FAQ

General

Where can I ask questions?

In IRC and the Forum. It is recommended to search the archives, most questions were probably answered before.

How to install mods and texture packs?

See Installing Mods and Texture Packs.

What are the different game modes. How do I install them?

On a new install you should have "Minetest [minetest_game]" that is the main game, if you don't have it download it form github. "Minimal development test" is just for Developers and is not intended to be playable. You can find several other game modes in the forum. To install them extract the pack and rename the folder to the name of the game (e.g. minetest_game-master to minetest_game), then copy the folder to the games folder.

How do I update Minetest?

Easiest way is just to download the newest version and move your worlds and mods to the new version. Depending on you operating system there are other ways too.

Ingame

How to find my House?

Minetest automatically generates a debug.txt in minetest/bin where you can see lots of text. Scroll down to its end and look for something like singleplayer digs node * (...) Try to teleport to the positions you see in these lines until you find your home: /teleport x,y,z

How to craft XYZ?

See Crafting. Or install a craft guide.

Are there any mobs?

No. Is is unlikely that they get added in the near future. But there are mods to add mobs.

I can't find any dungeons/jungles.

They are disabled by default. You can enable them by adding "v6_jungles, dungeons" to mg_flags in you minetest.conf. That will enable them for new worlds.

Cannot open or close doors

You need to right click instead of left click to open doors as of 0.4.5.

For Minecrafters

Is there a crafting bench?

No. You already have a 3x3 crafting grid in you inventory. But there are mods that add a crafting bench.

How can I make Minetest be like Minecraft?

You can use the Minitest game.

Graphics and sound

There is no sound

You need to download OpenAL to play sound on Windows (the file needed is [[1]], you need to execute the program after it has finished downloading. Firefox and Chrome users may need to either save file or keep downloading, Internet Explorer users will need to just press run. Other browsers maybe the same or different. If one browser fails, try another.)

Everything in the game is a weird color(particularly red), looks like rainbows, or is partially see-through

To fix this, turn off shaders. Shaders are not supported by your graphics card.

"Unsupported texture format" notice

Don't worry, this is completely normal. Minetest will still work.

"Generating dummy image for [...].png" warning

This is caused by a mod or texture pack not supplying an image for an object. Minetest will still work normally, but the specified object will use a dummy image; it will be a random color.

Crashes

Minetest can not load [...]/init.lua

Follow these steps, stopping when the mod works or if you reach the end Make sure the mod folder is correctly named. Find out the correct name by going to the mod's forum page and looking at what is in the [ ] in the title. Report the error to the mod owner by copying and pasting the section in debug.txt that starts with "=====ERROR FROM LUA=====" if any.

Assertation '0' failed

This is usually a mod error. Report it to the mod owner. To find out the name of the mod, look for any error text directly above that gives a path to a mod's init.lua

 ERROR: An unhandled exception occurred: LuaError: error: mods/minetest/<modname>/init.lua:69: [...]

MSCP2010.dll is not found (Or similar)

This is because Microsoft C++ Redistribute Package 2010 is not installed. [[2]]

"Minetest has stopped working" (Windows)

If it stops working before the main window even opens, and there are no error messages in debug.txt, then try restarting your computer. (sometimes it crashes with a 0x00005 error, which is caused by windows updates.) You can try looking in debug.txt for an error message or searching for a similar article in the forums.

Some exception: "what()=Access Violation"

This is caused by the Direct3D driver. To fix, go to the minetest.conf file and find:

 video_driver = direct3d9

change it so that it says:

 video_driver = opengl

Some exception: "ServerEnvironment::loadMeta(): EnvArgsEnd not found"

Put something like this in env_meta.txt in your world folder

 game_time = 40053
 time_of_day = 20068
 EnvArgsEnd

it doesn't matter much which numbers you use.