Minetest

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

• Website: https://minetest.net/
• Wiki: https://wiki.minetest.net/
• Developer wiki: https://dev.minetest.net/
• Forum: https://forum.minetest.net/
• GitHub: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/
• doc/ directory of source distribution

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

• Compiling on GNU/Linux
• Compiling on Windows
• Compiling on MacOS

Docker

• Developing minetestserver with 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.