31–40 of 42 posts
https://minetest.dustlabs.io/mt/minetest.js(1) : Uncaught RangeError: WebAssembly.Memory(): could not allocate memory
I also see an error but instead: Uncaught TypeError: GLctx is undefined -- Firefox 105 on Linux 64-bit (ElementaryOS)
Minetest is an absolutely incredible project. My kids love to play it and it's one I can get behind because I can easily self-host so I own all the data, and I know my kids aren't talking to internet strangers through the game. It's packaged on most distros also so you can probably `apt get install minetest` or `dnf install minetest` and have it running. You can host games on the LAN from your machine, or you can eas…
Anyone here got experience running both Minecraft and Minetest servers? How do they compare?
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Neat project! And thanks for the explanation :-) Do you think the browser issues are being addressed already or will be addressed soon? or do you think it's a low priority for them? I would think enabling complex WASM apps would be a priority (especially for Google/Chrome) but you never know.
There is definitely a tremendous amount of work going into emscripten/wasm. Minetest is multi-threaded, and so relies on SharedArrayBuffer which only became available in 2020. The UX issues do seem to be stubbornly persistent though. I ran into the same issues long ago porting games with NaCl and asm.js. I'm not sure what is preventing progress there.
Minetest is an absolutely incredible project. My kids love to play it and it's one I can get behind because I can easily self-host so I own all the data, and I know my kids aren't talking to internet strangers through the game. It's packaged on most distros also so you can probably `apt get install minetest` or `dnf install minetest` and have it running. You can host games on the LAN from your machine, or you can eas…
Hosting a private Minecraft server is also quite easy, you just need a JVM and a freely redistributable .jar file. I think Minetest will perform much better on low-end hardware though; you can use PaperMC, Sodium, etc to improve Minecraft performance, but Minetest runs much smoother out of the box. Anyone here got experience running both Minecraft and Minetest servers? How do they compare?
The other voxel OS game is : https://veloren.net/
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Neat project! And thanks for the explanation :-) Do you think the browser issues are being addressed already or will be addressed soon? or do you think it's a low priority for them? I would think enabling complex WASM apps would be a priority (especially for Google/Chrome) but you never know.
There is definitely a tremendous amount of work going into emscripten/wasm. Minetest is multi-threaded, and so relies on SharedArrayBuffer which only became available in 2020. The UX issues do seem to be stubbornly persistent though. I ran into the same issues long ago porting games with NaCl and asm.js. I'm not sure what is preventing progress there.
For what it's worth, when porting NetCraft I did make an effort to isolate, fix and upstream various UX fixes to Emscripten:
https://github.com/satoshinm/emglfwbugs
with _some_ success; the developers of Emscripten are happy to accept pull requests. But I agree there's a lot of papercuts, and tracking down each of the usability nits could essentially be a full-time job...
For the keybinding problem, I've found using backquote/tilde key for escape can sufficiently workaround the un-interceptable escape key. It also works well on mobile browsers without escape keys.
But the problems with multi-gigabyte world storage, multi-threaded networking, SharedArrayBuffer, may require more invasive architectural changes. At this point, maybe a rewrite focused on web support from the beginning would easier than a port? But _a lot_ of work was put into Minetest over the years, it is great having the library of mods already developed for Minetest, available on the web. Although the same could be said for Minecraft itself.
In any case, thank you for your work porting Minetest to the web. I appreciate it moving the needle in the "web-based Minecraft clone" niche. Even if it may not the be all to end all, hopefully the UX blockers can be resolved, fit and finish, if not in Minetest itself maybe it will inspire others to create something anew with lessons learned from your port. One step closer to the metaverse.
It would be great to be able to pair this with the server, letting people play on it together just by going to a website. I have a server set up for my daughter and her cousins, so reducing the friction to "go to this site, that's it" would be very useful.
Why is WASM not used as extensively as Flash and Java were?
The web used to be full of applications like this. First Flash, then Java. Now we have open standards that are used so rarely that they are notable post-worthy events. Why is WASM not used as extensively as Flash and Java were?
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"keyboard side effects(e.g. Ctrl, W), " You can intercept and cancel the standard browser events and therefore prevent closing the tab for example with Strg W. Storage option on the web for more data is indexedDB. It is quite fast and stable by now. What kind of network issues do you have? But general performance I would not suspect to go drastically up anytime soon, since you already use wasm. (Unless you find some…
A handful of key combinations cannot be cancelled. With the Full Screen API, the page also loses use of the ESC key, which is extremely important to Minetest's menu interface. (That's why F11 is the recommended way to go full screen) For storage, a bare minimum Minetest world needs 1GB, grow-able to multiple gigabytes. I don't think IndexedDB is meant for that. The network issues are specific to Firefox. Multiple thr…
It actually is. My app also uses way over 1 GB after a while with no issues. The global limit is just tied to the users avaiable free space.
"The maximum browser storage space is dynamic — it is based on your hard drive size. The global limit is calculated as 50% of free disk space."
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/IndexedDB_A...
"The network issues are specific to Firefox"
And honestly, I would not care too much and just make it clear, that it does not yet run stable in firefox and recommend chromium. (With a link to the technical limitations of what you just wrote, so you do not get yelled at so much by the firefox only crowd, who otherwise assume you did it out of evil neglect)
I regretted the huge amount of work I did to cater to firefox limitations. Its market share is just too low and chromium works also on linux.
(I use FF for browsing myself though)