Luanti (formerly Minetest)

Luanti is a free open-source voxel game engine with easy modding and game creation.

Copyright (C) 2010-2024 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://www.luanti.org/
• Wiki: https://wiki.luanti.org/
• Forum: https://forum.luanti.org/
• GitHub: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/
• Developer documentation
• 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 Luanti 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

If you're just creating mods or games with Luanti, you do not need to compile Luanti. Instead, follow Ruben Wardy's Luanti Modding Book to get started modding. Compiling Luanti is only required if you plan to modify the Luanti engine itself.

• Compiling - common information
• Compiling on GNU/Linux
• Compiling on Windows
• Compiling on MacOS

Docker

• Developing minetestserver with Docker
• Running a server with Docker

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.