What's Minetest still missing over Minecraft?

[SAMIAMNOT]

Neither do I ;) I have friends that play Minecraft and that's all they play too. It's always more fun to play with others.

[maikerumine]

My problem with that is that they will never load.
Or in the case of just test, it's stupidly unmonitored.
Also I respect the open source thing, but add SOMETHING to do without mods.

And this adds to the extreme survival aspect we all come to love. :-)

Admittedly, at first it is annoying.

[lisacvuk]

Try making Minetest with stronger colours, it will make it more realistic...

[The-Operator219]

Agreed, the textures match a public restroom's.

[Calinou]

Try making Minetest with stronger colours, it will make it more realistic...

Didn't you hear that? Real is brown.

[lisacvuk]

I found this texture pack called "Minecraft Enchanced" and it is converted to minetest... Anyways, it uses mostly the same colours as minecraft. So, I took some screenshots in wonderland area on Craig's server...

[trev]

Somebody, bring back the good ol' days, but with the latest and greatest in minetest developments.

We don't need to become more like Minecraft. We need to become more like the Minetest we used to know.

I agree. What is needed is something that makes Minetest stand out. Minetest can be fun even as something different. Having the engine/mod architecture doesn't mean that Minetest has to be more complex or commerial-like on the player level. I used to play 0.3.1 on Ubuntu and that was some of the most fun I've ever had with video games. We can keep Minetest open while preserving its differences and quirks. What we're losing is individuality as an open source project. Minetest needs to be less generic. It's not too late.

[trev]

What is missing are challenges. You don't get hungry - why would you farm? When mining is not dangerous because there are no mobs, then it is just work to do to get some ores. There are to many ores anyway. When there are no zombies at night, you don't need the small first-night-hut that will protect you.

I love how this shines light on an obvious issue that I feel has been left unaddressed. Minetest needs adventure. A while ago, I read in New Scientist that video games are enjoyable because they stimulate a sense of accomplishment. When a day closes in Minecraft, I feel pride for being alive and having iron in my inventory. When a day closes in Minetest, I think, Argh.. do /time 7000; /set time_speed 0. Minecraft is always different, always evolving. That is what Minetest is missing.

[trev]

Ok. I know I'm posting a lot, but I have too many ideas. Minetest is a great project. Despite room for improvement, I care about Minetest more than I care about Minecraft. Minetest is an open source project. Everyone can code in LUA to make a dream voxel world. Freedom has power in this way. Minecraft is only a proprietary cash cow now. It started as an individual project, but now that it is commercialized, I find it disgusting. Minetest has always been free. The community has done a great job of maintaining this. Minetest gets better with each release. Open source software is developed under a different pattern than proprietary software. As open source software, it will take time to perfect Minetest. Quote README.txt: "Don't expect it to work as well as a finished game will." As a community, we can make Minetest even better. We must wait for ideas to be perfected. Minetest development is not a paying job for modders like it is for equivalent development of Minecraft. With more time, we will see many things turn Minetest into an amazing engine that powers many servers. I hope for rare biomes to be added, mobs with more complex AIs, and hunger to be added to most survival games. With each release, the sense of adventure that one feels playing the game grows. Before too long, Minetest will catch up and be the world's best free and open source sandbox!

[Sokomine]

When a day closes in Minetest, I think, Argh.. do /time 7000; /set time_speed 0.

:-) Exactly. Though that is not necessarily a bad sign. It really depends on what you're doing. Hint: Take a look at BrandonReese's AdventureTest test server. Even day is dangerous there. So far, it seems as if the mobs have won against the villagers...But there are other situations. When actually building something, night is a decorative element. Have all the light sources be placed in such a way that it looks good at night? Yes? Well, then we may as well progress to day in order to continue with the project :-)

[thomasthespacefox]

one of the main advantages Minetest has is the Built in mod support. so the mods don't all break with every update like with a certain game i know...

also Mesecons has more features than redstone
ex you can easily convert redsone schematics to Mese schematics with a few tweaks. but the opposite can be almost impossible with all the microcontrollers, digilines, luacontrollers, and logic gates

not to mention how much space insulated mese saves.

i agree withtrev on the fact that minecrat is a commercialized mess of code that has been cash cowed to near oblivion.
unified inventory is a great help when im trying to find blocks i also like the apps that work with it like the armor mod.
the reason we Minetest folk have such nice things is because we are an open community. minecraft, well you need to pay for it for starters, and the code is now hidden behind Mr Big "company that named a operating system after a glass opening in a wall to let light in" corporation.
minecraft has a mid-evil age feel to it with a corporate mindset to match.

Minetest has a open, modern feel to it, with a community that cares.
Minetest seems to reflect the real world a little more. know what i mean?

[Linuxdirk]

On a technical side … it misses a proper lighting engine. (No, just altering texture colors is NOT lighting.)

[thomasthespacefox]

true... but the great thing about free open scource software is that it's alot easier to get trivial things like lighting done!

[ExeterDad]

true... but the great thing about free open scource software is that it's alot easier to get trivial things like lighting done!

Provided one of the handful of devs is interested and or capable of doing the task.
They say "Many hands make light work." This is true and is one thing MC has. But with Minetest... few hands are doing a huge amount of work. And that's pretty impressive when you look at it from that angle.

[jojoa1997]

true... but the great thing about free open scource software is that it's alot easier to get trivial things like lighting done!

Yeah but I have also seen people get pushed away because their code which fixed the problem was not added due to a dev wanting to do it their own way later. I still dont see lighting in the game

[thomasthespacefox]

true... but the great thing about free open scource software is that it's alot easier to get trivial things like lighting done!

Yeah but I have also seen people get pushed away because their code which fixed the problem was not added due to a dev wanting to do it their own way later. I still dont see lighting in the game

that can happen but Most of the people here just want to have fun and make a great game!

[Calinou]

On a technical side … it misses a proper lighting engine. (No, just altering texture colors is NOT lighting.)

I don't think Minecraft has real hardware lighting either.

[4aiman]

Minecraft is always different, always evolving. That is what Minetest is missing.

To begin evolving Minetest need to have a good default game.
A game is what users see in the first place.
But minetest_game would be of interest only as a "creative" game. (Which is quite nice for touch-screen devices!).
On PC creative becomes a "lego".
Not bad, true.
But in what did LEGO evolved?
Action.
Be it console, PC or "tangible" games to play in real world.

So there should be a game of that quality.
Here I'm trying to make one:

It's very MC-like algorithm-wise but still MT-like surface-wise.
I believe *that* is a kind of a game MT supposed to have.
And, since it's useless to make anyone to feel the same way, I'm just doing what I can. Those who would like my game will eventually join.
Right now I'm enjoying the process.




In the case Minetest to be treated as the engine, "evolving" would mean removal of "broken-by-design" implementation and making a good alternative (get_player_control, player physics, mesh animation etc etc).

The concept-decisions are hard to make, true. That is why Freeminer exists.
But it turned out that FM is not an engine I wanted - The direction it took IS interesting, but eventually it turned into an engine that won't meet *my* expectations.
License-wise and direction-wise.

MT still tries to be an engine, on the other hand.
That's why it still can meet my expectations as well of all those people out there.
The only thing hindering its "evolution" is the system of approval.
It's not a FM-like "majority wins" but "all must agree".

Note, I'm *not* judging the system.
I'm only hinting that many questions are being discussed over and over and over and over...
Those are "hanging in the middle of a room" - just like a semi-empty balloon with helium.

We must wait for ideas to be perfected. Minetest development is not a paying job for modders like it is for equivalent development of Minecraft. With more time, we will see many things turn Minetest into an amazing engine that powers many servers. I hope for rare biomes to be added, mobs with more complex AIs, and hunger to be added to most survival games. With each release, the sense of adventure that one feels playing the game grows. Before too long, Minetest will catch up and be the world's best free and open source sandbox!

Hunger and mobs won't be added to default MT game easily.
There are dozens of hunger mods.
Very simple (rouge-like) ones, middle-ware (Blockman's HUD, "farming" mod expansions) and MC-copying ones (4hunger, part of Magichet).
None of those was used.
Why?
I was told it's due to the fact minetest_game is not supposed to be a bloated platform for modding.

Quite justified opinion, if you ask me.

But then... where those "additional" games to be shipped with minetest releases?
I'll tell you where.
There are almost no such games.
All but several WIP projects are building upon default minetest_game by throwing in some mods.

Server-owners are kind enough to code things occasionally, though.
VanessaE, TenPlus1 and many others *do* create new mods or improve existing.

The problem is, those mods are fully compatible with every game.
So, we have a good choice of universal mods.
But we also have countless "clones".

It's hard to be unique, but It really pays off.

Magichet is a thing that is*not* compatible with most mods out there.
But that enabled me to create "connections" between mods. I'm not forced to support minetest_game or any mod made for it and/or add hacky support (like external_modifier.lua in Specialities mod) for it.

There's no way to get rid of any "clones" if minetest_game won't become a set of APIs to use (not a game).
But that approach was forfeit. For me it seemed only logical, though. Demands for API are much more higher than for a subgame. "Common" subgame, in turn, didn't want to become a set of APIs.

Maybe it all was due to a complete different set of reasons, but who cares?


Clones or not, but everyone want a good game to play.
Sounds simple - just throw in a set of well-tested mods for everything and make ppl disable those (MC modders do it this way).
Preferences do differ, though...

So... what will be the platform to bulid upon?

While anyone can make yet another "clone" it's difficult to decide.
But certainly *not* the minetest_game.
Minetest_game has no feature.
It loses to every game built upon it with mods.
Either in "lightweightness" or feature-wise.
Moreover, games like Carbon wouldn't have appeared if minetest_game had had a wider set of mods.
On the other hand, "bloated" default game doesn't seem like something devs would agree to have.


I think everyone interested should pick subgames he/she like and support development of those.
I.e. Instead of improving mods for *every* subgame modders should make mods for a *certain* subgame.

Code: Select all

It is good to have multiple games support, but functionality should prevail over universality. 
To the extent where no other subgame would be able to use the newest changes.
If a mod is "universal" it only means that there's no unique game in that aspect at all.
The more "universal" mods are in the "game" - the more it becomes a "clone".

you can easily convert redsone schematics to Mese schematics with a few tweaks

Yep. There are always just a "few tweaks"...
It will take more than that to create a copy of MC Redstone.
Some "features" of Mesecons are just a simplified version of Redstone mechanics.
It was logical and convenient to code the Mesecons mod the way it is.
But a *true* copy of Redstone will require either tons of additional checks in the signal processing or completely re-writing a good part of it.

I don't think Minecraft has real hardware lighting either.

MT won't have even shaders, let alone HW lighting...
OGL, OGLES1, OGLES2, DX, SW, BV - it's impossible to have one and the same shader for all those renderers.
MC uses only one renderer.

Complexity of MT sometimes is a disadvantage.


But what bugs me a lot is why some features (like OGL-only shaders) were added where other half-made features doesn't (or got removed).

[TheEpicJames]

this game really needs a way to use skins,
something like a skin system similar to Minecraft PE's skin system would be nice.

[thomasthespacefox]

this game really needs a way to use skins,
something like a skin system similar to Minecraft PE's skin system would be nice.

currently all the existing skin mods are on the server end meaning if you want a custom skin on a server you would need to send it to the admins manually.
server>client where > is the direction the skin is sent

what you are discussing i presume, would mean the client sending the skin server-side I'e like this:
server<client where < is the direction the skin is sent

someone correct me if I'm wrong but this would require a change to the engine wouldn't it.

minetest does have some mods to use skins but no way to send them to a server from a client.

[AccidentallyRhine]

To quote a core developer:

It's literally just sending a few hundred bytes to the server, nothing tricky about that.

Of course, he is only speaking about sending skin files from client to server, not the entire implementation.

[thomasthespacefox]

To quote a core developer:

It's literally just sending a few hundred bytes to the server, nothing tricky about that.

Of course, he is only speaking about sending skin files from client to server, not the entire implementation.

the tricky part is making a minetest-wide skin system in minetest so minetest can actually send those bytes. and of course it would need to have a server-side fallback skin (that the server admins can set) in case someone is not running version (insert version this would be implemented here) or later.
it would also need to send the skin to other players already on the server.
How that would work? I will leave that up to the devs.

[Sokomine]

I think everyone interested should pick subgames he/she like and support development of those.
I.e. Instead of improving mods for *every* subgame modders should make mods for a *certain* subgame.

I do have a diffrent opinion in that regard. Mods that can be more or less universal ought to. And if a mod can be used in combination with various subgames, it leaves the player freedom to choose which subgame and mods the player likes best. MT is about everyone beeing able to create his/her own set of mods and distinct subgame. But with all freedom, there's the drawback of having to choose.

Players sometimes ask for more polish of subgames, more fitting textures and so on. I'm sure any help in that regard will be welcomed by the subgame developers. Making a subgame look like it's something connected (and not just a collection of mods) is an important task as well, but it's the task of creating/maintaining/extending a subgame - and not a mod. If mods support such tweaking by subgames, that might be best.

[4aiman]

@Sokomine:
I agree that universal mods give freedom.
I also agree with you while mods are concerned.
But so far there are over 100 games with only 5(?) of them being not a bunch of mods.
In terms of evolving MT needs a great subgame. This is where "mod development" becomes "subgame development".

In other words, if there would be unique incompatible games, it would be still possible to write a universal mod, but MT will have several improved "platforms" for modding.

I hope that a situation like that will help even clones to be more polished. ;)

Regards!

[Linuxdirk]

I don't think Minecraft has real hardware lighting either.

They don’t but however their lighting engine is still better. Just compare sunset and sunraise in both games.

https://youtu.be/rhdTgGhGMmQ?t=48s