Totally not biased, but that first link is a great place to start.
Note that the process for making games is the same as for making mods - games are a collection of mod(ule)s.
I'll make a note about the docs being hard to find, obviously room to improve here. This page is intended to be the starting page for those interested in modding/game making, it gives an overview and links to other resources: https://dev.minetest.net/Modding_Intro
> It's (default subgame is) a decade behind Minecraft in terms of usability/features. It's barely maintained,
This is intentional and the default game will be removed by default. Users will instead be directed to the built-in content downloader to install a game. The default game is designed to be modded, and you're also encouraged to install other games. Minetest is a game platform and a game engine, rather than just a game
> especially after one of the big modders and graphics developers died to a heart disease.
We have a new graphics developer, they've added dynamic shadows and a post processing stage. This improves the performance of tone mapping, and allows for effects like godrays, bloom, and depth of field. They've also worked a fair bit on performance improvements and bug fixes, like better depth sorting
> No dynamic skyboxes, no fulrotation
Both of these have been supported for years
> no way to handle subgrids
This is mostly out of scope, Minetest is a block voxel game engine. But you can do this anyway, see the go mod - it allows you to place pieces on a board
> no overriding mouse controls.
You can rebind mouse controls using the config file. There's a settings redesign coming soon as well, the plan is improve the keybindings menu there too
> Forms have terribly poor ergonomic
This is one of our roadmap goals. One of our developers is working on a new UI API, there's also work on a new mainmenu and maintenance on the existing API
The current UI API has improved a lot in the last couple of years
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You are right about a lot of the limitations though, such as custom keybindings. We are working to improve this - we have adopted a roadmap to provide focus. You can keep up with development on our blog: https://blog.minetest.net/
Note that the process for making games is the same as for making mods - games are a collection of mod(ule)s.
I'll make a note about the docs being hard to find, obviously room to improve here. This page is intended to be the starting page for those interested in modding/game making, it gives an overview and links to other resources: https://dev.minetest.net/Modding_Intro