Welcome to Enyekala (Must Test), a Stone & Ice-World Server

Hello traveler. You have reached my ArkLegacy server.

Point an official Minetest Client @ port 30000 to play. The server’s forum thread is here. The log of players’ public chat is here. You can see maps here.

If you don’t already have the Minetest client, then you can download it from http://minetest.net/. The client is free and contains NO ads. If you see ads, then you are not using the official client.

If you like this server and want to stay, then read about the Citizen Passport (often abbreviated “PoC”).

Major Change - New DNS Domain

On June 10 of 2024, I finally parted with the coin to buy an actual, real-life domain name. Ongoing outages from the duckdns service, as reported by many players, finally motivated me to make the jump. To hear them speak of it, some had even been forced to copy the server’s IP into their hosts. When a 3-day ISP outage hit the neighborhood and took out our whole street, forcing an IP change, the folks offsite were left high and dry.

The good news is, the new DNS outfit is a lot bigger and a lot more stable, and the cost is very fair. The new domain is http://arklegacy-server.net/. My old domain, http://arklegacy.duckdns.org/, will continue to work (it’s free after all), albeit very slowly much of the time.

Major Change - Server Renamed

On February 16 of 2020, I finally decided it was time to invent a name for the server. Henceforth Must Test may be alternately called Enyekala, the origin for which is unknown. Nevertheless, the old name of Must Test continues to remain in use in many different places, and may be considered the server’s descriptive epithet.

Despite what a few readers may find themselves thinking, the name Enyekala is not derived from the name of a particular music artist. Any resemblance is entirely accidental.

Server Description

This is inspired by lag’s original server, but is not a clone. Like the original my aim is for it to be user-moderated as much as possible, and players are provided various means of dealing with vagrants. Hackers and annoying CSM users will be PUNISHED. See the server rules for specifics. Occasionally I test new code and algorithms for fun and no profit.

This world is only suited for the hard-core: survival is difficult and the mobs are worse! Everyone can interact, so always protect your stuff if you value it. Damage & PvP are enabled.

The theme of this server is development and exploration. Exploration is very important for newcomers, and remains of value even to veteran players. This is how you find flowers and saplings at first, and later it’s how you find new ore deposits. You can make stone tools before you get your first tree by hunting for dry shrubs, which can be crafted into sticks, and by using your first pick to dig a few cobble. Watch out for the mobs! It is usually best to farm or explore during the day and mine at night, in order to avoid them. Be sure to check the craft-guide which is part of your inventory. Veteran players who have built their way up to better technology & tools will find that survival becomes easier and leads to better building.

There is a seasonal snowmelt & snowfall cycle, lasting 34 real-time days. Snow slows you down a little, and deep snow slows you down a lot, so you’ll want to plan your longest expeditions to take place in ‘summertime’. This is also the only time it is safe to travel on the surface at night, since the icemen will not come out to mob you. There is a calendar item which you can use to plan weather-dependent projects. You can also craft a sled to allow you to traverse the flat, empty wastes quickly, without leaving a trace.

This server uses the Valleys mapgen, without any of the default biomes. The surface landscape far from civilization is nothing but ice and snow and stone, sometimes broken only by the occasional shelter others have built in order to survive. I value stability and continuity in terrain and cavegen as much as is possible, so the mapgen will never be changed to another. If something mapgen-related does break, here’s who you blame. :-)

Restart Schedule

As of October 27, 2017, I have finally gotten around to writing a restart script. The server will automatically restart every night at 06:00:00 UTC. (The restart might be a few seconds after 06:00:00 UTC due to script delays.) This is around 12:00 or 1:00 AM if you live in the U.S. (CST), depending on DST.

Typically the restart only takes a few seconds. On Sundays the server is down at this time for around 10 minutes in order to purge excess account data and generate the map images.

Source Code

On February 27 of 2020, the Lua code for MustTest Game was finally made public. You can find the source on GitHub. This links to the canonical repository for the code that runs on this server. There is also a repository on NotABug, but this goes largely unused because of service outages, except for its issue-tracker (as of 2023-12-23). Be aware that I will not receive a notification for comments or new issues there, so post your comments on the GitHub repo.

Take note! MustTest Game was, from its beginning, not intended to be used in “singleplayer” mode. Singleplayer mode will likely fail to work, or else it will be very buggy! Of course, I’ll accept patches if anyone wants to make singleplayer a tolerable experience.

The code also depends on server configuration (e.g., start items) without which the game may not work as intended. For a long time, the source was designed on the assumption that it would not be used anywhere else, and therefore it makes assumptions about system-configuration that won’t be true for other peoples’ machines. Such assumptions include hard-coded filepaths, date & time, and other such stuff. I will most likely not have time to fix these problems, but if anyone wants to spend time making a patch, I’ll gladly accept it (as long as the patch doesn’t break my own server).

A final note: if you wish to extract only a specific mod from this game, please save yourself some trouble and don’t naïvely copy a folder. You will probably experience annoying crashes for all your pains. Almost every “mod” in MustTest Game calls the functions of other mods, either at load-time or at runtime. Correct extraction can be done, but it is a non-trivial process.