I have made available in github the first usable experimental version of Minetest 0.4. (A stable release will be made in the future.)

It has a Lua modding API. I call it a modding API because modding is awesomer than scripting.

0.4 is an engine update. I first dvelved into the deep dark corners of Minetest and made pretty much all content dynamically loadable at runtime. Then I pulled in Lua, created the necessary interfaces and finalized the thing to it’s current state with the help of a guy called Kahrl.

From now on, all content will be implemented as mods, and C++ holds it’s position as the engine language.

There is a very important speciality about the Minetest Lua modding API: All mods are run server-side. This means players can connect using the same client to any server and see whole new worlds, without worrying about downloading malicious or incompatible mods.

It also makes a simple modding API, because the modder doesn’t need to handle both sides of the networked system. It is not as flexible, but it is easy. This makes it unique.

It is by no means finished, there are bugs, the API lacks many things and the modding interface will still evolve for some time, but it is highly usable.

Documentation is lacking, but here is a start. Feel free to fill in some of the wiki as you explore the API and make some awesome mods!

Oh, and make sure to report any bugs and missing API features, for example in the forums or in github.

Linux users: grab the sources from github:

https://github.com/celeron55/minetest .

grab the sources from github: . Windows users: Here is a compiled package:

minetest-0.4.dev-20111129-2-win32.zip

NOTE: See next post for more recent, better working windows packages.