Promotion

[maikerumine]

Quick topic and question.

PROMOTION.

I know a lot of you like to keep Minetest kinda on the DL (quiet), but was wondering if any of you show your kids or friends this AMASING game?

Let's be real here.

I have shown My Step son, both Niece and nephew, as well as other nephew this game and thay all already play Minecraft, so they are plenty aware on what to do.

Consensus is: They LOVE it. Actually, Three kids all said they love it more than Minecraft because of the flexibility and gameplay. So much so that I cannot keep them off my systems! I do my very best explaining all the ins and outs and complexity of tailoring your own game based on other creators mods, but was wondering how any of you all show this off and promote it, if at all any?

I feel Minetest is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I have other interests at heart.

The open source and infinite gameplay has me hooked, and I WANT to share.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

[Krock]

My friends prefer shooter games and just smile friendly when they hear the word "Minecraft" or "Minetest".
And my cousin played it for a short time but he wanted better visual effects. Not sure what he plays right now :/

Not everybody likes voxel games but this project is amazing for me.

[4aiman]

Well, my friends wanna see some MC features in MT before they will want to play it.
For one of them only helicopters and UFOs were the things which made him wait for inexistent features. I guess, a helicopter is a good compensation :)

The other one of my friends have said that he wants enchantment (working beta has been coded by me) and somewhat smart mobs (I still have issues with following algo - no manual for internal pathfinder is no good - but a much more complicated AI than that of the simple mobs has been developed. Again, I did it by myself.) and the Nether with portals and stuff.
The last one is not complete yet - there's no Nether-specific mobs and the Nether itself has too small caverns and has no pre-generated structures (although the overworld has MC-like ugly villages and mineshafts and some huge'n'buggy BSP-generated dungeons).
But when M$ had bought the MC he said he'd switch for sure once I'm done. (So, now HE is waiting for me )))

The third one answered me with the famous question: "Et tu, Brute?"

The fourth-through-seventh said smth like: "Minecraft, huh? But I have pirated... What? Free??! It must be buggy then...". They DID try to play MT but it didn't produce that much effect on them. It's too boring to not have a quest for them.

My wife was amazed with the things I've introduced in Magichet, true. But I know she just loves to breed animals and to have a farm - she had always supplied us with any food & animal products, should I or my buddies need smth.
In turn we helped her with wiring, lights for farms, more advanced armour than any of us had.
(I used to be a builder, a redstone-engineer as well as IC2 and GregTech machinery builder and the main alchemist too.
More advanced designs came from one of my buddies - he knew everything about the nuclear energy and materia production. He's a true warrior too.
The third one was an honest cheater. Whenever he managed to find a bug or disbalance - he used it to his own profit. When he had no room to store any more of his stuff - he started to distribute it. From him the first irridium pieces of armor came. He's also the one I don't want ever to have a PvP fight with - Lineage II made him a fierce battler.)
For now she CAN breed the animals, but I can't let her test those and spoil the experience like I did spoil mine with constant bug-reports to be made.

I believe there are people here, at MT forums whom I can call a friend of mine. All of them love Minetest in their own way. :)

Oh, and there's many younger children (cousins, nephews, nieces, brother-in-law and friends' children) around me and my wife who prefer to play smth with a "better graphics"...
Some of them DID like MT but only because it's open-world and it doesn't force one to struggle if he/she doesn't want to.
You know, kids nowadays can't beat the old Mario/Duck Tales/Chip & Dale/Megaman/etc NES games. Those are too damn hard for them. (Too bad they have to understand that there's smth with a better graphics wa-a-ay before they have a chance to grow up to the age when a Megaman game would be perfectly beatable.)



The problem with Minetest is a simple one:

Every time I play MC I'm free to do whatever I want. I can't change the rules of fix the bugs.
Every time I play MT I feel uneasiness caused by the fact that there's a LOT of things that should be changes/fixed and that I CAN fix those. So, any time I play MT it's more like testing what's wrong than enjoying the game itself. :(


It looks like I've digressed a lot...

Anyway, I try to introduce to MT/FM as many ppl as I can. I need testers, you know? ;)

[lansney]

Yea , its exactly like i said in some post on The forum ... This game has really good even better potentiality than MC, and I try to explain this to all of my friends who play MC ...
4aiman has true... We just need a well structurated minetest"vanilla"_game which make sense for players , and after they can do what the fuck they want to do with mods ! But at minimum, a solid basis to get started ! It's my own opinion but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone to share this ...

[Topywo]

We just need a well structurated minetest"vanilla"_game which make sense for players , and after they can do what the fuck they want to do with mods ! But at minimum, a solid basis to get started !

To get new players playing, I think adding some minetest subgames (even though in development and with minor bugs) should be in the standard minetest package (or however it is called).

[lansney]

yes, but at the begining just a subgame vanilla similar or not to minecraft and then when the player is at ease, he can try different subgame if he/she want !

[Jordach]

Subgames are what is going to make Minetest as a literal whole rocket up. Mods might get popular, but will not have the power to literally boost Minetest as a whole.

I will be using BFD as an example as well as Minetest Game.

Despite my efforts at bridging Minetest-like gameplay to a Minecraft style is difficult as hell. This leads to missing things, such as constructions, exploration, and a variety of other things, which will eventually turn up.

My reasoning is that:

1) It's not even finished for what I want from it.

2) The digging times will be heavily off putting.

3) They won't know which map generator to use.

4) Some textures are still bad in design and don't match up to MC, and feel like they don't fit in. (Wooden tools, and other stuff fit this quite well. This is referring to the Minetest Game tools.)

5) Textures feel too repeaty and have the grid. (Grasses, stone and others have randomised nodes, which create nice looking non grid terrain. You can see my efforts with the newer textures.)

6) Sounds do NOT live up to modern video game standards. Most sounds to me feel like they were made in the 80s, made by a chimp with a damaged Korg Synthesizer.

7) Not enough ambience, either being smaller mobs like birds, or just some sounds to make the nights feel alive (and like there is wildlife out there) and not quiet.

8) Content quality and immersion. This has been my largest annoyance since sliced bread. It's never good enough, because models don't ever seemingly fit the voxel design, and usually sometimes on occasion have 64x textures, when they should only have 16x. Models such as the ones from sapiers MOBF / Animals is the largest violator of this single rule. You don't have curved surfaces in a voxel game. Ever. I'm also looking at you, Vanessa, as your Dreambuilder apples are a non voxel mesh.

When I get closer to 1.0 with BFD, we could consider adding it, although the absolute size of it will probably be a deterrent.

[lansney]

I just wanna give +4444 to Jordach especially to point 5) from 8) !!

[TG-MyinaWD]

I have hosted an Mese Day before. A Day I had over 126 Players playing on the same Minetest world. World didn't made it alive. Was half ruin form Worldedit. But was fun when Mese Day lasted. I still do Mese Day when can alone. I even used have alot cool things wayback. But I really enjoy playing MT. alot sure has change since 0.3.1x
And there seem be infinite of Mods and Subgames even maps ideas.

I hope one day I will have an awesome project and keep expanding it until have not a single space left.

I want try create The best Real deal of real life on MT To. I already got most the plans done. But it still expanding. So is my idea for a Prison Server idea.

All I can say MT I made lots of friends :)

And proudly call everyone a Brother and Sister.

And heres to MT In 2015.

[Linuxdirk]

5) Textures feel too repeaty and have the grid. […]

6) Sounds do NOT live up to modern video game standards.[…]

It’s the same problem Minecrafthad until Mojang hired an graphics artist and a sound artist: Developer placeholder graphics and sounds are not to be used in a final product. Ever. :)

#5 could be fixed by automatically rotating nodes on a random or pseudo-random basis like Minecraft does with the latest version to get rid of that grid caused by simply stitching uniform textures together (See this video presenting the technique in one of the first snapshot releases which had this feature). This only needs one who codes it :)

#6 could be fixed by having a volunteer sound/graphics artist as a team member of the core developers team. This needs a sound/graphics artist to be interested to work on a FLOSS project in his free time.

[Casimir]

There is the general rule that, the better your material is, the less work you have to put in it to get a good result. Of course rotating, alternating and random textures would be a good feature, but it is less work when you learn how to eliminate the grid. With alternating textures you just redo the same mistake for different versions of one texture.

[jadedtest]

Developer placeholder graphics and sounds are not to be used in a final product. Ever. :)

Save Kirby. Kirby was a place-holder, until they got attached to him. :p

[philipbenr]

@LinuxDirk: I would enjoy being on the graphics development team. It is something I really like.

As per texture changes, the new grass texture was mine. It truthfully was a pretty quick fix. In the end, I could make a better set for the natural tiles and create a pull request for the tiles that I think are the best. Still, I think for now they look much better from 0.4.9 and back.

[lansney]

yea new graphics is really important for the default game, can be awsome and also clean up a little bit the default game for example, remov nyan cat etc...

[Linuxdirk]

Of course rotating, alternating and random textures would be a good feature, but it is less work when you learn how to eliminate the grid.

May be less work, but you still have an even pattern without putting in some kind of randomization no matter how uniform you make a texture.

With implementing this feature Minecraft improved the appearance of grass, sand, gravel, stone and some other materials a lot without changing anything on the textures – and it isn’t even real randomness :)

[Jordach]

Of course rotating, alternating and random textures would be a good feature, but it is less work when you learn how to eliminate the grid.

May be less work, but you still have an even pattern without putting in some kind of randomization no matter how uniform you make a texture.

With implementing this feature Minecraft improved the appearance of grass, sand, gravel, stone and some other materials a lot without changing anything on the textures – and it isn’t even real randomness :)

I did this with BFD's grass - except the ABM is monstrously heavy and I want to change it to on_generated, saving CPU time by miles. Stone does it as well, but has no random rotations, just variants of one texture instead.

[Linuxdirk]

Stone does it as well, but has no random rotations, just variants of one texture instead.

Doesn’t matter if it’s really the rotation of a node or simply altering the texture :) It just should be done in minetest_game or even be in the engine itself.

[Jordach]

Stone does it as well, but has no random rotations, just variants of one texture instead.

Doesn’t matter if it’s really the rotation of a node or simply altering the texture :) It just should be done in minetest_game or even be in the engine itself.

I've asked for textures to be like sounds:

texture.1.png
texture.2.png
texture.3.png
texture.4.png

Those textures will be randomly chosen when the client joins the world. So a 3x3 grid of grass would have:

143
214
423

As their topside.

[Linuxdirk]

I've asked for textures to be like sounds:

texture.1.png
texture.2.png
texture.3.png
texture.4.png

Those textures will be randomly chosen when the client joins the world.

This would be awesome! :D

[Jordach]

I've asked for textures to be like sounds:

texture.1.png
texture.2.png
texture.3.png
texture.4.png

Those textures will be randomly chosen when the client joins the world.

This would be awesome! :D

But this was the responce that I remember:

But shaders won't work!!!1!!

[Linuxdirk]

But shaders won't work!!!1!!

Have a checkbox saying “Use randomized textures for non-patterned look (please note: shaders won’t work when the randomized textures feature is enabled)” won’t be a big deal :)

Either randomized textures or shaders, until it’s fixed.

[Casimir]

May be less work, but you still have an even pattern without putting in some kind of randomization no matter how uniform you make a texture.

With implementing this feature Minecraft improved the appearance of grass, sand, gravel, stone and some other materials a lot without changing anything on the textures – and it isn’t even real randomness :)

You are right. I tested it and it looks much much better. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10845