Minetest is golden age of Minecraft

[Fixer]

Even if Minetest Game is not Minecraft, our servers and community look just like golden days of Minecraft (2011-2012), a lot of minecrafters want those days back, we have those already, we should embrace and enjoy it, non profit nerd-driving servers with players building a server with each other, starting from spawn-city and beyond, not /wild apart. Many don't realise how valuable it is.

[MineYoshi]

Minetest is good among closed source java Minecraft evil.

[Andrey01]

I hope Minetest Game will become better than Minecraft one soon. How do you think what do we need to do still for Minetest (to improve the engine, and etc.) people to love it and to come all from Minecraft?

[Krock]

our servers and community look just like golden days of Minecraft (2011-2012), a lot of minecrafters want those days back

The community is indeed lovely but I cannot compare it with Minecraft. What exactly do you mean with "golden days"? Has the user base now changed there to one which is unfriendly or chaotic?
I'd love to hear some history because I have never been a member of the Minecraft community.

[Linuxdirk]

I'd love to hear some history because I have never been a member of the Minecraft community.

I was since the first beta (coincidentally bought Minecraft a week or two after it left alpha stage). It was a fun time of exploring new things, learning to build stuff in a manipulable voxel environment and had a lot of fun.

But the more popular it got, the more the community base changed from “interested tech-savvy people” to 10 years old kids. Sure there still were some older players but there were little to no servers that are not flooded with minors.

I just couldn’t stand anymore to play with kids being half my age at best (more like a third) no matter how mature they acted. This just did not work for me. And when Notch sold Mojang (and thus Minecraft) to Microsoft this was the time for me to leave knowing that support for other platforms than Windows on PC would be phased out (I assumed that back then, and I was fucking right!).

The Minetest community is older in age. It is tiny compared to Minecraft, though (there are single Minecraft servers online that have more free slots than Minecraft has active players on all servers in the server list at the same time). But it just feels a lot better. (Not to mention how easy it is to set up a server and write officially mods for an official modding API.)

I absolutely understand if someone compares the current Minetest community with the early beta days Minecraft community.

[Stix]

I'd love to hear some history because I have never been a member of the Minecraft community.

I was since the first beta (coincidentally bought Minecraft a week or two after it left alpha stage). It was a fun time of exploring new things, learning to build stuff in a manipulable voxel environment and had a lot of fun.

But the more popular it got, the more the community base changed from “interested tech-savvy people” to 10 years old kids. Sure there still were some older players but there were little to no servers that are not flooded with minors.

I just couldn’t stand anymore to play with kids being half my age at best (more like a third) no matter how mature they acted. This just did not work for me. And when Notch sold Mojang (and thus Minecraft) to Microsoft this was the time for me to leave knowing that support for other platforms than Windows on PC would be phased out (I assumed that back then, and I was fucking right!).

The Minetest community is older in age. It is tiny compared to Minecraft, though (there are single Minecraft servers online that have more free slots than Minecraft has active players on all servers in the server list at the same time). But it just feels a lot better. (Not to mention how easy it is to set up a server and write officially mods for an official modding API.)

I absolutely understand if someone compares the current Minetest community with the early beta days Minecraft community.

Whats so bad about minors? I myself dont mind playing with people younger than me, as long as they dont act like 2-year-olds.

[Fixer]

our servers and community look just like golden days of Minecraft (2011-2012), a lot of minecrafters want those days back

The community is indeed lovely but I cannot compare it with Minecraft. What exactly do you mean with "golden days"? Has the user base now changed there to one which is unfriendly or chaotic?
I'd love to hear some history because I have never been a member of the Minecraft community.

1) Massive bloat and complexity of the game, game was already more or less finished in 2011 (apart from lack of some advanced redstone and hoppers)
2) For profit servers - ranks for sale, kits for sale, unban for sale, admin for sale, everything is for sale on any server, focus on mini-games, server wipes each year, pay to win, casino-like money grab, game degrading plugins (like mob condenser). Minecraft server is no longer to enjoy but a for profit business ripping off some stupid kids.
3) No longer a geek game but huge pool of whiny kids including kid admins with profit seekers on top, soulless. What about kids? They build the same dirt/wood/cobble squares everywhere, no spark and character, usual boredom stuff like house + farm.
4) Ad.fly cancer, other malware sites, backdoored hacked clients
5) Tendency to push players into walled garden via W10 edition with paid store texture packs and such
6) Huge and unnecessary spawn sizes, warping everyone to live in seperation, forming a nice spawn town is not possible.
7) Money grabbers steeling public builds on servers and then selling, as result, world downloaders are banned on some, you can't download your own build or area.

Game still amuses me, it is very complex these days, allowing amazing possibilities unseen by minetest, but for profit servers (greed) and community (cancer) are ruining that. Finding good server is hard.

[Linuxdirk]

Whats so bad about minors?

Say that again when you’re 36 and the oldest other person on the 20 people server and in the server’s voice chat is 14.

[Reedych]

Whats so bad about minors?

Say that again when you’re 36 and the oldest other person on the 20 people server and in the server’s voice chat is 14.

I'm 14. I'm the oldest. ^^

[Reedych]

Minetest is good among closed source java Minecraft evil.

Yes. And when you pronounce "Minecraft", german person hears "Mein Kraft" (my force). And its is very similar to name of the nazi book "Mein Kampf". So Minecraft is nazist game and Minetest is the real sandbox!

[Stix]

Whats so bad about minors?

Say that again when you’re 36 and the oldest other person on the 20 people server and in the server’s voice chat is 14.

I'm 14. I'm the oldest. ^^

Im 15, so Im even older ^_^.

[Fixer]

java one is not really closed source, you can deobfuscate the code, view and modify it - that is why modding is so big and advanced in minecraft.

[rubenwardy]

It is closed source. Being able to decompile it doesn't make it not closed source.

[voxelproof]

There's an interesting video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtEjurzvEqU which highlights the issue of the apparently fading interest in MC. I think that there's something to it and innumerable comments under videos like "Why Minecraft is dying" are in line with my own impressions. I suppose that the corporate team which developes MC now is not in the least aware of the basic principles of the open world genre, to put it straightforward, they just conduct tasks to meet the targets and the only main objective is money grab. There's no important development on the structural level of the game and one cannot evade impression that all these standard "updates" are made pro forma and the company is not even interested in making any profit of it. So what was it for to buy Mojang? Maybe yet another example of the thinking "if we could not invent the best game in the world, let's at least buy it"?

Frankly, those who changed graphics in 1.9 must had been blind. For me it's a proof that the present team is not comprised of fans of the game but technicians who follow some obscure corporate guidelines.

[Linuxdirk]

It is closed source. Being able to decompile it doesn't make it not closed source.

Quoted for emphasis.

[Reedych]

I'm 14. I'm the oldest. ^^

Im 15, so Im even older ^_^.

[/quote]
Wait 5 days and i'll become your contemporary.

[Fixer]

I disagree on game itself dying, new versions are exciting with very neat features, it is the community and lack of nonevil servers (there is no server browser).

[Reedych]

Yes, in 2017 i tryed new minecraft 1.12. So they added Advancements and unremovable craftbook. For 3-4 years nothing interesting added to Minecraft, so 1.7 is the last good Minecraft version. I now play only Minetest.

If in 0.5 localization will be fully realized (i want gettext) and Rubenwardy's Minetest Mod API book become ready, so Minecraft will be 100% dead because Minecraft has the less and less pros over Minetest.

[Linuxdirk]

If in 0.5 localization will be fully realized (i want gettext) and Rubenwardy's Minetest Mod API book become ready, so Minecraft will be 100% dead because Minecraft has the less and less pros over Minetest.

For people interested in voxel engines and games with this engine in general, yes.

It already is super easy to write mods for Minetest with an official modding API and there is a wide variety of games available (even if a lot of those games are basically Minetest Game with a theme).

So the functionality itself is there. Minetest just lacks A LOT of polishing (artist-created textures, proper UI design, etc.).

[Hamlet]

But the more popular it got, the more the community base changed from “interested tech-savvy people” to 10 years old kids. Sure there still were some older players but there were little to no servers that are not flooded with minors.

3) No longer a geek game but huge pool of whiny kids including kid admins with profit seekers on top, soulless. What about kids? They build the same dirt/wood/cobble squares everywhere, no spark and character, usual boredom stuff like house + farm.

I agree, and I will add four other issues related to the presence of minor players; I will start with the most disturbing one:

Sexual advances: I'm 40yo and I had to ban players because of sexual advances. I don't know how their parents educate them, but for sure I don't want to stay on a server where minors (or sick people pretending being minors) go around building cobble penises to impress female players - in the best case - or directly offer a blow**b to have more privs granted.
This is something that makes you think about how to ban their mac-address in order to hopefully lock them out forever.

Bidonville effect: the said dirt/wood/cobble "buildings", actually being just 10x10x10 cubes, spread everywhere on the map as soon as they discover a new mountain, lake, whatever; shortly said, everywhere you walk you have the feeling of being in a bidonville.

Alt. games: alternative accounts' wars, 5 kids create countless alt. accounts just to grief each other and/or around; i.e. dirt towers/stairs to enter other players' buildings, etc.
Protected areas help, but smartphone clients bypassing these protections are widely used.

Nanny admins: usually they spend the rest of their time attacking each other - in the best case - or more likely anyone who is just visiting the server or building.
The server's admins quickly become full-time nannies for the said group of annoyed kids left home with a smartphone.

[voxelproof]

But the more popular it got, the more the community base changed from “interested tech-savvy people” to 10 years old kids. Sure there still were some older players but there were little to no servers that are not flooded with minors.

3) No longer a geek game but huge pool of whiny kids including kid admins with profit seekers on top, soulless. What about kids? They build the same dirt/wood/cobble squares everywhere, no spark and character, usual boredom stuff like house + farm.

I agree, and I will add four other issues related to the presence of minor players;

Since I am not and never was an online player, I've nothing to say about this side of voxel games. But as a singleplayer I had a lot of expectations about Minecraft that were thoroughly flattened when I checked out the demo of 1.9 version of MC.

Since I'm not enough fluent in English to express my opinion here in an exhaustive way, I've searched YT and found video that in 100% corresponds with my own opinion about the current state of development of Minecraft.

I don't think Minetest is now a "golden age of Minecraft" and I think (and hope) that it'll never be cause this great Minecraft-inspired engine should find its own personality and trail. And I wholeheartedly wish the Minetest's development team to achieve even a small part of what the author of this video points as things which wait to be done in open world voxel sandbox genre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65q2-jdQgrg

[cuvtixo]

I'm old enough to think maybe posting on a month old thread might be okay internet etiquette! ;) I'm nearly 50 and my teenage years were spent playing Zork on a green monochrome monitor. I stay interested mostly because my nephew loves Minecraft things, but is totally scared of zombies and lava, and doing anything but making a house and beating on defenseless animals lol (and his mom doesn't know how to put it on Peaceful mode.That's where I come in). I don't know what Linuxdirk is on about about Minecraft becoming PC supported only. Smartphones and other Android platforms are way past that point with Pocket Minecraft, and his links could just as easily support the idea that the official Minecraft might be dropped from PCs and newer Xboxen altogether if it were not for Micro$oft. I saw Atari come and go, and many, many game franchises thrive then die. Minecraft isn't going to disappear from alternative platforms, and neither is minetest or Open Source survival sandbox games like it. And, without considering the mod scene, I'm mostly worried about what other things Microsoft might decide to market with their game, and what YouTube allows for videos with the Minecraft or Minetest name. Just coming onto Minetest after messing with Minecraft; it seems to me Minetest probably is in a precious golden age. Even Hamlet's concerns- "Bidonville" (WTF is that referring too? Is that an Alex Jones euphemism? I thought it might be a misspelling of Bidet-ville at first) From someone who got excited about Conway's Game of Life, it would seem to me that mass minimal-shelter-making might be an interesting strategy in survival mode if one automates the whole process. Hell, I remember old-timers getting nostalgic about Colossal Cave played on university terminals, unhappy how Zork was commercialized and came out with sequels (I grew up near MIT). 30something, interested in "visual" programming with Minetest (probably there's a term for it other than "modding" that I don't know), and tired of teens on multiplayers (do you still call them MMOGs?)? Wait till your fifty. I'm trying not to be condescending: but those concerns seem almost quaint to me. Wait till we get portable 3D projection communicators like in "Black Panther," with instant translation of foreign slang terms.

[Hamlet]

"Bidonville" (WTF is that referring too? Is that an Alex Jones euphemism? I thought it might be a misspelling of Bidet-ville at first)

Synonyms, you know... sounds better than "a sprawl of shi**y buildings".

"Numerous other non English terms are often used interchangeably with slum: shanty town, favela, rookery, gecekondu, skid row, barrio, ghetto, bidonville, [...]."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum#Etym ... menclature)

"A shanty town built of oil drums or other metal containers, especially on the outskirts of a North African city."
(https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bidonville)

[Hume2]

I think, you forgot to mention the protections. I have seen many protected areas those were just too big. Sometimes the entrance was forbidden, so there were pieces of lands those couldn't be passed through. And there were many protections those protected nothing. Someone just made a huge protection and left the server forever. I think that the protector mod in Minetest is better, because the protection costs some resources and can be visualised. And the community is also good, so they put protections only when needed.

[SilverSea]

New person here, recently installed Minetest and have been very happy with it. I tend to think of it as second generation Minecraft. I stopped playing Minecraft mainly because it now requires internet even if you never visit any servers. I played Minecraft a lot as a kid and remember when beds first came out. When Microsoft bought Minecraft I was hoping that they would make a more complicated/realistic version of it for older people. I knew better then to hope too much though.

Now however I'm looking forward to getting into Minetest especially since I know some programming now and can make mods. (I will probably post a bunch of questions regarding modding until I get used to it enough to figure things out.) I'm glad that the community tends to be a bit older too.