Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by rubenwardy » Post

Vulkan is in no means essential
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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Red_King_Cyclops » Post

texmex wrote:
Fixer wrote:I would rather see breakthroughs in actual gameplay in minetest game and final rename of engine/game.
This. Fancy shaders wont’t bring creativity in and of itself.
Agreed. Improving the engine is important, but making quality games and giving Minetest good content is more important and feasible right now.
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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by thomasthespacefox » Post

I think the main issue people here don't get, is minetest itself is a game engine,

much of the actual work is done by minetest.

as I understand, as such, minetest really uses irrlicht as a graphics engine more than anything else.

most of the suggestions seem to be full game engines.
Sad to say, but you can't just replace a door with a whole house. nor can you replace a graphics engine in a game engine, with an entire other game engine...

Even if irrlicht actually does a few other things, it still doesn't change the fact that minetest is not only a game engine, but a genre-dedicated one, with a huge set of specialized functionality for its target genre (which is voxel sandboxes obviously).

You can't just "re-implement" something that massively complex. any irrlicht replacement, would need to be of a similar level of use, as to not require recoding thousand upon thousands of C++ code...

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Inocudom » Post

Guess I should have considered the prospect that updating Minetest's graphical capabilities might cause it to compete with Minecraft, which would end very badly. I guess staying behind makes things safer overall. Better to be slow that to not be at all, eh?

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by skyace65 » Post

The Voxel world screenshot Extex shared on page 3 was made with a C++ module for Godot. Someone has taken that module and made a demo game project with it and released the first of three videos going over it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x758pT2X1MI

If you want to download the project files and try it for yourself they're here https://github.com/tinmanjuggernaut/vox ... e/fps_demo

The game uses a C++ module for Godot which can be found here https://github.com/Zylann/godot_voxel

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Brian Gaucher » Post

The biggest issue with Godot I see, is that that it requires modern OpenGL (>= 3.3). Which is required for many of those modern features everyone rages about. But that leaves support for old hardware in the dust. I play Minetest because it's one of the modern games I can actually play, that and STK. I am afraid losing old hardware would cause a great loss of players. And I will personally support only a version that I can play.
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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by texmex » Post

What hardware are you on?

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Inocudom » Post

Unless it is permanently and eternally impossible for them to get new hardware, all players will have to upgrade eventually. Besides, how in the world would Minetest survive in Goggle Stadia if its engine can't utilize the colossal computing power that it will have access to there?

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by ShallowDweller » Post

I can't decide if I should try to focus on Godot or Corona... (is this the right discussion to ask this question?)
Inocudom wrote:Unless it is permanently and eternally impossible for them to get new hardware, all players will have to upgrade eventually. Besides, how in the world would Minetest survive in Goggle Stadia if its engine can't utilize the colossal computing power that it will have access to there?
But why use all that power when you can get the job done with something that runs on a toaster? (Just curious)

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Quiark » Post

Guys, how many of you can code in C++ and actually help move Minetest to whatever your favourite engine?

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by v-rob » Post

Quite a few people can code C++ (at least partially [including me]), but transitioning to another engine would be a HUGE undertaking. All Irrlicht APIs would have to be migrated to the other engine's APIs, and many parts of the code would have to be completely restructured. Many new bugs would appear, and many already fixed bugs would become obsolete and cause new problems. In short, this really isn't at all feasible.

No, we'll just keep working with Irrlicht and making it better.
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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Hume2 » Post

I think, it might be easier to fork Irrlicht and make an unofficial release with all these bugs fixed.
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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Linuxdirk » Post

Hume2 wrote:I think, it might be easier to fork Irrlicht and make an unofficial release with all these bugs fixed.
Irrlicht is dead. A long-term goal should be making Minetest engine-independent using a compatibility layer. So when switching to another engine only said layer has to be adapted to the new engine.

If the change ever happens (not likely in the next couple of years) I think Godot would be a good replacement. Earlier in this thread someone posted about Godot's voxel capabilities.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by benrob0329 » Post

Godot is not at all the same thing as Irrlicht. Irrlicht is a graphics library, so MT would need a new graphics library, not an entire engine that wants to manage everything itself.

Any big change like this would likely cause numerous extra bugs as well, and potentially take years to finish. I'd much rather see development time used to fix how we use what we have right now.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Linuxdirk » Post

benrob0329 wrote:so MT would need a new graphics library, not an entire engine that wants to manage everything itself.
Maybe it is not a bad thing. This would fix so many issues.
benrob0329 wrote:... years to finish.
It would take years to even start. And thousands of posts in hundreds of discussions.
benrob0329 wrote:I'd much rather see development time used to fix how we use what we have right now.
Unfortunately this will be the case. The devs rather try to circumvent all the shortcomings of the already dead Irrlicht engine for the next 10 years instead of working towards an engine change or making Minetest engine-agnostic within the next 5 years.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by texmex » Post

I think that every code project will run its course. Throughout its lifespan it will see several phases with prototype in at the early stages and maintenance at the end. I think that Minetest is at least on that second half of such a timeline. That in and of itself is not a bad thing at all and we enjoy stability, feature additions and good maintenance alike. But an engine "switch" for the project won't, I think, happen within this same project but as a newly incepted one.

So I think most will be happier with reasonable expectations on the Minetest project.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Linuxdirk » Post

texmex wrote:But an engine "switch" for the project won't, I think, happen within this same project but as a newly incepted one.
There were already several concept of voxel worlds in other engines with Lua support but as far as I know none of the concepts were really made into something.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by texmex » Post

Linuxdirk wrote:
texmex wrote:But an engine "switch" for the project won't, I think, happen within this same project but as a newly incepted one.
There were already several concept of voxel worlds in other engines with Lua support but as far as I know none of the concepts were really made into something.
I’ve seen some too, and no, there aren’t any contenders currently but it’s still the only possible path forward for a modern engine, imo. Maybe one of those projects need an extra set of hands, who knows.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Mantar » Post

texmex wrote:But an engine "switch" for the project won't, I think, happen within this same project but as a newly incepted one.
I gotta say, it's been my experience that it's ALWAYS faster and better to rewrite in place than to start over from scratch. If the code is sanely designed to be modular, it's far easier to swap out parts until you get where you want to be, and if it's NOT reasonably modular, rewriting the code base piece-by-piece to be so not only gets you the ability to replace things without too much pain, but is also in the best interests of clarity, maintainability, and ease of development.

It is of course all moot if nobody wants to roll up their sleeves and do it -- Minetest's development seems like it's winding down, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Hume2 » Post

It would be nice to make an interface for the graphic engine. The game SuperTux has it, it can switch between SDL and OpenGL. The idea is simple: All calls of the graphic engine are wrapped by an abstract class. This class is then inherited by each graphic engine and calls the actual graphic functions.
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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Inocudom » Post

I have churned it in my head billions and billions of times and have always come to the same conclusion. Simply put, there needs to be a fork of Minetest specifically tailored for modern/gaming PCs. This is ultimately the solution that the developers of GZDoom had to resort to in order to appease both old and new machines. One type cannot appease all.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Walker » Post

Hume2 wrote:It would be nice to make an interface for the graphic engine. The game SuperTux has it, it can switch between SDL and OpenGL. The idea is simple: All calls of the graphic engine are wrapped by an abstract class. This class is then inherited by each graphic engine and calls the actual graphic functions.
+1
this is how i did it every time
in my opinion, it´s the only "clean" way ;)

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by DrFrankenstone » Post

Inocudom wrote:I have churned it in my head billions and billions of times and have always come to the same conclusion. Simply put, there needs to be a fork of Minetest specifically tailored for modern/gaming PCs. This is ultimately the solution that the developers of GZDoom had to resort to in order to appease both old and new machines. One type cannot appease all.
Would a fork even be bad? I don't think it would split the community much.

If the task of decoupling Minetest from the graphics engine is gargantuan then a fork would be needed just to go all-in, and by the time that was ready for adoption (if it were able to reach that point) the Irrlicht Minetest engine would be getting into its senior years and even ancient hardware would have moved on.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by Walker » Post

DrFrankenstone wrote:Would a fork even be bad?
i think yes ...

the best way is to have a layer betwen minetest and the rendering engine
thats make minetest future-profed and universal usable

i mean: making minetest openGL-depend is not a big think ... openGL will life longer than minetest ^^ ... but making minetest depend on other ( short-life ) thinks: makes minetest short-life

but yes ... the best way is to make minetest complet varible: selectable API ( openGL, DirectX, Software-Rendering, <what ever> ) and selectable Engine ( irrlicht, <what ever> )
Hume2 wrote:It would be nice to make an interface for the graphic engine. The game SuperTux has it, it can switch between SDL and OpenGL. The idea is simple: All calls of the graphic engine are wrapped by an abstract class. This class is then inherited by each graphic engine and calls the actual graphic functions.

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Re: Other, Superior Open Source Game Engines Exist Now... :D

by v-rob » Post

A fork would be a good thing because it would require a TON of time to separate the code, and that can't be feasibly done just on the engine. Look: I help work on the formspec code for Minetest, and to separate that, you would have to rewrite EVERYTHING. That's probably, in total, in the ten thousands of lines of code that you have to completely rewrite from scratch and test to make sure they have complete backwards compatibility. And that's just the formspec code, a relatively small portion of the Minetest engine and having nothing to do with 3d rendering. Not to mention the fact that this is still constantly changing and new features/bugfixes are being merged at a high rate, and discussions to replace it all are still going on.
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