Textures and Texture Packs

~ Minetest Textures ~

"Textures", in Minetest, refer to the small, png images that we see as blocks, tools, recipe items, what is held in the wield hand, and how we see the Minetest world itself.

Though the images themselves are flat, they are intended to represent the texture of the block. In the default texture pack, cobble is grey and lumpy while glass is smooth and clear with a few, white, highlights.

A "texture pack" is a collection of these texture images that you can use to change the overall look and feel of Minetest worlds that you play in.

Texture packs are "client side" meaning that what ever texture pack you are using to play with, you are the only one who sees it. The other players may be using other texture packs and they will see things differently than you.

So if you are using the "John Smith" texture pack, your view of the world will be very different from the view of the world as seen by another player who uses the "Simple Pixels" texture pack.



John Smith Texture Pack
Dark and rustic, the "John Smith" texture pack is well suited for medieval scenes.

~ An example of the "John Smith" texture pack ~
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Simple Pixels Texture Pack
A bright and cartoony looking, "Simple Pixels" may be ideal for the very young Minetest players.

~ An example of the "Simple Pixels" texture pack ~
 (click picture for larger version)

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Build Study

~ Street Designs ~
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A "build study" is anything that you would study to improve your building skills.

A build study may be a group of pictures that are related by a specific detail. For example, different shapes of roofs and the reasons for those shapes.

A build study may be screenshots of someone else's builds. Do they have a recognizable build style? If so, why is it recognizable? What techniques did they use to achieve effects? Why did they do this instead of that? Did they use these blocks because of color or because of texture... or both?

A build study may be a critique of your own build. Why does this corner look good but the other corner doesn't? This works in this scene but it wouldn't work in that scene because ________.

A build study may be an intentionally incomplete build with cut-away sections exposing the things above, below, and around that would have been covered up if the build were complete. These can be great for visual reference notes on special lighting effects or mechanical functions if you used a contraption mod.

A build study may be the same build repeated several times with only slight differences that is then later used as a visual reference. What does it look like when grey wool is used instead of stone brick? Panes vs glass blocks? Slabs vs stairs?

A build study may be purely conceptual. Try things, see what they look like. What works? What doesn't?

~ Street Designs ~
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A small section of street exploring at least five possible design options. Raised sidewalk or raised curb? Parking/biking lane or not? Sewer drains? How much work are you willing to do: dig the roads lower so the sidewalks and builds are flush with the ground or build the roads flush with the ground and raise every thing else?

~ Hobbit House Cut-Away ~
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The exposed frame-work of a hill-home or "Hobbit" house. What does a "hill home" or a "Hobbit" house look like, structurally, under all the dirt and grass? How wide does each wall have to be for the circular door ways to look good and fit right?

~ House Model ~
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A miniature, model construct for planning a house. Some projects can be planned by building tiny, model versions first. In this case, a suburban home with an attached garage and driveway in front, a front entrance off to the side and smaller room extensions and a bay window extending beyond the main section of the house.

~ Living Room Cut-Away ~
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A corner of a living room for trying different color combinations. Use WordEdit to change the wood floor to wall-to-wall carpeting with colored wool. Too much? Change the floor back and use the colored wool to create a rug instead.

~ Ktichen Cut-Away ~
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A kitchen where two walls have been cut-away to reveal the different layers. What proportions will things have to be? What color scheme works for the project? Cut-away build studies can help work-out details such as these.

~ "Noncubic" Mod Display ~
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A display of every block made by Yves de Beck's "Noncubic" Minetest mod. Laying out all the blocks in a mod will give you a much better idea of what they look like in different texture packs and under different lighting situations.

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Background House

To me, a "background" house or "background" build is a build that is too small to be considered "full-sized" and therefor is not fully functional. They are part of the background of a much larger scene.

Background houses typically have only one room per level and usually don't go over two stories high.

Due to their small size, background houses don't have separate, walled-off, dedicated-purpose rooms like a kitchen, a living room, a bathroom, a bedroom, a laundry room, a basement, an attic, and closets.

Like supporting cast in a film, these  background builds are the "supporting" structures in the landscape, farm, village, town or city scenes they are a part of.


Some examples:

~ ABM House ~
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~ Shack Improvement Project House ~
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~ Snow House ~
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Stick Frame

~ Stick Frame ~
(click picture for larger version)

A stick frame is a building frame that is not much more than just support posts and crossbeams.

Unlike a box frame, stick frames are very skeletal looking.

Think of a stick frame as the outline of a building before all the walls, floors, and ceilings are added.



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Box Frame

~ A Box Frame is literally made of boxes. ~
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A box frame is a building frame that is an enclosed box or multiple, joined boxes.

Unlike a stick frame where there are no walls, ceilings, or floors, just support posts and cross beams, a box frame has solid walls, ceilings, and floors.

The typical Minetest "starter home" on a survival-mode server is, basically, a box frame.



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Kitchen Testing

~ Kitchen Testing Can Be Like This ~

Once in a while when chatting about working with mods, I'll use the term, "kitchen testing". It's just one of my folksy sayings that's come about over the years. What I mean by "kitchen testing" is learning by trial-an-error; just do something and see what happens.

Many years ago, the author of a houseplant-tips book that I was reading, referred to his tips and techniques as "kitchen tested". (If I recall correctly, the book was "Mohter Earth's Hassle-Free Indoor Plant Book" by Lynn and Joel Rapp.) From reading the book and the way I grew up, I understood that "kitchen tested" meant learning by trial-and-error with simple experiments done in the kitchen.

No fancy apparatus, no sensitive scientific instruments, no framed PhD diplomas; just a terracotta pot, potting soil, a houseplant, and water.

What I know about working with mods for Minetest doesn't come from a fancy education but from "kitchen testing".

Pick a mod, open it's code in a text editor, change some stuff, load the mod into Minetest and see what happens. Then take note of the outcome, try something different in the mod's code, rinse-and-repeat the process. I may not know how and why something does what it does but I learn what works and what doesn't.

I can't emphasize enough how important it is to take notes during this process and to put them into the code as comments. Your notes will help you and others in the future. Don't worry about cluttering-up the code with your comments. Computer code by its very nature is cryptic and arcane to the average person. Comments in code can be the interpreters and translators for us non-geeks. "Kitchen testing" is about keeping things simple to understand and code comments can go a long way to help that.

So, in the end, even though kitchen testing may not be fancy and scientific (though there are times when I do feel like a mad scientist), it is still learning by trying things out and experimenting with ideas and what-ifs.



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