I read that Google will be purging accounts of anything that has been inactive for more than two years. When I checked my Minetest blog the last post was in 2017.
Two things:
- Yup, better get something posted.
- It's really been that long!?
Well,... back then I was unemployed and had a lot of time on my hands. More often than not I miss those days. My health and peace of mind were much better back then. The rat-race of employment takes a heavy toll on a person.
I still putter in my single-player world, "U4EA" (euphoria); put on some chill tunes, relax, and escape the insanities of real life for a while.
Creating blog posts were very time consuming. Thinking of what to write, condensing notes into concise and coherent content; setting up screenshots, cropping, resizing, condensing; then reviewing it all and work through several edits before posting only to come back days layer and see mistakes with refreshed eyes followed by another round of edits.
On that note...
Condense Your Images Before Posting
Yes, we live in a day and age of high-speed Internet, wide-screen monitors, and powerful desktop computers but the most used device for frequently accessing the Internet is the smartphone. In comparison to the desktop gear, smartphones have tiny screens, wimpy processors, dinky amounts of RAM, and if you don't have access to WiFi you are stuck in the hell that is slow and spotty cellular service (at least here in the US).
800px x 600px at 72dpi is good enough for most images. If the image is of the realistic sort, use the jpg file format. If the image is from a chunky, blocky game like Minetest, use the png file format.
It may take several attempts using different compression levels in jpg or png formats to find the sweet spot between the amount of compression and the rendered quality of the image. After a few times you develop a feel for what settings work for what type of image is compressed.
"GIMP" is a good, free, photo editor for Windows and Linux (not sure if it works for Mac).
"Compress jpeg, png: Reduce image size" is the free app I use on my Android smartphone.
Perspective and Proportion
One of the challenges of building in Minetest is interpreting your perspective and sense of proportion of the real world and translating that into the perspective and proportions of Minetest worlds.
In Minetest everything is based on the dimension of 1 x 1 x 1 cubical space. Even the smallest, thinnest panel occupies a full 1 x 1 x 1 cubical space -- nothing else can occupy that space at the same time.
This can be useful in some build-design tricks but more often than not it is a frustrating fact of builing in Minetest that you can't put stuff close together like you can in real life.
To work around this means having to make compromises and sacrifices in how you assemble your builds and then relying on the viewers' imagination to fill in where Minetest won't allow stuff to be put.
To build in Minetest with real life proportions would result in creations so massive that Minetest wouldn't be able to load all of the world chunks for viewing at a distance. The Minetest character would be like a tiny ant in a pro-sports stadium.
To help adjust your perspective from the real world to a Minetest world and give you a better sense of proportion of your build to the player character stack two blocks, one on top of the other, to create a mannequin. Two blocks high is roughly the height and width of a Minetest character ("Sam"). Since the default "Sam" has blue pants and a green shirt, I stack a green wool block on top of a blue wool block. Then I place one of these wool mannequins in each room and at least one outside to get a better feel for how big or small to make stuff.
I'll leave things here and save the rest of my thoughts and scribbled notes for future posts.
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