Did minetest get better than minecraft? comment your opinion

[PilzAdam]

...mods are written in .lua...

Dot lua(i am not sure)
I like Minetest as i am not good in fighting as in building.

lua. NOT DOT LUA. JUST LUA. LUA. *cringe*

its Lua not LUA.

[Novacain]

I think it's better in the simple fact that we are a close knit community. if you are active in the forums, chances are, you know most of the people.

one thing we do need though is someone who makes tutorials on how to build different types of houses, and give building tips. currently my only source for such videos are from MC. And although BloodZealous does a pretty good job, I would appreciate it in the minetest format instead.

[Novacain]

Dot lua(i am not sure)
I like Minetest as i am not good in fighting as in building.

lua. NOT DOT LUA. JUST LUA. LUA. *cringe*

its Lua not LUA.

yes, Lua as in the moon. so painful watching my dad (who is a programmer) name it LUA in his versioin of eclipse while showing me how to add the interface. fortunately, he canceled his install, and that error is not there.

[Novacain]

Minetest vs Minecraft is the same question as Linux vs Windows. Minetest is better design but minecraft has simply the mass of users
The only thing we can do is pushing minetest to perfection (Both Game and Engine) and wait
the mills of fairness grind slowly but they grind at all

I feel this is a bad comparison as Microsoft just plain sucks. I would say minecraft is better than Microsoft.

[hoodedice]

Dot lua(i am not sure)
I like Minetest as i am not good in fighting as in building.

lua. NOT DOT LUA. JUST LUA. LUA. *cringe*

its Lua not LUA.

*jumps off building in utter despair at having wrote it wrongly*

[Casimir]

Minetest vs Minecraft is the same question as Linux vs Windows.

That sums it up quite good. It's not the question of what is better, free software is just utterly different from closed and commercial software. In Minetest you can change anything you want, and possibly do the most wired thinks you can think of, the same with Linux (from a raspberry pi to supercomputers). With Minecraft and Windows you can only do what Minecraft and Windows thought of.
The decentralized world project I'm dreaming of (see Tinas and WorldDiff) is just impossible with closed software. With free software it will take some work, but generally is possible to do.

[CheerfulCherub]

Can't wait to get my other computer up and running, it's got a duel core in it and I think my mods will work better on that, considering I can't get the mobs one to work and I can't get the simple mobs to work, won't load some of the animals, and the other one just won't work at all.

[MustLoveCats]

I agree that Minetest is better than Minecraft. Here's my little list (I like lists):

1. It's free. If there's one thing everyone in the world likes, it's getting stuff for free. Minetest is a perfect example of this.

2. Easier modding. Minetest is very mod-friendly and even has an in-game source to download mods. I am very happy with this myself because it takes all the hassle out of downloading stuff like Winzip, then doing all that whatchamacallit associated with it.

3. Better multiplayer system. Minetest makes it easier to connect to multiplayer servers than Minecraft. It shows a full list of active servers in-game, instead of you having to take your time to find an IP adress from the internet somewhere, like Minecraft does. It is also easier (and possibly a bit less expensive) to create and run multiplayer servers. Another main reason multiplayer is better is due to #4...

4. Friendlier players. There may statistically be less friendly players than Minecraft (only due in part of Minecraft having more players period), but technically if Minetest and Minecraft had the same amount of players, Minetest would have more friendly people. Another thing is, even without the same amount of people, there are less Minetest griefers (This is surprising to me because Minetest is free and Minecraft is not.)

That's all on my list. Something to note is, you get different results on the different group of people you ask. This means if you ask people on Minetest forums, "Which is better: Minecraft or Minetest?" they will say "Minetest!" If you were ask the same to people on the Minecraft forums, they'd say, "Minecraft!". It's kind of like asking communists, "Is communism better or capitalism?" and then asking capitalists the same. You can guess who'll say what.

-MustLoveCats

[CraigyDavi]

MustLoveCats, those are some good points. The 2 biggest things which I like about minetest is that it is open source and that minetest has a much friendlier community.

It is also easier (and possibly a bit less expensive) to create and run multiplayer servers.

Wouldn't agree with that though.

[sfan5]

MustLoveCats, those are some good points. The 2 biggest things which I like about minetest is that it is open source and that minetest has a much friendlier community.

It is also easier (and possibly a bit less expensive) to create and run multiplayer servers.

Wouldn't agree with that though.

You can run a minetest server on a VPS with 128MB RAM and 256MB swap, good luck running a Minecraft server on that.

[CraigyDavi]

MustLoveCats, those are some good points. The 2 biggest things which I like about minetest is that it is open source and that minetest has a much friendlier community.

It is also easier (and possibly a bit less expensive) to create and run multiplayer servers.

Wouldn't agree with that though.

You can run a minetest server on a VPS with 128MB RAM and 256MB swap, good luck running a Minecraft server on that.

Fair enough. I still think that it requires quite a bit of technical knowledge to run a server.

[hoodedice]

MustLoveCats, those are some good points. The 2 biggest things which I like about minetest is that it is open source and that minetest has a much friendlier community.


Wouldn't agree with that though.

You can run a minetest server on a VPS with 128MB RAM and 256MB swap, good luck running a Minecraft server on that.

Fair enough. I still think that it requires quite a bit of technical knowledge to run a server.

What if I told you my 12 year old brother ran a server once?

It's not hard at all. Once you get the port forwarding done correctly, nothing is hard at all.

[CitroPotter]

in my opinion it did

Edit by sfan5:
Added a poll

It is better becuse its way super easy to make mads in int. lua

[ranta]

i have played both minecraft and mintest and i will say minetest is much better especially considering the that when minecraft was on version 0.4 it was leagues behind were mintest is now

[Novacain]

i have played both minecraft and mintest and i will say minetest is much better especially considering the that when minecraft was on version 0.4 it was leagues behind were mintest is now

maybe that's cause we have a higher standard for what should increase the second point :P

[onpon4]

when minecraft was on version 0.4 it was leagues behind were mintest is now

Version numbers are arbitrary. Comparing the version numbers of two different projects is completely meaningless.

[MirceaKitsune]

I wish I could say yes, but sadly it would be too early. However, I'm confident that Minetest WILL get better than Minecraft in a few years at most. If development keeps going forth with at least the current enthusiasm and energy, and stays open to various ideas and changes.

In my opinion, the main problem Minetest has which doesn't qualify it as good as Minecraft are players and Lua entities. Player animation and movement is still ugly and laggy. Lua entities also have a lot of problems, which make it difficult to integrate a good mob system or have mobs of quality. The world is also slow to load at times (causing invisible walls) as well as logins taking a lot on some servers due to texture caching (even with curl). There are other smaller problems too... such as lakes / oceans being full of holes due to cavegen (also causing broken water physics) or lack of a good in-game menu where you can change most settings in realtime (like shaders or graphical options).

Rotation interpolation is one awaited feature which would hide part of the lag, yet for some reason it didn't happen to this day. I also suggested (and plan to attempt coding) a movement buffer which would allow for smoother movement. I made a thread about that some time ago, but no one replied so far.

Conclusion: Without mobs and acceptably low lag with +30 players on a server, I believe Minetest can't even be considered fully stable and finished. Once those problems are all solved, Minetest will already be better than Minecraft, as being written in C++ rather than Java and having a Lua API is the main advantage. After RealBadAngel helps with hardware lighting too, and we'll be able to achieve graphics like those in Terasology, Minetest will be way over Minecraft in visual aspect as well.

[stormchaser3000]

not to mention mineteest needs smoth nodebox lighting like in minetest-classic and minecraft because when say i have new_style_water = true in conf the water is not lighted properly when i have smooth lighting enabled and same with many other things

[minermoder27]

You can run a minetest server on a VPS with 128MB RAM and 256MB swap, good luck running a Minecraft server on that.

Fair enough. I still think that it requires quite a bit of technical knowledge to run a server.

What if I told you my 12 year old brother ran a server once?

It's not hard at all. Once you get the port forwarding done correctly, nothing is hard at all.

If you are using a VPS and have ssh access, and have set up $PATH correctly all it takes is one command to start the server:

Your phone or window isn't wide enough to display the code box. If it's a phone, try rotating it to landscape mode.

Code: Select all

nohup minetestserver --gameid minetest --worldname world &

[PeterPanda]

Ok, I am going to be blunt. The biggest thing that makes minetest better than minecraft is the community. Since theres nowhere near as many minetest players as there are minecraft players, everyone knows each other. That's why I adore minetest multiplayer. The other thing I like is how more realistic/simplistic it is. I mean, theres no zombie pig men who came from an underground hellish dimension running around trying to kill you with golden swords XD

[PeterPanda]

But I would like mobs added in default minetest. Like realistic: Sheep, cattle, pigs, birds, wolves, cats, bears, stuff like that. I Would love all the animals in survivalcraft ( http://kaalus.wordpress.com/author/kaalus/ ) to be in minetest :D

[HeroOfTheWinds]

If you were to compare just the base Minetest game with Minecraft, MC would win almost hands down. However, when you look at the communities for each and Minetest's super-cool modding API, MC blushes and has to leave the stage. I agree that Minetest has better default textures, but both games support texture packs, making that an irrelevant point. I've yet to see mobs in Minetest that outdo those of Minecraft as well, but somewhere down the line that has to improve too.

Does MC let you have floating islands? No. Does MC have Pipeworks and its pneumatic tubes? Nein. The list goes on...

However, MT is missing something rather large that MC has: a trailer fitted to Zack Hemsey's song "Mind Heist".

[philipbenr]

@PeterPanda: I like that about MT as well. Another reason why is that this is free and is soooo much more welcoming. Also, our default shaders are really amazing, and I don't think MC built those by hand like RealBadAngel did. Also, Blockmen built the 3rd person view, which really was amazing for me. Our devs are pretty awesome here, and actually really get out with the community, unlike MC.

[MirceaKitsune]

At this day, I have a slightly better way of putting how I see things in this sense: Minecraft and Minetest both have one great blessing and one great curse, and each side wins / fails at what the other one has.

Minecraft: It has a lot of content, excellent item / mob balance and diversity, a colorful and pleasant environment, and there's so many things you're compelled to do that it almost never gets boring. However, it's pretty limited from any other perspective... both technical (difficult to mod, Java being less optimal and consistent than C++) and because of its proprietary nature it doesn't allow everyone to do everything they could with it.

Minetest: It's a fantastic engine, which allows creating nearly anything your mind can imagine doing with a voxel world, and which can be used to achieve some amazing worlds in the future. However, it lacks any good content; It ships with minetest_game which is a dead and simple world and gets you bored the moment you even see it, while mods (although many and based on good ideas) do little to fix that and compel the player to do anything at all.

Which got better over time? IMO, both did at their own "blessing" while they did little to fix their "curse". MineCraft is barely becoming a little more mod friendly and technically optimized, but is always adding new content and exciting new things you see in-game with each version. MineTest on the other hand is constantly improving its engine and getting better and better from a technical perspective, but is doing nearly nothing to create a world as colorful and grand and compelling as MineCraft's.

So MineCraft holds the flag for "gameplay quality" while MineTest holds the flag for "technical quality". When will MineTest get better than MineCraft in this case? IMO, when it will hold both flags itself. Which is possible, once we break from being satisfied with "minetest_game & mods" and create a whole new game with lots of biomes, nodes, mobs, purpose and progression, unique items and ideas, and much more. Just what I think and my 2 cents.

[Evolykane]

So MineCraft holds the flag for "gameplay quality" while MineTest holds the flag for "technical quality". When will MineTest get better than MineCraft in this case? IMO, when it will hold both flags itself. Which is possible, once we break from being satisfied with "minetest_game & mods" and create a whole new game with lots of biomes, nodes, mobs, purpose and progression, unique items and ideas, and much more. Just what I think and my 2 cents.

I agree with your opinion that Minetest should expand its standard Game, but it is not technical at the same Level as Minecraft.

[Zombie461]

If you were to compare just the base Minetest game with Minecraft, MC would win almost hands down. However, when you look at the communities for each and Minetest's super-cool modding API, MC blushes and has to leave the stage. I agree that Minetest has better default textures, but both games support texture packs, making that an irrelevant point. I've yet to see mobs in Minetest that outdo those of Minecraft as well, but somewhere down the line that has to improve too.

Does MC let you have floating islands? No. Does MC have Pipeworks and its pneumatic tubes? Nein. The list goes on...

However, MT is missing something rather large that MC has: a trailer fitted to Zack Hemsey's song "Mind Heist".

Yes. It has both. What the hell are you talking about? Floating islands are easy as pie. Pipes? Technic. Also, Neither does Minetest. You'd need mods for that.

[HeroOfTheWinds]

I will say that expanding the default mapgen (or rather, making a whole new one) and having it encompass a much great variety should be one of the first small places to start. Obviously, improving client-side prediction would be wonderful and a much greater technical step to outdoing MC. But until then, every minor improvement that can be made can and should be, in my humble opinion. Expanding the base game and livening up the mapgen are both high on the list, maybe introducing some sort of achievement or progression system. For example, there could be some sort of item similar to the nether reactor from Minetest: Pocket Edition... Hard to craft and yielding much reward. Obviously, we could do much better than the nether reactor... On a really ambitious scale, dungeons could be heavily revamped or be given a spawner to create a whole trap filled temple, with some reward and/or achievement at the end.

Regarding mapgen, I'd love to eventually work on a C++ mapgen for the actual game, but I'm still learning the language. However, converting a few extra mods to in-game mapgen to make it more exciting would be great, particularly in creating more varied surface worlds (watershed is a good example), larger caverns (caverealms or subterrain), and floating islands (fracture or skylands) would certainly be a good start.
EDIT: For the first time I actually took a look at why (via GitHub) indev is/was removed, and it makes sense. Lua modding is more appropriate for creating such mapgens, and a better solution in view of that is more/better included "games". Perhaps I should work on helping more game modes get polished or completed...

[kirazo]

It should have better surival mode by default.

[SAMIAMNOT]

yes minetest did get better than minecraft in a way just inocudom said it is a lot easier to mod. another reason is because it is open source and minecraft you have to pay $26 USD. also minetest has a better comunity not as many griefers.

I agree for those two reasons alone. However, one setback is that Minecraft is universal, being released on Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, PS4,PS3 , Xbox One & Xbox 360. Minetest is only available on Windows, Mac OS X & Ansroid.
However, I do believe a Xbox 360 version is possible, as I vaguely remember hearing that you can make 360 games for free.
True, we dont have as many griefers, but we dont have as many players either. Im sure its proportionate.
I think that one reason users are flocking to Freeminer is that it comes with (slightly) more content. Weather, animals, etc. Minetest_game is dead.

[ExeterDad]

I agree for those two reasons alone. However, one setback is that Minecraft is universal, being released on Windows, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, PS4,PS3 , Xbox One & Xbox 360. Minetest is only available on Windows, Mac OS X & Ansroid.

Did you forget Linux? No one in my household uses anything but Linux and we are enjoying Minetest :)