onpon4 wrote:as far as I can tell, his overall impression of the game so far is positive, and I think he would play it as often as Minecraft if his friends were playing it, too.
There are a lot of that kind of people, even here many players came from MC. And I don't understand why we can't copy features from there. In Minetest almost all features are OPTIONAL presented in a form of mods. There are pretty much talks about minecraft lameness (I even was accused of hating MC O_o), but c'mon, minetest IS a clone in many ways. As a clone we CAN became more popular than minecraft. As a different game - not likely.
Why is that?
Well, amongst minecrafters (even those with positive attitude) minetest always will be only a clone. BUT! Manic digger or the likes of it are wa-ay far from both minetest AND minecraft. Minetest have so much attention amongst minecrafters because it IS similar. And all they (minecrafters) want before switching to minetest (I'm talking about adequate people who are able to see potential in minetest) or playing both of them is minecraft features they like and get used to. Lame or not - IT DOESN'T MATTER. If Minetest will take it's own path, anyone here should forget about Minecraft and it's features.
We have same craft recipes, we have redstone counterpart (overhauling one), we have farming and tries to make somee mobs but we don't wanna be minecraft clone? Ridiculous. Simple and plain. Copying AND creating new features is the way, copying AND probably changing crafts to more reasonable (for devices like those of buildcraft or IC2 (Hi there, RealBadAngel! You're doing great job!) is the way, copying AND overshadowing is the way. Not diverting.
It's pretty pointless to try to convince anyone that we should go a way of Internet Explorer. ("Wut?!!" is not an option, Mito ;)
Yes, IE. MS was copying Netscape Nevigator in every feature they could and when the time of IE 4.0 had came they (MS) were like a train ready to squash the Netscape.
IE is lame, sure. But at least 50% of users all over the world (much more, actually - lowered for those who probably would say I'm exaggerating) use IE! And IE 10 is really fast and neat (nope, I'm totally for Firefox, so that's no ads of IE or Win8).
Anyone can say that IE is a crap (and it is), but Minetest consists of mods which can be separated and installed/uninstalled independently. We (and by that I mean Minetest) need to became Firefox-like (in terms of "extensibility" ) and chase Minecraft, adding more it's features and more features that minecraft DO NOT HAVE. In fact we have plenty of what minecraft do not have, but we don't have some of it's features too. One can't just came and say that IE/Windows is crap and user should switch to another browser/OS. That's too hard for too many people.
In the end personally I see Minetest called a clone of minecraft, which have more features then latter, more fun to play and superior in everything except bugs. I didn't say "lameness", cause that's too subjective to be said. Everyone have their own thoughts about what is "lame".
All Minetest need is "configurability". Mods is the great way to do that. But we also need new callbacks for Lua, pathfinding and simple mobs AI in C++. I'm not bithcing about anything. But mobs are slow and stupid. And they will stay so, unless some basic AI would be coded in C++.
As for the renewable lava, obsidian and stuff like that... Those who want renewable lava should have an option in config. But I don't really care about it. Just remember, that first one want more lava and then he/she will ask to ban a griefer who use that easy-to-get lava. Obsidian being hard to crack is lame? Then make a substitute and call it whatever you like. Just remember, that calling it "obsidian" will be less lame then make a new ore as a substitute. In first case minecrafter will say: "Oh, MT is just a clone. Good one, possible, but a mere clone", while in the second one minecrafter will say: "OMG!!! They took our obsidian, called it a different name, drew some horrible textures, added some questionable crafts from it and spoiled in every way! Copy it PROPERLY if you do!!! God, it's like playing lame Minecraft...".
Anyone who will try to say, it's just my point of view, will be ignored, cause it's not - Minetesters want their lava back, Minecrafters want their nether and mobs and hunger-meter. Minetest is a community project atm. And community want both MC an MT features. Not all of us, not all the features, but we want.
I suggest a little experiment:
Calinou said he tried to make a game as close to MC as he can. PilzAdam have his Minitest game and there are other mods like snow etc. Also there are some unmerged minecraft-like features for the game engine.
So... Is there any who can and want to try build a geme engine + minetest_minecraft_game that will copy minecraft as much as it's possible atm? We create special topic, a youtube channel, social networks groups and see what happens and how many people will come to minetest and will help it to develop it and how many will come just to play.
Oh, if anyone want to mention blockplanet_old or other two-year-old-fork (despite blockplanet still have some features MT doesn't), then I'm talking about a fork with all minetest have atm and will have in the future.
If this will fail, then anyone who (like me) was for making MT closer to MC should shut up. I'll definitely will do that. Those who can understand no one needs smth will too (I'm pretty sure). Other non-adequate persons may treated as trolls then.