cdb_featured.md

What are Featured Packages?

Featured Packages are shown at the top of the ContentDB homepage. In the future, featured packages may be shown inside the Minetest client. Only Editors can add the "Featured" tag to a package.

How are the packages chosen?

Before a package can be considered, it must fulfil the criteria in the below lists. There are three types of criteria:

• "MUST": These must absolutely be fulfilled, no exceptions!
• "SHOULD": Most of them should be fulfilled, if possible. Some of them can be left out if there's a reason.
• "CAN": Can be fulfilled for bonus points, they are entirely optional.

For a chance to get featured, a package must fulfill all "MUST" criteria and ideally as many "SHOULD" criteria as possible. The more, the better. Thankfully, many criteria are trivial to fulfil. Note that ticking off all the boxes is not enough: Just because a package completes the checklist does not make it good. Other aspects of the package should be rated as well. See this list as a starting point, not as an exhaustive quality control.

A game that fulfills all MUST criteria but zero SHOULD criteria is probably not a good candidate.

General Requirements

General

• MUST: Is 100% free and open source, with no legally questionable licenses such as WTFPL.
• MUST: Has a high resolution cover image (at least 1920x1080 pixels).
• MUST: Works out-of-the-box (no weird setup or settings required).
• MUST: Compatible with the latest stable Minetest release.
• SHOULD: Has at least 5 reviews, and be >90% positive.

Stability

• MUST: Is well maintained (author is present and active).
• MUST: Be reasonably stable, with no game-breaking or major bugs.
• MUST: The author does not consider the package to be in an experimental/development/alpha state.
• MUST: No error messages from the engine (e.g. missing textures).

Meta and packaging

• MUST: screenshot.png is present and up-to-date, with a correct aspect ratio (3:2).
• MUST: mod/game/texture_pack.conf present with description and name, and dependencies if relevant.
• MUST: Contain a README file and a LICENSE file. These may be .md or .txt.
• SHOULD: All important settings are in settingtypes.txt with description.

Game-specific Requirements

Meta and packaging

• MUST: Main menu icon and header image are used.
• MUST: Include a README file that includes at least:
  • Game name
  • Short game description
  • List of relevant links (download, bugtracker, etc.)
  • Pointers to other relevant files (like license)
  • Which Minetest version is expected

Stability

• MUST: Does not break when changing key minetest.conf settings.
• MUST: If any major setting (like enable_damage) is unsupported, game must deal with it appropriately (e.g. force-disable the setting).
• MUST: Does not screw up Minetest.
• MUST: No catastrophic map breakages (entire mapchunk destroyed, entire inventories destroyed, huge amounts of unknown nodes) in the past 2 months.
• SHOULD: No major map breakages (many unknown nodes appeared, few or unimportant items destroyed, entities destroyed) in the past 2 months.
• SHOULD: No minor map breakages (unknown nodes) in the past month.

Note: All map breakages before the first officially finished version are ignored.

Note: Any map breakage is excused immediately if "disaster relief" (i.e. tools to repair the damage) is available.

Usability

• MUST: Unsupported mapgens are disabled in game.conf.
• SHOULD: Passes the Beginner Test: A newbie to the game (but not Minetest) wouldn't get completely stuck within the first 5 minutes of playing.
• SHOULD: Has a crafting guide or something similar (unless not required).
• SHOULD: Documentation: Reasonably complete manual (or similar) ''somewhere'' or the game explains itself.
• SHOULD: All formspecs use listrings, where appropriate.

Gameplay

• CAN: Passes the Six Hour Test (only applies to sandbox games): The game doesn't run out of new content before the first 6 hours of playing.
• CAN: Players don't feel that something in the game is "lacking".

Audiovisuals

• MUST: Audiovisual design should be of good quality.
• MUST: No obvious GUI/HUD breakages.
• MUST: Sounds have no obvious artifacts like clicks or unintentional noise.
• MUST: All sounds sound OK with headphones, too.
• MUST: No nodes with unintentional sounds.
• SHOULD: Graphical design is mostly consistent.
• SHOULD: Sounds are used.
• SHOULD: Sounds are normalized (more or less).
• CAN: Texture packs are supported normally.

Quality Assurance

• MUST: No flooding the console/log file with warnings.
• MUST: No duplicate crafting recipes.
• MUST: Highly experimental features are disabled by default.
• MUST: Experimental features are clearly marked as such.
• SHOULD: No unknown nodes/items/objects appear.
• SHOULD: No dependency on legacy API calls.
• SHOULD: No console warnings.

Writing

• MUST: All items that can be obtained in normal gameplay have description set.
• MUST: Game is not littered with typos or bad grammar (a few typos are OK but should be fixed, when found).
• SHOULD: All items have unique names (items which disguise themselves as another item are exempt).
• SHOULD: The writing style of all item names is grammatical and consistent.
• SHOULD: Descriptions of things convey useful and meaningful information (if applicable).
• CAN: Text is written in clear and (if possible) simple language.
• CAN: Very technical language is avoided (unless hackers are the audience).
• CAN: Game is translatable.