[Hamara-devel] the minetest test

[Vikas Tara]

On 14/05/15 18:21, shirish wrote:
> Hi all,
> I was looking at minetest. While it runs pretty slowly on this 
> machine, barely usable but could do stuff.
>
> @vikas which version were your kids playing as :-
>
> [$] apt-cache policy minetest
>
>
> minetest:
>   Installed: 0.4.12+repack-2
>   Candidate: 0.4.12+repack-2
>   Version table:
>  *** 0.4.12+repack-2 0
>           1 http://httpredir.debian.org//debian/ testing/main amd64 
> Packages
>           1 http://httpredir.debian.org//debian/ unstable/main amd64 
> Packages
>         100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
>      0.4.10+repack-1 0
>         500 http://httpredir.debian.org//debian/ jessie/main amd64 
> Packages
>
Hamara 1.0.1 currently has 0.4.9 as shipped by Ubuntu

>
> So as can be seen there are two versions of minetest in Debian.
> Looking at the changelog there seems to be lot of progress over a year.
>
> See http://dev.minetest.net/Changelog
>
> I also looked at its github page and was pleased to see the game is 
> active and has something like 100 odd pull requests which means that 
> there is healthy community around it.
>
> I did take a look at both commit logs and was able to find quite a few 
> people being able to commit to main which is healthy for the project 
> as well.
>
> Even the forum for modding is bursting with activity.
>
> https://forum.minetest.net/viewforum.php?f=11
This is the part that makes is more attractive than minecraft. With 
minetest, modding is allowed!
>
> As far as the sleepy nature of gaming on my system is simply because 
> there were and still not any voxel instructions in the cpu and the 
> embedded intel card/gpu is too old. I got something like 10-12 fps 
> with cent percent cpu and gpu utilization.
>
> This is a known issue on the cpu front for a long time. On the GPU 
> side, there are many improvements supposed to happen in near-term.
>
> For e.g. see 
> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/190660-nvidia-uses-its-new-maxwell-gpu-and-global-illumination-to-prove-the-lunar-landings-werent-faked
>
> and http://voxels.blogspot.in/2014/04/gtx580m-vs-ati-270x-1920x1024.html
>
> apparently Radeon's cards are best (in part due to them having more 
> shaders perhaps).
>
> http://voxels.blogspot.in/ does have lot of info. about voxels
>
> Minetest is already in pi. See 
> https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=15543&p=190946
>
> Looking at the huge variety of mods, content now and being planned 
> once kids (or even adults) get into it, wouldn't be able to get any 
> things done (TM) !
>
> So, in essence am glad it doesn't run well on my system otherwise 
> would be instantly addicted to this game.
Yeah - I hear that. I'm taking a different approach - getting the kids 
to do it, next i'll set up a server and get multiplayer going, then I'll 
move them onto
lua scripting and modding ;)

Working on this could be really useful for the educational aspects of 
hamara and it would be great to engage with young users this way.

Also - mods for objects that are more likely to be seen in india might 
be a good idea!