FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

What reasons do you all individually have which attracted you to Minetest? Is it the fact that Minetest is free (gratis or libre)? Do you enjoy watching games grow from alphas into fully featured releases? Migrated from Minecraft for political or technical reasons?

AnxiousInfusion wrote:Migrated from Minecraft for political or technical reasons?

First yes (political AND technical reasons), but then I stayed because of modding and the fact that it’s free (in all meanings).

originally i only knew minecraft, but was not interested, because it looked like a fusion of Zelda and building blocks.
then it became more popular, so i got interested too.
then i noticed that it was taken over by microsoft and no longer a free game.
then i remembered that almost everything has an alternate open-source version, so i searched for it and
then i found minetest.
then i was happy.
then i compared minetest with minecraft videos on youtube.
then i noticed that minetest is better than minecraft.
then ... some time passed.
then i saw this topic,
then i made this post.

EDIT: then i was awarded the prize for the most "then" in a single post.

I like it because it is open source and easy to mod. But the support for complex AI makes me a little disappoint.

I try to only use open source software. My daughter wanted minecraft so I found minetest.
I stay because I enjoy modding and the community is great.

The freedom to customize the game how I like, and I can take my time building things with out super hostile mobs attacking or explore the randomly generated world with out the threat of starving.

Plus it has a great community where people are open to ideas and help out with problems in the game.

I left a certain other game since it no longer caters to what I listed above.

I love Minetest because of the possibilities are limitless...

It is free and easy to mod.
It is a great platform for game creation.
The community is pretty awesome.

I love the fact that my seven year-old can ask me to make a this or make a that, and within a hour I can make new ores, weapons, mobs and test with him, and he loves it too.

There is some deeper pull to Minetest that I could even explain, It is just limitless and so much fun to create and explore that I don't think it is even possible for me to become bored with it.

It seems that almost everyone is here because of the freedom and opportunity. I guess I should also share my reasons. For me there is no single, significant feature that sparked my interest but instead a bunch of little things.

1. I have always hosted a vanilla (see: no mods!) Minecraft server for friends and family and I really like the idea that Minetest;
a) Has locked chests by default.
b) /sethome functionality built in.
c) interact-off is better than adventure mode for protecting a server from new, potentially malicious players.

2. It is much easier to introduce somebody to a game when it is free. I know several who would probably enjoy such a game, but couldn't be bothered to pay ~20 dollars just to see.

3. Unlike most games, which are focused on providing an experience, voxel builder games are more about creation. And since you'll want to preserve these creations, open source is much more suited to preserving these things. Minetest is the natural choice here.

4. There is no 256 block hight restriction. Finally tall towers can be built and airships can be made where they belong. And I have yet to experience multi-kilometer deep caving.

5. I am a Linux user and ever since the acquisition of Minecraft from Microsoft, there has been a looming expectation that Minecraft support for Linux will slowly erode.

I play Minetest because:

• Minetest is free, unlike Minecraft
• Minetest is Open-source, unlike Minecraft
• Minetest has a good modding API(Although is is a bit rough in places)
• Minetest has a good community :)

AnxiousInfusion wrote:5. I am a Linux user and ever since the acquisition of Minecraft from Microsoft, there has been a looming expectation that Minecraft support for Linux will slowly erode.

Just rename Minecraft.exe to Minecraft.jar. Havent played MC in a long time, so I dont know if that still works...

I came to Minetest because its free, the large selection of mods and how easy they are to install, the ready to help community, and its for linux.

Although I am quite disappointed that mobs have not been re-implemented into the game yet. Been waiting so long...

I love its speed on older hardware. Other 3D voxel games wouldn't run on my singlecore system - but if they would run, I would expect less FPS than with this software.
Also open-source is a good thing when you want to contribute to your favourite game.

Oh - about migrating from Minecraft. A friend asked me if I could check it out with his older account.
Fine, it started but soon it lagged so hard - the fun was gone. I doupt I had spent money for that game even if I had a better computer at that time.

What hardware are you running it on?

I like Minetest because:

• The fact that there's no win or lose, you just mine and build. :D
• It's open source!
• You get to live in an alternate universe.
• There's not a lot of odd hotkeys, just the WASD direction keys and I for inventory and a couple other stuff.
• Old mods are compatible with new versions.
• The minetest worlds are HUGE!
• Lots of great servers!
• Great forums!

I think that's about it.

It's free and open source.
Low Bandwidth usage per second.
No long waits of launching.
Many mods.
Great community and, servers.
Mods always acceptable.
No need download any other contact.
Easy to mod.
Meshes, and nodeboxing.
No register needed.
±31,000 in all directions world size.
Can create own subgame.

That about it..

Alt. Tester wrote:

[...]
Low Bandwidth usage per second.
[...]

That about it..

I think the worst part of MT at the moment is the networking...

• It's free (both gratis and libre)!
• Fully modifiable.
• Portable.
• Anybody can make own mod (or even subgame) easily (even a 12th~14th user can make it!).
• Good community.
• Can run on old computer.
• Small amount of space used (~20MB! Compared to MC which has >100MB (I haven't play it, but my friend told me)).

I think that's it.

kaadmy wrote:I think the worst part of MT at the moment is the networking...

The whole interaction protocol seems to be extremely slow. Not only the network stack.

Because it's free and enjoyable, because I've never played minecraft, because I discovered later that it's easy to learn Lua. Unlike JavaScript. I tried learning JS once, here's how it went...

Blaa blaa blaa blaa sets something blaa blaa blaa commands list blaa blaa blaa.

then i noticed that it was taken over by microsoft and no longer a free game.

it wasn’t a libre game in the first place but Microsoft definitely didn’t help!

The thing that drew me to minetest was the fact it was a lot like minecraft (which i played for many years before i gave up non-free software) and fully free software

you can mod it very easily and runs on low spec hardware
and just putting it out there...

Minetest for the n64 would be the greatest thing ever... just saying..
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/N64_Programming

Freedom, money-wise and do-whatever-you-want-with-it wise.
Even if I had Minecraft, I'd still play Minetest frequently because I like experimenting with my software.... a lot.

Kpenguin wrote:[...]
because I like experimenting with my software.... a lot.

Same :)
Recently I made my own branch of Assaultcube with Counterstrike gameplay, loadouts, smoke/flash nades etc.

kaadmy wrote:

Kpenguin wrote:[...]
because I like experimenting with my software.... a lot.

Same :)
Recently I made my own branch of Assaultcube with Counterstrike gameplay, loadouts, smoke/flash nades etc.

Rely were is this branch?????

Easy to mod.
World height.

tomlukeywood wrote:

kaadmy wrote:

Kpenguin wrote:[...]
because I like experimenting with my software.... a lot.

Same :)
Recently I made my own branch of Assaultcube with Counterstrike gameplay, loadouts, smoke/flash nades etc.

Rely were is this branch?????

Haven't put it online yet :) It's buggy, and might not work too well, haven't tested with it much, and there's still some kown problems, and I still have to change the logos/icons for the licencing.

However, I can supply some screenshots :)

could you use bloom shaders in the fog of the grenade
and some similar one for the flash grenade?

Hybrid Dog wrote:could you use bloom shaders in the fog of the grenade
and some similar one for the flash grenade?

I guess this thread is getting too off-topic, please PM me about it instead.
Unfortunately, Assaultcube doesn't support GLSL by default, so it'll be a mess to implement it.

kaadmy wrote:I guess this thread is getting too off-topic

not anymore

i like Minetest, because it is free / libre and it has a lot of cool features.

I Play almost on VanessaE's Servers, on VE-Building or on her Dreambuilder Servers.
There are so much blocks / nodes on this game, that i almost can do everything in minetest.

Some years ago i tested an other free MC / MT alike game, but that was really bad, that was very buggy and i got bored because of lacking features and blocks. Minetest is much much better.

instead of paying for mc, l would try that "build a world" game

World size
Customizability
A LOT less lag than meincrap.

I mean, really. MT seems a lot faster. But that's understandable given that:
-it's native code, and that's never going to be matched by virtual machines
-modding and mods in meincrap are just a bunch of workarounds and hacks on top of already slow s(tuff) and reinventing stuff in every mod.

But... wait for it... the best feature: you get mods from the server! With textures and sounds!

Also, cheers all! This is my first post.