REWRITE OF THIS MOD IN PROGRESS! DO NOT USE IN THIS STATE! USE Commit 5e6138855b INSTEAD, OR USE THE VERSION AVAILABLE IN THE CONTENT DATABASE!

---

Pixelart is a game-agnostic mod that adds colored nodes grouped in palettes to Luanti

The nodes can be used for all sorts of creative building activities and are mainly meant for creating pixelart (or voxelart) on servers or in singleplayer worlds with a focus on creative building.

Using the mod

The mod can be used as-is. Just install and enable it. The features of the mod do not depend on any specific game or other mods.

There are two options to access the palettes with the “pixel nodes”: A chat command and an access node. Just enter /pixelart or craft the access node and rightlick it.

From the selector you chose a palette you like and then click on the individual pixel nodes of that palette to transfer them into your inventory (granted there is enough space in your inventory). Then simply place the pixels in the world as you like.

The nodes are not removed from your inventory when placing them. Pixeling is free!

The crafting recipe for the selector access node is always the same and automatically uses whatever material your game uses as “mapgen stone” (which is basically what the world is made of underground).

You can also uncraft the selector access node back into 4 “mapgen stone” items.

Built-in palettes

The built-in palettes are curated by the mod author.

ID	Name	Description
6_bit_rgb	Calculated 6-Bit RGB	Calculated RGB palette using 2 bit per color
atari_2600_pal	Atari 2600 PAL	Palette used by the Atari 2600 (PAL version)
c64	Commodore 64	8-bit hardware colors of the C64’s VIC-II chip
cga	IBM CGA-16 Colors	Representation of the CGA 4-bit RGBI colors
gameboy	Original Game Boys	Simulated colors of the original 4-shade Game Boys
minetest	Minetest Game Dyes	Median colors from the the MTG default dyes
nes	NES Hardware Colors	Cleaned up Hardware colors of the NES PPU
tango	Tango! Color Palette	Color palette from the Free Desktop Project

Feel free to suggest some more!

Create custom palettes and override built-in ones

When placing palette files in ./worlds/worlddirectory/_pixelart/palettes/, those files are loaded after the built-in palettes. The files are simple Lua files (filename.lua, filename is used as ID) that return a table.

If you use the same name as one of the built-in palettes, the world-specific palette takes precedence over the built-in one. That means, that you can override the palette IDs with your custom ones.

return {
    name = 'My Cool Palette',
    curator = 'Some Nice Person',
    description = 'A short palette description',
    pixels = {
        PixelSpec1,
        PixelSpec2,
        PixelspecN
    }
}

Since this is a regular Lua file, you can run other Lua code before returning the table. Just be reasonable, okay? :) Since those files are executed without any further validation, you or someone else could break the palette, the mod, or the server/world. Make sure to validate the file actually being a correct palette definition.

• The name attribute defines the name/title of the palette. It should not be too long, because it needs to fit on a 4.5 formspec units wide button. This field is optional. If not used, a generated title containing the ID is shown instead.
• By providing curator you can mention who curated the palette. If omitted, nothing is shown instead. It is always nice to show people who did something. So while this is optional, palette providers are encouraged to set the curator value (it can be the name, nickname, online handle, whatever you like).
• With description you can add a description to the palette. This description is shown in the palette selector dialog. It should describe the palette in a short and precise way. If omitted, the palette name is used.
• In the pixels table, all PixelSpecs for the individually colored pixel nodes are defined. If the table is empty, the palette gets removed from the list of registered palettes. See below how a PixelSpec is defined.

You cannot replace individual configuration from existing palettes, only replace/remove them as a whole. See “World-specific settings” on how to disable loading of the built-in palettes completely.

PixelSpec definition

The pixels entry is a table containing all PixelSpecs for the palette. A PixelSpec is either a hexadecimal value prefixed with # for a color, one of the two control characters, or a table defining the pixel with more details.

There is a maximum of 128 possible color PixelSpecs per palette. Keep in mind that for each color definition one node will be registered. So having a 128 colors palette this palette alone registers 128 nodes. Control character PixelSpecs do not count towards this limit.

This is the simplest PixelSpec just defining the color or one of the formatting options. If providing a color, the name of the node is automatically generated using the color value.

'#729fcf' -- A pixel with the name “Pixel #729fcf” (or translated)
'n'       -- Wrap the palette buttons in the selector dialog to a new line
's'       -- Add an empty space in the current line in the selector dialog

This definition is a full PixelSpec setting color and name. The generated pixel node then uses the name. Names are used as-is and cannot be translated without further manual coding.

{
    color = '#729fcf',     -- Mandatory color definition
    name = 'My Cool Name', -- Optional name for the created pixel (node)
}

The node IDs are generated from a combination of the palette ID and the color. For example: pixelart:my_cool_palette_729fcf. This means, you can only register a color once per palette.

Multiple definitions of the same color show up in the selector dialog but are using the same name (last PixelSpec in the palette) and of course give you the same node. Curators should check for PixelSpecs with same colors before releasing a palette.

Example palette code

return {
    name = 'My Cool Palette',
    curator = 'Some Nice Person',
    description = 'Short discription of that palette',
    pixels = {
        '#000001',
        { color = '#729fcf', name = 'My Cool Pixel Node' },
        '#000003',
        -- more colors
        '#000128'
    }
}

As described: By default there is a limit of 128 nodes per world-specific palette, see below for configuration and how to change that limit.

Configuration

This mod allows for world-specific settings. The world-specific settings are stored in ./worlds/worlddirectory/_pixelart/pixelart_settings.ini and are in the same format as the default minetest.conf configuration file.

If the file does not exist, the default values of the mod are used. And settings that are not present in the existing file are automatically defined with their default values, too.

# Register an access node
#
# The pixelart selector formspec can be opened with a chat command. In
# addition to that, a node will be registered, allowing players to craft
# an interface to that.
#
# If this option is `false`, players can only access the dialog using the
# provided chat command.
pixelart_access_node = true

# Provide chat command
#
# For opening the pixelart selector dialog formspec, a simple chat command
# `/pixelart` can be used. This opens the ready-to-use dialog.
#
# Please note: when disabling both the access node and the chat command,
# players have no access to the palettes selection and pixel nodes.
pixelart_chat_command = true

# Define the digging speed
#
# When set to `true`, the digging speed for the pixel nodes is raised from
# 0.5 seconds (like when digging sign-like or rails-like node) to immediately
# (like the speed of digging Minetest Game default torches)
pixelart_fast_digging = false

# Hide nodes from creative inventory
#
# By default, all registered pixel nodes are hidden from the creative
# inventory (granted, that the used game supports that in the intended
# way of respecting the `not_in_creative_inventory` group).
#
# When disabling access node and chat command, this should be set to
# `false` so players have access to the individual pixel nodes from the
# creative mode inventory
pixelart_hide_nodes = true

# Load built-in palettes
#
# The mod comes with a variety of palettes from author’s choice. If you want
# to provide your custom palettes only, you need to set this to false. When
# set to false, none of the built-in palettes are loaded. All nodes from those
# palettes that are already placed in the wold become invalid nodes.
pixelart_load_builtin = true

# Maximum amount of pixels per world-specific palette
#
# With this value you can control the amount of supported pixels per custom
# palette in a world. Don’t forget that for each PixelSpec in the palette,
# one node will be registered. This could fill up the maximum amount of nodes
# supported by Luanti real quick.
pixelart_max_pixels = 128

# Control pixel node’s noise color effect
#
# The registered nodes come with a noise effect to break up the uniformity
# of the node tile colors. If you want uniform colors, set to 0 to disable
# this effect or to 255 or larger to use the full noise effect.
pixelart_noise_opacity = 32

# User privileges in order to access the mod functionality
#
# You can define needed user privileges in order to limit access to the mod
# functionality. The configuration is simply a list of privilege names, either
# comma-separated or not. The standard `interact` privilege is probably the
# most reasonable one.
pixelart_privileges = interact

The code above shows the default values.

Intended usage for the privileges setting

By default, the pixelart_privileges setting is set to interact, meaning that players can use the mod’s features as soon as they get the interact privilege granted. Just the interact privilege alone is redundant, because with interact the player can, well, interact with the world and use the chat command.

Administrators can set additional privileges here, for example: by using a “companion mod”, server administrators can register a can_create_pixelart privilege and granting this privilege to pixel artists only. So normal players with interact can interact with the world, but only those pixelartist players can interact with the mod’s features.

The mod checks if players have the needed privileges. If a privilege is missing, players get an error message when they try to interact with the mod’s features, which means: the chat command /pixelart, placing or digging any pixel nodes or the selector access node, trying to access the selector formspec using an already placed selector access node, or somehow sending formspec fields in the mod’s name to the server.

(Potential) Issues

Since the mod is fully game agnostic, some issues could appear.

• The selector dialog is unreadable due to the game setting colors and/or fonts that are not compatible with the selector dialog’s formspec definition.
• The selector dialog access node is uncraftable because the mapgen_stone alias refers to a node that is not obtainable.
• Rightclicking the selector dialog access node does nothing because the game intercepts rightlicking nodes
• Not all game nodes or palette nodes are registered because the hard limit of available internal Luanti node IDs is used up because the game wants to register a lot of nodes.

In case of this or any other issues feel free to drop me a node in the CDB or the forums!

Translations

Missing your language? Feel free to add it!