What's Minetest still missing over Minecraft?

[MirceaKitsune]

Skill should be valued, not play time.

i think both should be valued equally

Agreed on both. But for both things, you need to work and progress in order to get the best items.

[LazyJ]

I'll toss in my two-cents (maybe even a plug-nickel's worth). ;)-


Minetest_Game Should Be More Polished

I remember my impressions from when I first started playing Minetest. At the time I didn't know anything about this kind of game, I didn't know mods existed, and since I installed it from Ubuntu's repositories, minetest_game was the only sub-game (I'm not counting "minimal") and I wasn't aware there were any other alternatives.

I had seen YouTube videos of Minecraft so that is what I was expecting when I installed Minetest. When I started playing Minetest, for the very first time, it was a bit of a disappointment. The bland graphics and lack of sound (environmental or otherwise) made getting immersed in the game impossible.

Much later I learned about mods and was able to "accessorise" minetest_game into something I could lose myself in.

Like it or not, minetest_game is what most players are exposed to when they first experience Minetest. Even if they never play in singleplayer mode, most Minetest servers out there use minetest_game.

"Polishing" minetest_game doesn't neccessarily mean bloating it with a bunch of hefty bells-and-whistles (though there are several "little" things that still could be added).

By "polishing" minetest_game I mean fixing and enhancing what is already there. Heavier, mod-rich, games and lighter, minimalistic games can be added by the player later when they are more familiar with Minetest. But that very first impression, that make-it-or-break-it moment, when the player loads Minetest and starts exploring, should be a rich and fulfilling experience.

• The default textures could be improved by making the colors richer and more constrasting. Yes, players can install several of the many diverse texture packs available but I'm thinking in terms of the first-time player. Someone like me, who started playing the game with no idea of its potential. Now that Minetest has a texture pack menu, perhaps packaging minetest_game with three versions of the default texture pack (one low-res, one medium, one high) is a solution.
• The environmental lighting is too static. The shadows, what little there are, don't move with the players nor with the light source (sun, torch, flame, etc). Light doesn't shimmer on the ripples in the water, no building blocks are shiny to contrast with all the dull ones. I think I read somewhere that this was due to the limitations of Irrlicht. Maybe Minetest has matured to the point where something other than Irrlicht should be used?
• The user interface, though functional, is flat and bland. It is as inviting and appealing as a cinder block. RealBadAngel's Unified Inventory mod really improves greatly upon this. Looking back through old screenshots, the earlier, dirt-like background seemed more fitting to a mining game. The darker color receded into the background allowing the focus to be on the menu. The current, light colored background of floating clouds is a bit too busy. Kind of like flashing, blinking ads along the edges of a web article that you are trying to read.
  
  Sprucing up the menus may not seem important so long as they are functional, but then, if the menus makes new players think Minetest hasn't been updated since the days of MSDOS or BlackBox, based on its looks alone, they may decide not to play the game, making all the "function" irrelevant.
• Sounds go a long way for auditory immersion. As things are currently, a coat closet has more auditory immersion than the default, minetest_game. Granted, Minetest has improved since the days of 0.3.0 but there is still a lot more improvement to be done. The Minetest community seems to have several members skilled in Photoshop/GIMP/Blender. Any audiophiles out there that could lend their equipment and expertise ?
  
  The environmental sounds of Neuromancer's "Ambience" mod helps but more auditory detail could be incorporated in the default minetest_game. The current batch of default sounds are recycled with varying "gain" levels. Perhaps more sounds could be added? Like the sound of a match being struck for placing torches, a more hammer-hitting-stone like sound for stone with pickaxe or axe but a more rining, metalic sound like when a spade is smacked, broad-side, against a stone.
  
  Perhaps there could be a notice in the "Settings" tab that there is no default, game music in Minetest (yet). If game music is ever made default, have it turned "on" as a default that can be toggled "off" in the "Settings" tab. (Of course finding background music that is royalty free and of good quality is one hurdle, licensing is another.)
  
  All the video games I was used to playing had background music. When I didn't hear any background music (or environmental sounds back then) in Minetest, I thought it was broken. "Good thing I didn't have to pay for this.", I thought to myself.
  
  Through experience I have since learned that background, "mood" music doesn't work well for a game like Minetest. Background music helps set the mood of the game scene. However, in Minetest, the game scene can vary greatly in purpose. It makes sense to play spooky music when underground in a cavern unless... that underground cavern is an artisan dwarven city. Spooky cavern music makes even less sense when the dwarven city has pubs, taverns, dance halls and brightly lit streets and buildings.
  
  I've since turned off the music in the "Ambience" mod, kept the environmental sounds, and listen to external news or music while playing Minetest. Sometimes I turn off all the news and music, put on my headphones and lose myself in playing Minetest and only hear the sounds in that world.
• There are gaps in the game-logic. If I can do this with stone why can't I do it with desert stone? If snow freezes dirt, why won't ice do the same? GingerHunter797 mentioned earlier in this thread that the game seems incomplete. These unfinished game steps, progression, cause and effect, etc. lend to the sense of being incomplete.
  
  There are things in the inventory that are useless and unobtainable without other mods. Rats, vessels, snow, dirt_with_snow, ice and (up until farming and flowers were added ) dyes and wool, for examples of things that make the game fell incomplete.
• When playing in survival-mode there should be bad guys and monsters to keep you on your toes. Minetest doesn't operate off of game levels or points so defeating the bad guys and monsters needs more incentive. It's been suggested before that monsters should drop valuable items when destroyed (why not have mechanical menaces too, like combination locks and traps to filled chests?).
  
  The worlds seem dead because there are no creatures milling about on the surface, flying in the air, swimming in the seas, or burrowing underground.
  
  Minetest creates worlds with generating and evolving environments, so why not have critters too? (I know part of the answer is due to the increased amount of computing power such things would require.)
• I prefer to play in creative-mode. The Minetest world is my art studio to create in. It would be great if minetest_game, the engine itself, or a default set of utility programs provided tools for easily manipulting the landscape and environment. Drop in a mountain here, draw a river there, that large, rectagular, mapgen glitch... yeah, fix that by smooothing it, sloping it and grading it to look like normal terrain.
• An in-game user manual that pops up like a formspec menu would be helpful to newcomers and Minetest veterans alike. List the basic crafting recipes, what keys do what action and where to get more info on Minetest.
  
  Also in-game help windows dedicated to each mod that is installed displaying the mod's name, author, download and forum links (for future updates and commentary), along with descriptions for each of the mod's items (What kind of things does this block do or what to do other blocks do to it?). This would be really helpful to have for complex mods like "Technic" and "Mesecons".
  
  The "/help all" command fills chat with everything from every mod making it very difficult to know which command goes with which mod and, at best, only provides very sparce info about commands and nothing about mods or items.

Lack of Players

Opinions of a grumpy, old man:

Sometimes I think people complain about a lack of players because the in-game chat is quiet or they are looking for someone to entertain/babysit them.

There are times when a server seems quiet and empty as players try to avoid and ignore another player because that other player has a history of being offensive, obnoxious, annoying, or any combination thereof.

Then there are times when players are more focused on mining, harvesting, building and are less interested in being someones babysitter-playmate at the moment.

Another aspect is the quality of the players versus the quantity of players. I'd rather play on a server that has few players but who are more self-reliant than one that is overrun by hyper-active kids with short attention spans expecting everyone to pay attention to them at all times and expecting others to do everything for them. I think Jordach and ShadowNinja may have been hinting at similar thoughts earlier in this thread.

Is Minetest boring because players are unable to do anything by themselves? That's not a problem of Minetest's; that's a personal problem of the players'.

Is Minetest boring because player's expect instant gratification? If players want an insta-matic epic castle with a press of a button then they should go watch YouTube videos. They don't even have to make any effort; someone else does all the work for them in fast-forward time-lapse.

Minetest requires planning and prepartation (and study if you are learning build-styles), even in creative-mode. Actually building an epic castle, with all it's ineteresting details and features, requires studying pics, reading some history, watching vidoes (of Minecraft and of real-life stuff), going out in the real-world to study real buildings and structures, building parts and pieces of sections, in-game, in a separate location to workout design-build problems, and it will take you a lot of time.

What about the landscape around the castle? I rarely see any builds were the players did anything to make the surrounding landscape look interesting, appealing, and an integral part of the build.

If all you do is build 5x3x5 cobble shacks on the first flat areas you find, then, yeah, Minetest probably does get boring.


A less grumpy and more pragmatic perspective:

Minecraft has been marketed much more successfully for a much longer time so it is much more well known. There are going to be more players on a Minecraft server because more people know about Minecraft than Minetest.

Minecraft set the pace, set the trend, and set the standards of what players expect when they first play Minetest. The technical differences only matter to the geeks and gurus. The game experience is what is important to the rest of us and in that reguard, Minecraft has delivered where MInetest is still trying to catch-up.



Ok, Those Were the Gripes. Now, What's Minecraft Still Missing Over Minetest?

• The long established point - Minetest is free.
  
  I started playing Minetest (and stuck with it) because I didn't want to spend money on a type of game I'd never heard of before. I understood first-person-shooters, simulators, platforms and role-playing games but what in the world is a sandbox game? The sandboxes I remember from when I was a kid were frequented by cats... I didn't want to play in those. :0)
• Because of mods like VanessaE's HomeDecor and Calinou's MoreBlocks, Minetest has options Minecraft does not.
• Minetest mods are much easier to make.
  
  I've watched YouTube videos of Minecraft and listen to the YouTubers complain about not having a block for this or that and I think to myself, "Well, why don't you Minecraft people make a mod to have that block?" Does Mojang have restrictions on what mods are authorized to be installed? Are new mods only allowed to be created with Mojang's blessing? If not, why aren't these Minecrafters making the simple blocks they are pining for?
  
  I don't know much about coding but at least with Minetest's Lua mods some of the stuff is simple enough even for me to figure out.

Minetest Needs to be Minetest, not a Minecraft Knock-off

So long as players keep wanting to make Minetest just like Minecraft, Minetest will continue to be a MInecraft knock-off.

Yes, Minecraft and Minetest share the same game idea, and, yes, they will have similar things as a result. However, if Minetest is to stand apart from Minecraft, Minetest will have to be different in significant ways that are easilily recongized by the average Minetest player.

Being different means Minetest may never have some of things, or do some of the things, that Minecraft does. It also means having things and doing things Minecraft doesn't.

Minetest shouldn't be shackeled to Minecraft's game model. Look for ideas and things that Minecraft wouldn't do because "it's just not the Minecraft-way" and then do them. Provided of course that they are good, honorable, and legal things. ;)-

These different ideas and features don't have to be big things either. Little things often add subtley that makes all the difference.

Ok, enough rambling out of me.

My thanks to those who have sat through and read yet another "LazyJ wall-o-text". ;)-

(LazyJ gets off his soap box to go brew another French Press.)

[twoelk]

I have added your text to my favorites just as the "Observation about people on public servers" text ;-)

What about the landscape around the castle? I rarely see any builds were the players did anything to make the surrounding landscape look interesting, appealing, and an integral part of the build.

ha! That is what good landscaping is about, making it so that visitors don't notice it is handcrafted. My experience though is that overly epic landscape attracts other players who might have different ideas about what is good looking and landscaping in popular places such as spawn is futile as players seeking for a place to build will build over any carefully designed scenery. I guess this is just as in real life.

(visit VanessaE's Creative/Survival/Minetest-mostlyvanilla servers to see examples)


As for most of your points fixing that would need experts willing to spend time on corporate design issues and a good manuall. Those people are indeed rare. Feel free to add to the Wiki. Maybe some of the tutorials there can be used to create an ingame manuall - someday - in the future

[MirceaKitsune]

I'd prefer to not get started on minetest_game. IMO, this game has failed, and I don't agree with the direction it's going and will be staying in. For this reason, I have less expectations for anything good being achieved with it.

The problem is the developers don't seem to want it to be an actual game. But rather a game offering a few basic tools and materials, and relying on mods to add anything of interest. For some servers this works out a bit, and the idea itself wouldn't be a bad one. But no one can really polish the game itself as a whole due to this. You rely on each admin finding and using the proper mods... some of which aren't quite the best at this stage.

I am planning on changing this, and making a game different from everything Minetest has been used with so far. But it will be a long while. Still hoping for something more exciting to happen till then.

[twoelk]

...
The problem is the developers don't seem to want it to be an actual game. But rather a game offering a few basic tools and materials, and relying on mods to add anything of interest.
...

This is (semi-officially) not considered a problem but a feature!

...
I am planning on changing this, and making a game different from everything Minetest has been used with so far.
...

cool

...
But it will be a long while.
...

nooooooooooooooo, hurry up

...
Still hoping for something more exciting to happen till then.
...

" come on now everybody, just stand up and do something exiting "
(= an extremelly difficult task in my opinion)

[Morn76]

I am planning on changing this, and making a game different from everything Minetest has been used with so far. But it will be a long while. Still hoping for something more exciting to happen till then.

Well, the Freeminer fork has happened, which is pretty much the answer to all suggestions in this thread, isn't it? Personally I still prefer the Minetest approach because I find it easier to start with a blank canvas and add mods as needed for a specific map, rather than starting with something full of features I don't want that I have to disable.

Freeminer performance is terrible on my machine. But for those who want a more complete game, Freeminer is very nice, especially with the dwarves game.

[Inocudom]

I am planning on changing this, and making a game different from everything Minetest has been used with so far. But it will be a long while. Still hoping for something more exciting to happen till then.

Well, the Freeminer fork has happened, which is pretty much the answer to all suggestions in this thread, isn't it? Personally I still prefer the Minetest approach because I find it easier to start with a blank canvas and add mods as needed for a specific map, rather than starting with something full of features I don't want that I have to disable.

Freeminer performance is terrible on my machine. But for those who want a more complete game, Freeminer is very nice, especially with the dwarves game.

Yes, but builds of Freeminer for Windows are pretty rare and dirt and sand flow in that fork.

[Morn76]

I am planning on changing this, and making a game different from everything Minetest has been used with so far. But it will be a long while. Still hoping for something more exciting to happen till then.

Well, the Freeminer fork has happened, which is pretty much the answer to all suggestions in this thread, isn't it? Personally I still prefer the Minetest approach because I find it easier to start with a blank canvas and add mods as needed for a specific map, rather than starting with something full of features I don't want that I have to disable.

Freeminer performance is terrible on my machine. But for those who want a more complete game, Freeminer is very nice, especially with the dwarves game.

Yes, but builds of Freeminer for Windows are pretty rare and dirt and sand flow in that fork.

So we need to fork the fork? Fork-ception. :-)

[celeron55]

I think the main issue is that Minetest lacks coherence. It's not anything that a well-made subgame couldn't tackle, but none so far have as much content as Minecraft with as much coherence as Minecraft does.

One of the reason I'm putting minetest_game out of its misery is this. It can't have coherence when everyone wants everything from it. Hopefully over time some of its replacements will gain this precious property.

Coherence means at least a couple of things:

• Very importantly, the game must be balanced. If at some point of playing you have the feeling that if you just do some arbitrary thing, you could be way ahead, the game has failed. At each point of time you should have multiple options to progress towards whatever goal you have, and the options should be roughly equally hard to execute.
• The way the game is balanced should to some extent match the intuition of the player. (For example, this is where minetest_game's crafting comes short as you can craft anything anywhere without any overhead.)
• Overally there should be meaningful choices to begin with. Games in their core are all about meaningful choices. If there are 5 options but only one of them gets you forward, that's not a meaningful choice. If there are no options, that's not a meaningful choice.
• Everything has to match everything else visually. If something looks like it came from a different world, you can't escape that. Quality doesn't matter that much, as long as it's good enough to not be a distraction.
• Everything in the world has to make sense with everything else in the world. Not directly, but there must be some chain of things that make them make sense in the context of each other.

This is obviously much easier to achieve with a simpler game. Everyone should take a look at Nodetopia, because it succesfully does this. It's too simple for many people though.

EDIT: I must mention that Minecraft doesn't actually do a particularly good job at this either. It's better than minetest_game, but that doesn't mean it would be worth cloning even for getting this effect.

[Morn76]

EDIT: I must mention that Minecraft doesn't actually do a particularly good job at this either. It's better than minetest_game, but that doesn't mean it would be worth cloning even for getting this effect.

Maybe that is part of the problem: Instead of cloning something that works and is popular (as so much Open Source software does, with rare exceptions like Emacs), there is this attitude now that emulating MC gameplay is bad and MT needs to be original at all cost.

If a project which started out as a straightforward clone suddenly decides it wants to be different and original, this is usually a problem, see Gnome 3. They were fine as long as they cloned OS X, but things went downhill fast when they implemented their own half-baked UI ideas. Gnome 3 has been the best thing to happen to KDE, ever. :-)

[Calinou]

The default textures could be improved by making the colors richer and more constrasting. Yes, players can install several of the many diverse texture packs available but I'm thinking in terms of the first-time player. Someone like me, who started playing the game with no idea of its potential. Now that Minetest has a texture pack menu, perhaps packaging minetest_game with three versions of the default texture pack (one low-res, one medium, one high) is a solution.

Most of the current textures are saturated enough and have balanced colors.

The environmental lighting is too static. The shadows, what little there are, don't move with the players nor with the light source (sun, torch, flame, etc). Light doesn't shimmer on the ripples in the water, no building blocks are shiny to contrast with all the dull ones. I think I read somewhere that this was due to the limitations of Irrlicht. Maybe Minetest has matured to the point where something other than Irrlicht should be used?

This is easier to say than to do.

The user interface, though functional, is flat and bland. It is as inviting and appealing as a cinder block. RealBadAngel's Unified Inventory mod really improves greatly upon this. Looking back through old screenshots, the earlier, dirt-like background seemed more fitting to a mining game. The darker color receded into the background allowing the focus to be on the menu. The current, light colored background of floating clouds is a bit too busy. Kind of like flashing, blinking ads along the edges of a web article that you are trying to read.

A prettier, larger font (by default) would help a lot. If you disable clouds, all you get is a single-colored brown background.

Sounds go a long way for auditory immersion. As things are currently, a coat closet has more auditory immersion than the default, minetest_game. Granted, Minetest has improved since the days of 0.3.0 but there is still a lot more improvement to be done. The Minetest community seems to have several members skilled in Photoshop/GIMP/Blender. Any audiophiles out there that could lend their equipment and expertise ?

I agree on this, especially for footstep sounds. Carbone has a few other improved sounds, such as throwing or damage sounds.

The environmental sounds of Neuromancer's "Ambience" mod helps but more auditory detail could be incorporated in the default minetest_game. The current batch of default sounds are recycled with varying "gain" levels. Perhaps more sounds could be added? Like the sound of a match being struck for placing torches, a more hammer-hitting-stone like sound for stone with pickaxe or axe but a more rining, metalic sound like when a spade is smacked, broad-side, against a stone.

If this is added, there must be a way to disable this.

All the video games I was used to playing had background music. When I didn't hear any background music (or environmental sounds back then) in Minetest, I thought it was broken. "Good thing I didn't have to pay for this.", I thought to myself.

Minecraft's background music takes several seconds, or even minutes to play – the first time I started it, I thought there was no music.

There are gaps in the game-logic. If I can do this with stone why can't I do it with desert stone? If snow freezes dirt, why won't ice do the same? GingerHunter797 mentioned earlier in this thread that the game seems incomplete. These unfinished game steps, progression, cause and effect, etc. lend to the sense of being incomplete.

I find minetest_game (and its forks) to be fairly idiot-proof, actually; probably more than Minecraft.

There are things in the inventory that are useless and unobtainable without other mods. Rats, vessels, snow, dirt_with_snow, ice and (up until farming and flowers were added ) dyes and wool, for examples of things that make the game fell incomplete.

In minetest_game, rats are legacy items. Some games reimplement them. In Carbone, the way they are implemented is very similar to 0.3.1.

When playing in survival-mode there should be bad guys and monsters to keep you on your toes. Minetest doesn't operate off of game levels or points so defeating the bad guys and monsters needs more incentive. It's been suggested before that monsters should drop valuable items when destroyed (why not have mechanical menaces too, like combination locks and traps to filled chests?).

Your post reminded me to tweak mob drops in Carbone, thanks. ;)

An in-game user manual that pops up like a formspec menu would be helpful to newcomers and Minetest veterans alike. List the basic crafting recipes, what keys do what action and where to get more info on Minetest.

I agree, it is technically possible.

The "/help all" command fills chat with everything from every mod making it very difficult to know which command goes with which mod and, at best, only provides very sparce info about commands and nothing about mods or items.

Open the chat console after opening it. It'd be nice if there was a message that told you to open your chat console – including the key to open it – when you type /help all.

Sometimes I think people complain about a lack of players because the in-game chat is quiet or they are looking for someone to entertain/babysit them.

There are many servers with a nice amount of players. An excessive amount is never funny – it's harder to get resources and to “integrate” into the server.

Another aspect is the quality of the players versus the quantity of players. I'd rather play on a server that has few players but who are more self-reliant than one that is overrun by hyper-active kids with short attention spans expecting everyone to pay attention to them at all times and expecting others to do everything for them. I think Jordach and ShadowNinja may have been hinting at similar thoughts earlier in this thread.

Start a server? Partcipate in an effort of creating a server with mature players?

Minecraft set the pace, set the trend, and set the standards of what players expect when they first play Minetest. The technical differences only matter to the geeks and gurus. The game experience is what is important to the rest of us and in that reguard, Minecraft has delivered where MInetest is still trying to catch-up.

I don't think so. Minecraft is fairly unbalanced, has annoying gameplay — hunger, mobs sometimes too common, crafting table... – and back when I played Minecraft, I frequently felt “lonely” on servers, of any size. It's a matter of playing with friends or not.

The long established point - Minetest is free.

Free as in beer and free as in freedom. More important than just a “free”.

Minetest Needs to be Minetest, not a Minecraft Knock-off

Carbone doesn't follow Minecraft's gameplay or anything else. To it, it's like Minecraft didn't exist.

[Jordach]

Carbone doesn't follow Minecraft's gameplay or anything else. To it, it's like Minecraft didn't exist.

You can tell that to BFD... :)

[mauvebic]

Dunno, we're frequently told that minetest doesn't have the resources to develop any given feature, though not so short on resources that precious time isn't wasted on issues like code formatting and implementing every database under the sun. Heck even when the devs do reach a consensus the topic comes back up for debate, sometimes more than once. Of the dozen or so devs only a handful seem to be doing any work, the others could more appropriately be called "Consultants", though i'm not sure micro-managing is something consultants do. Maybe adopt a use-it-or-lose-it posture to developer status?

Bottom line, real people couldn't care less that Minetest is open source or written in C++, that might be pertinent for people playing github, but you need to think what would make playing Minetest more enjoyable. In that regard I wish c55 would bring out the little fuhrer in him and say "these are the features that need to be fixed, and these are the ones to be developed". The OP says MC is more engaging, obviously our mobs suck and have for years, I'd start there.

[twoelk]

... One of the reason I'm putting minetest_game out of its misery ...

If it is kept as base and example it should be tweaked to do this job as good as possible. This could include checking it's code to offer a good example of coding-style. Do things only in ways they should be done or comment where things are a little "hacky" and of course include as many explaining comments as needed to work as a toturial of sorts. I hope "feature freeze" does not mean it can't be tweaked to fulfill it's new assignment as good as possible.

...
At each point of time you should have multiple options to progress towards whatever goal you have, and the options should be roughly equally hard to execute.
...

I might disagree slightly here. I think a choice should make a difference or otherwise it is useless to offer one. I even think some choices one can make should be bad because otherwise there would be no rewarding feeling for having finally found the best choice. This may be in part what you refer to as "meaningful choice".

As a simple example for this, think of the Mt.Meru mod or the "Roads" server. Climbing those mountains only becomes an achievement if you can fail and you have to find a working path to the top. Of course you can cheat your way up by pillar jumping or something similar but you can still fail as all them old bones on the "Roads" server clearly document.

Don't get me wrong, I am no fan of secret doors that bring you right to the sollution but I think choices should make a difference.

...
Everything has to match everything else visually. If something looks like it came from a different world, you can't escape that. Quality doesn't matter that much, as long as it's good enough to not be a distraction.
...

So if a texture project, or a project including textures becomes a colaborative effort of a team you will need to define standards. Minetest has this to some extand for coding, so not having that for graphics is something missing indeed. Especially as in gaming graphics are very much perceived as signature of the whole project. (The Minetest logo is pretty brilliant in this aspect in my opinion)

[Inocudom]

The OP says MC is more engaging, obviously our mobs suck and have for years, I'd start there.

I guess not many people know about the mod linked to below:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=8798
I would say that it is a decent start.

[GingerHunter797]

I wish c55 would bring out the little fuhrer in him and say "these are the features that need to be fixed, and these are the ones to be developed".

This. This is what Minetest needs, for someone to take charge and command the devs(no offense to the devs)

[Calinou]

From a more personal perspective: Whenever I go on a crowded Minecraft server, I quickly start interacting with the environment as well as people. Getting materials, tools, building a house, going underground to mine, etc. I never really get bored... something palpable is almost always going on, and the environment feels very alive itself. Yet when I join a Minetest server, I don't feel like there is much to do; I can farm just like in MC, but don't really feel like bothering. There are hostile mobs, but I don't feel like there's any fun to fight them. There are beautiful cities with very nice houses, yet I don't feel like getting a house there. And the environment feels well... very static and dead. Usually I just parkour around spawn, look at what people are chatting, and eventually make a little house somewhere then get bored and leave.

I suggest playing “for an objective”: PvP, mini-games...

Or, play with people you already know from somewhere else. It's quite funnier than playing alone in your corner.

[MirceaKitsune]

I wish c55 would bring out the little fuhrer in him and say "these are the features that need to be fixed, and these are the ones to be developed".

This. This is what Minetest needs, for someone to take charge and command the devs(no offense to the devs)

Kind of, but not quite. That probably doesn't help or isn't the best approach, especially in an open-source project. What I believe to be needed is a serious discussion regarding what the direction of the default gameplay is.

Currently, we have an engine which is capable of a lot of awesome things... way over Minecraft in a lot of aspects. We also have minetest_game and mods for it which offer a lot of items and features. Very good so far. The problem is that we aren't using them all properly, in the right logics and order.

"minetest_game & mods" simply offers a lot of items and some nice features and says "go craft whatever you like, enjoy seeing how these things all work, etc". But it never says "to get this, you must first explore and work quite a bit for this... if you do this, you will also get this reward... if you find this rare item, you can build this rare tool".

Combined with some artistic lacks, I think this is what makes Minetest still look more like a sandbox demo (even if a good one at that) rather than a world you are compelled to be in and interact with.

[Calinou]

if you do this, you will also get this reward... if you find this rare item, you can build this rare tool".

The purpose of diamonds and Mese is to be mined to make precious stuff with it. In some games, you can make more than just tools with them.

Combined with some artistic lacks, I think this is what makes Minetest still look more like a sandbox demo (even if a good one at that) rather than a world you are compelled to be in and interact with.

Do you want the game to have an end like Minecraft, or just more or less objectives “scrambled” around in order to “finish” the game, or just some writing about the game (background story)?


Adding an XP system with rewards (eg. with paintings, you need a certain amount of XP to place some paintings, or you receive items when you reach a certain amount of XP) may add some incentive to play the game.

[MirceaKitsune]

Actually, I was thinking about experience and achievements. Surely this is one thing we wouldn't want to do too close to Minecraft as well. But having skills you can level might add a new layer of depth. Don't know if and how Minetest should actually attempt this, but the general idea of skills and levels is one that should stick around IMO.

If it was me, I'd do something similar to MMORPG's in this sense; Various skills that can be leveled up by being practiced. But unlike Minecraft where you gain exp orbs and spend them to enhance items (I hate it personally), you simply level up at skills you do often, or get exp points but spend them on your own self at any time. Fighting mobs levels up your attack skill, giving you more damage.... mining levels up your mining skill, helping you break blocks faster... melting things in the furnace levels up your blacksmith skill, making items melt faster for you in a furnace.

Apart from giving more depth to the game, it could also make each player better at different skills. Groups of players could then do things based on those skills... like for example: Someone who has a good attack and someone who has a good mine skill go together underground to mine. The player with the good mining skill does the mining, while the one with the good attack skill protects them from mobs. That is indeed an example of adding more depth :)

[GingerHunter797]

Actually, I was thinking about experience and achievements. Surely this is one thing we wouldn't want to do too close to Minecraft as well. But having skills you can level might add a new layer of depth. Don't know if and how Minetest should actually attempt this, but the general idea of skills and levels is one that should stick around IMO.

If it was me, I'd do something similar to MMORPG's in this sense; Various skills that can be leveled up by being practiced. But unlike Minecraft where you gain exp orbs and spend them to enhance items (I hate it personally), you simply level up at skills you do often, or get exp points but spend them on your own self at any time. Fighting mobs levels up your attack skill, giving you more damage.... mining levels up your mining skill, helping you break blocks faster... melting things in the furnace levels up your blacksmith skill, making items melt faster for you in a furnace.

Apart from giving more depth to the game, it could also make each player better at different skills. Groups of players could then do things based on those skills... like for example: Someone who has a good attack and someone who has a good mine skill go together underground to mine. The player with the good mining skill does the mining, while the one with the good attack skill protects them from mobs. That is indeed an example of adding more depth :)

I absolutely LOVE this idea! This has to be part of the game! It would be like a million times better than Minecraft or any other game I have ever seen. It would be a Sandbox RPG/MMO! So awesome! :O

[Linxx]

Actually, I was thinking about experience and achievements. Surely this is one thing we wouldn't want to do too close to Minecraft as well. But having skills you can level might add a new layer of depth. Don't know if and how Minetest should actually attempt this, but the general idea of skills and levels is one that should stick around IMO.

If it was me, I'd do something similar to MMORPG's in this sense; Various skills that can be leveled up by being practiced. But unlike Minecraft where you gain exp orbs and spend them to enhance items (I hate it personally), you simply level up at skills you do often, or get exp points but spend them on your own self at any time. Fighting mobs levels up your attack skill, giving you more damage.... mining levels up your mining skill, helping you break blocks faster... melting things in the furnace levels up your blacksmith skill, making items melt faster for you in a furnace.

Apart from giving more depth to the game, it could also make each player better at different skills. Groups of players could then do things based on those skills... like for example: Someone who has a good attack and someone who has a good mine skill go together underground to mine. The player with the good mining skill does the mining, while the one with the good attack skill protects them from mobs. That is indeed an example of adding more depth :)

I absolutely LOVE this idea! This has to be part of the game! It would be like a million times better than Minecraft or any other game I have ever seen. It would be a Sandbox RPG/MMO! So awesome! :O

maybe it can be done you can follow more than one skill tree

[MirceaKitsune]

maybe it can be done you can follow more than one skill tree

I was wondering what to do for Minetest. Perhaps I'll consider such a mod sometime :)

Just one problem: Does Lua allow modifying damage / mining / furnace speeds per player? Usually, the tool defines how fast you mine, and IIRC there's no way to offset block breaking speed for individual players. Furnace is defined in Lua, so perhaps a trick can be found... for damage it should also be possible I assume.

[Calinou]

If it was me, I'd do something similar to MMORPG's in this sense; Various skills that can be leveled up by being practiced. But unlike Minecraft where you gain exp orbs and spend them to enhance items (I hate it personally), you simply level up at skills you do often, or get exp points but spend them on your own self at any time. Fighting mobs levels up your attack skill, giving you more damage.... mining levels up your mining skill, helping you break blocks faster... melting things in the furnace levels up your blacksmith skill, making items melt faster for you in a furnace.

This is basically what McMMO does (a CraftBukkit plugin), but by default, it values play time too much (for little benefits) over skill – yet some people manage to get insanely high skills (too much time on their hands?) to literally own you using their axes or fists. Anyway, playing on servers which used McMMO was funnier for me than playing on servers which didn't have it.

Balancing a system like that is possible, I would like to see skill-based leveling in Minetest.

Implementing this in a mod is possible, but tricky (and maybe slow).

[MirceaKitsune]

Earlier today I decided to try latest mapgen-v7, but my biome script was outdated. I came across this biome mod and decided to try it out. Once I did, I realized how much biomes and nature actually make a difference, and why it's no wonder that the boring default biomes make everything seem dead and demotivating.

I posted a set of screenshots below. This is what I personally call a lively environment, and what I think Minetest really needs. It's also more than I imagined mgv7 could do, and some beautiful sights I've yet to see in MT until now.

http://i62.tinypic.com/10xuadw.png
http://i59.tinypic.com/jjvau0.png
http://i62.tinypic.com/m9n4f6.png
http://i59.tinypic.com/r76ofq.png
http://i60.tinypic.com/dg0v1d.png
http://i57.tinypic.com/2mgtgup.png
http://i60.tinypic.com/10zp6vq.png
http://i58.tinypic.com/2wnd2co.png
http://i57.tinypic.com/1zco749.png
http://i57.tinypic.com/nv9vyg.png
http://i61.tinypic.com/ipb8ra.png
http://i61.tinypic.com/148nl6o.png