rubenwardy wrote:How did you find Minetest?
My kids (4 and 6) and I have been minecrafting just about every available
moment for a few months now. They're pretty keen to start playing with
mods, but I'm reluctant to take on a whole lot of fiddling to make that work
(on Ubuntu Linux, especially). So I'm looking around for alternatives that
more mod-friendly.
rubenwardy wrote:What was your first opinion?
I installed this for the kids and sent them in "cold" pretty much saying - go try this and see what you think. Some of the things they especially like surprise me - like seeing the apples in the trees.
My first impression is that graphics performance is solid (Minecraft graphics sometimes glitches on my Mac) and as an open-ended engine/platform has great potential. I was also pleased to see a solid heart-beat on github.
rubenwardy wrote:What do you think know?
It's early days for us, I can see a mixture of Minecraft and Minetest in our house going forward - I intend to start playing with Lua to add new Minetest items, my kids want an apple basket (for some reason).
rubenwardy wrote:What do you think about its Experience and Gameplay?
Technically, my first thought was that the UI elements ought to be done in SVG. I think the low-def thing (yay for pixel art!) is great for the 3D world, but on a high-def TV at least the icons and fonts ought to be smooth and crispy. (That's the graphics programmer perspective)
My kids took straight to it, started their own server without any fuss and didn't complain about any significant glitches or crashes - so WELL DONE! All the new items, blocks and mods will keep them busy and amused for hours, I'm sure.
rubenwardy wrote:What do you think about the modding capabilities?
That's a big attraction - Lua makes a lot of sense for that, it could well be the first programming language for my kids.
- Nigel