mineclonia-cd2025/CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Mineclonia

So you want to contribute to Mineclonia?

Wow, thank you! :-)

Mineclonia is maintained by ryvnf and cora. By asking us to include your changes in this game, you agree that they fall under the terms of the GPLv3 license, which means they will become part of a free/libre software.

Inclusion criteria

The project goals are listed under the project description in the README. Contributions that do not align with the project goals will not be accepted. The main goal of Mineclonia is to be a stable and performant clone of Minecraft. We suggest using the Minecraft wiki as a reference when implementing new features.

While the primary goal of Mineclonia is to clone Minecraft gameplay, sometimes contributions containing minor deviations from Minecraft will be included. These deviations should be motivated either by Minetest engine limitations or other technical difficulties replicating Minecraft behaviour. The addition of bonus features not found in Minecraft will generally not be accepted. Most of the time we will suggest putting such features in a separate mod since Mineclonia has modding support.

Contributions which fix bugs or incomplete features are always welcome. Contributions of Minecraft features not yet implemented in Mineclonia are also welcome but should be complete before their inclusion. Assets like sounds and textures must come from sources which allow their use.

Code Guidelines

• Each mod must provide mod.conf.
• Mod names are snake case, and newly added mods start with mcl_, e.g. mcl_core, mcl_farming, mcl_monster_eggs. Keep in mind Minetest does not support capital letters in mod names.
• To export functions, store them inside a global table named like the mod, e.g.

mcl_example = {}

function mcl_example.do_something()
	-- ...
end

• Public functions should not use self references but rather just access the table directly, e.g.

-- bad
function mcl_example:do_something()
end

-- good
function mcl_example.do_something()
end

• Use modern Minetest API, e.g. no usage of minetest.env
• Tabs should be used for indent, spaces for alignment, e.g.

-- use tabs for indent

for i = 1, 10 do
	if i % 3 == 0 then
		print(i)
	end
end

-- use tabs for indent and spaces to align things

some_table = {
	{"a string",                   5},
	{"a very much longer string", 10},
}

• Use double quotes for strings, e.g. "asdf" rather than 'asdf'
• Use snake_case rather than CamelCase, e.g. my_function rather than MyFunction
• Don't declare functions as an assignment, e.g.

-- bad
local some_local_func = function()
	-- ...
end

my_mod.some_func = function()
	-- ...
end

-- good
local function some_local_func()
	-- ...
end

function my_mod.some_func()
	-- ...
end