🐛 Name the 3 most annoying bugs you'd like to see fixed

[Zughy]

After a long and useful discussion on the forum: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?t=29949 I've decided to run this experiment.

Name the 3 most annoying bugs that you'd like to see fixed and add a brief explanation of why in your opinion such bugs should be prioritised compared to the rest.

The idea is to make use of the "high priority" label so that development can be more community driven. What's the criteria that determines whether a bug should obtain or not the label? Frankly I still don't know, but it wouldn't be an experiment otherwise, would it? I'd like to see what comes out of it and core devs can simply ignore this topic if they want - I don't want to add a bigger burden onto their back.

Speaking of devs, of course "high priority" doesn't mean "now devs have to fix it or I'll stomp my feet until they hurt" (we're all volunteering), but rather something that can be pointed out (e.g. in the blog with a call to action) to people that would like to contribute to Minetest and don't know where to start (alongside the "good first issue" label).

Rules

1. do not propose your own issues
2. please post all the bugs in one single message
3. keep debates to a bare minimum and consider commenting directly under the offending bug if you've got observations related to it; use reactions so to avoid spamming my mail inbox, thanks 🙏

That being said, have fun! (I've removed the ones labelled "low priority")
https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3ABug+-label%3A%22Low+priority%22

[rollerozxa]

(Are we supposed to write all three of our bugs in the same comment or can I split them up? Latter makes more sense, and this was the only one I could think of right now.)

env_meta.txt corruption rendering worlds unable to be opened unless you delete the file, caused by a bug in fs::safeWriteToFile that primarily occurs on Windows. (#9425) Haven't experienced it myself, but there is always every now and then someone who runs into this problem and asks for help about it in the Discord server.

The bug is especially terrifying because the engine will not display any kind of user facing error (only writes it to debug output), just kick you back to the main menu when attempting to load a world with a corrupted env_meta.txt file, making the player assume something way worse has happened to their world than just a metadata file that only contains LBM and time data (losing it is a bit unfortunate, but not a major setback for your world).

[erlehmann]

• Android: Black screen with post-processing #13519 Android black screen → This bug simply prevents people from playing Minetest.
• FPS in inventories drop drastically if the inventory displays a page with items #6905 Inventory rendering performance → FPS drop in inventories for everyone.
• Objects rendering in fullbright on unified driver without shaders #13511 OGLES2 fullbright entity rendering issues → Looks needlessly ugly.

@Zughy how will this be evaluated? I suggest approval voting (i.e. count how often each bug was mentioned), it is very simple.

[Zughy]

The lowest common denominator of my 3 bugs is they can break games and you can't do anything (or close to anything) to prevent it:

• Players remain stuck in mid air when they open the chat #10842. This is basically a built-in hack. For instance, you can win minigames like Colour Jump and TNT Run by just opening the chat after jumping. If you're playing online and you're falling into a lava pit, you can prevent it if you're fast enough (and ask a friend to come rescue you)
• Can glitch through ceiling with Sneak Glitch #11081. It's unthinkable that builders/level designers should take (also) this aspect into account
• If player receives a formspec while in the death screen, the death screen disappears, breaking the game #11523. It turns the player into a client-side ghost who's probably not even aware of their condition. High likely to make the game crash in the following minutes

(@rollerozxa added a rule about that)
(@erlehmann that's one idea)

[RecentRunner]

• FPS in inventories drop drastically if the inventory displays a page with items #6905

• Many wieldmesh polygons #3069

• Wieldhand is "detached" from player body #12582

[hecktest]

#11531
(not sure why it's tagged as a feature request, leaking memory is a bug)

[jordan4ibanez]

If someone knows the ID of the issue where you can float when you're sneaking on a nodebox, please let me know

EDIT by Zughy: I guess #9993

[immagiov4]

• Hypertext font size doesn't scale with window size #13568
• Physics override not working properly when speed is set to 0 while moving #10037: right now to stop the player we must attach them to an entity, which is an nuisance and can possibly cause bugs like #12092
• GUI images use inconsistent/bad scaling #10733

[nininik0]

1. Players remain stuck in mid air when they open the chat #10842 annoying and weird on mobile, ruins gameplay
2. yawsprite doesn't work on OpenGL ES 2 (with shaders enabled) #13580 can't play with yaw-modulated stuff properly
3. Objects rendering in fullbright on unified driver without shaders #13511 annoying when trying to play games

[ancientmarinerdev]

Thanks for this, Zughy. I've added 3 here. I may chance my mind, but thought i'd get something down for now.

1. Death screen is avoidable, leaving player in bugged state #7879

This is a game breaking bug that has happened multiple times to many players. Due to the impact and frequency, it really needs to be prioritised. It's probably very much related to #11523 which was listed by Zughy, but I fear if that is resolved in isolation, it may not fix this bug which can surface in many ways. The issue is a player can get into a bugged state without that formspec present and multiple ways can cause it.

2. minetest.dig_node in protected areas will not work (even if you own the area) #13563

This is a bug (even though there was an exhausting hours long debate about whether it was) which makes any form of automation unimplmentable without nasty hacks. It really takes away from multiplayer experience, and the engine should have a prescribed way of doing this.

3. Seeing through blocks glitch #12429

Takes away from multiplayer experiences when people can find cave bases around them easily on vanilla client.

[tetsuo55]

Things like bows, fireworks, etc... are impossible to use on touchscreen devices like android, this is a game breaking issue.

• Hold Interact on mobile #8543

[kromka-chleba]

The first one is annoying as hell:

1. Mapgen: "Unfinished" y-slices with num_emerge_threads > 1 #9357
2. Client uses a poor block caching strategy #14014
3. Translucent entity disappears if locates behind translucent node. #12719

Rationale (for the 1st):

Have some extra cores for the server? Too bad because using them will slice your world in half.
I have a vague understanding of the problem, but I think the bug may be a problem once this PR gets merged: #13092

[Wuzzy2]

If I ignore bugs I am not allowed to post, I currently only have one bug:

1. Waving liquid render bug if solid block is above liquid #3075

This bug basically makes the waving liquids feature totally useless IMO. I always play without waving liquids because of the ugly bug. I like waving liquids, but this bug ruins it.

[fluxionary]

• Access player meta when offline #6193

  things like xp from xp_redo aren't accessible if the player isn't online, without some sort of custom connection to the database.

• Incorrect sequence of calling callbacks on_take & on_put on swapping items in inventory #13486

  this can provide an easy way to crash the game that's hard to patch

• Inefficient Entity Rendering (no batching) #14018

  on servers with lots of signs, FPS drops dramatically, even if the signs aren't visible.

[Zughy]

Thanks to everyone participating. The majority of issues has been labelled as "High Priority", using my point of view as yardstick. Closing, probably see you with something similar in the next roadmap brainstorm!