Minetest needs graphics programmers, UI/UX, and more

[rubenwardy]

Minetest is an open-source game engine which allows easy creation of Minecraft-like games. Minetest has over 100 million downloads across all our ports and third-party clients, 340 contributors, and stable development. We've recently released Minetest 5.0.0, which greatly improves the ability of the API. Coming soon, 5.1.0 will allow better GUIs and more.



Graphics Programmers

Our graphics core developer, RealBadAngel, died in 2017. Since then we've been struggling to find the expertise to improve the performance and quality of our graphics. We use the 3d rendering library Irrlicht, which has not received an update in 3 years. The last update of Irrlicht with features was 6 years ago - Minetest was released 8 years ago.

UI/UX

Minetest 5.1.0 will come with an improved main menu, and we need UI/UX knowledgable people to help inform the design. Minetest also suffers from this in general

Optimisers/Testers

One of the main aims of Minetest is to be stable and performant, especially on older hardware. Minetest does mostly obtain this, but there's still lots of places which need improvement

Game designers / developers

We'd like people to make games and tech demos to show what the engine's capable of

[Julius]

Regarding the engine problems: maybe worth looking into and talking to the SuperTuxKart developers here? AFAIK they use a much updated fork of Irrlicht. It might still be close enough to allow porting of Minetest? Edit: saw on the STK chat that they are aware of this thread but have not yet had the chance to look into it.

[Julius]

A bit OT, but I saw that you have a complex IRC channel structure as well as a userbase that to a large extend seems to prefer Discord.
https://wiki.minetest.net/IRC
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18636

If you don't mind I could set up a team server on our Mattermost https://chat.freegamedev.net with the same structure as your IRC channels and bot-bridge all to your IRC. In addition we could bridge some selected channels over from Discord if a moderator from there helps with setting up a bot-account.

[rubenwardy]

A bit OT, but I saw that you have a complex IRC channel structure as well as a userbase that to a large extend seems to prefer Discord.
https://wiki.minetest.net/IRC
https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=18636

If you don't mind I could set up a team server on our Mattermost https://chat.freegamedev.net with the same structure as your IRC channels and bot-bridge all to your IRC. In addition we could bridge some selected channels over from Discord if a moderator from there helps with setting up a bot-account.

The unofficial discord server is unofficial because we don't want to promote proprietary platforms.
I personally run a discord bridge between my game server's discord and IRC

[Julius]

The unofficial discord server is unofficial because we don't want to promote proprietary platforms.
I personally run a discord bridge between my game server's discord and IRC

Hmm... I agree with the not wanting to promote proprietary platforms, but if that is where most users are then not bridging rather drives people towards Discord and not away from it in my experience

[drummyfish]

The unofficial discord server is unofficial because we don't want to promote proprietary platforms.

Love to hear this

I'll try to take a look at Minetest's engine internals... I have some experience with graphics (have studied it and contributed to some projects, e.g. OpenMW)... though I am kinda burned out and can't be promising anything right now.

[Julius]

Modertator's notice: This has gone far enough. As this is a legitimate thread asking for help I have not closed it but instead deleted the totally unnecessary swearing over a wording issue. @fluffrabbit, if you have a bad day don't vent here on the forum please.