Development Tools

This article lists various free software tools which help in development of Minetest and mods for Minetest.

Minetest development

• Development Test: A testing game for testing various engine features
• /minetest/util: Various maintenance utilities

Mod development

Standalone software

• NodeBoxEditor: Build node boxes by dragging their edges.
• MTS Editor: A program to create, view and edit Minetest schematics, but it supports other file formats (e.g. Minecraft schematics) as well
• Schematic Creator: A Java program to create schematics
• Model Creator: A Java program to create meshes
• RocketLib Toolkit: Lua-based SQLite3 map reader
• luacheck: Lua linter and static code analyser (see also the chapter rubenwardy's modding book)
• busted: Lua unit testing framework (see also the chapter rubenwardy's modding book)
• Perlin noise tuner Visualizes the perlin noise Minetest will generate with different noiseparams. (Emulation of Minetest perlin can be wrong in extremes/edge-cases due to precision of javascript number type)

Minetest games and mods

Formspecs

• Formspec Editor: A very simple tool (in the form of a "game") which lets you edit a formspec file in a text editor and it will be shown in Minetest in real time

Coding and testing

• LuaCmd [luacmd]: luacmd server command which allows you to run a single Lua statement
• QA-Block [qa_block]: Adds a Quality Assurance block which you use to run various checker scripts like listing items with missing description (including your own) and browse the global Lua namespace
• DevToys: Modpacks with lots of example nodes (for testing engine features) and a few tools to manipulate nodes
• Nodebox Creator [nodebox_creator]: Ingame nodebox editor

Buildings and schematics

• L-System Tree Utility [ltool]: Helps you creating L-system trees which you can spawn with minetest.spawn_tree
• Schematic Editor [schemedit]: Advanced tool for creating and placing schematics
• Convert table schematic to .mts [saveschems]: Tool for converting schematics from Lua table format to MTS files
• WorldEdit: Primarily a tool for editing large parts of the world, what's interesting for developers is that it includes a few basic schematic commands (//mtschemcreate, etc.)

Map generation

• Perlin Explorer [perlin_explorer]: Generate, experiment around with, explore and analyze Perlin noises

Informational

• List Items [listitems]: Server commands for listing and searching the IDs of registered items and entities
• Find Biome [findbiome]: Server command for finding a biome and teleporting to it
• Inventory Check [inventorycheck]: Investigate the inventory of any player
• Inspector [inspector]: Reveal the item/entity definition, metadata and param1/param2 of whatever you punch
• Prysm [prysm]: Test Perlin noise on-the-fly
• Advanced Rangefinder [finder]: Adds search capabilities for both nodes and entities and related server commands

Benchmarking

• Stopwatch [stopwatch]: Benchmarking utility to quickly benchmark portions of Lua code

Scripts

Formspecs

• Minetest Formspec Editor: A great online tool with drag and drop that allows you to import and export formspecs in different versions

Translation

• update_translations: Python script to create and update mod translation files
• findtext.lua: Create mod translation template (buggy!) (see also)
• updatetext.lua: Update mod translation template (buggy!) (see also)