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Migrating To Minetest v5 Sucks 2023-09-16


I have been running a Minetest server since before the change from v0.4.17.1 to v5.0 (which was a bit of a mess). I was disappointed to see that v5 would not run on XP and that anyone with a v4 client would not be able to connect to a v5 server. So I kept my server at v4 and it has generally been fine for me. I sometimes log in and fiddle, but almost nobody else does, and they don't take it seriously at all. Recently though, someone asked about my Minetest game and I gave them the info to log in. Unfortunately this person had the v5 client and had to compile the v4 client in order to connect.

I felt bad that someone had to add unnecessary software to their system as a result of a decision I had made, so I looked in to what was needed to upgrade my server to v5. Turns out, v5 can use the same "world", so I didn't lose any of my construction. The mods however, are right proper fucked. So I started going through the mods one by one, manually installing the current versions in my v5 game. Turns out, whoever made the CompassGPS mod never updated their mod to work with v5. It looks like the same happened to the signs mod. As you can see in the below screenshot of the graveyard I keep for my corpses, all of the text I put on my signs is gone.

Minetest screenshot showing how all my signs are broken and my compassGPS is borked This sucks.

You can also [maybe] see that the eighth slot in my quick-access bar at the bottom there says Unknown Item. This was my CompassGPS, which had a list of personal and shared coordinates for various places. I suspect I'll be able to find a similar GPS-like mod to replace it, but I am going to have to manually go through every bookmark and type in the coordinates of each to recreate all of them in the new mod. I'll also have to manually go around finding all of my signs in the old game and create new signs with the same text in the new game. If I miss any, well too fuckin' bad for me. Progress is one thing, but this just sucks. The point of the game is to construct stuff, so it is a real disappointment when a new version comes out and you basically have a choice between being left behind while the attention-of-a-goldfish gamers move on, and losing the things you created (or at least enough of what you created to feel shitty).

Now my concern is that I may have waited so long to do the upgrade that it won't be long before I run in to this exact same scenario again when v6 comes out. :-(

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