/minetest

Minetest is an open source voxel game engine with easy modding and game creation

Primary LanguageC++OtherNOASSERTION

Minetest

Build Status Translation status License

Minetest is a free open-source voxel game engine with easy modding and game creation.

Copyright (C) 2010-2022 Perttu Ahola celeron55@gmail.com and contributors (see source file comments and the version control log)

Table of Contents

  1. Further Documentation
  2. Default Controls
  3. Paths
  4. Configuration File
  5. Command-line Options
  6. Compiling
  7. Docker
  8. Version Scheme

Further documentation

Default controls

All controls are re-bindable using settings. Some can be changed in the key config dialog in the settings tab.

Button Action
Move mouse Look around
W, A, S, D Move
Space Jump/move up
Shift Sneak/move down
Q Drop itemstack
Shift + Q Drop single item
Left mouse button Dig/punch/use
Right mouse button Place/use
Shift + right mouse button Build (without using)
I Inventory menu
Mouse wheel Select item
0-9 Select item
Z Zoom (needs zoom privilege)
T Chat
/ Command
Esc Pause menu/abort/exit (pauses only singleplayer game)
+ Increase view range
- Decrease view range
K Enable/disable fly mode (needs fly privilege)
J Enable/disable fast mode (needs fast privilege)
H Enable/disable noclip mode (needs noclip privilege)
E Aux1 (Move fast in fast mode. Games may add special features)
C Cycle through camera modes
V Cycle through minimap modes
Shift + V Change minimap orientation
F1 Hide/show HUD
F2 Hide/show chat
F3 Disable/enable fog
F4 Disable/enable camera update (Mapblocks are not updated anymore when disabled, disabled in release builds)
F5 Cycle through debug information screens
F6 Cycle through profiler info screens
F10 Show/hide console
F12 Take screenshot

Paths

Locations:

  • bin - Compiled binaries
  • share - Distributed read-only data
  • user - User-created modifiable data

Where each location is on each platform:

  • Windows .zip / RUN_IN_PLACE source:
    • bin = bin
    • share = .
    • user = .
  • Windows installed:
    • bin = C:\Program Files\Minetest\bin (Depends on the install location)
    • share = C:\Program Files\Minetest (Depends on the install location)
    • user = %APPDATA%\Minetest or %MINETEST_USER_PATH%
  • Linux installed:
    • bin = /usr/bin
    • share = /usr/share/minetest
    • user = ~/.minetest or $MINETEST_USER_PATH
  • macOS:
    • bin = Contents/MacOS
    • share = Contents/Resources
    • user = Contents/User or ~/Library/Application Support/minetest or $MINETEST_USER_PATH

Worlds can be found as separate folders in: user/worlds/

Configuration file

  • Default location: user/minetest.conf
  • This file is created by closing Minetest for the first time.
  • A specific file can be specified on the command line: --config <path-to-file>
  • A run-in-place build will look for the configuration file in location_of_exe/../minetest.conf and also location_of_exe/../../minetest.conf

Command-line options

  • Use --help

Compiling

Docker

We provide Minetest server Docker images using the GitLab mirror registry.

Images are built on each commit and available using the following tag scheme:

  • registry.gitlab.com/minetest/minetest/server:latest (latest build)
  • registry.gitlab.com/minetest/minetest/server:<branch/tag> (current branch or current tag)
  • registry.gitlab.com/minetest/minetest/server:<commit-id> (current commit id)

If you want to test it on a Docker server you can easily run:

sudo docker run registry.gitlab.com/minetest/minetest/server:<docker tag>

If you want to use it in a production environment you should use volumes bound to the Docker host to persist data and modify the configuration:

sudo docker create -v /home/minetest/data/:/var/lib/minetest/ -v /home/minetest/conf/:/etc/minetest/ registry.gitlab.com/minetest/minetest/server:master

Data will be written to /home/minetest/data on the host, and configuration will be read from /home/minetest/conf/minetest.conf.

Note: If you don't understand the previous commands please read the official Docker documentation before use.

You can also host your Minetest server inside a Kubernetes cluster. See our example implementation in misc/kubernetes.yml.

Version scheme

We use major.minor.patch since 5.0.0-dev. Prior to that we used 0.major.minor.

  • Major is incremented when the release contains breaking changes, all other numbers are set to 0.
  • Minor is incremented when the release contains new non-breaking features, patch is set to 0.
  • Patch is incremented when the release only contains bugfixes and very minor/trivial features considered necessary.

Since 5.0.0-dev and 0.4.17-dev, the dev notation refers to the next release, i.e.: 5.0.0-dev is the development version leading to 5.0.0. Prior to that we used previous_version-dev.