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Introducing Our New Name

blog.minetest.net

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Re: Introducing Our New Name

#41

Post by Twirrim »

rkharsan64 wrote: post #21
Twirrim wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or pay Microsoft to host a "server" for you and like 8 other people as long as you obey the microsoft guidelines and drink enough verification cans. Or you can just run your own dedicated bedrock edition server, no need to pay anyone. https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server/bedrock

There's a big catch here: creating mods for Bedrock is difficult. And, Mojang is taking steps that make it difficult for modders to create stuff for Bedrock. [1] There's no match for the modding capabilities that Java edition gives you. [1]: https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/2309...

No disagreements there, but I was just correcting misinformation in the previous post

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#42

Post by jasonjayr »

runjake wrote: post #5

Name is awful but game itself looks awesome. Can any speak to how “good” it is, especially server play?

There are a lot of creative mods + abilities. That the Lua programming language is core to the engine, means it is easy to do all sorts of supported creative things with the engine. But some of the mechanics and 'smoothness' of play that you can get in Minecraft just isn't there yet in Minetest, due to how the network protocol works. Give it a shot, you can play a local world with very little effort, and if you know lua, look at some of the 'world' definition code.

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#43

Post by itronitron »

excalibur wrote: post #23

Yeah, this name sucks. It will endlessly be misread as "Luna-ti" and assigned astrological connotations, it sounds like a pharmaceutical, and it tells you nothing about the platform.

Luanti is easy to pronounce and distinct, but it's also vague enough that someone making a game using the Luanti platform will want to name their game something else.

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#44

Post by singpolyma3 »

barrettondricka wrote: post #14

Great, but I wish they invested their nomenclature resources into design and ease of access. https://bloxd.io/ is currently reaping kids who can't afford official Minecraft. (Browser based, free, ad driven) But then again, MineTest is a bunch of volunteers playing around with a tool, so you can't exactly force anybody to do anything.

So what exactly did you wish they did? Make a browser version?

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#45

Post by xanderlewis »

Affric wrote: post #33
xanderlewis wrote: post #28

I find it hard to take seriously much debate on naming things. Whatever name you choose is going to upset some people and please others; in the end, all you need is something fairly unique. You quickly forget any intrinsic meaning and it becomes transparent. ‘YouTube’ is a pretty amateurish sounding name and yet it stuck, and here we are now. When was the last time you even stopped and pondered its etymology? The nam…

I agree but I always thought YouTube was a great name for what it was. It was me choosing what was on (no pesky programming) and us making videos. It’s very different now but “you”, as in me, was very central to my idea of what YouTube was. And the TV was a CRT. It was the tube. And as per GWB it was a series of tubes it came through (facetious).

I agree, actually. But I do think it’s an odd name given what it’s grown into. And as far as I know there’s no movement to have it changed.

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#46

Post by owenpalmer »

barrettondricka wrote: post #14

Great, but I wish they invested their nomenclature resources into design and ease of access. https://bloxd.io/ is currently reaping kids who can't afford official Minecraft. (Browser based, free, ad driven) But then again, MineTest is a bunch of volunteers playing around with a tool, so you can't exactly force anybody to do anything.

Wow, Bloxd is really impressive. Works great on mobile.

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#47

Post by xp84 »

beeflet wrote: post #7
cortesoft wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You just visit another server and it downloads and sets up all of the server's mods. That's how mods work in Minecraft bedrock

Minecraft Bedrock Edition is Microsoft's freemium children's game where you buy "mods" and "skins" using minecoins and you can visit a number of pre-approved pay-to-win servers or pay Microsoft to host a "server" for you and like 8 other people as long as you obey the microsoft guidelines and drink enough verification cans. You might be confusing it with a beloved viral indie PC game called Minecraft (2011) which is…

Your dripping disdain for Bedrock seems pretty biased, and it seems like you have spent very little time with it. I’ve been playing it for a solid year because it’s what my kid can play (prefers touch controls) and the bedrock experience is light years away from a modern pay to win/in-game-currency focused game such as you’d find on a tablet.

(To any reader: Skip the rest of this comment unless you are curious to hear the answer to “Isn’t Minecraft Bedrock a crappy in-game-purchase machine pretending to be a game like the crap on mobile app stores? Why would anybody ever choose it over Java?”)

I know you said you only like the “old indie” version, but all my following comments apply to it as well since they’re about its huge omissions.

Going back to Java with its archaic menu system and weird, drifty controls was jarring. (I played back in Alpha and for a couple years after, then stopped until using Bedrock last year).

Bedrock supports simple LAN multiplayer! Java makes this possible only if you have a real computer (server) and know how. Any people playing Bedrock can play a LAN game with zero preparation, even 3 consoles, a PC, and an iPad.

It contains a listing of 5 or 6 servers, yes, which is 5-6 more than Java includes helpful links to. You can also click below that and type in an IP.

Yes, avatar costume items cost money. It’s because yes, 5-year-olds cannot use the Java skin editing mechanism of “just make a PNG file.” Of course, that’s all Java even has or had. And Bedrock has that as a free option too.

Overall the marketplace is something trivially easy to ignore (btw the actual game costs $20 so it’s not “freemium”.) It’s just another option on the main menu. But my kid has “bought” all manner of both fun and educational stuff on that marketplace for completely free so I’m glad it’s there. There’s a bunch of free stuff on there. One really cool thing I liked was the special “15 year journey” map and modpacks they put up for the occasion of the game’s 15th anniversary.

Again I know there are a ton of free mods for Java but that whole scene has become a nightmare for me with all these various weird third party programs I have to use to “apply” the mods. Again, not really a safe situation either to just have even a young teen on Google looking for downloads which may or may not be Minecraft mods. Or even non-tech-savvy adults, tbh.

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#48

Post by o11c »

runjake wrote: post #5

Name is awful but game itself looks awesome. Can any speak to how “good” it is, especially server play?

The thing that bugs me is how ... intrusive the object dependencies are. Outside of the most trivial mods, you absolutely must buy into one of the major ecosystems, and quite a few things can't be changed in an external mod, only in the ecosystem's core mods, because they're all registered in a single function that's not hookable. Changing the core mods themselves of course causes problems whenever you want to update them.

That said, some of the ecosystems (frameworks?) themselves are decent as-is. The two mineclone forks (I don't pretend to know the difference) are probably the best place to start.

Mapgen sucks if you want any kind of realism though. Even the mods that pretend to care about it (half of which are in lua and thus really slow) don't operate on a "top-down" level, so always end up with things like "water flows uphill in a circle". And the grid is very obvious, especially if you're obsessed with the dimensions of your base like I am. I also suspect poor RNG control in places. And there's definitely an idempotency option - if you quit (or crash) the game while mapgen is still running, you can end up with half-generated terrain.

Even the builtin mapgens are slow to generate new terrain if you use the "fast" cheat.

(this ended up being a bit more negative than I'd like; I don't intend to stop people from trying it)

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#49

Post by freedomben »

I absolutely adore minetest and have an enormous amount of love and respect for the people who have built it into the phenomenal platform that it is.

But damn, they are not great at naming things.

I have long wished they would rename from minetest to something else, because as silly as it is, one of the biggest barriers of adoption I have run into is the name. When people hear the name, it is confusing and they think it is stupid and a joke. Hell, I even joke about it sometimes too.

Naming things is very difficult, so I do feel for them. I also will give this new name some time and see if it grows on me. I am a bit skeptical, but they have more than earned some trust.

Regardless, this is a fantastic game and a fantastic platform, and I really don't understand why so many people play Minecraft when there is an open open source alternative that is this good.

The code is genuinely very good, and is a pleasure to read. It is one of the things I love about a great open source project, where it was done for the love of the art, not just to grab a paycheck. The code is well thought out and well written, and dare I say even beautiful. Exactly my kind of project!

Re: Introducing Our New Name

#50

Post by jawngee »

xp84 wrote: post #47
beeflet wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minecraft Bedrock Edition is Microsoft's freemium children's game where you buy "mods" and "skins" using minecoins and you can visit a number of pre-approved pay-to-win servers or pay Microsoft to host a "server" for you and like 8 other people as long as you obey the microsoft guidelines and drink enough verification cans. You might be confusing it with a beloved viral indie PC game called Minecraft (2011) which is…

Your dripping disdain for Bedrock seems pretty biased, and it seems like you have spent very little time with it. I’ve been playing it for a solid year because it’s what my kid can play (prefers touch controls) and the bedrock experience is light years away from a modern pay to win/in-game-currency focused game such as you’d find on a tablet. (To any reader: Skip the rest of this comment unless you are curious to hea…

> Bedrock supports simple LAN multiplayer! Java makes this > possible only if you have a real computer (server) and know > how. Any people playing Bedrock can play a LAN game with > zero preparation, even 3 consoles, a PC, and an iPad.

You can do this with Java. After you start a new world you select "Open to LAN" in the settings menu.

> Again I know there are a ton of free mods for Java but that whole scene has > become a nightmare for me with all these various weird third party programs > I have to use to “apply” the mods. Again, not really a safe situation either to > just have even a young teen on Google looking for downloads which may or > may not be Minecraft mods. Or even non-tech-savvy adults, tbh.

Nobody is downloading mods from Google. Modrinth, CurseForge and Prism are all very straightforward apps. You download the mods within those apps and they (mostly) handle dependencies. It's 1 click to launch Minecraft after that. My 6 and 9 year old use them easily and only one of them is a genius - but I won't say which one out of fear they might read these comments after I pass.

They both prefer Java fwiw.

And Essential mod gives you costume editing as well as making playing with friends even easier than it already is. https://essential.gg/

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