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MTG was officially moved to a 'bugfixes, maintenance only' mode! #2710
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I have no idea what Hidden Worlds is and couldn't find it form a quick search.
MTG had a team of 6 before and it was still somewhat productive. (roughly 2016-2018 on this graph)
I don't get where you see any focus on MTG. Despite the nitpicking above, I don't see any future for MTG this way either and moving it to a bugfix-only mode is a necessary step. |
Hidden Worlds is @Ezhh's game. It's a private repo currently |
The only problem I see is that 95% of mods depend on MTG. I mean if MTG is removed then all ContentDB mods will be useless and the mods will be dispersed. Then a batch of specific mods will appear just for unique games, and they will be incompatible with other games. 9 years of mod history will be compromised. It will be a clean slate. Casual players will be upset if they can't install good mods: 3d armor, moreores, decor in their favorite game... |
@runsy This isn't talking about deleting MTG. It will continue to exist, just won't see new features. |
Ah, so i say: OK. No more features. Still. Pause. Freeze. Only bugfixes. |
👍 This would be not the first time MTG would be in a bugfix-only mode. Yes, let go of MTG, apart from bugfixes. MTG still needs to be supported in a strictly technical sense just for the servers alone. I agree that MTG can't and shouldn't be killed entirely simply because of all the dependencies that grew from it. Moving to maintenence mode is probably the best solution. As for the modding base view of MTG, I might argue that allowing documentation improvements/fixes is acceptable as well. But I don't think it's pressing, I think the documentation is fine for now. I mostly agree with this post, obviously, as I have argued to dethrone MTG for YEARS. I'm very glad to see that you finally agree. Going to pure-maintanence-only mode is a clear signal to set priorities.
I think that's not really the problem. The problem is that MTG has a near complete lack of vision, for years. You don't neccessary need a “dictator”, but more like a shared vision. Since there was basically none, MTG was being pulled in many opposing directions, so it did not head anywhere. I have also nagged you years ago about MTG's core goals, but I never got a satisfying answer or just very vague ones at best. The fact that you still have not figured out whether MTG is even meant as a game, or a modding base, or something else, is very telling. It's no surprise that MTG was always in this misery, nobody knows what MTG is even about! I agree with most of the rest of the post, except:
Absolutely not. MTG is not a good gentle introduction. I have disputed your claim before, I don't understand why you still repeat this. I think Repixture might become a candidate for an introduction game. First, it's deliberately very simple, and includes some of the missing help stuff. Bot it's not quite ready for prime time, however. First, it too lacks in content (IMHO), second, it has no tutorial-like elements (yet). |
It's probably a good idea to discuss which PRs are, and which PRs are not acceptable. Acceptable PRs to me:
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By 'focus on MTG' i mean it being shipped with the engine, being the basis for so many servers, and having contributions being made to it, it still seems 'the game to aspire to contribute to', probably because it is shipped with the engine. /////////////////////////////// Part of the reason i request this is to make clear to non-core dev contributors what PRs will be considered. We still get PRs for new textures and random low-priority features (which should obviously be optional mods used with MTG), currently there is still pressure to attend to these, i feel obliged to. And it is then painful to try to argue these should not be added, and this disappoints the contributors.
This is actually what i meant by a large non-coherent team of equals.
Well yeah, it is not great for that, i should not have included that =) As this is a big decision, i ask for one more core dev to agree, that will then be a majority of active MTG core devs. |
Also:
Well ... the core devs, and celeron55, have actually also intended to dethrone MTG for many years, by shipping multiple games with the engine. But that never happened. |
Also:
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Minetest Game is stagnating because there's a lack of direction. We try to please everyone, but end up pleasing no one at all. I want to see MTG be more fully-featured as a light minecraft-like, with:
Whether it's a fork or an official project, I think it's useful for Minetest Game to continue. |
I do not consider the 'stagnation' to be a bad thing, using that word implies a bad thing, i think it is necessary and we realise this. I consider the intent to create an 'impressive game' around MTG to be a mistake. It cannot be a good modding base either. Better to make MTG maintenance/bugfix-only to support what depends on it, and start a new unrestricted game, even if the new game copy-pastes many of the better parts of MTG (to not waste that work) but uses a good mod structure, removes unnecessary mods and fixes the bad stuff like the horrific plant-spreading implementation. So i suggest a fork (or multiple forks) that is free to alter and fix all that is wrong with MTG, not restricted by what depends on MTG remaining the way it is. Good chance to use a new name. If a fork is made it needs to be developed under a new system, one of the 3 i list in the first post, not 'a large number of non-coherent core devs with equal power' as that is what MTG does and that does not work for a game and results in a dull unfocussed game as well as lots of subjective-taste arguing. I will not be a part of any gameplay-focussed popular MTG-fork as i am not gameplay-orientated, or rather, my concept of 'gameplay' is radically different to most users of MT. |
I fully agree with paramat. The dependency argument cannot be dismissed easily, there is a ton of mods and servers that depend on MTG so that some major changes would actually make things worse. If you want to “rescue” MTG, the only reasonable way forwards would be an independent fork. A fork which can ignore all these restrictions safely. But I like to note the fork would have to have a radically different development method. It also needs an actual plan and vision, some goals to work towards, rather than just a vague and useless notion of “voxel game”. The bureaucracy of MTG has prevented MTG from getting a crafting guide, for crying out loud! The discussion about the crafting guide is >100 comments long, while almost all other games just did it. Some advice for a potential fork:
This list only applies if you actually want to do a fork, obviously. I don't know if we even need a MTG fork, or if it is better to just start something from scratch. Also, we already do have games which already have most of the features that rubenwardy lists, games with much greater potential. So check out those, too. |
What new games you people have in mind and will you even contribute to them in any way... Will it end up as even more "dead MTG" game? Will it be different this time with red tape on contributing, will PRs stall for years? |
MTG had all that except 'vision', see the many issues discussing the many planned features.
Nah, the delay is due to us still working through the necessary changes and refinements, and of course the usual lack of core dev time.
That is fine and expected for a game that has mostly unofficially gone into maintenance mode, just a few bugfix and maintenance commits.
Well, i see what you are trying to say, but we very much care about MTG because it has to be very carefully maintained. We are just not much interested in further feature development, and are busy elsewhere.
Only needed if the development is 'small group of coherent devs with equal power', which is unlikely to happen with any more than 2 core devs, and i warn is one of the less good development methods likely to end up with similar problems to MTG. 'Agreeing' to an initial plan is not necessarily the same as having the same vision.
Strange and negative question, there is plenty of ideas and enthusiasm for new MT games.
Another strange and negative question. Some games will go well, some will not, obviously, just as currently. What i refer to is no different to current general MT game development. |
Maybe i did not make it clear enough ... After the necessay main menu changes, ship MT with no games. Move MTG officially to maintenance-only mode. There will then be:
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I can get 100% behind this particular plan. Making MT more “neutral” as a whole and moving the spotlight to the particular game projects. Also, we need more of these “independent game projects”. =) It is good to see this issue as part of the Bigger Picture. Whether MTG is ever forked or not is actually besides the question, sorry for the distraction … |
I support @paramat on this. |
@rubenwardy @SmallJoker shall we do this? On the understanding that compatibility-breaking forks of MTG could be started as unofficial game projects (i might make one myself), so the good work in MTG can be extracted and built upon and ideas for MTG already discussed could go ahead in these. |
Generally I agree to your proposition.
Generally, MTG would be a repository to provide the official version of "default", "dyes", "wool", ... but happens to be a game which could be installed and used on its own. |
Just add some variable names to the I disagree with turning MTG to a mere modpack. This is too disruptive, and actually goes against the goal of keeping compability. OK, even if it is compatible, it would be super annoying for everyone. It might cause a lot of stress for server operators. Please note that a ton of servers use MTG in some way or other. Usually heavily modded, but still. No need to provoke them. ;-) Just stop “tweaking” MTG already. MTG could be locked down right now. Just do it. What's stopping you? I think the idea like “compability helpers” qualifies as “maintenence work”, so those won't be blocked if MTG is in “maintenenace/bugfix mode”. This can safely be added, even after the lockdown. |
MTG will not have new features added (after the larger ones already in progress), and a feature added to a 'new game derived from MTG' has nothing to do with MTG.
I think i might be misleading by my use of the word 'fork'. I mean completely unrestricted new games that are derived from MTG and use some of the work done in MTG, with no intention of being concerned about compatibility.
New games derived from MTG should not have a "default" mod at all, it would be insane to do that, they should use a well designed mod structure. I get the impression you are writing about the MTG project actually growing to include closely-related 'forks' with compatibility concerns. This seems a very bad idea as this is not 'moving on' at all. I am not proposing this and discourage it. I propose that everyone makes a clean break from MTG and moves on (in terms of game and mod development). I discourage anyone making a 'fork of MTG that has compatibility concerns'. If someone does want to do this, they are of course free to do that, but the maintainers of MTG should not feel obligation or do any work. We seem to have some kind of consensus now so i will start work on re-assessing issues and PRs, and will make a forum post. |
@BuckarooBanzay |
Sorry, i didn't read your comment properly: no, |
NP. |
(this is getting offtopic, sorry) My usecase was that i can use some of the mods from the Example (wip): https://github.com/BuckarooBanzay/eco/tree/master/mods |
also there should be a simple legacy detector inside the core which helps to debug mods without changing debug out. |
Is MTG going to be broken up into individual mods so they can be added to ContentDB? |
No, why would it? |
Because 85% of mods depend on Edit: I'm just ballparking "85%". I don't know what the actual percentage is. Would be interesting to find out. |
MTG isn't going anywhere and if no longer shipped with the engine it will be added as a game in CDB. |
https://content.minetest.net/packages/Minetest/minetest_game/ It doesn't really make sense to distribute default externally, as it's essentially MTG itself. Work should be done to add APIs and encourage not depending on default. Cross game support is hard though, so most mods only support one game and can then be ported to other games |
Something that might be helpful (if not already implemented), would be an ‘or’ option in dependencies. So we can write mods as alternatives to Though this can already be done using soft dependencies with global or mod path checks, I don’t think it is used very often. Mods just add |
Or maybe allow mods declare a “provides” specification? |
This page https://github.com/minetest still states Building an open source voxel game engine and game, However if MTG is maintainance only and not actively developed is this statement entirely true? |
Maintenance qualifies as building IMO, although perhaps less emphasis should be put on the game. |
Is there any reason why this issue is still open? I feel it can be closed now, especially as Luanti doesn't even ship with MTG by default anymore. |
But wouldn't closing it unpin it? |
no |
Because we need to move on from MTG, which is holding MT back.
There is still too much focus on MTG, core dev and contributor time is better spent elsewhere on new games.
Hopefully soon we will stop shipping MTG with the engine, the more i think about this the more i realise how obvious and important this is, to stop MT being judged by MTG and confused with MTG. I consider this the most important task in the engine.
The more we add to MTG the more maintenance and time it requires, resulting in more focus on it and neglect of moving forward and creating new games (either modding bases or coherent playable games).
This does not have to be completely inflexible and rigid. Occasionally we could still add highly beneficial refinements or highly beneficial fundamental features.
If this seems controversial and extreme, it is not, as MTG deveopment has already been close to this state for many months.
Few contributions to MTG are made, and these are mostly bugfixes.
Is MTG a modding base?
MTG is sometimes described as a 'modding base', but it is actually a bad one due to its mod structure. However, splitting default into many smaller mods is a nightmare task that involves many aliases and the complexity of compatibilty code. MTG is not worth the effort this requires.
A good modding base would not have random feature mods included, like beds etc. Stuff that a game customiser would prefer to choose themselves.
A good modding base, to me, would be a world with biomes and resources, and mods to do fundamental environment stuff like altering clouds and providing environment sounds. Nothing else. Then you add mods to do what you desire with those resources.
Is MTG a game?
But also, MTG is not a coherent game, it has a random collection of mods, some of which are exact copies of MC features, that do not make much sense together. Survival aspects but no dangerous mobs.
MTG can never be a coherent game, and we should give up trying, because it suffers from 'design by committee'. Celeron55 warned about this in the past, and it seems he tried to limit the number of MTG core devs due to this. But as engine core devs were added, most insisted on being MTG core devs also, resulting in a large number of MTG core devs.
The MTG core devs are large in number but not coherent, and have equal power, this is the worst situation for a game which, unlike the engine, is a work of art.
A group creating a work of art only works well if either:
MTG is also developed in a MT repo and according to MT engine rules, this further harms creativity due to the bureaucracy which is actually fine for an engine.
So
MTG is stuck halfway between being a modding base and a cohesive and compelling game, unable to be good at either.
We should give up trying to make it either of those.
The value of MTG is:
None of these require the addition of new features.
MTG contains a lot of nasty implementations that cannot be changed because of so much depending on MTG being the way it is.
In this way, MTG is very restricted and stuck 8 years in the past. I am actuallly surprised that we are still so focussed on it, i feel we should have moved on many years ago.
Obviously, we have to maintain MTG to support what depends on it. But beyond that i do not think it deserves any more than a tiny amount of core dev or contributor attention.
To be clear, i am calm and am not ranting or insulting MTG. I feel good about what we have achieved. I just have a clear view of how things are and a need to move on.
EDIT:
Some more things that need doing:
Remove 'minetest-subgame' from GitHub tags, we do not use 'subgame' anymore.
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