What's Minetest still missing over Minecraft?

[4aiman]

Heh... Once upon a time I was disliked to the bottom of the reputation well for this kind of a message.

Story time!

Sarcasm time! ;-p

Oh, wait!
Maybe it's "offtopic time"?..
Arrrghhhh....
...
Gosh, now it's "pirate time"...
What am I going to do?!!



PS: I'd suggest re-reading the whole topic. Everyone who didn't should definitely do it.

[benrob0329]

Good suggestion, rereading it helped.

I think it's all the little things that matter. Little stuff as in:

Being able to see what a player is mining

More sound effects

Subgame defined background music

[4aiman]

Agreed here :)


> Subgame defined background music

It has been a while since the in-game music was suggested for the first time.

@freeminer.org I suggested an idea of having some "base theme".
It was meant to play occasionally anywhere.
Then there were "moods" - a litte pieces of music that should've been played along the "base theme" to mix with it and alter it somehow.
There was a "mood" for every biome plus "town mood", "machinery mood", "danger mood" etc.

The idea was nice but there were no coders and no composers to make that possible.


Another idea was to implement things MMRPG-like.
There should've been "theme areas".
Every area should've played it's "theme".
This one was simpler than the first one, but ppl wanted to be able to define several themes per biome.
I don't remember ppl working out a compromise to satisfy most of them.


Right now BG music is perfectly doable thing, but Lua-based search for conditions of theme choice would be too slow in comparison with some way to define areas from C++.


> Being able to see what a player is mining

Do you mean drawing cracks for every client?
I have an idea how to make a workaround in Lua right now: use entities with no collision box to highlight node or particle spawners to mark the place.
Both will affect network protocol efficiency, though.


> More sound effects
Search for Immerse sounds :)

[SAMIAMNOT]

Playeranim adds head movement. I looked at a demo and it's REALLY close, the only difference is that the head only goes up and down and not left and right, but that really matters little.

[benrob0329]

playeranim doesn't have the animations that make the game feel more alive to me, breathing and smooth walking and such.

[Dragonop]

playeranim doesn't have the animations that make the game feel more alive to me, breathing and smooth walking and such.

breathing? smooth walking? I think you are thinking on other types of videogames.
(btw, to add a walking sensation, all blocks should have walking sounds! I think that will be a great addition.)

[benrob0329]

I'm thinking of my favorite game, Minetest XP

Look at Sam when he is standing still, you will see him almost breath, I guess it's not quite 'breathing' but I don't know what else to call it...

[SAMIAMNOT]

It is breathing. But yeah, the animations could be smoother, although they arent worth complaining.

[lordtoran]

Minetest was my first exposure to this class of games, and after I had bought Minecraft – just in order to know what all the fuss and talk is about – I quickly regretted paying the 19.95 €.

MC horribly sucks as a sandbox to just build beautiful things in. And that's everything I want and expect. There is no easy way to, say, add a few hundred pretty new blocks to the base game. And talk on the MC forums anyway revolves mostly around multiplayer survival, not the creative stuff, so I was turned away from there too.

Minetest probably won't succeed as long as it is an obvious clone grounded on the same paradigm(s), and it certainly won't catch that other game's player base by copying its concepts. MT is a vastly superior sandbox and should IMHO consequently focus on that and develop as such, without looking back to its roots. For me such a direction would mean:

• Supplying a big heap of default content (integrating major mods that everyone has installed anyway, like mesecons and plantlife)
• More eye candy than similar games can offer, because the simulation aspect would become more important
• More detail and realism in terms of the physical environment, like different types of weather and natural hazards (caused in turn by environmental parameters), effects of temperature changes throughout the day, visible seasons, player can heatstroke when sprinting in a hot area, or freeze to death in cold water or with too thin clothing etc.
• Doing away with biomes in favor of something more generic. The biome concept places artificial restrictions on what can happen at one location in the world, by assuming a fixed, unchangeable set of environmental parameters. Why not a realistic temporal worldgen like in Dwarf Fortress. After generating the mountains, rocks and ores and simulating erosion and tectonics, create the surface layers according to average temperature, humidity, maximum temperature span throughout the day and year, prevailing wind direction and speed; even parameters like surface albedo could be factored in. And these parameters could change at any time; with the time of day, the seasons, also after certain events like flooding or shadowing the area (obviously).
• A less sterile environment. Foremost: Sounds. And how about more atmospheric lighting effects. Lots of different plants by default. A few non-hostile default mobs and maybe villages, ruins or artifacts here and there so it isn't so lifeless. Random events like natural disasters, appearance of a powerful artifact or entity, or in survival mode, invasions, hurricanes or meteor impacts. Maybe even a concept of spirituality. You could find or build shrines and gain the affection of a deity. The deity may temporarily grant the player access to resources or supernatural attack abilities.
• An exhaustive ingame manual.

Just a few thoughts of mine. I know the game is ridicuously easy to mod but what a new player gets is the unmodded game and he/she will judge by that.

[rubenwardy]

I totally agree with that lordtoran.

[benrob0329]

I do not. The very name Minetest is from its roots, as are nyan cats and Mese.

Minetest (the subgame) also isn't about having 10000 blocks and mobs in default, it's about the freedom to chose what blocks and such you want, however I do think that Minetest (the sub game) should be a complete base to use.

Minetest (the game engine) does need some more eye candy though, and other various improvements. But I don't think that MT (both) should only focus on being a sandbox, but rather both.

[Dragonop]

+1 lordtoran

[benrob0329]

Ok, after rereading it (always reread things, it helps) i agree with just about everything, though not to an extream. I still think that Minetest should cling to its roots, but maybe not to an extream either.

[lordtoran]

Yes, maybe I just intended to provoke a bit. IMO the base game should give a foretaste of what it can be turned into, by including an assortment of decorative blocks by default to underline the creative/sandbox aspect. Not hundreds, maybe two dozen. And a handful of mobs and some bushes/flowers.

Unique and innovative game mechanics however is where this game can possibly really shine and start standing on its own. Why not implement something that similar games don't offer?

[benrob0329]

Hmmm, there are 12 pages of stuff in vanilla (Don't Quote me on that)...so we may be covered on that. Though having the saw from moreblocks would be nice....

Mobs in default? Animals maybe, but please not Zombies or other undead. That whole craze seems quite stupid and old to me. (Do we really need bloody, brains sticking out, half dead things in our stores where 5-year-olds look?)

As far as game mechanics, here are a few ideas:

Reflections and other advanced materials (MT would need a new graphics engine)

Mods that can add animated wield items

I cant think of any more! I must be more brain tiered than i though....

[AnxiousInfusion]

Yes, but to make caving an exciting element in Minetest something has to lurk in the dark. Part of the excitement of going underground to gather resources is in the inherent danger it presents. I agree that zombies are overdone but maybe ghosts or just more environmental hazards?

[TenPlus1]

AnxiousINfusion: you can already install a Mobs mod that gives you underground threats like Oerkki and Stone monsters and the deeper you go the bigger and badder the monsters get like Dungeon Masters, Mese Monsters and Lava Flan...

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9917

[AnxiousInfusion]

I am aware of this. I thought this thread was about Minetest_game. It is great that players can go and get mods as they see fit but as it stands, Minetest vanilla subgame is a desolate experience. Players shouldn't have to mod to make the game interesting.

[ArguablySane]

Yes, but to make caving an exciting element in Minetest something has to lurk in the dark. Part of the excitement of going underground to gather resources is in the inherent danger it presents. I agree that zombies are overdone but maybe ghosts or just more environmental hazards?

I agree, but I think there also needs to be more variety underground in general.

In Minecraft the subterranean portion of the map is only about 64 metres deep, but even that has some variety in cavegen. Below a certain level all the caves are filled with lava, and there are also abandoned mines and strongholds.
Minetest has 32 kilometres depth underground to explore, but by default there's no variety whatsoever. The same cavegen is used at all depths. There's nothing exciting or wonderous to be found by digging deeper.

I think underground biomes which modify the terrain gen could do a lot to fix this. There should be vast caverns scattered around down there, filled with resources and threats. The caves themselves should get more impressive as you go deeper. There should be volcanoes on the surface which have huge magma chambers deep beneath them. There should be extensive underground ruins which take hours to fully explore.

For monsters, I wouldn't go with anything supernatural like ghosts or zombies. The only mob I might copy from Minecraft are spiders. I'd actually look to games like Dwarf Fortress for inspiration. Some of the underground fauna and flora in Dwarf Fortress are perfect for Minetest. Who doesn't want to be chased through caverns by a hungry head?

[Casimir]

[*] Doing away with biomes in favor of something more generic. The biome concept places artificial restrictions on what can happen at one location in the world, by assuming a fixed, unchangeable set of environmental parameters.

This is what bugs me to since the beginnings of the biome system. It only gives a linear number of biomes to explore: there are just as many as one defines.
Alternatively, if one would define all the aspects separate and then have them overlap, it would result in an exponential number of biomes, and even some one would not imagine. I like how in mapgen v6 the blurred borders make the most interesting places to be.

[lordtoran]

For underground variety I tried combining caverealms (which creates crystal caverns of different types depending on depth) with paramat's "subterrain" and "intersecting" worldgens, which resulted in HUGE though quite amorphous caverns of sometimes many kilometers. I agree that a versatile generic underground generator is a great idea. It could be able to create various cavern and tunnel types, dungeons, mines, ruins of forgotten civilizations (with powerful or valuable items), lava rivers, chasms etc.

@TenPlus1: I like the revival of the mobs, and that you can now have a big variety of mobs with a single API. In case more complex or intelligent behavior/interaction is needed: I wrote an AI for a roguelike RPG once, which got quite some praise from the players. It was based on a weighted decision matrix with a random element corresponding to the weights. I can point you to the code on Sourceforge if you like, development is dead since 2009 but it's still hosted there.

Another idea of mine would be a little amount of storytelling. I'm a creative writer BTW. How about a little backstory as a unique "feature"? The player may have ended up with absolutely nothing in that ever-changing surreal world made of blocks, right after something funny happened to spacetime, for example by misconfiguration of some newly invented machinery, or he got lost with a spaceship and experienced a reality shift while entering a strange star system during an intense eruption of radiation.

edit: @Casimir: In a biomeless system, every place in the world would be potentially unique. You would have a set of environmental base parameters like average temperature and humidity, as well as how continental the climate is (which effects the possible temperature span and precipitation patterns). That would be that place's "biome" as determined during worldgen. But actual temperature, humidity etc. would also be simulated and would change during the day and year and through other factors, like the player building stuff there, or the presence of a body of water.

[AnxiousInfusion]

You should get together with benrob0329 who also has interest in writing a back story.

[ArguablySane]

[*] Doing away with biomes in favor of something more generic. The biome concept places artificial restrictions on what can happen at one location in the world, by assuming a fixed, unchangeable set of environmental parameters.

This is what bugs me to since the beginnings of the biome system. It only gives a linear number of biomes to explore: there are just as many as one defines.
Alternatively, if one would define all the aspects separate and then have them overlap, it would result in an exponential number of biomes, and even some one would not imagine. I like how in mapgen v6 the blurred borders make the most interesting places to be.

This is an extremely good point, although some of the parameters should be correlated for realism. For example, you don't want palm trees growing in a glacier.
It applies to more than just biomes, too. When coding any kind of mapgen, people should try to keep parameters independent and make different aspects of the terrain depend on different parameters.

[SAMIAMNOT]

Wow. I really like those magpen ideas.
BTW, did you know you can get a kind of "amplified" world if use use the seed "Kiwi Plant"? Try it.

[maikerumine]

Just look at the wide variety of servers out there and the small community we have, plus the ability to tweak mods to your liking in very short time, these unique situations as well as others really make this platform rather wonderful in my opinion. Things will get better as more aspiring coders and devs contribute to the project.

I play both, but MT is where I spend 90% of my voxel time. I love this software.

[4aiman]

Minecraft is more than just "creative".
It may suck in terms of block variety, but think about this:
1. There are tons of mods which add more blocks to the game.
2. Yet, for some reason, ppl tend to discuss Survival mode more than creative.
I think of that as a tendency.

The strange thing, however, is how the idea of per-player settings was discarded. (that would be a year or so since I've posted that idea)

What does that mean:
EVERY player will do exactly what he/she want to do w/o paying attention to some other features.
If some one doesn't want to fight against monsters - he/she don't have to. Well, until he/she will kill that kind of a monster by him/her~self.
If someone don't want to feel hunger - he/she don't have too. Well, until he/she will trigger some of the "survival" mode events like killing a mob or sprinting.

That would enable everyone to choose what type of a game they'd like to play.
===============================


Big heap of content is MC-way. Just look at how many there are mods "compilations": 100+, 200+, 500+ mods!!!
Some of use are trying to run Minetest on a low-end HW or Android devices for many of which the default minetest_game is already "too bloated".

I'm not against adding new stuff, but there should be a separate overhaul game within official package.
Magichet won't be selected for it does not correspond the conditions, but I'd recommend to at least try that game.
=============================

For many players eye-candy means HD textures and non-blocky terrain.
But let us forget about those ppl for a second and discuss a more weird behaviour:
Some people who tried Minecraft are saying that 32x textures for Minetest are of a lower resolution than 16x textures for Minecraft.
So I guess we should not discuss textures in this very thread, where members who DO know Minecraft gathered.
It's better to start making a new texture pack and then make a pull request.
Just to save one's nerves and time.
========================================

Finally, Minetest as a free clone of Minecraft is something that stirs many players to try out and love Minetest.
It is the same, yet it differs. There's no use denying the obvious: Minecraft HAD an impact on this Minetest developement.


PS: If you don't want your Minecraft license - I can buy it from you for the half of a price or so ;)

[SAMIAMNOT]

I like the ideas for gameplay, and that could be created as a game, but how would that work? For instance, lets say that I kill a mob because I think it will give me meat. However, it's a dirt monster, so it just gives me dirt, and now I'll be hounded by sirt monsters for the rest of my life. And what would trigger hunger? Really intriguing ideas, just need a bit more fleshing out.

[Sokomine]

EVERY player will do exactly what he/she want to do w/o paying attention to some other features.
If some one doesn't want to fight against monsters - he/she don't have to. Well, until he/she will kill that kind of a monster by him/her~self.

Sounds good, and to a degree this already happens. There are many servers out there which switch players who've had enough of romaning around and fighting for survival and now want to construct impressive buildings to a mode more or less similar to creative by giving them the necessary privs. Automatic triggering - as you seem to suggest - also sounds fine. Even a player who focusses on survival might want to stop now and then and have a nice chat with other players without beeing bothered by attacking mobs or an empty stomach. AdventureTest introduces stamina, but that is very specific to that game and would not fit to games where building is a major factor. Special blocks could stop monsters from attacking the player so that homes are safe, while going out into the wilderness may lead to an encounter with a mob. Instead of getting hungry over time, you could get hungry for fighting, or even to a lesser degree for heavy mining/digging. Another factor is PvP. That's best handled by either beeing on a only-if-both-sides-agree-basis or by using other indicators for showing other players weather a particular player likes pvp or not.

[TenPlus1]

The only thing I feel is missing in MInetest is basic engine stability... I'm not dissing the developers as they have done an amazing job on Minetest already, but having a game with random segfaults or std::bad_alloc error's really hampers any building efforts on server and loses items from player inventory and chests... It can be trying...

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=8494&start=975#p188315
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13061

[4aiman]

@Sokomine, @SAMIAMNOT
I think that auto-triggering should start over every single reincarnation.
I.e. upon respawning a player will be able to live a whole new life.

@SAMIAMNOT
Doesn't it sound a bit off when ppl say that they killed a dirt monster to gain some meat? ))

@TenPlus1
As always, +100500!