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)

Minetest games and mods

See the Developer Tools tag in ContentDB.

Scripts

Formspecs

• Minetest Formspec Editor: A great online tool with drag and drop that allows you to import and export formspecs in different versions
• Perlin noise tuner Visualizes 2D Perlin noise that Minetest will generate with different noiseparams. (Emulation of Minetest Perlin noise can be wrong in extremes/edge-cases due to precision of JavaScript number type)

Translation

• update_translations: Python script to create and update mod translation files (*.tr)
• minetest_check_translations: Python script to check mod translation files for syntax errors
• findtext.lua: Create mod translation template (buggy!) (see also)
• updatetext.lua: Update mod translation template (buggy!) (see also)