Minetest is boring (clickbait) A few thoughts about Minetest

[Pyrollo]

Minetest is only good for two type of people: those who want to build and those who want to code.

It's not completely sure for the first category :)

[texmex]

Survival is a pain in Minetest, even with mods or other Subgames because of bugs or the lack of features in the core to make good survival games

You should look into Pyrollo's LATE for building interesting features… :)

[solars]

Minetest is only good for two type of people: those who want to build and those who want to code.

It's not completely sure for the first category :)

Why that?

Minetest should be perfect for everyone, who want only to build...

[MineYoshi]

You know, I sometimes think that if Minetest was sold as "a voxel engine designed to be enhanced and modified as you want with the use of its lua API creating great possibilities of gaming and creativity unleashing" since the start, the "it's a Minecraft copy" meme wouldn't be so big. The "blocky 3D construction and survival stand-alone game" trend is long gone and it's not as popular as back then, but instead gets to tire people as it has been extremely overused; if you want Minetest to reach a greater audience and get better and more user-made content, present this thing not as a "block 3D construction standalone game" because it'll be just like another copy of Minecraft, let's be honest, no matter if it's Open Source, C++ or has a Lua API instead of Minecraft: this Minetest thing is better presented as a voxel engine that's easily modified and made by and for user-made content (like Garry's Mod), not as a standalone game because Minetest in its actual state and future isn't a standalone game being honest.

[burli]

Well, I'll use the experience I've gained from Minetest and play around with other projects. I don't think I'll make any more contributions to Minetest, because all the work isn't worth it if it doesn't get any credit. I have, in my opinion, added important features like an optimized leave decay or better stair and slab placement, both a lot of work, but that wasn't even mentioned in the changelog (at least I haven't found it), but other (minor) changes like a new default height for the console (woohhh, important) are listed. My original code for leave decay was even changed, which caused problems later on that I had foreseen.

I have many ideas that I can't realize with Minetest, so I'm going to play around with another game engine, probably Godot, just to test if my ideas work as expected.

In my opinion Minetest needs to be rewritten from scratch because the current code is completely messed up and it is sometimes difficult or even impossible to add features or fix bugs. Even if Irrlicht is replaced by a superior engine, which means a lot of work, only a few problems on the client side are solved.

[bhree]

The best from free open source project is it opens ways for another proof of concept like minetest can be a minecraft alternative. There may be another proof of concept where minetest can be beautified with different game engine. The most important is what is the purpose of all of this. If it is only to compete minecraft then i doubt it will happen near in the future. If I may see from a different pov, minetest can be a general purpose block style game engine for 3d space modelling. Which I see will be getting more benefit from correctness of calculation and based on reality. Like having 9,8 for gravity is interesting as it is closer to the real thing. If minetest can be maintained to conform general mathematical and statistical behaviour the engine will be interesting for modellers more than gamers. And the engine should be kept lightweight for older machine with various OS to run. Gamers will still choose minecraft since it is supported by established corporation that is pushing (investing on) minecraft for more profits, minetest, will go another way but will still very good for multi platform gamers with less machine and money.

[voxelproof]

The best from free open source project is it opens ways for another proof of concept like minetest can be a minecraft alternative. There may be another proof of concept where minetest can be beautified with different game engine. The most important is what is the purpose of all of this. If it is only to compete minecraft then i doubt it will happen near in the future. If I may see from a different pov, minetest can be a general purpose block style game engine for 3d space modelling. Which I see will be getting more benefit from correctness of calculation and based on reality. Like having 9,8 for gravity is interesting as it is closer to the real thing. If minetest can be maintained to conform general mathematical and statistical behaviour the engine will be interesting for modellers more than gamers. And the engine should be kept lightweight for older machine with various OS to run. Gamers will still choose minecraft since it is supported by established corporation that is pushing (investing on) minecraft for more profits, minetest, will go another way but will still very good for multi platform gamers with less machine and money.

I agree, especially with the part concerning modelling which I believe makes the greatest potential of MT, however with one restriction: the present engine doesn't allow to model NPCs in an adequate manner, comparable to other 'natural' features. Unless there's devised some bypass to this, such modelling can be applied only to worlds which don't feature NPCs.

[paramat]

burli,

> If you don't know or understand the concept of Minetest, it quickly becomes boring and you lose the desire.

If a player plays MT without any research this is true.
However, such a player is not blameless. If they do no research at all, it's highly likely they might miss the point, misunderstand or have unreasonable expectations.
For example:
They cannot expect biomes to be a certain size beause the point of the game may be to have very large biomes.
They cannot expect to find fruit immediately because maybe the point is to explore and find sources of food.

You make some valid points, but the quoted player is certainly not blameless. They are lazy and have a short attention span. They don't put much effort or time into playing so don't get much back. They seem to expect, unreasonably, that gameplay will be identical to MC.

/////////////////////////////

Some quotes from the player:

> I installed the game without reading the information on the website, just like everybody else does, and started it.

'Everybody' doesn't do this, they write this to try to excuse and normalise their own laziness.

> I go in one direction, always further and further. The landscape hardly changes. I go on. A forest! Maybe something more interesting will come. No, afterwards again only snow. Little vegetation, no animals, no life.

Assuming they didn't pick mgv6 ... chances are they didn't, and they give the impression the biomes are fairly large, so it's probably not mgv6. it doesn't sound like mgfractal or mgflat.
They didn't go far then, the rest of the mapgens have terrain that does change significantly, with plenty of varied vegetation.

> I go deeper and deeper, but I find nothing but coal.

They didn't go deep then, sounds like they didn't pass y = -64 where tin and coppe start. This isn't MC, the worlds go to -31000.

> After losing a few more hearts I decide to go back upstairs and look for something edible. When I reach the top there is still snow everywhere.

You have to search for food. It would be very boring if everything possible occured within 128 nodes of spawn.

////////////////////////////

burli,

> I've played games like this myself. I'm spawning in a snow biome and even after a long search I couldn't find anything else.

You didn't go far then, this isn't MC. 'Cubeworld' had vast biomes that would sometimes take a whole gaming session to cross.

> Even if he manages to install other games via ContenDB, he won't find much information about these games and will quickly lose interest because he doesn't even know what the games are about.

The CDB website has information about the downloads, the forum has more. If a player doesn't make an effort to find out about a game then they are part of the problem.

> The problem for new players is to find information. Information about minetest itself, MTG or about subgames is often hard to find, unordered, outdated or not available at all.

Forum or CDB website.

> It's annoying when you start a new game and end up in a huge ice area, which has often happened to me. The first contact should be in a nice green forest biome.

MTGame 5.0.0 has a new 'spawn' mod that spawns a new player in a 'friendly' biome.

[ShadMOrdre]

@paramat Forum or CDB website

While the content DB is now available from within MTv5.0, the forums are not mentioned, neither are mentioned, and one even nonexistant, for ALL versions prior to v5.0. Notice that the quote by burli does not mention the version this quote is aimed at.

I also do not think that the Android downloaders, or fork downloaders, are going to know about, or even have the resources to download and install mods. Unless there is an premade Android package for a given mod, installing mods will take some tech skill.

Expecting that users are going to investigate anything is a wrong assumption. Players download games based on either word of mouth, because they are looking for a new experience, or because they want a free download. Most people do not search, research, investigate, or look for anything, unless something doesn't work. And even then, it is only a small group who have the mentality to try fix the problem, as opposed to giving up.

I think most people don't really get what an Open World Sandbox game is. It really isn't a game. It's a virtual space in which users can create. Complex buildings, mesecon computers, games, simulations, whatever one desires. But to impose the strict standard of expecting a "game" out of the box is unfair in this instance, because MT isn't a game. Neither is MTG. paramat has stated this.

The issue is not the game. It is rather people having an expectation. An expectation that this equals that, without really understanding that apples and oranges are not comparable in the first place.

Shad

[rubenwardy]

I also do not think that the Android downloaders, or fork downloaders, are going to know about, or even have the resources to download and install mods. Unless there is an premade Android package for a given mod, installing mods will take some tech skill.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... modmanager

[paramat]

Wuzzy wrote:
> Yet MTG is still shipped as the default, is still promoted heavily on minetest.net while other games are given a hard time. WHY?

Linuxdirk wrote:
> Because according to paramat “the people most qualified to create new games are the core devs due to their understanding and experience”.

Firstly, no, however ...
That quote has nothing to do with the promotion of other games. You've taken something out of context and misrepresented it to bash the core devs, and applied it in an irrelevant way.
I should clarify that quote. In context, someone suggested that new games should be left to non core devs, that quote was my reply and was meant to express that, in my experience, the most talented game coders (not in terms of ideas, but quality code) are the core devs, so it would be a huge waste for them to not make new games.
it did not imply that non core devs should not make new games or that their games deserve to be rejected.
I admit i worded it sloppily and it therefore became easy to misrepresent to make a negative point.

burli wrote:

> This community has a really bad karma.

Many have expressed how good the MT community is, especially compared to MC.

> Most time it is not one large biome, but a combination of similar biomes like Taiga, tundra, cold desert, snowy grassland...

Taiga is very different to the others. The others are significantly different from each other.

> Minetest has 12 biomes, but 7 of them have low or no vegetation.
It's the wrong way to try to copy the real world.

You mean MTGame.
There are 4 forests and 3 grasslands, all these have lots of vegetation, grass counts. 3 deserts and 2 'tundras'.
The proportion of barren biomes is actually fairly realistic. Having plenty of barren land is intentional.

> I don't think I'll make any more contributions to Minetest, because all the work isn't worth it if it doesn't get any credit. I have, in my opinion, added important features like an optimized leave decay or better stair and slab placement, both a lot of work, but that wasn't even mentioned in the changelog

The changelog is for the engine only, it's also not a credits document.
Your work is much appreciated, the leaf decay and slab placement methods are excellent.
But anyway, this is a very odd attitude, contributing is obviously worth it even without being officially credited.
Maybe MTGame should have a credits document with every contributor?

I'm sorry to see that you seem to have quite a negative perspective, i remember you did when last active too.

[paramat]

ShadMOrdre

> While the content DB is now available from within MTv5.0, the forums are not mentioned, neither are mentioned, and one even nonexistant, for ALL versions prior to v5.0. Notice that the quote by burli does not mention the version this quote is aimed at.

Pre-5.0.0 is obviously irrelevant to the discussion. MT can't be criticised for 'how it used to be' if improvements have been made =)

[rubenwardy]

I don't think I'll make any more contributions to Minetest, because all the work isn't worth it if it doesn't get any credit. I have, in my opinion, added important features like an optimized leave decay or better stair and slab placement, both a lot of work, but that wasn't even mentioned in the changelog

You're welcome to update the changelog to include changes in Minetest Game. For the last few releases, the change log only covered the engine - but this is just because no one made one for Minetest Game

[thomasthespacefox]

We need games that challenge the very core concepts of what "voxel sandbox games" are. IMO, minetest already can be a "voxel game engine" in the very literal sense that it can handle games with blocky volumetric terrain, with any wonder of styles, game genres, and stories.

IMO. we need to stop treating minetest like its only this one game, or only for this one genre. theres no logical reason minetest can't handle pre-crafted worlds with a detailed quest structure, and perhaps a nice story. the Tutorial game even shows many of the needed features for games with "precrafted worlds", are indeed possible in the vanilla engine.

Likewise, theres also no technical reason minetest can't handle a space sim (Minetest Saturn), or a Flight simulator, or a turn-based RPG, given someone with the right lua skills. Minetest has already been exposed to complex frameworks in pure lua. e.g. Advanced Trains. so its not like showing a few formspecs with buttons like "attack" "defend" "magic" and "item" is some super-complex minetest-engine-changing rocket science.

Well. thats my 2 cents.

[burli]

I'm sorry about the changelog. My fault and I apologize. I searched for Mintest game changelog and expected to have the MTG changelog. Didn't noticed that MTG has no cl

If the new spawn function really works well, then ok, but it is also sad that such a function is necessary at all. It should be able to survive and have fun everywhere.

But it doesn't seem to be perfect. Try 15912668495806839079. This is what I would call boring. If you are lucky and walk left you might find some green biome. But only with a view range of >150. With the default of 100 you can't see it. I had to fly around for a while to find at least two bushes to get sticks.

I understand how a map is generated and I know that the biome size can't be predicted. I had giant biomes and I had biomes so tiny that I was able to throw a snowball from a snow biome into a jungle. But that is not my point.

My point is, that many biomes are just boring. There is a difference between realism and gameplay. If you want to make a real life simulation maybe you are on the right way, but it's the wrong way for a game that should make fun. A game should make fun... everywhere

@paramat: blaming players to be lazy is also bad attitude. Even if they try to find informations it is difficult. The "official" Wiki is not up to date, Informations about subgames are often obsolete or scattered around in the forum thread. Just an example. Someone was able to find and install Lord of the Test and he also found the forum thread. What does he find? A post from 2013 (last edit 2017) that fits on a napkin. I really tried to find informations, but all I found was "This is a game for Minetest that adds Lord of the Rings elements into the game."

So: what is the goal of the game? Or is it just MTG with some rings added? All I can do is to start the game and fish in the murky waters. Or you're expecting that players try to read the source code to find out whats the goal of the game.

Then you install a subgame and you get lots of error messages after starting and the weather went crazy. It starts raining for a second, then stops, another second of rain, stops again and so on. you can't take that seriously and you don't want to continue to play within 3 minutes.

Last but not least: all games and mods taken together cannot offer a player the same experience as Minecraft. And I don't talk about cloning Minecraft. I just talk about the feeling. I installed the MC demo recently and played around with the demo map. Even in older versions of MC like 1.8 the "feeling" is completely different.

What all minetest mods and games lack is content, depth, progression, rich detail, easter eggs and many more. What Minecraft makes really different is that you can play it in many different ways. You can play peaceful and just build, you can simply play survival, you can try to kill the ender dragon, try to get all achievements, all enchantments or just walk around to find as many biomes and structures as possible. Everything in one game, even on one map. No need to install totally different games with different textures and maybe even different sounds or gravity settings (like Voxelgarden)

Partly this is the fault of the Open Source thought, because everybody has his own ideas and rarely two or more people work together. Partly it's also the fault of the engine, because it's just not mature yet and it is difficult or simply not possible to make a good game.

To make a long story short: I like the idea of Minetest, but it is far (far far) away from being a good voxel engine

[voxelproof]

But it doesn't seem to be perfect. Try 15912668495806839079. This is what I would call boring. If you are lucky and walk left you might find some green biome. But only with a view range of >150. With the default of 100 you can't see it. I had to fly around for a while to find at least two bushes to get sticks.

I understand how a map is generated and I know that the biome size can't be predicted. I had giant biomes and I had biomes so tiny that I was able to throw a snowball from a snow biome into a jungle. But that is not my point.

My point is, that many biomes are just boring. There is a difference between realism and gameplay. If you want to make a real life simulation maybe you are on the right way, but it's the wrong way for a game that should make fun. A game should make fun... everywhere

I really can't understand all that complaining about "boring" worlds. I've made plenty of tweaking of different map generators and I really can say that the achievable diversity of different landscapes and biome configurations is simply amazing. Moreover, as far as I know, there's a possibility to customize or tweak land generation in particular games. MC2 is a good example of that. And since MTG is just an example game, not conceived to be the 'selling point' of Minetest or anything like this, you just should look for (or develop by yourself) the perfect game which suits your expectations, using Minetest as a tool, not a ready-to-use end product.

[burli]

I really can't understand all that complaining about "boring" worlds. I've made plenty of tweaking of different map generators and I really can say that the achievable diversity of different landscapes and biome configurations is simply amazing. Moreover, as far as I know, there's a possibility to customize or tweak land generation in particular games. MC2 is a good example of that. And since MTG is just an example game, not conceived to be the 'selling point' of Minetest or anything like this, you just should look for (or develop by yourself) the perfect game which suits your expectations, using Minetest as a tool, not a ready-to-use end product.

So you expect every player to be able to understand the noise parameters? I strongly doubt that.

Lasst mich die letzten Tage mit Minetest zusammenfassen. Ich habe die neueste Version von Minetest und MTG installiert. Als erstes habe ich MTG ausprobiert. Wie zu erwarten nichts besonderes.

Dann habe ich Mineclone installiert und wollte ein ernsthaftes Spiel starten. Nach etwa einer Stunde begann das Spiel stark zu lag und das Spiel war nicht mehr spielbar. Ich konnte nicht herausfinden, warum.

Dann habe ich Voxelgarden installiert. Ein seltsames Spiel mit merkwürdigen 2d Mobs, dessen Sinn ich nicht verstanden habe und das noch weniger Spielinhalt hat als MTG.

Als nächstes habe ich Minetest Life getestet. Nach dem Laden bekam ich sofort eine Menge Fehlermeldungen und nach wenigen Minuten hat das Wetter verrückt gespielt. Nichts was ich länger als 5 Minuten spielen würde.

Gerade habe ich Regnum probiert. Ich wurde quasi sofort von Monstern angegriffen. Auch nicht unbedingt das, was ich von einem Spiel erwarte.

Das sind alles Spiele, die einem empfohlen werden

[burli]

Woops, I accidentally wrote this in German. Will translate it when I'm back home

[burli]

I'm sorry. I'm lazy now and I just dump it to my favorite translation tool.

Please replace the "lay" with "lag"

And as addendum: I continued to play Regnum. But I was killed before I was able to do anything. Mobs spawn by day and they are faster than the player or at least have the same speed. No chance to survive, especially because I spawned in a grassland.

All games I tried are usually a collection of independent mods and none of them are balanced.

[voxelproof]

All games I tried are usually a collection of independent mods and none of them are balanced.

Yes. but for me it's a great opportunity to pursuit one's own ideas. Especially some which might be called 'proofs of concept', i.e. games with certain minimal sets of rules made to be as engaging as possible, maybe even immersive and simply worth playing. I'm working now on an extension to the genre of walking simulators -- can they really be transformed into a great game full of suspence, thrill and engagement? My answer is -- certainly yes. I've even given up my favourite arcade in favour of this one of my design :)

[elfang]

Shouldn't gameplay be the focus here? And not just the things you can do, but how it all feels. In Minecraft, everything is fine-tuned to have a specific mood to it: dropped entities float, the sounds blend well, options for basically everything. I think the biggest part of having a fine-tuned game is, well, fine-tuning it so everything just works with minimal bugs and minimal unexpected behavior. I think that before content (apart from the base) there needs to be some kind of a plan that brings the whole game together as one cohesive unit, rather than several choppy components. Otherwise players just won't know how to feel about it.

That's just my one cents though.

[texmex]

You’re spot on, elfang.

[burli]

Yes. but for me it's a great opportunity to pursuit one's own ideas.

Well, you are talking about coding and/or game design. It's true, Minetest is a good platform for people who want to realize own ideas (within the limitations of Minetest). And there are some good games out there. But all of them are more or less minigames and adventure maps.

Shouldn't gameplay be the focus here? And not just the things you can do, but how it all feels.

There are many terms that define a game. Gameplay, content, game mechanics, balance and so on. It depends on the type of game which of the terms is more or less important. When we talk about a predefined adventure map such as a Parkour or escape map, the content is not so important because the map is focused on something specific. These types of maps have a goal and a relatively short playing time. You only need to add the content that is necessary to finish the game.

When you play in Creative Mode, the content is the most important thing, not the gameplay or balance.

When you play survival, everything is important. Without content, you quickly run out of motivation because you've discovered everything. Without balance, some things may be too easy, others too hard. For example Mobs Redo. Mobs are too deadly at first, but when you have better armor, you don't even notice that you've been hit.

Just an example for content in Minecraft. I just walked around and suddenly I found an underwater structure. You can spend an hour or more just to explore this structure and try to find it's secrets.

Another, more simple example for content is shown in this video.

[Linuxdirk]

Just an example for content in Minecraft. I just walked around and suddenly I found an underwater structure. You can spend an hour or more just to explore this structure and try to find it's secrets.

Too bad that without additional mods there are any secrets. The giant caves look awesome, yes, but they're just bland. Except structure nothing happens in caves without mods.

[burli]

Just an example for content in Minecraft. I just walked around and suddenly I found an underwater structure. You can spend an hour or more just to explore this structure and try to find it's secrets.

Too bad that without additional mods there are any secrets. The giant caves look awesome, yes, but they're just bland. Except structure nothing happens in caves without mods.

I was talking about Minecraft Vanilla Demo Version. And there was a large structure in the Ocean. Not in a cave. Don't know if I will find it again