[HN Gopher] Minetest: An open source voxel game engine
___________________________________________________________________
Minetest: An open source voxel game engine
Author : doener
Score : 408 points
Date : 2023-04-30 20:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.minetest.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.minetest.net)
| George83728 wrote:
| Minetest has a lot of promise, but also has a lot of low-hanging
| fruit, particularly around the fit and finish of the game. For
| instance the configuration GUIs for setting up your controls is
| pretty bad, you still can't reconfigure your mouse keys without
| editing minetest.conf
|
| Still, it gives me hope that if Microsoft ever ruins Minecraft
| somehow, minetest should prove to be a good foundation for
| community-run block game.
| kragen wrote:
| right now microsoft has had minetest removed from the google
| play store for a month using groundless copyright accusations
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Groundless copyright accusations? If there were accusations,
| they seem grounded. I took one look at the site and those
| images are 95%+ similar to minecraft
| mepian wrote:
| I looked it up, they are actually groundless in this case:
| https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/13363#issuecomm
| e...
| spencerchubb wrote:
| I don't know copyright law very well, so I ask in
| earnest.
|
| If you copy the entire essence but still write the code
| yourself, is that not infringement?
| nullc wrote:
| And if you could-- minecraft itself was highly derivative
| if infiniminer. Many of the elaborations in mincraft
| itself existed as freely distributed community mods
| first, etc.
| rasz wrote:
| What if you call it Infiniminer?
| roywiggins wrote:
| You can't copyright an idea, just a particular
| realization of an idea.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E2%80%93expression_d
| ist...
|
| Game mechanics pretty much can't be copyrighted at all.
| drones wrote:
| Game mechanics haven't been copyrighted, but they have
| been patented.
|
| The developers of shadow of war has a patent on their
| nemesis system. It's not just an implementation detail,
| it's the entire concept.
|
| https://www.ign.com/articles/wb-games-nemesis-system-
| patent-...
|
| >The patent protects the "Nemesis characters, nemesis
| forts, social vendettas and followers in computer games."
|
| >This encompasses a hierarchy of procedurally-generated
| NPCs that interact with and remember the player's
| actions. The patent also covers changes to the NPCs'
| positions in the hierarchy, as well as their appearance
| and behaviour, again based on the actions of the player.
| kragen wrote:
| the link to the patent is incorrect
|
| but yeah software patents are a huge problem
|
| fortunately we don't have to worry about them in this
| case
| bitwize wrote:
| Per _Atari v. Philips_ , _Tetris Holding v. Xio
| Interactive_ , and _Spry Fox v. Lolapps_ , among other
| cases, substantial similarity in presentation is enough
| for a video game to infringe on another game's copyright,
| even if it shares no code or assets with the infringed-
| upon game. And yes, this means the idea that game
| mechanics or even "look and feel" are not copyrightable
| is a myth.
|
| The concept of Tetris, in particular, is protected with
| copyright, patent, and trademark armor so thick that if
| you write a clone of the game, Henk and Alexey will sue
| you into a smouldering crater.
| kragen wrote:
| debian and ubuntu ship an implementation of tetris in the
| bsdgames package (and bsd has included it since the 80s),
| gnu emacs has included tetris.el for 25 years (despite
| removing yow lines), and debian also includes bastet,
| blocks of the undead, crack-attack, gtkboard, kblocks
| (which is part of kde), ltris, netris, petris, stax,
| termtris, tetrinet, tint, vdr-plugin-games, vitetris,
| /usr/share/vim-scripts/plugin/tetris.vim, and
| quadrapassel (which is part of the official gnome
| release)
|
| you've been able to buy cheap '9999 in 1 block game'
| hardware with 200 nematic pixels, preprogrammed with
| tetris, for at least 15 years at any import port in the
| world
|
| i've written two tetris clones myself,
| http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/inexorable-misc/tetris
| and https://gitlab.com/kragen/bubbleos/blob/master/yeso/t
| etris.c, and no lawsuits have yet arrived
|
| also, minecraft is just an infiniminer clone, and there
| are fifty zillion clones of each of pacman, space
| invaders, breakout, snake, doom, and super mario
|
| so these novel legal precedents you mention, though
| indeed menacing, are at least still being very narrowly
| applied in practice; conflicting precedents include data
| east v. epyx, capcom v. data east, and atari v. amusement
| world
|
| even in tetris v. xio, the judge held that tetris's
| gameplay is not copyrightable, and the case was not
| appealed, so it isn't binding precedent outside that one
| district
|
| also your mention of patent suggests that maybe you're
| not very well informed about the area; tetris came out in
| 01985, so any patents on inventions disclosed by the game
| would have had to have an application date no later than
| 01986 (01985 outside the usa) and, barring lemelson-style
| submarine patent tricks to delay issuance until 02006 or
| later, be expired for over a decade now
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Minecraft was a copy of Infiniminer, AIUI, which has been
| open-sourced. I think you'd need more than one look to tell
| something was based on MC rather than just being part of
| the block genre that Infiniminer spawned?
|
| In my personal opinion, as USA has politically appointed
| judiciary it's hard to see copyright domain extension - eg
| to game mechanics - as anything other than overreach to use
| international treaties to protect USA business interests?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I wasn't aware of Infiniminer, but that makes a strong
| case to negate any strong claims from microsoft trying to
| stop minetest. But I also would change that name.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The copyright might be groundless, but using the name
| "Minetest" is incredibly risky as basically any court will
| decide it's trademark infringement, as it's too confusingly
| similar to "Minecraft".
|
| If I were the creator, I'd change the name before I'm forced
| to.
| taneq wrote:
| Amusingly they probably went with 'test' over 'craft' to
| avoid sabre-rattling from Blizzard. I think Freecraft was
| taken down at around that time?
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > if Microsoft ever ruins Minecraft somehow
|
| They're not ruining it as much as just letting it stagnate in
| favour of things like Story Mode, Dungeons, and Legends. If
| they'd put half the energy they've put into those shameless
| cash grabs into optimising the Java version, it would improve
| millions of players' daily experience. It should not require a
| suite of mods to get passable performance.
| Gigachad wrote:
| They are ruining it by trying to control multi player. Users
| are being banned from the entirety of multiplayer over screen
| recordings of greifing.
|
| It's honestly outrageous that MS thinks they should control
| what happens on other peoples servers.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| The Minecraft IAP and server spam is getting pretty close.
| rmorey wrote:
| This is the major reason I stay away from bedrock versions,
| java seems to have way less of this
| anonym29 wrote:
| Right now, Microsoft is perm-banning accounts from all servers
| for gameplay activity that is openly encouraged on certain
| servers, like griefing, which is a fundamental aspect of
| anarchy servers like 2b2t; to say nothing of the speech
| policing.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| not in my experience. const (the only playable anarchy
| server) is as vile and wild as ever and nobody got banned
| AFAICT. 2b was hot trash for a long time now and it mostly
| serves to fuel hauses raging coke addiction
| George83728 wrote:
| AFAIK the chat reporting systems aren't enabled on servers
| like 2b2t (not least because 2b2t runs an ancient version of
| minecraft, but also because servers that want to opt-out can
| do so using mods or plugins which disable the system, or by
| enabling "offline" mode.)
|
| Nevertheless, it's a very troubling development and is the
| main source of my concern for the future of Minecraft. I find
| Microsoft's excuses for this system wholly unconvincing;
| Minecraft became _the most_ popular game for all ages despite
| lacking such reporting systems for years, so obviously it isn
| 't necessary. This reports system is another datapoint in the
| trend of software corporations going on authoritarian power-
| trips.
| DefineOutside wrote:
| They banned people for mass scanning billions of IP addresses
| then creating bots to automatically grief these small
| servers.
|
| I don't know how you can justify this. This isn't someone
| being an asshole on 2b2t... this is someone destroying
| thousands of small servers just to be destructive.
| jahsome wrote:
| There is some serious cognitive dissonance in the Minecraft
| community. There's a narrative that Microsoft is
| "destroying" the community that does not align with
| reality.
|
| Most recently, the outrage was over the (entirely
| optional!) chat moderation features on private servers, and
| the mindless recitation that it would lead to widespread
| abuse and false-positive bans. It didn't.
|
| I can only assume it's the result of non-technical people
| who know _just enough_ to think they know what they're
| talking about parroting misinformation in discords,
| Twitter, YouTube comments, etc. Perhaps it's a just a
| younger, more impressionable audience.
|
| There is seemingly no reasoning with them either. They will
| vehemently defend wild points with zero evidence, and often
| with evidence to the contrary readily available.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Meta comment.
|
| This comment is a great example of doing what you accuse
| others of:
|
| -- makes grand claims without evidence being presented
|
| -- accuses others of making grand claims without evidence
| being presented
|
| Whilst also pre-empting any dissent by stating that any
| counter-arguments are "wild", and that people who aren't
| on your side are deficient.
|
| It's bad logic and bad rhetoric.
| [deleted]
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| This is how outrage spreads on the Internet, through
| "very online" communities, and gaming tends to have a lot
| of them. People who have an axe to grind against X (big
| tech company, a streamer, a game, etc) exaggerate the
| truth and make lots of paranoid points. These communities
| tend to be very big about solidarity so everyone else in
| the community parrots the message and through a game of
| telephone fake rumors whip up outrage.
|
| It happens on HN a lot these days too on pretty much any
| Big Tech related topic.
| technerder wrote:
| I could be wrong but IIRC the chat moderation can not be
| disabled on a per server basis. Microsoft forces it onto
| every server and if your account is banned because of
| something you said on one server you won't be able to
| join other servers, even those you run yourself.
| jahsome wrote:
| I run a server. Chat signing isn't enabled. Upon login,
| the user sees a message along the lines of "chat can't be
| verified on this server." Reporting doesn't work.
| Everything else works just fine.
| aprilnya wrote:
| But can someone who got banned by Microsoft still join
| your server?
| lyu07282 wrote:
| This was exactly the point of the outrage, servers ought
| to be able to opt out of this system but they can't.
| There are mods [1] that server admins can use to remove
| the chat message signatures, players are powerless if
| they strip the signature that certified ever message they
| send, vanilla servers will block them by default and
| prevent them from joining.
|
| It is true however that there wasn't really the wave of
| false positive bans happening that the community was
| expecting. At least as far as I'm aware.
|
| [1] https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/no-chat-
| reports
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Can't you just run a third party server?
| nickelpro wrote:
| Because of the pseudo-open nature of the MC source code,
| in practice it is trivial to run an authenticated server
| without signed chat
| mort96 wrote:
| Microsoft turned every PC user who doesn't use Windows
| from a first-class player into a second-class player who
| can't play what's now branded as "Minecraft". It's
| impossible for Linux and Mac players to play the game
| with any of the consoles, and there's a good chance you
| can't play with Windows people thanks to how Microsoft
| railroads you away from "Minecraft: Java Edition".
|
| They've split the community and shown clear hostility to
| people who aren't using Windows. What more do you need to
| conclude that Microsoft is "destroying" Minecraft?
| jahsome wrote:
| Could you please explain your points?
| mort96 wrote:
| There used to be a game called Minecraft. It was written
| in Java, and was the same on Windows, macOS and Linux
| (and any other platform with a Java runtime). People on
| all platforms could play the same game with each other.
| They also made a C++ reimplementation of Minecraft -
| codenamed "Bedrock" - which they used for the console and
| phone editions of Minecraft.
|
| Eventually, they released a "Windows 10 Edition", based
| on the Bedrock code base. This version is incompatible
| with Linux and macOS, and can't play multiplayer with the
| Java client.
|
| Later, they renamed the Java client from "Minecraft" to
| "Minecraft: Java Edition", and renamed "Minecraft:
| Windows 10 Edition" to "Minecraft". They also started
| railroading buyers towards this game formally known as
| "Minecraft: Windows 10 Edition".
|
| As a result, the definitive version of Minecraft, the
| version someone gets if you just tell them to "buy
| Minecraft", does not work on Linux or macOS. If you're a
| Linux or Mac user, and you want to play Minecraft with a
| friend who uses Windows, you're probably going to find
| that their game is incompatible with yours. Because as a
| Linux or Mac user, you don't get to play the version
| branded as simply "Minecraft". You're off in your own
| separate world, playing the incompatible game known as
| "Minecraft: Java Edition".
|
| To add insult to injury, there's nothing technically
| preventing the game now known as "Minecraft" from working
| on Linux and macOS. "Minecraft Education" is a product
| based on the Bedrock code base which is available on
| Linux (well, ChromeOS) and macOS.
|
| Does that make it clearer?
| George83728 wrote:
| For what little it's worth, the community has created a
| plugin for Java edition servers called 'Geyser' which
| allows bedrock clients to join an java edition server.
|
| (Microsoft obviously have no intention of bridging this
| divide, but hobbyists manage to do it for free...)
| mort96 wrote:
| That plug-in helps if you're a Minecraft player and want
| to play with your friends who play on a Minecraft: Java
| Edition server with that plug-in. It doesn't help if
| you're a Minecraft: Java Edition player and want to play
| with your friends who play Minecraft.
|
| Basically, it just further solidifies Minecraft players
| as the first-class citizens of the community and
| Minecraft: Java Edition players as second-class.
| jahsome wrote:
| Seems like you insinuate cross-platform Java to Bedrock
| play was possible at some point, and now isn't. I don't
| think that was ever the case.
|
| In any case, I don't see how any of what you described
| could be characterized as "hostile."
| mort96 wrote:
| I did not mean to insinuate that playing multiplayer
| between Java and Bedrock was possible at some point. I
| mean to say that playing multiplayer "Minecraft" between
| Linux, Windows and macOS was possible, but is no longer
| possible, since "Minecraft" is now a product which
| doesn't work on Linux and macOS.
|
| If you don't see how what I described could be
| characterized as "hostile", you've either misunderstood
| something, or we have a different understanding of what
| "hostile" means.
| jahsome wrote:
| > we have a different understanding of what "hostile"
| means.
|
| Indeed.
| rixthefox wrote:
| Pray tell what you call it then:
|
| A company takes a game that had a very lively multiplayer
| community, replaces the game engine that was based on
| software that could run on any platform as long as it
| supported Java to .NET where the only possible platform
| is Windows. Take everyone who has ever purchased the game
| and force them to migrate their accounts to a Microsoft
| account in order to continue playing, then intentionally
| make the two versions of the game incompatible just to
| force people to play a watered down "definitive edition"
| that still lacks many of the features that allowed the
| community to thrive in the first place while issuing all
| these updates that essentially equate to "spyware".
|
| Yes, I think the word you are looking for is, in fact,
| Hostile.
| George83728 wrote:
| Nitpick: Bedrock edition uses C++ not .NET. Either of
| these could support Linux in principle (as noted, Bedrock
| edition runs on ChromeOS over a Linux kernel), but
| Microsoft doesn't care to facilitate that.
| tehbeard wrote:
| Let's actually give some context to the chat moderation
| issue rather than just your hearsay on the matter that
| dismisses without any consideration one side of it in
| favour of Mojang.
|
| 1. Chat moderation is *required*, unless you modify the
| vanilla game. There is no toggle for it on vanilla. You
| can choose to not enforce it for clients connecting to
| your server, but if they are a vanilla client they will
| sign chat regardless.
|
| 2. The initial wording of the rules that could result in
| a permanent ban, were incredibly loose & vague, allowing
| for bans for things such as swearing or alcohol/drugs,
| regardless of player age / legal status in their
| countries. This was something the community was able to
| change through pressure and the "outrage" you belittle.
|
| 3. > ...and the mindless recitation that it would lead to
| widespread abuse and false-positive bans. It didn't.
|
| The reason it didn't was that since this community has a
| pretty tech-savvy sub-community of modders, we pulled
| apart that section of the code to examine it. And what we
| found was horrifying from a security standpoint.
|
| Your message is signed by you (sig psuedocode in
| brackets):
|
| "Want to play a round of spleef?"(JohnCrafter)
| "Sure"(jahsome)
|
| Nothing, absolutely nothing in those initial few
| snapshots, ties your "Sure" to the context of a spleef
| match, or any proceeding chat. So with a burner account,
| one could change it to:
|
| "The gays sure have ruined America, they must be
| purged."(BurnerAccount) "Sure"(jahsome)
|
| It took several more snapshot releases before they
| started to actually implement a chain of context with
| signing, where one could prove what you replied to, or
| that a report had be adulterated. Again, psuedocode for
| how it's signed now after the "outrage":
|
| "Anyone selling saddles?"(TexRanger) "Want to play a
| round of spleef?"(JohnCrafter+saddleMessage)
| "Sure"(jahsome+saddleMessage+spleefMessage)
|
| 4. The planned release schedule, and the "community
| consultation"
|
| Something that seems missed to the history books, is that
| the development cycle for this was going to be one
| snapshot, one pre release, then release (In total, 2
| weeks for community at large to see and respond before
| it's live to all)
|
| That seems, rather short compared to most other previous
| releases that featured such a big feature? If it was
| adding emojis, sure. But a signature system, and full
| reporting framework? Turns out, from leaks, they had
| consulted a very, very small subset of the community
| under NDA on a private discord for about a year...
|
| And it instead took 8 weeks to be launched. Due to the
| above mentioned issues with both the vagueness of planned
| rules, and the severe holes in the implementation as well
| as debate over the "stigmatization" being applied to
| unsigned chat messages.
|
| One should also factor in that at this time, a prominent
| content creator within the community died. Which is never
| going to go well for "emotional stability" with young
| fans and likely contributed to some of the vitriol thrown
| about.
|
| The Java community where much of this stemmed from, also
| has some trust issues with Mojang/Microsoft over previous
| debacles such as the ownership of Bukkit, and licencing
| around obfuscation mappings that were presented as a
| "here, use these to help with modding" but licenced very
| much more as a "look, but don't you dare touch".
|
| And finally, Mojang had been, having issues shall we say,
| with their content release schedule up to that point
| (tl;dr the "Caves & Cliffs" update was understandably
| split in two during the start of the pandemic, but then
| further features from it slipped to the Wild update which
| even before chat reporting, had it's own drama
| surrounding "removed content" and reasons given by Mojang
| for it). Mojang had "used up" a lot of community goodwill
| before dropping a controversial feature in.
|
| This in no way excuses the doxxing and personal
| attacks/threats levelled at the employees of Mojang. It
| was abhorrent and detracted from getting the real issues
| with this release/feature, resolved.
|
| But at the same time, claiming it was all hysterics
| washes away alot of the problems with how it was
| implemented, and the sheer lack of consideration for the
| optics of adding a feature quickly with little to no
| public consultation, on a game that has been "public" in
| it's development for years.
| jahsome wrote:
| I just don't understand the entitlement present. It's a
| 10-year-old game. To receive any update should be lauded
| by the community. To dictate the development cycle of
| those updates is... pretty odd to me, especially from a
| hn reader.
| mort96 wrote:
| Not all updates are good. If it seems like a company is
| going to publish an update which will break the product
| for a lot of people, there's nothing wrong with pushing
| back against it. There is no moral imperative to be
| thankful that a product is receiving updates regardless
| of the content of the updates.
| jahsome wrote:
| What was broken?
|
| If you don't want the update, don't use it...
| mort96 wrote:
| Here's an excellent comment which describes the issues:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35769764
|
| Staying on an old version in perpetuity is often
| unrealistic.
| jahsome wrote:
| Ok.
| hooby wrote:
| When my Mojang account was forcibly transferred over to a
| Microsoft account, I suddenly no longer owned Minecraft.
|
| And since I no longer had access to the email account I had
| used for the original purchase nine years prior, Microsoft
| support outright refused to even talk to me, unless I prove
| ownership beyond all doubt.
|
| That I owned the email address currently linked to the account,
| and had played the game just a week before, and that I knew the
| security questions/answers wasn't proof enough for them. And
| yes I really KNEW all the security answers - as those were
| stored in my keepass.
|
| They treated me like a criminal, and I never learned whether
| the game disappeared by accident, or if they removed it
| intentionally because some algorithm thought I got it
| illegitimately...
|
| As far as I personally am concerned, they already did ruin
| Minecraft.
| herbst wrote:
| Same. Haven't played Minecraft since then. I won't bother
| with Microsoft about this. And this from someone who did earn
| his income with this game.
|
| IMO they already ruined Minecraft by deciding to rewrite it
| and run with 2 complete seperate editions and only care about
| the -.NET- Bedrock one.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Bedrock is in C++, and the development workflow is that
| many features are still first development in Java version,
| and then redone on the C++ later.
|
| Java version isn't going away, as Bedrock still doesn't
| support many of the scenarios, and Microsoft doesn't want
| to lose that userbase.
| FireInsight wrote:
| I thought Bedrock edition was C++?
| herbst wrote:
| No idea honestly. The initial launcher updates definitely
| have been .NET and we're completely broken on Linux. I
| never went any deeper than accidentally updating the
| launcher back then.
| bscphil wrote:
| > if Microsoft ever ruins Minecraft somehow
|
| Honestly I haven't touched Minecraft since Microsoft started
| enforcing "you have to have a Microsoft account". It's not
| ruining the game per se, and it's not an overwhelmingly
| burdensome thing, it has just raised the activation energy of
| getting back into the game enough that I haven't summoned the
| will yet.
| marak830 wrote:
| And then there are people like me who purchased the game, and
| now cannot play it.
|
| This is why I f#$@ing pirate you idiot managers
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I bought Minecraft for my son and I've been extremely
| frustrated by this requirement and that there's seemingly no
| way to stay signed in-- I've had to print out my MS account
| details and tape them to his computer so he can sign in
| whenever he needs.
| amlib wrote:
| I've worked around this by printing the command line while
| minecraft is open with something like:
|
| cat /proc/$(pgrep java)/cmdline | sed -e "s/\x00/ /g"
|
| And then pasting that sucker in a script wrapped around a
| .desktop file and from then on only launching that. Opens
| just as fast as it did back in 2010 and I don't need to
| open the launcher unless I need to update the game or
| something like that.
|
| I only play on single-player, haven't tested on
| multiplayer. The tokens might expire after some time and
| thus require you to "reseed" the command line from time to
| time.
| teekert wrote:
| If you are on Linux, this is a known issue, I think you
| need Gnome Keyring installed (on any DE) to avoid this
| behavior.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Okay! Thanks for this. Yeah it's on a bog standard Ubuntu
| 20.04 install; I didn't realise this might be fixable by
| installing additional software.
| teekert wrote:
| Fwiw I think standard 20.04 already has gnome keyring. As
| suggested here, try a launcher perhaps? I think the one
| in the store has been working fine for me.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I'm using the official Minecraft launcher, likely from
| the snap store? In any case, knowing that this is
| fixable, I will take a closer look when I have a chance.
|
| Ironically, for all this trouble, at least we were able
| to get Minecraft running _at all_ on Ubuntu-- on a
| separate Windows 10 machine I couldn 't get it going at
| all. Might try again at some point with a VM so that we
| can play together.
| bscphil wrote:
| Complete speculation on my part, but I wonder if maybe
| snap applications have trouble accessing the keyring from
| inside the sandbox.
| esskay wrote:
| I'd recommend using a launcher, it stops that happening. I
| use Prism Launcher and after the initial sign in about a
| year ago I've never been asked to log in again even after
| going a few months of not playing it.
| platz wrote:
| use multimc
| mort96 wrote:
| Wasn't there a lot of drama around MultiMC recently?
| tmtvl wrote:
| You may be thinking of the PolyMC->Prism Launcher
| transition.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Minetest is nowhere near Minecraft... but it's still fun, and I
| wish the developers the best (especially as Minecraft gets more
| and more heavy-handed).
|
| I would strongly recommend that anyone playing Minetest get a
| texture pack, basically any would do, because the stock textures
| do not leave a good impression.
| comrad wrote:
| Minetest is really just a base game and an engine. Look into
| Mineclone2, a minetest-game.
|
| https://content.minetest.net/packages/Wuzzy/mineclone2/
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I tried that recently but I found the landscape generation to
| be really poor. I tried all the various generators, to no
| avail.
|
| It's been a while since I played Minecraft but I can't recall
| the maps being that poorly constructed.
|
| It really distracted me from the game, to the point I stopped
| after just a few hours.
|
| Rest was pretty good tho, so a shame.
| em-bee wrote:
| i found a server with a nice community, which is what keeps
| me playing. but to start my own world i'd wish for better
| map generators. more realistic mountains, rivers, climates,
| etc.
|
| and maybe some powerful tools would be nice, to efficiently
| build streets or dig new rivers, grow mountains, ... so you
| can efficiently create a map by hand, or modify a map to
| add or remove features.
|
| fortunately, new map generators are being worked on, so
| there is hope for the future.
| opan wrote:
| I agree with the first half of what you said, but for people
| considering MineClone2, be aware that it doesn't have the
| same mod support as the base game, and so modifying it
| doesn't always work well. It also adds some of Minecraft's
| limitations that were otherwise missing in Minetest, such as
| a more restrictive height limit in both directions. You can
| normally dig much much deeper and climb much higher in
| Minetest than Minecraft, and I think this is one of the
| cooler parts of Minetest.
|
| MineClone2 is fun if you know Minecraft and you want
| something ready to play immediately, but if you have a
| background of playing modded Minecraft, don't expect to be
| able to take all the cool Minetest mods and slap them over
| MineClone2. This means you're playing a clone of _vanilla_
| Minecraft. For many this isn 't very fun anymore. You'll
| probably want to start from scratch and build on top of the
| default minetest_game to enjoy all the cool mods out there,
| such as df_caverns.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I play Minetest 2 with my kids and we have a great time.
| detaro wrote:
| When you say "Minetest", are you referring to the default
| "game" that comes with it? The _game engine_ part is important!
| George83728 wrote:
| It would be nice if the default "Minetest Game" were less
| bare bones, since that is the experience most people new to
| minetest will probably encounter first. Some decisions in
| "Minetest Game", like broken blocks going straight into your
| inventory instead of falling to the ground, seem like they're
| different for the sake of being different; I have a gut
| feeling the Minetest devs are consciously staying off
| Mojang's turf.
| teddyh wrote:
| s/Mojang/Microsoft/
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| I would love for this to reach parity with minecraft. They've
| made so much money off of Minecraft but they never really add
| anything in updates and they keep adding evil data mining stuff.
|
| An electricity system and machines like modded mc but in a base
| game would be so good.
| emmelaich wrote:
| If you like this you may want to also have a look at voxraygames
| by the irrepressible @Aardappel
|
| Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlNTKN4HSJQ
| jesse__ wrote:
| That looks awesome. I'm really looking forward to some high-
| fidelity voxel engines getting more mature
| kragen wrote:
| is this going to be proprietary
| bullen wrote:
| Uses lobster programming language apparently.
| uvnq wrote:
| As a fan of older minecraft versions I'm looking forward to
| messing around with this with friends
| esskay wrote:
| Older java minecraft is still very much alive and well. There's
| thousands of servers that still use old versions and have
| hundreds, sometimes thousands of members online at a time.
| gatane wrote:
| A minecraft classic client made in C, with its own launcher.
| https://www.classicube.net/
| tjoff wrote:
| I do not mind the minecraft aesthetic, but it feels a bit weird
| if all voxels evolved into was that. Most promising showcase (for
| its time) that I know of was Delta Force from 1998 in which the
| landscape geometry was vastly more detailed. But then again I
| haven't been paying attention and might be missing many obvious
| examples. I'm guessing graphics hardware decided against it but
| are there more modern showcases? Or any other future of voxels?
|
| Delta Force images: https://tagn.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/delta-
| force-a-memory-o...
|
| Delta Force video: https://youtu.be/Fnj-q3ux-Us?t=287
| croes wrote:
| Outcast was also great
| LeonM wrote:
| Also first thing that came to my mind. Also, I can recommend
| playing the remaster (Second Contact).
| croes wrote:
| Back then they had a bug in the naming of the quality
| settings, so that the high quality was labeled low and vice
| versa.
|
| Played the whole game in bad quality until near the end
| astrobe_ wrote:
| It's not just "that". Minetest is actually a "voxel game
| engine", and allows all sorts of things. A better showcase is
| the community's mod catalog, "ContentDB" [1].
|
| Some mods/games even try to break out from the cubic theme, for
| instance "Little Lady" [2] or the "Rocks" mod [3]
|
| It should be mentioned, though, that beyond those "extreme"
| cases, the MC-like voxel model is vastly easier to deal with
| for mod creators, and that's really a key point. That's the
| kind of thing a high-school kids can hack because it's Lua and
| PNG textures all the way.
|
| [1] https://content.minetest.net/ [2]
| https://content.minetest.net/packages/Just_Visiting/littlela...
| [3] https://content.minetest.net/packages/Just_Visiting/rocks/
| hypertexthero wrote:
| There was also Comanche: Maximum Overkill, one of the first
| voxel-based games, quite impressive for 1992!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comanche:_Maximum_Overkill
| butz wrote:
| Check out Voxatron (https://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php),
| it's like Pico8, but in voxels.
| criley2 wrote:
| Smooth of voxel terrain isn't new, ultimately it doesn't play
| well so it isn't included in most voxel games. Minecraft stores
| data as voxels but renders as polygons (blocks). There are
| voxel rendering techniques as well. But at the end of the day
| it comes down to triangles or rays, right? So that voxel data
| has to be turned into polygons sooner or later, and the more
| magic you do to it, the less coherent these polygons are as a
| gaming mechanic. Blocks turn out to be fast/cheap to render and
| are highly usable in gaming mechanics.
|
| I think the reality is that in Minecraft for example, every
| voxel is in memory, including the 99% of them you can't see. In
| minecraft, a chunk is up to 16x255x16 or 65,536 voxels, and
| with a view distance of 10, that's 21x21 or 441 chunks loaded,
| with up to 28,901,376 voxels in memory.
|
| So whatever we do to turn voxels into polygons, we're going to
| likely be doing it across an enormous amount of data (relative
| to a home computer).
|
| (And remember, in minecraft, chunk generation occurs live too.
| No world pre-gen. As you walk around, the game is inventing the
| world 65k blocks at a time!)
| sdfjkl wrote:
| The undeservedly little-known Planet Explorers1 has a rather
| nice voxel engine and is using it well. Mine anything, dig
| tunnels in any shape, modify terrain, etc.
|
| Without the cuboid look.
|
| 1 https://store.steampowered.com/app/237870/Planet_Explorers/
| loupol wrote:
| If I recall properly, Minetest started out as an open-source
| Minecraft clone hence the aesthetics.
|
| Best looking modern voxel games I know of are Teardown[0] and
| Shadows of Doubt[1].
|
| [0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1167630/Teardown/
|
| [1]:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/986130/Shadows_of_Doubt/
| vrglvrglvrgl wrote:
| [dead]
| CaesarA wrote:
| Reminds me of Ken Silverman's old projects.
| socceroos wrote:
| I've got Minetest on my machines. Another good one along these
| lines is Veloren. It's a Rust voxel game along the lines of
| minecraft and Dwarf Fortress.
|
| https://veloren.net/
| parlortricks wrote:
| never heard of this before looks great
| rain1 wrote:
| Is there a mod that adds PNP/NPN style transistors?
| newswasboring wrote:
| It's completely possible that I'm having a dumb moment, but where
| can I learn to make games with this engine? I really cannot find
| a tutorial.
| xigoi wrote:
| You're right, the documentation is all over the place and
| pretty hard to find.
|
| https://rubenwardy.com/minetest_modding_book/en/index.html
|
| https://dev.minetest.net/Main_Page
| rubenwardy wrote:
| Totally not biased, but that first link is a great place to
| start.
|
| Note that the process for making games is the same as for
| making mods - games are a collection of mod(ule)s.
|
| I'll make a note about the docs being hard to find, obviously
| room to improve here. This page is intended to be the
| starting page for those interested in modding/game making, it
| gives an overview and links to other resources:
| https://dev.minetest.net/Modding_Intro
| newswasboring wrote:
| > Note that the process for making games is the same as for
| making mods - games are a collection of mod(ule)s.
|
| I think this is what is confusing. If you call it a game
| engine, I expect it to make... Games. It's just weird is
| all.
| jamilton wrote:
| A Minetest game I recommend is Nodecore:
| https://content.minetest.net/packages/Warr1024/nodecore/
|
| Description: "A surreal dream-world where everything is possible
| but nothing is easy. Peaceful and Zen. Brutally obstinate.
| Prepare to unlearn everything you thought you knew about voxel
| sandbox games."
|
| "Brutally obstinate" is right, it's pretty mystifying and I
| didn't get very far when I played it, but it's definitely
| interesting. It's like heavily modded Minecraft from another
| dimension. If you like a game where figuring out how to play is
| part of the challenge, I think you'd like Nodecore.
| anthk wrote:
| So this is like Minetest blended with The Powder Toy?
| samstave wrote:
| with a sprinkle of QWOP
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Man, I spent way too much time on qwop, and still can only
| finish it like 1% of the time...
| xigoi wrote:
| For a more Minecraft-like - but still unique - experience, I
| recommend MeseCraft: http://mesecraft.com/
| poopsmithe wrote:
| I had a Minecraft background and I disliked Nodecore. I would
| not recommend Nodecore if you want a minecraft-like experience.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I've always bounced off of Minetest at the "build a game out of
| modpacks" stage.
|
| Anyone have recommendations? Nodecore looks fun, am open to
| others as well.
| tmtvl wrote:
| I haven't tried it yet, but Techage looks interesting. Might be
| as close to GregTech as we can get in Minetest (GregTest?).
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Take a look at MultiCraft, a fork. I paid (less than a dollar)
| for the mobile version, but my understanding is that you can
| compile the repo code and get a runnable version yourself
| (whether for PC or Android). It's on Github.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| MineClone2 is somewhat like an older Java version of MC.
| opan wrote:
| You could try joining a public server (I don't have any
| recommendations, don't play on them much myself) and seeing
| what mods they use, or just browse the contentdb for stuff that
| looks cool. This is definitely an issue that makes the game
| less approachable to new players. It's hard to get the ideal
| experience of a bunch of cool mods that work well together if
| you don't already know which mods are good or have a friend
| hosting a server for you that put the mods together.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| Minetest has the same problem as editors like Vim do - it has
| only the ingredients for what most people use as the final
| product, and you have to put them together yourself, with the
| help of plugins and addons. People will rattle off a list of
| thirty-odd addons ("this one for monsters, that one a different
| type of monsters, this one for small animals, this one has small
| and medium animals, this one adds villagers, this one makes them
| actually do something, etc."). There's also very sparse info on
| what addons actually work well with each other, whether the
| enhanced armor addon will work with this mobs addon, or whether
| they don't recognize each other, or if the combo will just not
| let the game start...
|
| In the end, since I mostly play on mobile anyway, I went with
| this paid fork of this called MultiCraft, that's just install-
| and-play. It's less than a dollar (at least in my currency), and
| for someone who just wants a sandbox game to play casually, it
| turned out to be the much easier, less headache-inducing option.
| (I believe the PC version of MultiCraft is free to play too, you
| just have to compile it yourself.)
| realjhol wrote:
| There is also Terasology - a Minecraft-like voxel game with fancy
| graphics: https://terasology.org/
| grapesurgeon wrote:
| its an interesting project with a lot of promise, but its not
| something id rather play over minecraft honestly. i hate what
| microsoft has done with minecraft for sure though.
| wg0 wrote:
| I understand what is a database server and what is a web server
| but what is a Minecraft server? What does it store? Whole map and
| state and user accounts? Is there some sort of federation or one
| has to create an account on every server?
|
| Server is also in Java? Requires GPU as well? Open source servers
| also exist? What is griefing?
|
| No idea about any of this never played Minecraft.
|
| Edit: Typos and open source
| drones wrote:
| From my own experience running a server for friends:
|
| No federation. For either version of minecraft you have an
| account you register with microsoft, which among other things
| provides you with a UUID, allowing users to be identified and
| authenticated across different servers. The various UUID
| authentication utilities are not necessary to set up a server,
| they are just offered for security.
|
| Minecraft servers store world data, NPC states, and player
| inventories. All server data is unique to that server (e.g
| players cannot take an inventory from one game server and
| transfer it to another, or access worlds from different
| servers)
|
| There are two versions of Minecraft: Java (written in java,
| only available on PC) and Bedrock (available on all platforms,
| and also allow cross play between platforms). PC players
| generally prefer Java as it was the first version and supports
| modding. The server side of minecraft Java is also written in
| java. Not sure what the GPU part is referencing.
|
| Minetest in particular is open source, by the fact that the
| underlying game engine can be modified to create new
| functionality not available in the base game. In regular
| Minecraft there is restriction on what exactly a Minecraft
| server can do and what client-side modifications can be made.
|
| Griefing is basically trolling in game: destroying other
| player's buildings, repeatedly killing them in game, etc. Some
| server moderators will allow this, some don't.
|
| Hope this helps :)
| wg0 wrote:
| Thank you. I have never played Minecraft but it is a huge
| phenomenon,a game that's really very popular.
|
| By GPU I meant if server also requires some GPU but seems
| like from your description that it doesn't.
|
| Thank you again for the detailed answer.
| drones wrote:
| That's right, you don't need a GPU to host a server. In
| fact, I hosted my server using a 4GB ram raspberry pi on
| linux, supporting 6 concurrent players at one point without
| a hitch. The actual server binary only ever had access to
| about ~2 Gigs of ram at any one time.
| simion314 wrote:
| Bedrock is only for Windows on PC.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Isn't Bedrock now basically "anything that isn't the Java
| edition"? Like iOS, consoles, etc.?
| Snacklive wrote:
| Yes, you are correct. Java is the one that's exclusively
| on desktop and it has "Java" added to the name
|
| Bedrock its just "Minecraft" and includes all the other
| platforms
| wg0 wrote:
| Again being a noob on Minecraft, how does Java work for a
| game like that? I mean performance wise? Whereas
| traditionally people would write such a thing in some
| typical game engine.
| fifticon wrote:
| Performancewise java actually isn't bad. In the middle
| nineties, java would feel slow compared to e.g. C, but
| we've come a long way since. Some basic tricks are
| sticking to fixed arrays, and avoiding angering the
| garbage collector by repeatedly allocating and
| deallocating stuff. Dave's garage in recent years did an
| involved 'which languages are fastest' benchmark, where
| java was, I think, number 5? It was beaten by Zig, Rust,
| C and C++, and the numbers of java and C++ were quite
| similar. (Of course such a test is not generally valid,
| anything can be optimized to be 'the fastest ever', if
| there are no limitations on what goes. In that test, they
| used a prime number sieve).
|
| Usually, Minecraft is sped up by using more clever
| algorithms(OptiFine), not switching to different
| languages.
|
| For how Minecraft has performed, in every sense
| (including on hand-me-down laptops of 6-year olds), java
| has served well. Of course, using C or C++ might have
| sped it up by a factor of x2-x5, but it has not been a
| pain point, to my knowledge.
| xigency wrote:
| The lineage of voxel miners is quite interesting. MineCraft is
| obviously trailblazing, but it was preceded by a few others like
| Infiniminer. I would say I feel bad that early projects like
| those didn't make billions from success, but there is a lot to be
| said about the creative gameplay in MineCraft that change it from
| being a simple sandbox to a really engaging world.
| bibanez wrote:
| The creator of Infiniminer is the same dev behind Zachtronics,
| who made Shenzen I/O and exa punks, for example
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| If you like the genre you should check out Colony Survival!
| It's a fun voxel game with a tight gameplay loop based around
| how high can you make number go up though observation.
| nullcaution wrote:
| I stopped playing Minecraft years ago, just before endermen were
| added. I recently had a go at it 6 months ago, and I couldn't get
| into it. In my mind Minecraft lost its charm of brutal simplicity
| since MS took over. The spells, the huge diversity of new items
| its just lost on me.
|
| But I like the way these FOSS clones look, maybe I'll give it a
| shot later.
|
| Also, screw MS. I purchased Minecraft 4 times for friends to
| borrow, I don't want an MS account tied to each one, nor do I
| have time for that hassel.
| PcChip wrote:
| For me it lost its charm after they added the hunger bar
| Hendrikto wrote:
| That was in beta 1.8, iirc.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Minetest, an open source infinite-world block sandbox game_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22818192 - April 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Minetest - Open source voxel game engine_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18282085 - Oct 2018 (1
| comment)
|
| _Minetest - A free, open-source voxel game engine and game_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12670310 - Oct 2016 (54
| comments)
|
| also:
|
| _Minetest for the Web_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207408 - Oct 2022 (41
| comments)
| [deleted]
| ntnsndr wrote:
| I'm working on a mod for enabling user self-governance in online
| games, initially with Minetest: modpol.net
| beardog wrote:
| It is best to think of Minetest as more of a decentralized open
| source roblox instead of a minecraft clone as one may initially
| think since it is more of a game engine than a game.
| opan wrote:
| This is a pretty good way to put it. There are some
| similarities to Garry's Mod as well. All three are moddable
| with lua, and Garry's Mod's approach to mods on servers where
| you connect and automatically download what's needed is more
| similar to what Minetest does than what modded Minecraft does
| (where you need to prepare the exact right set of mods ahead of
| time or you can't connect).
| 1val wrote:
| People should start with building a voxel engine as performant as
| possible that would allow for player count to scale with hardware
| to eventually allow for millions of players on the same map.
|
| What makes games like minecraft great is the gameplay that
| naturally emerges from player interaction. This aspect of voxel
| engines should be actively pushed to the absolute limit.
|
| People in the gaming sector tend to apply new tech to improve old
| overdone gameplay (like making games more hd) instead of enabling
| previously impossible experiences.
| bullen wrote:
| I'm working on it.
| sanqui wrote:
| John Lin's voxel engine showed a lot of promise in this
| department: https://m.youtube.com/@johnlin9665/videos
| Gigachad wrote:
| Doesn't seem like many games at all have achieved this. If any.
| Seems like an extremely difficult problem to try and shard a
| multi player game on to multiple machines while still being
| able to interact with everyone.
| hot_gril wrote:
| Niantic gave a talk on the Pokemon Go scaling experience, and
| yeah. That one even has the advantage of not too many people
| being in one place.
| billfruit wrote:
| Does it support an isometric camera? Or a RTS like zoomable
| camera?
| mvdl wrote:
| I like the way the mineyest ecosystem is progressing. I am a huge
| fan of Minecraft and we turned it into a family thing running our
| own server. But the take-over by Microsoft feels like a pain and
| I really dislike that since the move to Microsoft I now have to
| grant my teen daughters access via a family page.
| teekert wrote:
| Yeah this is really annoying. My son had friends over, I told
| them about our MC servers (even with Java/Bedrock cross Play!).
| Cool! Then I spend the next 30 min calling parents and feeling
| like talking them into letting their kids watch the pron our
| family server :| I'm not doing that again.
| LittleBox wrote:
| There is another Minecraft-like called Vintage Story, which I
| like a lot. I love the effort that the Minetest team is making
| but the game's development doesn't seem to be going anywhere as
| of right now due to a lack of direction. I feel being a game that
| is fully open source is not doing any favors.
|
| I don't know if it's possible under license but it might be able
| to pick up some steam if a large, for-profit mod came along.
| platz wrote:
| Just tried it, the visuals aren't bad, but the player control and
| inventory management seem like an afterthought. The jumping
| physics feels especially unrealistic.
| kragen wrote:
| android or desktop? mtg, nodecore, or mineclone (and if so,
| which mineclone)? which texture pack? etc.
| platz wrote:
| It does let you run it without downloading any "games" btw.
| If that's not the intended experience they shouldn't make
| that the shortest path UI experience.
|
| but fwiw, I just tried mineclone and at least the jumping
| physics were better.
| sundarurfriend wrote:
| That's been a long running debate in the community, whether
| the "MineTestGame" should be included by default anymore.
| At some point MTG seemed slated to be even discontinued as
| a project, but instead it got some fixes for outstanding
| issues and kept intact.
|
| In my case, when I was starting out, it was a nice way to
| incrementally add game features only when I was ready for
| them, with MTG being the base to start from. So I have a
| bit of a soft spot for it.
| mikae1 wrote:
| I enjoyed https://veloren.net/ more. Open source too.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| I'd say Veloren is closer to Cube World, while Minetest is
| closer to Minecraft. Both are cool projects, though.
| haolez wrote:
| When my daughter gets a little older, I'm going to try setting up
| a similar project on my home lab: https://veloren.net/
| dekhn wrote:
| I played for a while, and eventually found a nice collection of
| mods that were all compatible with each other and made the game
| really fun. I can't remember all the details, but it made the
| game a bit more fun. Some were additional items (more complete
| carpet selection, mobs, biomes), some were functionality
| enhancements (crafting guide), some were for automation
| (digilines), travel (elevators). It was pretty fun and whatever
| "game" (set of rules/textures/etc) I did had some very deep
| caverns to explore.
| snvzz wrote:
| I still remember Mojang's promise to open source Minecraft.
|
| Instead, he sold it to Microsoft. /o\
| nsxwolf wrote:
| For $2.5 billion I would absolutely renege on a promise to open
| source my code. Every time.
| xmzx wrote:
| [flagged]
| snvzz wrote:
| If I was already rich (Like Mojang was), I actually wouldn't.
|
| YMMV.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Notch ended up set for life and distributed out huge sums
| of cash to all of the employees after the sale who were not
| rich.
|
| At the end of the day its a video game, not firmware for
| someones heart implant. If it matters to anyone, they can
| just write their own video game.
| nullc wrote:
| People did, that's minetest... and now microsoft has been
| using apparently bogus copyright complaints to get it
| taken down. So much for "can just write their own".
| snvzz wrote:
| >and now microsoft has been using apparently bogus
| copyright complaints to get it taken down.
|
| That'd be HN front page worthy. How come I haven't heard
| about this?
| nullc wrote:
| https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/13363#issueco
| mme...
| snvzz wrote:
| >The company is AppDetex, they appear to author automated
| solutions for finding copyright infringement so it's
| probably a mistake on their part
|
| Yeah, the usual robot DMCA fare any random project may
| get.
| nullc wrote:
| Yes and, the app is down none the less due to the false
| and defamatory statements made "under penalty of perjury"
| from an agent being paid by Microsoft.
| [deleted]
| snvzz wrote:
| Yes, that's one way to see it.
|
| But Minecraft is likely to be what Notch will be
| remembered for, yet he doesn't even own the rights to his
| own work anymore.
|
| If that made him rich, it'd be one thing. But as he was
| already rich... was it really worth it? It might be
| something that torments him for the rest of his life.
|
| This has some parallels to Palmer Luckey's Oculus sale to
| Facebook. We already know he regrets doing that. Some
| promises were already broken; FB got him really good.
|
| It is unfortunate, but the field psychologists employed
| by Facebook got him to sell Oculus. Not unlike Faust and
| Mephistopheles.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Counterplan: accept the $2.5 billion. Spend $10 million to
| fund the development of an equivalent or better open source
| voxel game engine. Everyone wins.
| leansensei wrote:
| His agreement probably prohibits that.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Fund it in secret. Name it "Minetest."
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| astrange wrote:
| Isn't it Java? It's basically already open source.
| streakfix wrote:
| It's obfuscated
| MrPowerGamerBR wrote:
| While it is obfuscated, newer versions provide
| unobfuscation mappings to make moodders' lifes easier
| tjoff wrote:
| You typically only do that the the intended API used for
| modders, would guess that is what is done here?
|
| Not quite the same thing.
| pongo1231 wrote:
| There is no official modding API for the Java edition
| unless that changed some time ago. I remember there being
| plans for it almost a decade ago now but nothing coming
| out of it for the Java edition - Bedrock however got
| modpack support.
| astrange wrote:
| Can't be that bad if there's so many mods.
| herbst wrote:
| You obviously haven't battled the mod game by rebuilding
| and fixing your mods from zero every time a new version
| comes out.
|
| The good tooling is from the community. Not majong and
| especially not Microsoft.
| snvzz wrote:
| Open Source is not about having source code.
|
| It is about the license meeting OSI's requirements, which
| are more or less the same as GNU's four freedoms.
|
| The main problem with Minecraft is how Microsoft, due to
| Mojang's decision to sell, is at the centre.
|
| This is such an important game to computer history, and it
| has such huge community. It deserves better than this.
|
| IMHO the community is best served by alternative, actual
| open-source clients and servers, and it would be healthy to
| recreate everything Microsoft currently owns.
|
| Minetest is one such effort. This one is from scratch.
|
| The incremental approach is another possible route.
| mort96 wrote:
| Oh, so I can decompile Minecraft, make a bunch of my own
| changes, change the name (to avoid trademark issues) and
| then sell the result? Can you point me in the direction of
| a license or other legal document which grants me these
| rights?
|
| That's what it means for something to be open source as
| opposed to source-available after all.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| You can't do that on open source projects... that's
| called stealing. Licenses basically never allow anything
| like that.
| mort96 wrote:
| They ... do let you do that. Being able to make changes
| to the code and redistribute your changes is literally
| the whole point of open source, and the popular licenses
| don't contain restrictions on making money (nor could
| they, if they want to fit the Open Source Initiative's
| definition of open source).
|
| The permissive open-source licenses (MIT, BSD, ...) let
| you just take the code, make whatever changes you want,
| package it up into some proprietary product, and sell
| that product. The only requirements are usually that you
| maintain some attribution notice. The MIT license, for
| example, says this: "Permission is hereby granted, free
| of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this
| software and associated documentation files (the
| "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
| including without limitation the rights to use, copy,
| modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or
| sell copies of the Software".
|
| The copyleft licenses (GPL, LGPL, ...) lets you take the
| code, make whatever changes you want, package it up into
| some product, and sell that product; but you need to
| provide your product's source code to your customers.
|
| Show me an open source license which prohibits me from
| taking the source code and selling a product based on it.
| pongo1231 wrote:
| The commonly used licenses like GPL and MIT don't put any
| restrictions on commercial use granted you don't break
| any of the conditions and limitations.
|
| Theoretically you could even just take any software using
| any of those licenses, optionally package it up and then
| commercially redistribute it as is and it would not
| breach the license. Needless to say people probably
| wouldn't look at you favorably in that case though.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Brian Acton sold WhatsApp to Facebook, then helped found and
| fund the Signal Foundation. It's not mutually exclusive.
| charcircuit wrote:
| It was never a promise and it was something to do once the game
| had died which the game clearly hasn't.
| platz wrote:
| I remember when he promised to develop 0x10c
| herbst wrote:
| Which looked amazing. But to be fair would I be suddenly that
| rich I would probably not find the time to build
| sophisticated games either.
| rstat1 wrote:
| If I recall that promise only applied if they ever stopped
| working on, which they clearly haven't.
| SquareWheel wrote:
| Correct. Also it was said by a lone developer a couple months
| after starting a hobby project. To expect that throwaway
| comment to mean anything after fifteen years and a 2.5
| billion dollar acquisition is simply unreasonable.
| bobwaycott wrote:
| Minetest was the vehicle through which I first introduced my
| youngest son to programming around 7-8 years ago (iirc). The way
| his eyes lit up when he wrote some code to change the game and
| then played it was just magic. He still--as a freshman CS student
| wrapping up his first year--fondly remembers those magical
| feelings today.
| darkteflon wrote:
| Came here to ask about just this! May I ask how old he was at
| the time? I'm considering trying this with our 6 year-old, who
| is a huge Minecraft fan. Looks to me as though it would
| probably be beyond him but, on the other hand, I would at least
| like to try to re-create that "aha!" moment with VS Code on one
| half of the screen and this on the other.
| bobwaycott wrote:
| He was around 11-12 at the time. He and his brother were huge
| Minecraft fans (they still play all these years later), and
| he wanted to learn how to change the game like mods did. I
| worried Java would be a bit much and might get in the way of
| him just trying some simple things out, and Lua seemed much
| simpler and approachable for me to help him with. He was also
| a big superhero fan, so his first 3 modifications were to
| give himself superpowers. We added the ability to fly like
| Superman, run fast like the Flash, and jump huge distances
| like the Hulk. His favorite moment was when he activated the
| speedforce() and hulk_jump() together and realized he didn't
| even need to fly because the speed-running and massive jump
| moved him further across the map at a faster rate of speed
| than his superman() function did. :)
| LoganDark wrote:
| It's so cool to compare this to how I was at 11-12. I never
| really was affected by mascots or superheroes, never really
| looked up to anyone. Because of my neurodivergent
| childhood, I sometimes forget that normal kids are kids.
| But hearing about someone as old as 11-12 wanting to give
| themself superpowers to be like their favorite superheroes
| is just amazing. They are lucky to have someone like you <3
| bobwaycott wrote:
| That's incredibly kind of you, thank you. I think I am
| really the lucky one.
| darkteflon wrote:
| Wonderful, love it :) Thanks so much - this'll be our
| project this weekend. I'll set everything up so he can just
| change a couple variables and see the effect immediately.
| We'll see where we get to!
| bobwaycott wrote:
| You're welcome, and I hope you have a ton of fun!
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