FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

We like to bash Minetest. We like to give reasons why it's not good enough for Steam. We constantly point out what it's still missing. Yet we've got thousands of other games we could be playing, and we wind up spending most if not all our time playing this "not ready for primetime" game. I know why I keep coming back to Minetest, why I'm obsessed with it. It's like legos, the greatest toy ever invented. You could get a toy truck. You could play with it for a while, but then you get bored with it and want a toy airplane. But if you have legos, and you built a toy truck, you could now rip it apart and build an airplane, or a robot, or a fire station, or anything you want. And that's what Minetest is like. It really should be called Video Game Construction Kit. With a minimal amount of technical skills Minetest can be anything you want it to be. You could argue that Minecraft is just as good. There are more and better mods. The problem is that they are a pain to install, and I never modify them because they use a more difficult programming method, and their licenses are way more restrictive than Minetest Mods. With Minetest I can add or remove functionality almost as easily as snapping 2 lego blocks together. If Minetest aint good enough to be on Steam, then why do we spend all our time playing it and not our Steam games? Minetest simply is better than anything on Steam. Minetest is the best game ever.

minecraft was taken over by microsoft. it will never be the same as it used to be.
eventually apple will publish their own version and name it iCraft.
and then there is minetest for linux, and just like linux it will never die.

Yeah, sometimes we get focus more on what we lack...its just something natural on people. However, we need those topics and that discussion for us to know where to dedicate resources and time on. The thing with Steam is that if we get this game packed, even with a little more content, it will crush the competition. Apart from Terraria, there is no good substitute for MC, just lazy knock-offs. MT can fill that void!

Neuromancer wrote:...It's like legos, the greatest toy ever invented. You could get a toy truck. You could play with it for a while, but then you get bored with it and want a toy airplane. But if you got legos, and you built a toy truck, you could now rip it apart and build an airplane, or a robot, or a fire station, or anything you want../

Exactly, without the hassle, noise, and the missing parts! There is nothing worse than building a truck and be missing the last wheel! xD

firefox wrote:minecraft was taken over by microsoft. it will never be the same as it used to be...

Is something sad to see a creators leave their projects, but I yet have to see some form of "change". MS as a company, the'll do marketing that Notch never did.That's what a company does, and in my eyes, MS is the tamest of the company/publishers out there... *cough*EA*cough*

Let's remember that currently, Minetest is one of the most popular free/libre games around. It easily has 5 times more players than Xonotic, for example.

Neuromancer wrote:...You could argue that Minecraft is just as good...

Minecraft is just as good, and also more complete. Unfortunately, it is now owned by Microsoft and I don't foresee them taking it in a good direction.

I don't know why everyone wants their PC games to be on Steam. The convenience of having everything all in one spot is nice, sure. But PC is all about choice and freedom. We wouldn't be here if one single god-king of a platform controlled our access to software. Some games have their own launchers e.g. Star Citizen, League and others and that's fine as they have their own visions.

If Minetest absolutely must be on a digital games storefront, it would have much better success with Desura or Itch.io as those are friendly to hosting free-to-own, indie +/ FOSS games.

AnxiousInfusion wrote:If Minetest absolutely must be on a digital games storefront, it would have much better success with Desura or Itch.io as those are friendly to hosting free-to-own, indie +/ FOSS games.

I agree, but still, I would preffer some kind of simple launcher that updates the game, than using anyting similar to steam and desura.

AnxiousInfusion wrote:Minecraft is just as good, and also more complete

Modding wise, Minecraft can do more and better than Minetest, but it requires you to be a skilled coder. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it sets a filtering for the shit mods to proliferate like in Minetest.

Anyways : Minetest is not a game, it's a voxel engine. If you take the flexibility as premium criteria for judging the quality of an engine, then Unity or the Unreal Engine 4 are immensely better than Minetest. If you just want a good slice of fun and relaxation, better investing to a AAA counterpart — unless, of course, if you're a FOSS integrist.

The real, persistent interest in Minetest in the long-run resides in a free accessibility for all kinds of developing experiments, and thus making yourself more mature for serious projects other than this chaotically-driven one.

jp wrote:

AnxiousInfusion wrote:Minecraft is just as good, and also more complete

Modding wise, Minecraft can do more and better than Minetest, but it requires you to be a skilled coder. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it sets a filtering for the shit mods to proliferate like in Minetest.

Anyways : Minetest is not a game, it's a voxel engine. If you take the flexibility as premium criteria for judging the quality of an engine, then Unity or the Unreal Engine 4 are immensely better than Minetest. If you just want a good slice of fun and relaxation, better investing to a AAA counterpart — unless, of course, if you're a FOSS integrist.

The real, persistent interest in Minetest in the long-run resides in a free accessibility for all kinds of developing experiments, and thus making yourself more mature for serious projects other than this chaotically-driven one.

Just because there are more terrible mods doesn't mean that there are less good mods. They may be harder to find, but they're still there.

rubenwardy wrote:Just because there are more terrible mods doesn't mean that there are less good mods. They may be harder to find, but they're still there.

also terrible mods give inspiration to make good mods ;)

jp wrote:The real, persistent interest in Minetest in the long-run resides in a free accessibility for all kinds of developing experiments, and thus making yourself more mature for serious projects other than this chaotically-driven one.

I disagree, by making mods easy to develop and install like lego, Minetest will always be a better place to be than Minecraft. The minecraft community should be focusing their play and development efforts on Minetest because it gives you the freedom to easily try things out, and play around with infinite combinations. Minetest is not some sort of pre-school for Minecraft and other games, it is the destination for the wise and enlightened.

Neuromancer wrote:The minecraft community should be focusing their play and development efforts on Minetest because it gives you the freedom to easily try things out

Hmmm... tell me for example serious alternatives to ComputerCraft or NoCubes in Minetest ? (hint : there aren't).

I realize how hard is it to hear that but the widest freedom of modding is in Minecraft, whose you basically extend its core with new classes without having to be a low-level programming erudite.

Neuromancer wrote:

jp wrote: Minetest is not some sort of pre-school for Minecraft and other games, it is the destination for the wise and enlightened.

Damn straight. :-)
+1

Not the time to develop my answer, but I think that the game has an exceptionnal potential, maybe 5% is used, because of the subgame system that makes everything possible. We're used to have the ground nodes - dirt, grass, stone, sand, wood - and a natural world. I'm sure that there are numerous completely different ideas we have not imagined for now. Or inventing some game concepts that are completely different from the survival or creative game (an idea among others: Sim Earth).