Installing Mods

Security considerations

Prior to installing any mod, please make sure that you have received it from someone you trust. Malicious code can damage your computer, violate your privacy or cause your computer to take part in illegal activities.

Installing a mod

After downloading a mod (e.g. from the Mod Releases forum) you usually have a Zip archive. In order to get the mod running, you have to unpack it in one of the folders where Minetest looks for mods. This depends on what Minetest version you have installed.

You may have to change the folder name to the “technical” mod name (e.g. rename PilzAdam-carts-70cc4f4 to carts). You can usually find the mod name in the title of the forum topic—It is the last name within the square brackets in the topic title. For example, if the title is [Mod] Lol Mod [1.0] [anotherlolmod], then the folder must be renamed to anotherlolmod.

If one of the below mentioned directories does not exist, create it.

Installing a modpack

A modpack is installed in the same way as a mod, but you are usually not required to change the directory name of the modpack. Just make sure the name does not collide with that of any other installed mod or modpack.

Installation directory

As of 0.4.7, the mods are installed globally and enabled per world.

The common place to install them is $path_user/mods/. That is minetest-install-directory/mods/ in the official Windows releases and on GNU/Linux with RUN_IN_PLACE enabled and ~/.minetest/mods/ in globally installed Minetest versions.

• Location of the mods folder within the folder structure of a run-in-place installation of Minetest, including some of the folders Minetest adds after some usage as client and server, as well as the positions (…) that custom-made content goes. Unrelevant folders are not expanded.

minetest/
├── bin/
├── builtin/
├── cache/
├── client/
├── doc/
├── fonts/
├── games/
│   ├── minetest_game/
│   ├── minimal/
│   └── … (installed extra games)
├── locale/
├── mods/
│   └── … (installed extra mods and modpacks)
├── textures/
│   ├── base/
│   │   └── pack/
│   └── … (installed extra texturepacks)
└── worlds/
    └── … (saved worlds. Some with exclusive world mods)

After extracting the mod there you need to enable it for your world. This can either be done in the GUI by clicking on “Configure” in the world selection, or by adding load_mod_<modname> = true in the world.mt file in the world directory.

Note that new installed mods are disabled for all worlds by default, so you explicitly need to enable them.

Additional install directories (all Minetest versions)

Other places to install mods are world-directory/worldmods/, $path_share/mods/ and $<path_user, path_share>/games/<gameid>/mods/.

Note that users should generally install mods in the normal install directory and not in the additional ones. Note that having copies of the same mod in different places may easily generate mod conflicts.

Differences of the three kinds of places mods can be kept in:

• in a /game/somegame/mods folder such as the folder of the "Minetest Game", this could be a subfolder of someplace/minetest/games/minetest_game/mods or someotherplace/minetest(or "dot"minetest)/games/minetest_game/mods.

Any mod in a game is considered per design to be an essential part of said game and is not togglable. These mods apply to all maps created with this game but not to any map created by another game (although many games may include the same mods)

• in the /mods folder technically parallel to the /bin folder the executable is in.

On different installations this may very well also be in some other minetest location such as a shared, system/game, user or hidden folder. Only mods in this place are togglable. Mods in this folder can be run with any map created by any game. This is therefore an easy place to create mod conflicts that might even crash minetest.

• in a /worlds/nameofsomeworld/worldmods folder inside the subfolder of a specific map that contains the map data. Mods in a worldmods folder are not togglable and will only and always run when this map is loaded. They cannot be accessed from any other map.

Example structure

In this example the mods “carts” and “tnt”, and the modpack “mesecons” are installed:

    mods/
    ├── carts/
    │   ├── init.lua
    │   ├── functions.lua
    │   ├── depends.txt
    │   ├── README.txt
    │   ├── textures/
    │   │   ├── carts_top.png
    │   │   └── …
    │   └── models/
    │       ├── cart.x
    │       └── …
    ├── tnt/
    │   ├── init.lua
    │   ├── depends.txt
    │   ├── README.txt
    │   ├── textures/
    │   │   ├── tnt_side.png
    │   │   └── …
    │   └── sounds/
    │       ├── tnt_explode.ogg
    │       └── …
    └── mesecons/
        ├── modpack.txt
        ├── mesecons/
        │   ├── init.lua
        │   └── …
        ├── mesecons_alias/
        │   ├── init.lua
        │   └── …
        ├── mesecons_blinkyplant
        │   ├── init.lua
        │   └── …
        ├── mesecons_button
        │   ├── init.lua
        │   └── …
        ├── …