Improvements are made to graphics, the Lua API, and the user interface. We present the winners of the 2023 Game Jam along with other cool mods. A new core developer joins the team, and we look forward to FOSDEM 2024!
- Engine News
- 2023 Game Jam Winners
- Mods News
- Art and Builds
- Other News
- FOSDEM 2024
- Contributing to Minetest
Engine News
New Core Developer
The community welcomes longtime community member Lars Müller (aka Luatic, appguru(eu), LMD) (Github, ContentDB), as the newest Core Developer! He has made many contributions to documentation and entities, is currently assisting the effort to introduce the modern glTF model format, and is working on a PR to allow specific entities to be hidden from players.
Improved Touchscreen Support
With SDL2 recently being set as the default rendering backend, progress on better integration of gamepads and touchscreens can easily move forward. Grorp’s PR to enable mouse and touchscreen input on any device paired with work by okias to switch between the two while playing marks another great step towards universal input support.
Entity Animation Improvements
Lars M. has extended the capabilities of armature bones, allowing mods to set individual bone position, rotation, and scale, with optional relation to defined animations and interpolation over time. This will finally allow game developers and modders to implement smoother entity animations in Lua.
God Rays Shader
x2048’s god rays shader was adopted by lhofhansl and merged into the development version of Minetest 5.9.0. Similar to dynamic shadows, game developers can choose to enable the new lighting API features to allow god rays in their games. Players must enable both bloom and volumetric lighting in their settings to utilize the new shader.
Touchscreen Tap Inputs
Many items are used by holding the place button (right mouse by default), such as bows and shields from MineClone2. Until PR #14087 by grorp, these items did not work on touchscreens. With the PR merged, game and mod developers can determine which action a given item performs on a long or short tap. The PR also changes the default touchscreen punch behavior to a short tap, improving the Minetest combat experience and bringing it closer to other mobile voxel games.
2023 Game Jam Winners
The 2023 Game Jam was held in December with the theme “Unexpected”. Contestants were given three weeks to make games from scratch and submit them to ContentDB. After the community ranked their favorite submissions on the new Game Jam Site, the winners emerged.
1st Place: Citadel by Irevol
Weave through the past and future in the 4-dimensional parkour puzzle game Citadel by Irevol. You are a daring explorer searching the ruins of an ancient citadel. You find mysterious runes which allow you to navigate space and time and unearth the secrets and treasures of the citadel.
2nd Place: The Velvet Crystal by Regulus
Recover the lost crystal and bring light back to the world in The Velvet Crystal by Regulus, a parkour game with a twist. Use your wand to perform stunts and help you navigate the castle. Gather information from voiced NPCs and defeat the final boss to recover the velvet crystal.
3rd place: The Unexpected Gambit by NO11
Are you a chess lover? The Unexpected Gambit by NO11 will keep you on your toes with crazy moves that come at unexpected moments. Experience a very polished implementation of a classic game with interesting twists in The Unexpected Gambit.
Honorable Mentions
Thank you to everyone who participated in the game jam and congratulations to the winners! We hope all the participants continue to improve their games to become polished player experiences and great showcases of what Minetest can do. Here are some other interesting projects that emerged from the 2023 jam.
MineOS
MineOS by jordan4ibanez is an astonishing demo, especially for those familiar with Minetest’s GUI capabilities. MineOS implements a polished graphical operating system with retro sound effects and animations and includes several windowed apps to play with, including a 3D DOOM-like shooter. It was certainly unexpected.
Shadow Forest
Shadow Forest by Wuzzy is a polished role-playing game where you fill the shoes of the Wizard of Light (and his trusty Light Crystal companion). Your quest is to rid the forest of the invading Shadows. Collect resources, level up your skills, and use your Staff of Light to defeat the Shadows. Read more about the making of Shadow Forest on Wuzzy’s website!
Air Game by wsor4035
This section intentionally left blank.
Mods News
Vehicles from Apercy
APercy continues his line of quality vehicles in Minetest! His latest work introduces a Volkswagen Beetle to his Automobiles Pack, the Savoia S2.1 biplane from the 1992 Japanese animated film Porco Rosso (Studio Ghibli), and a World War I airplane combat mod.
TypeScript For Minetest
jordan4ibanez has created custom TypeScript type definitions for Minetest to use with the TypeScriptToLua transpiler. He is developing and using it with his project ForgottenLands, written almost entirely in TypeScript.
BlockExchange
The Blockexchange project by BuckarooBanzay has undergone a few rewrites and enhancements to improve the overall user experience. Blockexchange now supports logging in with ContentDB, features schematics on the homepage, supports CDB Collections and markdown on detail pages, and sports a new, faster interface. Check out the new features at https://blockexchange.minetest.ch.
Art and Builds
Other News
Minetest at Events in Italy
In late 2023 Minetest was featured at several conventions around Italy thanks to Zughy and his sponsor Italian Linux Society. Zughy demonstrated Minetest and gave talks at several events, from underground videogame festivals like Zona Warpa to free software events like MERGE-it (you can watch one of the talks in Italian here). In December, Zughy also presented a workshop in Empoli, Italy where participants learned how to create minigames from scratch using arena_lib. It doesn’t look like these events are going to stop any time soon, so what’s next? FOSDEM!
FOSDEM 2024
Minetest will be among several stands at FOSDEM 2024! FOSDEM is the largest free and open-source software conference in Europe and will be held on February 3rd and 4th in Brussels, Belgium. The Minetest booth will be showing off the engine and community content, giving out stickers and goodies, and introducing visitors to the platform!
If you happen to be in the area, come say hi!
Contributing to Minetest
Want to contribute to Minetest but don’t know where to start? Start with these simple issues, or help fix the most annoying bugs for the community!
Want to add a feature, but you’re not sure if it will be accepted? Have a look at the roadmap or choose an issue with the “Supported by core dev” label!
Are you a professional artist or UI designer? Help us make our main menu more appealing and help create an identity for Minetest!
Thanks to our post contributors this month: MisterE, GreenXenith, rubenwardy, Zughy, jordan4ibanez, Bituvo, Apercy, BuckarooBanzay, jdiego, grorp, Luatic.