Player

Notice

This site is a work in progress under active development! Content and URLs may change quickly without notice. Refer to the About page for information on the mission statement, roadmap, and how to contribute.

Player #

The player or “player character” is the character that a user controls.

Health #

Players start with 10 hearts, which is equal to 20 hit points (HP). The smallest unit of health is 0.5 hearts or 1 HP. Players die when they have lost all hearts.

Players can restore health by consuming food. Players can lose health by various means, including, but not limited to: Falling too hard, touching a harmful block such as lava, drowning in a liquid or getting attacked by other players (if PvP is enabled).

The built-in health system can be completely disabled by the game or mods, or by the player through the per-world enable_damage setting if made accessible by the game.

Breath #

Players have up to 10 breath points, represented by bubbles. Players start at 10 breath points and normally the breath quickly increases up to 10 in steps of 1 breath point. If players have full breath, the breath meter in the HUD is usually hidden. While the player is inside a liquid with drowning damage, breath will be reduced by 1 every 2 seconds. If the breath reaches 0, the player will take damage every 2 seconds as long the player is inside the liquid. The damage taken depends on the liquid type.

The built-in breath system can be completely disabled by the game or mods as part of the health system, or by the player through the per-world enable_damage setting if made accessible by the game.

Death #

When players lose their health, they die. After death, the player can immediately respawn, with health and breath restored. The new spawn position is usually somewhere near the initial spawning position (see Spawn Algorithm). Other consequences of death (usually negative) can be implemented by mods.

Default engine behaviour is that the player keeps the items that are in their inventory after death, but this behaviour can be changed by games and mods.

Name #

Player names may consist only of the characters a-z, A-Z, 0-9, the dash (“-”) and the underscore (“_”). Other characters are not allowed.

Appearance #

The default appearance of the player character in the engine is as a flat 2D sprite with a front and back texture. The “Change Camera” keybind can be used by the player to switch into third-person mode to see their character in the world from the back and from the front. It is possible for games to replace the sprite textures, or replace the character completely with a custom animated 3D model.

Trivia #

  • The default player skin in player_api commonly used in Minetest Game and other games, is named “Sam”. It is a recursive acronym for “Sam ain’t Minecraft”.