Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

EVILED
New member
Posts: 8
Joined: Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:32

Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by EVILED » Post

My key points are simple.

1: Minetest is a bad name because it sounds shoddy. Like it's 'just a test' and nothing to write home about.

2: The Minetest Game confirms this first impression by dropping the player into endless fields and forests with absolutely nothing to do.

3: The Minetest Main Menu directs players to Minetest Game by default.

4: New players would need to either poke around Content DB, Servers, or be introduced to the engine to have any clue what it's capable of.

This is all very bad because it leaves new players thinking poorly about this engine. First impressions mean a lot and if you don't capture the player's attention in about the first five minutes you've lost most of them. This is a huge disservice to both the people working on this engine and for people making content for this engine.

Everything about the first impression experience of Minetest is done completely back asswards. It's like it was decided by people who have no clue how this appears to the outside world. 'Branding' or 'marketing' is important in a project's success. This is true even for projects not being sold for money.

Your first impression is where you want to put your best foot forward and show people what you can really do. Minetest Game is by no stretch of the imagination a game. It is not at all the best of what Minetest can do. Yet, it's the first thing new players are pointed to.

It's clear that Minetest had decided to abandon the idea of making a game a very long time ago. Instead, they focus on making an engine and depending on the community to make games with the engine. Fair enough. The community has.

The best thing to happen to Mintest (aside from its licensing and its creation in the first place) is the Content DB and its integration into the engine itself. As well as the new update that adds dependency resolution.

So, here is my question. Sense the entire point is to make an engine and not a game and let the community make the games; why not change things up to reflect that?

Here is my roadmap to resolving the problem Minetest straddles new players with.

1: Change the name of the engine to something simple and on the nose. Something that entirely separates it from the idea of a game itself. My suggestion is to rename the Minetest engine to Voxel Engine. Simple, and to the point.

2: Change the name of Minetest Game to Base. The name is confusing. Minetest Game is not a game. Minetest Game is a base developer dependency.

3: Don't point people to Base (Minetest Game) as a game. That's a horribly mean thing to do to new players.

4: The Voxel Engine Main Menu should instead showcase community creations. This could be done by directing players to install the top three best games for this engine. Or, if picking favorites make people uncomfortable, you could instead have the Main Menu pick three random entries from the Content DB Game tab to direct new players to. It could be random each time they start up to give everybody's game a chance.

A text message could be included saying, "Voxel Engine is used by a large community to create many types of exciting games. Here is a small sample of what has been made so far. However, there are many more Voxel Engine Games to choose from in the Content DB tab. Please explore what our community has created!”

Minetest is a great engine that suffers horribly at branding itself to the public.

Why hide your light under a bushel? Seriously, you really have to spend some time with this engine just to see what it can do. Nothing about the first impression tells you anything about what this engine can create. Nothing is inviting. It’s all actually quite off-putting, honestly.

This is NOT a criticism of the engine or the games people have made with it. This is an amazing engine that is capable of amazing things with a passionate community that has made amazing things with it.

This is a criticism of Minetest’s ‘branding’ and what a woefully unwelcoming experience it is to new players. I’m honestly surprised I stayed around long enough myself to figure out this engine actually is amazing. Because, when I first tried it years ago, I thought it was barren of content and a joke. I can only imagine how many people have turned away from this engine after having spent five minutes with it for the exact same reasons.

User avatar
Linuxdirk
Member
Posts: 3218
Joined: Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:21
In-game: Linuxdirk
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by Linuxdirk » Post

Oh no, not this topic again ...

User avatar
Krock
Developer
Posts: 4649
Joined: Thu Oct 03, 2013 07:48
GitHub: SmallJoker
Location: Switzerland
Contact:

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by Krock » Post

> rants about how bad everything is
> recycling endlessly discussed topics which led to zero conclusions or changes

Yes there are a few issues but if Minetest were so bad as you say, why are there over 1 million unique IPs (≃ users) per month?
Look, I programmed a bug for you. >> Mod Search Engine << - Mods by Krock - DuckDuckGo mod search bang: !mtmod <keyword here>

User avatar
Mantar
Member
Posts: 585
Joined: Thu Oct 05, 2017 18:46
Contact:

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by Mantar » Post

A test is a challenge.
Lead dev of Exile, git repo: https://codeberg.org/Mantar/Exile

User avatar
davidthecreator
Member
Posts: 452
Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2014 19:48
GitHub: daviddoesminetest
In-game: DavidDoesMinetest
Location: Lithuania

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by davidthecreator » Post

Krock wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 17:20

Yes there are a few issues but if Minetest were so bad as you say, why are there over 1 million unique IPs (≃ users) per month?
Nice...

Wish the forums were a bit more alive as well tho...

User avatar
MisterE
Member
Posts: 693
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2020 21:06
GitHub: MisterE123
IRC: MisterE
In-game: MisterE

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by MisterE » Post

So, is there any reason that someone who spent the time to change the layout of minetest to incorporate the OP's suggestions (renaming, refactoring layout), and made a PR would not get it accepted?

Is it that devs *like* the layout and dont want it to change? Or is it actually that they dont want to spend time with branding?

Because, if it is just that they dont want to spend time, Im sure that those who *do* care about branding would pull together a pr if they care about it so much, and if they had reasonable expectations of the PR being merged.

*side note* Minetest already has a name for itself within debian repos and websites, etc... It probably shouldnt change the name "minetest" now, though it could add on - engine, so its "minetest engine" for clarity.

User avatar
philipbenr
Member
Posts: 1897
Joined: Fri Jun 14, 2013 01:56
GitHub: philipbenr
IRC: philipbenr
In-game: robinspi
Location: United States

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by philipbenr » Post

Person who is passionate about Minetest takes their time to write a giant post giving their thoughts about what is wrong with it

Everyone else: "Ah not this shit again. Just do it yourself already."


-

This is what happens when you have engineers make a user interface / experience. No offense, but it is often barebones, and adds nothing to the user experience. There is a reason there is a whole field in software engineering dedicated to people who understand user experience and user interfaces.

Thankfully, there are changes that are being worked on by Rubenwardy, to rework the main menu so that games are first class citizens, making for a better experience. Hopefully those changes will eventually get implemented.

bzt
Member
Posts: 217
Joined: Tue Sep 24, 2019 14:26

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by bzt » Post

If I may share my thought on this...
EVILED wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:52
My key points are simple.

1: Minetest is a bad name because it sounds shoddy. Like it's 'just a test' and nothing to write home about.
That's wrong. Minetest is already a well-known brand, it would be insane to replace a well-known name to something not-known. (Put aside if the name is good or not, it's already recognized, and that's what matters.)
EVILED wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:52
2: The Minetest Game confirms this first impression by dropping the player into endless fields and forests with absolutely nothing to do.

3: The Minetest Main Menu directs players to Minetest Game by default.
I agree with that. MTG should be a bit more interesting without mods.
EVILED wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:52
4: New players would need to either poke around Content DB, Servers, or be introduced to the engine to have any clue what it's capable of.
There's nothing wrong with this. Maybe new players should be made aware more that there's a ContentDB, but that's all. Integration with the UI (Contents menu) is pretty good I think, easy to use and straightforward.
EVILED wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:52
This is all very bad because it leaves new players thinking poorly about this engine. First impressions mean a lot and if you don't capture the player's attention in about the first five minutes you've lost most of them.
I absolutely agree on this. Maybe MTG should be something like a "feature demo"? But at least there should be a pop-up window letting new players know about other games exists and that there's a ContentDB. Maybe something like "Dear new user! This is just a demo, one of the many games made for Minetest. Check out 'Contents' menu for more complete games and mods." I think a simple message on first MTG start could solve this.

Cheers,
bzt

User avatar
Zughy
Member
Posts: 301
Joined: Thu Mar 26, 2020 18:23
GitHub: belongs_to_microsoft
In-game: Zughy
Location: Italy
Contact:

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by Zughy » Post

philipbenr wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 17:53
Person who is passionate about Minetest takes their time to write a giant post giving their thoughts about what is wrong with it

Everyone else: "Ah not this shit again. Just do it yourself already."
This, this, a hundred times this.
And if people keep complaining about these things, maybe you should ask yourself why instead of going "yeah but <excuses>". He/she's right, Minetest as a name sucks, the main menu sucks, the user experience in general sucks, Minetest Game as a name is a joke. All these are huge factors to push people away. Yes, there are people trying to do something about it, but, as for now, the guy/gal is right

Inb4 "so why don't you do that?" let's have a talk when your contributions match my signature ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

User avatar
freshreplicant
Member
Posts: 224
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:37
In-game: freshreplicant

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by freshreplicant » Post

Zughy wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 18:37
philipbenr wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 17:53
Person who is passionate about Minetest takes their time to write a giant post giving their thoughts about what is wrong with it

Everyone else: "Ah not this shit again. Just do it yourself already."
This, this, a hundred times this.
And if people keep complaining about these things, maybe you should ask yourself why instead of going "yeah but <excuses>". He/she's right, Minetest as a name sucks, the main menu sucks, the user experience in general sucks, Minetest Game as a name is a joke. All these are huge factors to push people away. Yes, there are people trying to do something about it, but, as for now, the guy/gal is right

Inb4 "so why don't you do that?" let's have a talk when your contributions match my signature ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Even if the name 'Minetest' must be kept for the engine, perhaps a rebrand is possible to reframe the significance of the name: a separate more neutral logo, font and any other details for the engine that are less tied to 'Minetest the Game' or any particular type of game. Godot has that funny little robot as a mascot, Unity has that box, Unreal has the stylised 'U'. Browsers, operating systems and other software change their logos up regularly, so why not Minetest?

What to do about Minetest Game is the million dollar question. The description of MTG has changed and the plans to retire it as the default game have been addressed frequently on the forums, Github, Matrix, Discord, etc. There are also some very slow moves towards refreshing the menu (hey, we have at least two excellent new buttons thanks to Zughy). The original poster could have done a bit more reading around before charging in but...I'm pretty sure I did the same thing when I first discovered Minetest.

One thing is clear: breaking the link of 'Minetest == Minetest Game' is vital if the current stated trajectory for the project is to succeed and the cost of renaming the game is much less significant than the cost of renaming the engine. Like others have suggested again and gain, renaming Minetest Game something very pragmatic like 'Modding Base' or 'Modding Foundation' would warn off people that the unmoded experience is not what Minetest (the Engine) is about. With a new name and it not being shipped by default, we could also finally stop this painful MTE/MTG business. Let 'Minetest' just be an engine, if that's what the developers and community want it to be.

If the camp in the community who would love to see MTG continue to be developed and expanded as a non-default game can rally the troops, then MTG could still be forked and recast with a whole new vision, theme and name that finally shatters the notion that this community cannot join hands to make an original and fun game in the voxel/sandbox/survival genre. A good name for a game tells you something about the gameplay, the theme or world you'll get to experience. Names like 'Counterstrike', 'Age of Empires' , 'Doom', 'Dark Souls' or even *cough* 'No Man's Sky', love them or hate them, at least give you some flavour of what the game is about. That would of course require a total re-think of what this game would be about, with far more detail than this - but that's for another thread.

There are lots of people in this community with distinct sets of skills necessary to tackle things like re-branding, fixing up the main menu, revamping the website, promoting the project and maybe even making a great game out of the bones of MTG (as a non-default, community effort). I guess we just need to get critical mass behind these various efforts and ensure that these people are empowered enough to actually make a change for the better. Things are happening, but they could probably be happening a bit faster.

sfan5
Moderator
Posts: 4094
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 09:44
GitHub: sfan5
IRC: sfan5
Location: Germany

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by sfan5 » Post

Well..... this topic hasn't exactly taken the best start.
As mentioned by others all of these topics have been discussed before, so I'll give a short answer / further info to each point as a constructive contribution.
EVILED wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:52
1: Change the name of the engine to something simple and on the nose. Something that entirely separates it from the idea of a game itself. My suggestion is to rename the Minetest engine to Voxel Engine. Simple, and to the point.
This has been discussed before and is unlikely to happen at this point. "Voxel Engine" is a bad suggestion btw.
EVILED wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:52
2: Change the name of Minetest Game to Base. The name is confusing. Minetest Game is not a game. Minetest Game is a base developer dependency.
No (but not for the reason you might think). It's very true that MTG is not a good game for showcase or regular play, however it should not be used as base for other games either (related). The community should make fully original games.
EVILED wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:52
3: Don't point people to Base (Minetest Game) as a game. That's a horribly mean thing to do to new players.
Since it's frozen Minetest Game will hopefully eventually be superseded by a better game. (See also the next point)
EVILED wrote:
Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:52
4: The Voxel Engine Main Menu should instead showcase community creations. This could be done by directing players to install the top three best games for this engine. Or, if picking favorites make people uncomfortable, you could instead have the Main Menu pick three random entries from the Content DB Game tab to direct new players to. It could be random each time they start up to give everybody's game a chance.
This is planned: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/9509
Your specific idea has also been proposed: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/9530
Mods: Mesecons | WorldEdit | Nuke & Minetest builds for Windows (32-bit & 64-bit)

User avatar
Wuzzy
Member
Posts: 4786
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 15:01
GitHub: Wuzzy2
IRC: Wuzzy
In-game: Wuzzy
Contact:

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by Wuzzy » Post

I agree about:

1) Yes, the name sucks, but nobody came up with a better one so far.
2) Yes, MTG is meh. Players expect a game (it's even in the name!) but only get a very minimalist sandbox. MTG is fine if you only want creative building, but if you expect anything beyond that, MTG fails you.
3) I agree, MTG must be dethroned.
4) Yes, I think that's a big problem. The fact that the player needs to find the quality content on their own isn't really a great help for newcomers. There is a complete lack of curation.

But to be honest, I don't even consider these issues to be the actual biggest problems right now. With branding and “marketing” you can only get so far. While I do agree that all 4 problems are real problems, they are not the most important problems. The real problems are much different.

I think the biggest problems right now are actually with Minetest / the community itself:

A) Lack of a very high-quality singleplayer game, the “killer app”. The games we have so far are “fine” at best, and even the better ones are unfortunately either buggy, have performance problems or lack the basic polishing or balancing. Or there's always that little “something” that's missing. There isn't any singleplayer game which I could recommend right away. But I am fully convinced that with the current engine, even with all its shortcomings and limitations, we are, in fact, already able to create something great. Inside the Box is the best example, but sadly, it dos not count because it is not singleplayer and as far I know, none of the levels are FOSS. :-(
B) Awful UX/UI, especially in the main menu. No graphical design, awkward tabbed menu structure, the controls menu is too small and incomplete, the 'all settings' menu is way too complicated. In Android the UX is even worse. There are so many problems with the main menu that it needs to be thrown away and done from scracth.
C) The way how games are selected, and how the main menu interacts with games is still kind of weird. I think this is related to the main menu as well. I think the problem is the whole concept behind the main menu that fails to really communicate how Minetest really works. When you select a singleplayer game, the background is kinda themed to that game and only worlds for that game are shown, which makes sense. But if you go to the server list, all theming is gone as the list shows servers of all games. I think this single inconsistency alone is the biggest reason why the main menu feels so awkward. There is also the underlying technical issue that there are no proper game IDs which would be needed to be able to filter the server list by game.
D) Menu structure makes too many assumptions which games cannot really get rid of (yet): All games have multiple “worlds” (which double as savegames) which the player must “generate” first (what about games with a static world?). There are checkboxes for damage, Creative Mode and online multiplayer (which also don't always make sense, obviously). And there is almost zero support for game-specific customization of the game screen (for something like a highscore).

Basically, I think Minetest still fails a bit in getting the message that Minetest is an engine across. I think the main menu structure itself can go a LONG way to bring home this message.
But I think the lack of any high-quality singleplayer game is by far the biggest challenge that Minetest faces. You can brand all you want, if we have nothing great to show off, it will not generate much interest from players.

Speaking of games, you might have noticed I don't even recommend my own games. Here's why:
- MineClone 2: Plenty of content, but also plenty of bugs (often minor), the biggest problem is the poor performance, however. But maybe the new maintainers will fix this eventually. But even then, I don't feel comfortable in recommending a Minecraft clone, the “Minetest killer app” needs to be more unique IMO
- Repixture: I think this game is still a bit too small, but it might go in the right direction. Not sure if I'll ever pick it up again.
- Other games: Incomplete / WIP.

On the other hand, I think where Minetest is very strong is with servers, the amount of customization that some servers is absolutely shocking. :D If you have found a server you love, that's a win. But here's the problem again: You first have to find it. And curating and recommening servers is much harder than doing so with games, as servers are not forever. I think this is one aspect where a bit of marketing wouldn't hurt. Something like a top 10 of best servers or whatever would be nice.

User avatar
runs
Member
Posts: 3225
Joined: Sat Oct 27, 2018 08:32

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by runs » Post

In my native language I pronounce it as "Minetes". So no problem in the 'test' part. It sounds good indeed, better than "Minecraf" (yes, I hate all the final t's).
Minetest brand problem is not the name, but all behind the name. Even if renamed to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" the problems won't dissapear.

I think the menu needs to be redesigned. This would be the first thing. It is the calling card of any game. And it would take nothing to do it. Minecraft's menu is simple and pixelated, Minetest's menu is aesthetically even nicer, but it's a mess and counterintuitive. And please a drop-down to select the language!

User avatar
MisterE
Member
Posts: 693
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2020 21:06
GitHub: MisterE123
IRC: MisterE
In-game: MisterE

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by MisterE » Post

Wuzzy wrote:
Sat Mar 13, 2021 20:36

A) Lack of a very high-quality singleplayer game, the “killer app”

Wuzzy, and all other interested parties: Ok, so we need a new default game. Ok, so we have the skills. What we need is the will and the organization.

I would be interested in helping develop a new, original, game. I can bring modelling XP, a little texturing XP, a lot of disorganized modding XP, and many ideas to the table. I do not want to take on the entire project *myself*, but am willing to do alot of the organizing.

I'd say that to get started, we need 2 other people that are interested in pursuing this. If you are interested, and have basic experience in any helpful area, then indicate in a response. The way we would go about it is having a discord server, which devs would be expected to keep up on. There, we would have discussions to determine the fate of the game. We would also have occasional realtime meetings over voicechat or text chat. (weekly, biweekly, or monthly as determined suitable). When I say discord, I wouldnt mind using matrix either.

Some base rules that my participation is dependent on:
1) everyone is respectful
2) the game we make is suitable for children, and contains no explicit content in any way, and strives to offend as few people as possible.
3) no "magic" as such, though I do not mind "unexplained powers"

We would plan and structure the organization of the game. We would develop a plan and we would plan release points.

We would not be making promises to complete our jobs, but we would be expected to make reasonable guesses as to what we can accomplish and try to meet them. If we are incorrect about what we can accomplish, fine no excuse necessary.

I would love to have a "This Week in <our_game>" or "This Month in <our_game>" newsletter. This could go on our WIP games forum post, to garner support from forum members.

I would like for our game to be fun, original, and quirky.
It should start out with a simple concept, and expand.

What do you say?

User avatar
freshreplicant
Member
Posts: 224
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:37
In-game: freshreplicant

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by freshreplicant » Post

MisterE wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 03:55
Wuzzy wrote:
Sat Mar 13, 2021 20:36

A) Lack of a very high-quality singleplayer game, the “killer app”

Wuzzy, and all other interested parties: Ok, so we need a new default game. Ok, so we have the skills. What we need is the will and the organization.
A big challenge to overcome is that, despite the gleeful bells ringing about Minetest Game's 'death', it's not really dead in the least, especially if you look at the modding scene. Even if uncoupled from the engine as the default game, there's no guarantee it will fade away naturally. With the sheer volume of content it has built up, the game has built up significant momentum that could keep it rolling along for years. As a consequence most of the talented individuals in the Minetest world are 'modders' (specifically MTG modders) not game creators.

The talent game creators tend to be very singleminded individuals that work alone, until they either drop their project due to time constraints or boredom. It seems relatively rare that these games live long enough that they relinquish some creative control and welcome PRs from others or hand over the reigns altogether.

To have the best chance of success, you would ideally coax some of these people away from modding or their solo-project darlings and win them over to a new communal project. The utter failure of MTG as a standalone game has probably left a bad taste in people's mouths.
MisterE wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 03:55
I'd say that to get started, we need 2 other people that are interested in pursuing this. If you are interested, and have basic experience in any helpful area, then indicate in a response. The way we would go about it is having a discord server, which devs would be expected to keep up on. There, we would have discussions to determine the fate of the game. We would also have occasional realtime meetings over voicechat or text chat. (weekly, biweekly, or monthly as determined suitable). When I say discord, I wouldnt mind using matrix either.
Three people might be a struggle, unless people's schedules are very clear. With younger devs, it might be possible (see Mineclone 2).

I'll hold my tongue on Discord seemingly being the default platform to organise FOSS projects. :P
MisterE wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 03:55
Some base rules that my participation is dependent on:
2) the game we make is suitable for children, and contains no explicit content in any way, and strives to offend as few people as possible.
3) no "magic" as such, though I do not mind "unexplained powers"
2) 'Suitable for children' is pretty vague, if you consider the moral panic around things like D&D and Harry Potter. For the primary demographic of games like Minecraft/Minetest, 'no explicit content' would make sense, if you mean no graphic violence or sexually suggestive content.

3) Out of curiosity, why no magic? That's immediately very prescriptive creatively and gameplay wise.
MisterE wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 03:55
I would love to have a "This Week in <our_game>" or "This Month in <our_game>" newsletter. This could go on our WIP games forum post, to garner support from forum members.
This is vital. Honestly, despite how often people say it, if you want to see how to promote and organise an open source game project well, you could do a lot worse than examine what Veloren are doing. They are on a roll.
MisterE wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 03:55
I would like for our game to be fun, original, and quirky.
It should start out with a simple concept, and expand.

What do you say?
Personally I think most projects in the MT world fail utterly when it comes to world building. There is no shortage of interesting game mechanics, fresh takes on Minecraft style stuff (like banishing formspecs). Yet, save for maybe Exile, I haven't seen a single game where the world actually feels interesting in an immersive way, lore driven way. Arguably even Minecraft suffers there, if you discount all the fan-driven mythologising and explanation for otherwise seemingly unrelated items and mobs. Part of that might be genre conventions, but I think it is perfectly possible to make a sandbox game with an established cosmology, mythology and immersive world.

I think this is part of the reason games like Valheim have recently rocketed to popularity. You can still create your own niche in the world and shape it to your liking, but it's very clearly a game built around Norse Mythology and popular ideas about Vikings. For many people, that setting alone is enough to draw them in. Gameplay wise, it borrows liberally from Minecraft, Dark Souls, Rust etc. So in some ways, especially when it comes to mechanics, I'd argue that getting to hung up on 'originality' and 'quirkiness' can be a dead end. Coming up with an original cocktail of influences is probably the right idea if you want people to actually play your game instead of just looking at it as a novelty.

A killer, high-quality singleplayer game is really hard to pull of without a real vision for the world, the atmosphere and environment you want to throw players into. This is especially true when you've got your hands tied behind your back graphics wise (lets face it, lots of very basic features are still missing from MTE). Having a very distinctive stylised art style can also help here, if you look at how Nintendo has been able to compete with and sometimes even dominate rivals with far more advanced hardware. Doing basic world building and getting some lore together can help inform things like aesthetic choices and gameplay.

Trouble is, often enough people like me interested in worldbuilding don't have any drawing or programming skills...
LibraSubtilis wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 15:34
I think a better base game would be great. I am not the first person who is working on such a game
Respectfully, I think this 'minimal base game' thing is another huge trap that seems uniquely prominent in the MT world. It's probably partially due to the fact that in Minetest, mods far outpaced the base game. That brought the argument that you can't develop the base game because it will cause compatibility issues for modders.

A killer singleplayer game is very different than a 'modding base' and the objectives behind these are diametrically opposed. You will need to forget about compatibility, let MTG remain feature frozen and take care of its own modding ecosystem.

Outside of Minetest, the vast majority of the modding scene is built on fully realised games, with storylines, worlds and mechanics. A game being fleshed out does not prevent amazing mods from eventually coming about. As a matter of fact, most successful and impressive mods I can think of came about exactly in this type of situation. A game like Skyrim doesn't stop people from doing total overhauls. Modders are creative people, and they can spin a game like Warcraft III not just into another game but into an entirely new genre if they put their mind to it.

If you want to make a killer singleplayer game in MT, forget the mods. Let that come optionally down the road.

User avatar
MisterE
Member
Posts: 693
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2020 21:06
GitHub: MisterE123
IRC: MisterE
In-game: MisterE

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by MisterE » Post

freshreplicant wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 15:38

MisterE wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 03:55
Some base rules that my participation is dependent on:
2) the game we make is suitable for children, and contains no explicit content in any way, and strives to offend as few people as possible.
3) no "magic" as such, though I do not mind "unexplained powers"
2) 'Suitable for children' is pretty vague, if you consider the moral panic around things like D&D and Harry Potter. For the primary demographic of games like Minecraft/Minetest, 'no explicit content' would make sense, if you mean no graphic violence or sexually suggestive content.

3) Out of curiosity, why no magic? That's immediately very prescriptive creatively and gameplay wise.

so, while I recognize that magic as a gameplay mechanic isnt real magic, I do not like focus on that, since "play is practice for real life", and real magic, I believe, is evil (not talking abt slight-of-hand). Anyways, why should there be magic: why not be more creative than that? "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" : why not call it something else.

And, yes, I hope to avoid all major moral panics. That might restrict the game design somewhat, but it will also open it to larger audiences, who will not feel guilty about playing it. And besides, it can be seen as an opportunity to develop other gameplay mechanics that are not objectionable.

If 3 people are interested in jumping in, then we can get started. Any major project requires a core team. However, while I am hoping for regular meetings, that isn't absolutely necessary.
Active participation on the "discord" would suffice.

Also, I wouldn't want the game to be singleplayer only, though it should be playable in singleplayer.

You're right, originality is overrated, my concern is that we don't try to copy any other game exactly.

To help get this started, here are some do-able ideas for games

3D snake : ok, this would be quite easy to make. Im thinking a wrappable, fairly small world. The world would be copied in every direction, and when you reach the edge, you are tp'd to the opposite side. It looks to you as if you havn't moved, so the wrapping seems infinite. The parts for this are already ready: I have a working minigame, it could easily be made an official game. However, that is mostly my project, because I have already done much of the work. So others might not be so interested.



Tuxverse: So, we make an openworld game based on tux, and his nemesis, Nolok. Games of this type are a foss staple, and we could easily include elements from minecraft, supertux, super mario, snake, tetris, bomberman, and any other retro game platform you like. Players would be tux. The idea is to have various realms relating to various retro games. You can travel between realms. Lore: Ok, so Nolok wants to kidnap creatures from each game level and put them on display in his castle. He (once again) kidnaps *both* penny *and* Gnu and takes them to his castle.
His castle is the lowest layer of the world. Tux's home world is in the top layer of the world. Tux has to go rescue other characters. In each world, Nolok has a fortress, where he keeps prisoners. You can collect coins by defeating enemies, breaking chests, and rescuing prisoners.

User avatar
MisterE
Member
Posts: 693
Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2020 21:06
GitHub: MisterE123
IRC: MisterE
In-game: MisterE

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by MisterE » Post

LibraSubtilis wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 19:27

It looks like you want to do something story driven. That is really not what I want to do and I don't think such a game is ever going to be bundled with MTE.
I would like to get a nice game... I gave two possibilities: they were what I could think of at the moment. note that the first suggestion, 3d snake, as a real game, is not story driven. I am open completely to other suggestions, and if you have an idea you would like to get behind, to make something, please, post.

My requirements for my participation are as stated above:
"
1) everyone is respectful
2) the game we make is suitable for children, and contains no explicit content in any way, and strives to offend as few people as possible.
3) no "magic" as such, though I do not mind "unexplained powers"
"

if you have a game idea that fits in with that, then I may likely be willing to help dev it. I would want at least 1 other person to get behind it tho, as 3 pll makes a team.


Side note, for clarification: no game we make will be bundled with MTE, but it may be featured, if its good enough. I hope the thread does not get sidetracked on this....

User avatar
GreenXenith
Member
Posts: 1356
Joined: Wed Oct 28, 2015 01:26
GitHub: GreenXenith
Location: UTC-8:00
Contact:

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by GreenXenith » Post

LibraSubtilis wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 15:34
I think a better base game would be great.
Base games promote base-dependency, which is bad. Mods should be as dependency-agnostic as possible (even if just by implementing conditional stuff). I'm not saying a base game is bad, I just think it is difficult to make a "good" base game without the numerous negative sides that come with it.
YouTube | Mods | Patreon | Minetest Discord @greenxenith

You should not be able to read this message.

cuthbertdoublebarrel
Member
Posts: 348
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2020 16:03
GitHub: cuthbert

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by cuthbertdoublebarrel » Post

MisterE wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 02:06

2) the game we make is suitable for children, and contains no explicit content in any way, and strives to offend as few people as possible.
3) no "magic" as such, though I do not mind "unexplained powers"
"
If you want to deprive your children of magic and stunt thier imagination thats your choice . but you dont get to force your parenting skills on others ,
request for setting to disable magic for MR E.
not a big fan of magic powers myself in combat so would welcome the option to switch it off .
Last edited by cuthbertdoublebarrel on Mon Mar 15, 2021 08:12, edited 1 time in total.
Project BrutalTest...hide your Petz

bzt
Member
Posts: 217
Joined: Tue Sep 24, 2019 14:26

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by bzt » Post

LibraSubtilis wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 15:34
I think a better base game would be great.
Agreed! I must confess when I first installed Minetest, I've deleted it right away after the first try, haven't even showed it to my boys, and went on with modding Craft instead. It was only later when my boys started to nagging me for mobs, tools and mines and I searched the net all over for an OpenSource MC clone that I've found this forum and learned about MCL2 and other games. (Yeah, it was quite a chellange to convert all of their creations from Craft sqlite db into Minetest :-D)
GreenXenith wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 02:27
Base games promote base-dependency, which is bad. Mods should be as dependency-agnostic as possible (even if just by implementing conditional stuff).
Absolutely agree. I was first shocked when I learned that MCL2 mods and MTG mods and their assets are incompatible. It was pretty strange... About getting rid of "default" Lua library I wrote here, but that's a big task considering the number of mods depending on it. I would rather made "default" optional, think of it as a game of its own.
GreenXenith wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 02:27
I'm not saying a base game is bad, I just think it is difficult to make a "good" base game without the numerous negative sides that come with it.
That, plus @MisterE's and @LibraSubtilis' revealed again that it's simply impossible to create a game that everyone likes. People are different, their tastes are different.

So here's an idea: what if there were no game bundled with Minetest at all? Instead, when the games directory is empty, the main menu would show a simple chooser with few (3 or 5 tops) options and a "More..." button? No long descriptions, just a header image and a short sentence describing the very essence of that game. This way people could choose their first game in a user-friendly way, and newcomers would be made aware instantly that MTE is an engine, and there are multiple games available for it.

It would be easy to say display the top 5 games from this list, but that wouldn't be representative. I think it's better to choose a few game intentionally to demonstrate the capabilities of the engine.

For example, my list for that initial list would be:

1. Tutorial (until this new child-friendly magic-free game finished)
"A simple game that teaches you the basics"

2. Minetest Game (I would keep that as the 2nd game, just not as the bundled one)
"A fairly simple world that you can extend with lots of mods and mobs"

3. Mineclone2 (I would add that because buggy or not, that's the most complete and most popular game there is for Minetest)
"A work-in-progress Minecraft clone"

4. (something that's very different to a standard survival voxel game, I dunno, Castrum or Sudoku perhaps? The point is a game that's so different that newcomers could realize what MTE is capable of.)

5. Minetest developer
"An empty world for builders and mod testers"

Find more games button -> this would lead to content menu with "games" filter selected (all the other menu would redirect to that base game selection menu when there's no game installed)

As soon as at least one game is installed, the main menu would be like now (or maybe refactored later, I'm not against that, just that's a different problem than the bundled game issue.)

Cheers,
bzt

User avatar
freshreplicant
Member
Posts: 224
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:37
In-game: freshreplicant

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by freshreplicant » Post

So...that's why you don't start making a game by committee! Seeing this, it makes sense to me now why you probably need a solo creator with well rounded skills to do the early legwork and shape something that others can eventually join. After that point, with an established project and concept, you can let others work within those boundaries.

It's pretty fascinating the diametrically opposed viewpoints that exist about basic things in this community. I'd firmly put myself in the camp that doesn't believe in actual real life magic, but to each their own.

Wuzzy's point, to my knowledge, was about the need for a good singleplayer games, not shipping something else in default or about making another 'minimal mod base' (again, this concept isn't widespread outside of MT - most modders mod games, not 'bases'). As Sfan and others have pointed out, it has already been more or less decided that:

1) No game will ship by default

2) Some sort of 'Featured Games' may be added

I think the main menu redesign will come first in order to make 1 and 2 possible.

Coming even more back on topic, branding the engine to distinguish it from Minetest Game, without changing the engine's name, to my mind still makes sense. Even just a new logo, colour scheme, font and touches like that. If you want to further decouple MT from Minetest Game and it wouldn't break compatibility, maybe MTG could be renamed (maybe even just the package/directory name). I know Sfan said it wasn't necessary, but these kinds of little nudges will probably be helpful if you want to change tracks from a Minecraft-like game with an engine behind it to a truly autonomous engine for diverse node based games.

cuthbertdoublebarrel
Member
Posts: 348
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2020 16:03
GitHub: cuthbert

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by cuthbertdoublebarrel » Post

LibraSubtilis wrote:
Sun Mar 14, 2021 19:27

Are you aware of the fact that game characters are often serial and mass murderers? That is even true for Super Mario. That is why I stopped playing most kind of games. I played "Might and Magic VI" as teenager. What did I do? I went into Mines killing every dwarf I encountered. Why? Because I didn't question it.
Are you aware that somebody speed run doom without shooting a single monster ,used in fighting to clear a path .
option for LibraSubtilis .game challange if you hurt one creature the wild life services will arrest you and its game over .
In fighting mobs in MT seems to be a feature but i have yet to see it utilized .
very interesting to load up all the mobs. build a glass house and observe .
Project BrutalTest...hide your Petz

User avatar
rubenwardy
Moderator
Posts: 6972
Joined: Tue Jun 12, 2012 18:11
GitHub: rubenwardy
IRC: rubenwardy
In-game: rubenwardy
Location: Bristol, United Kingdom
Contact:

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by rubenwardy » Post

Yeah, we plan to not ship with any games but instead show a screen with ContentDB integration as the first page.

Note that this is a mock up, obviously the grey buttons will be going

Image
freshreplicant wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 10:51
It's pretty fascinating the diametrically opposed viewpoints that exist about basic things in this community. I'd firmly put myself in the camp that doesn't believe in actual real life magic, but to each their own.
:D
Renewed Tab (my browser add-on) | Donate | Mods | Minetest Modding Book

Hello profile reader

User avatar
davidthecreator
Member
Posts: 452
Joined: Mon Aug 18, 2014 19:48
GitHub: daviddoesminetest
In-game: DavidDoesMinetest
Location: Lithuania

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by davidthecreator » Post

MisterE wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 02:06

2) the game we make is suitable for children, and contains no explicit content in any way, and strives to offend as few people as possible.
3) no "magic" as such, though I do not mind "unexplained powers"
I downloaded the whole engine, so I will use the whole engine.

My personal goal is to make something similar to Terraria, but in MineTest and with a few extra features, such as leveling up for example.

Guns, horrifying mobs & decorations and magic are absolutely essential for what I want to achieve. Even if I'll have to push it so far, the game ends up being age rated +14

The result should be pretty entertaining though, if I find the time to actually make the game.

cuthbertdoublebarrel
Member
Posts: 348
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2020 16:03
GitHub: cuthbert

Re: Mintest: Great Engine, Horrible 'Branding'

by cuthbertdoublebarrel » Post

davidthecreator wrote:
Mon Mar 15, 2021 11:27
My personal goal is to make something similar to Terraria, but in MineTest and with a few extra features, such as leveling up for example.

Guns, horrifying mobs & decorations and magic are absolutely essential for what I want to achieve. Even if I'll have to push it so far, the game ends up being age rated +14
have you taken a look at RLcraft ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssdfUUs0am8 is that what you have mind . ? leveling up is nicely done .
Project BrutalTest...hide your Petz

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests