Last month, developers worked on the 5.7.0 release. We had lots of mod updates and releases. Also, Repixture got a soundscape rework.
Engine News
The developers spent March working on a release, see the 5.7.0 release post for all the information.
Games News
Repixture release 3.9.0, “The Update That Changed Sounds Forever”, is a huge rework of sounds. The old soundscape was somewhat jarring, but now, after a lot of work and a few hundred new sound files, walking, digging and placing sounds much better.
Additionally, Wuzzy introduced a player manual, which is not a walkthrough but should help you get started with the game. It serves as a reference for the game’s mechanics.
Mods News
AP Airship
Primarily an experiment with attachments, AP Airship by Apercy adds a huge dirigible balloon. Like Steampunk Blimp players can walk around inside it, and it adds special features such as clickable seats, more control, and a better ladder. Fuel is disabled for now, so it can fly indefinitely, but in the future Apercy will add a fuel mechanic. The Airship is affected by winds and supports climate_api from TestificateMods.
Pizzaria
Pizzaria by Extex immerses you in your pizza-building quest. You will form the dough with a rolling pin, place ingredients on your pizza, physically place your pizza in the oven, and then slice up your masterpiece with a flourish using a pizza cutter.
Minetest Game lacks meat, cheese, tomatoes, and olives. Pizzaria supports toppings from other mods such as pineapple and mobs_redo, but as a fallback, Extex invented “The Mese Mutation Crystal”, which allows players to turn their wealth into pizza ingredients. Running a pizza shop will require a steady stream of mese, gold, apples and … bones. This could get interesting.
Mesecons
Wuzzy contributed an update for Mesecons which adds pitch variation for noteblocks, increasing the range of possible sounds. A player can set the pitch for a sound from C to B by punching the block just as with the piano sounds. Fire and explosions have been excluded from pitch modification to preserve their quality.
Mobs Redo
Mobs Redo by
tenplus1 added a damage
flash indicator. Whenever a mob is hit it will glow orange for a moment if the
setting mob_hit_effect is set to true. Mod authors can also define a custom
damage_texture_modifier in the mob definition. Additionally, the API now has
support for an injured animation, although mods will have to be updated to make
use of it.
Everness
Everness’s “Deep Ocean” update brings 3 new ocean biomes with sands, craftable blocks, corals, and ocean plants. It adds a “shell of underwater breathing” which makes exploring these biomes easier. Smaller fixes include new sounds for dirt, grass and ice blocks and Igloos with loot chests in Frosted Icesheet biomes. Happy exploring, everyone!
X Farming
X Farming by Sakel added a new scarecrow decoration for your farms. It can be activated with X farming’s bonemeal, making any nearby plants grow faster.
Modlib
Modlib’s B3D to glTF converter has been fixed and tested on about 1000 models from ContentDB. With this update, mod authors can use modlib to convert otherwise un-editable b3d models into an editable glTF format, allowing the community to clean up old models and re-export them. All animations are preserved during the process. In other words, even if the original Blender files have been lost, the model may be edited. In the future, it may also help with providing an easy upgrade path from B3D to glTF when Minetest gets support for glTF.
An example workflow is here.
Art and Builds
Thanks to our post contributors this month: MisterE, rubenwardy, appgurueu, Sakel, Extex, Apercy, Heather, Floh.