What's Minetest still missing over Minecraft?

[programmingchicken]

You CAN eat dirt, contrary to common belief.

[SAMIAMNOT]

You CAN eat dirt, contrary to common belief.

That's in real life, not MT & MC

[SAMIAMNOT]

@Sokomine, @SAMIAMNOT
I think that auto-triggering should start over every single reincarnation.
I.e. upon respawning a player will be able to live a whole new life.

I dunno, what if a Minetest warrior accidentally dies? He'll have to re-trigger all the settings again.
What about a /die command that resets the settings?
[quote="4aiman]
@SAMIAMNOT
Doesn't it sound a bit off when ppl say that they killed a dirt monster to gain some meat? ))
[/quote]
True, but my sister did once. Plus, any monster should drop meat, IMHO.

[programmingchicken]

Not every monster should drop meat. A monster should drop food, but not always meat. And sometimes it doesn't drop anything.

[ArguablySane]

Not every monster should drop meat. A monster should drop food, but not always meat. And sometimes it doesn't drop anything.

I'd actually like to see a corpse/butchery system instead of the Minecraft approach of just having the mob leave loot on the ground. When a mob dies it should fall over and remain as a corpse. Interacting with the corpse using a sharp tool (maybe a knife) would bring up the usual inventory list you see in other games showing what can be taken from the corpse. The loot would be randomised to some extent, but essential things like bones would always be present. A cow might be very lean and provide very little meat, but it makes no sense to find a cow without bones.

As far as food goes, I'd actually say that some monsters shouldn't drop food. Food/hunger is a useful mechanic, and it's easier to balance if availability of food isn't always correlated with the number of monsters around. From a realism standpoint, there are plenty of creatures which you wouldn't want to eat, either because they're poisonous or simply unpleasant.

[TenPlus1]

Only animals in Mobs Redo will drop meat, monsters tend to drop their namesake be it dirt, stone, mese etc.

[philipbenr]

+1 @Arguably Sane. That has always been my favorite method. I just hope i doesn't look as bad as the bones from the bones mod. We should have a Dead Sam model instead of a node. Just make him laying down, perfectly still, and with a bones skin. Or maybe like a skin overlay...

[ArguablySane]

+1 @Arguably Sane. That has always been my favorite method. I just hope i doesn't look as bad as the bones from the bones mod. We should have a Dead Sam model instead of a node. Just make him laying down, perfectly still, and with a bones skin. Or maybe like a skin overlay...

I hadn't even thought of the player corpses, but you're right, that could be handled in a similar way. I wouldn't use a custom skin though. Just the fact the corpse is lying on the ground rather than standing up should be enough to distinguish it from a living player. A bones skin would just look like a bad halloween costume.

[Sokomine]

Dead players are already lying around dead on the ground as long as they havn't respawned - or as long as their animation wasn't updated due to a bug. As far as mobs go, a corpse would certainly be more suitable for them.

[SAMIAMNOT]

Like dirt. ;)

[Kpenguin]

We're definitely missing a goal in the game. For example, in Minecraft, you have the Ender-Dragon to kill and the end to get to, you have other bosses to kill, you have experience to collect, you have mobs to kill, you have potions to brew and food to grow, and you can make interesting puzzle/challenge courses with redstone. The goal of Minetest is simply... build. *yawn* I like playing Minetest, but it lacks the satisfaction that you've accomplished something of Minecraft.

[benrob0329]

I think that there's more to it than that though, let me see...

See all of the bioms
Find all or the ores
do some meseconing
Go digiline happy
Fulfill all of the achievements in the awards mod
Make a technic nuclear reactor
Get a full set of diamond armor
Make a house
Fight a dungeon master
Build some more
Make it to the nether/moon
Aaand survive

So there is plenty to do if you try!

Oh, and figure out where Mese came from ;)

[Kpenguin]

Well, that's all with mods. Minecraft doesn't need those to still be interesting. I was talking about the bare game.

[Don]

Well, that's all with mods. Minecraft doesn't need those to still be interesting. I was talking about the bare game.

It is a bare game so people can set it up however they like. It is a choose your own adventure game.

[benrob0329]

Exactly

[philipbenr]

But choosing your own adventure is a little bit hard because it makes people find their adventure and incorporate it. That is why we should be bundling subgames with Minetest, so there is a lot more attraction to the game in general.

[Don]

Bundled games will make minetest a lot better.

[SAMIAMNOT]

Too bad they didn't add any this time around.

[philipbenr]

I'm guessing that is for 0.5... Or maybe something after that.

[Ferk]

I just hope i doesn't look as bad as the bones from the bones mod. We should have a Dead Sam model instead of a node. Just make him laying down, perfectly still, and with a bones skin. Or maybe like a skin overlay...

Actually I like the idea of a bones node, just not a completely cubic one. Someone should make a 3D model for a pile of bones.

Even if it's just a cubic head of a player with a skull skin and 1 or 2 cuboids as extra bones, it would already look better and make more sense than the current strange bones cube.

[4aiman]

I always hated the idea of "bones" block.
Over time there's bones everywhere.
I'm perfectly "ok" with having things like cemeteries or crypts or (mentioned above) death pits, but *not* all over the world.

However, some survival-horror game may well use the idea ArguablySane has presented to everyone.

I dunno, what if a Minetest warrior accidentally dies? He'll have to re-trigger all the settings again.
What about a /die command that resets the settings?

Good point :)

Hm... I think I'll add some variety to Magichet's reincarnators: the one which *will* and the one which *won't* reset all triggers. The one which *won't* will be accessible @spawn and auto-generated throughout the world. The one which *will* then become smth one should build on his/her own. :)

Maybe even more variety can be added - a separate reincarnator to be revived as a particular class (farmer, animal breeder, warrior, builder, miner, etc.)

True, but my sister did once. Plus, any monster should drop meat, IMHO.

I can't see how smth made out of dirt/stone/sand should turn into meat upon slaying it. But that's just me )

As far as food goes, I'd actually say that some monsters shouldn't drop food.

Agreed.
Minecraft actually have 2 types of mobs: to kill for food, to kill for loot.
The first ones are defenceless and needed only(?) to support the "hunger" feature.
I can't say that's wrong.
There are some defenceless mobs who drop loot, but the value of that loot is somewhere at the bottom of the loot-value-rates. I think that's only to show that a player *can* kill mobs for loot too.

To gain some useful stuff like powder, armour pieces, brewing potions ingredients one need to brace the trials of monster hunting, The Nether and the End world.

it's easier to balance if availability of food isn't always correlated with the number of monsters around.

Good point. Now all what is needed is to make sure there's some to kill for food everywhere.
Besides, one can go farming and just forget about hunting.


Actually, I think a player should receive the *more* XP the less "jobs" he's training :)
If one lives by hunting, that will charge his/her XP bar 5X times faster.
Basically it's a total_number_of_jobs/number_of_jobs_applied multiplier to any XP gain.

From a realism standpoint, there are plenty of creatures which you wouldn't want to eat, either because they're poisonous or simply unpleasant.

From a realism standpoint, killing animals to gain meat is totally normal :)
Besides, Minecraft does that already with poisonous crops and rotten flesh.
Magichet's 4hunger, Blockman's HUDs and several other hunger mods have that functionality too.

[Ferk]

I always hated the idea of "bones" block.
Over time there's bones everywhere.
I'm perfectly "ok" with having things like cemeteries or crypts or (mentioned above) death pits, but *not* all over the world.

Is having corpses instead all over the world much of a change?

Having them as entities might actually be more overhead for the server than if they were blocks. What if the corpses stack up, how many entities can we have?

If what you want is the corpses disappearing after a while, this is independent of it being a block or an entity (isn't bone aging already implemented? I'm not sure if in minetest_game bones mod they expire, but I've played subgames where they disappear)

[4aiman]

Is having corpses instead all over the world much of a change?

No, it's not much of a change. That's why I hate bones/corpses.

Having them as entities might actually be more overhead for the server than if they were blocks. What if the corpses stack up, how many entities can we have?

And that's yet another reason to dislike corpses.
AFAIK, Freeminer increased that number 10 times w/o any problem.

I'm not sure if in minetest_game bones mod they expire, but I've played subgames where they disappear)

AFAIK, minetest_game doesn't have that feature. But I well may turn out to be misinformed.
Anyway, TTL for bones node is a NICE addition.
Actually, with the meshnode feature there will be no difference between entities and nodes :)

One will only need entities if he/she would like to move the corpse to some other coordinates in a more "natural" way - by pulling/kicking it - instead of "dig & place" business. But I hope those kind of games won't ever be produced for MT engine.

[ArguablySane]

One will only need entities if he/she would like to move the corpse to some other coordinates in a more "natural" way - by pulling/kicking it - instead of "dig & place" business.

Or if you want a dying animation which looks natural without the body suddenly snapping to align with integer coordinates, or if you want to keep the dead player's skin on the corpse.

Anyway, I certainly wasn't thinking of a system where corpses would remain indefinitely. Mob corpses should disappear in minutes and player corpses shouldn't stay around longer than an hour. Any corpse without items in it should disappear much faster.

[Ferk]

I was thinking more on the lines of what happens in for example The Witcher 3, where after a monster dies their entrails (or bones) fall to the ground and then you can loot them as if they were a chest.

The "corpse" would be just a small node mesh, as if it was a mushroom. In the Witcher 3, depending on the enemy the "bones" are different.. for ghosts, elementals and ethereal creatures it's just ashes, for animals it's a bloody thorax, for humans it's just a small bag you can loot.

This would be easier to implement (it's basically already there in the bones mod, just needs improvements), would be more efficient, more consistent with the bones mechanics for the player and would still look fine using a proper mesh.

[MrNomNom111]

Well, that's all with mods. Minecraft doesn't need those to still be interesting. I was talking about the bare game.

Like the original post mentioned, there's something you "just can't pin down" and I believe its the aesthetic, the immersion.

I'm no expert, let me get that straight.

But, i think there are several things that should be pointed out:

-"HD" graphics =/= better graphics
-Polished minimalism is better than a whole ton of crude content
-An unpolished UX breaks the user's focus on the actual content.

I'll be honest when I say that in the first few hours of playing I was unimpressed. It just seemed hollow. The control system was hard to learn, the movement was janky, and the lighting was primitive. And so while I had a wealth of content, in the form of several mods I had downloaded, I just couldn't become immersed. I felt limited by the poor aesthetics so much that I couldn't focus on the content.

When I fall, its a linear fall, that comes to an abrupt, painless. When I place down certain blocks, they don't interact with the world as I assume they should. Ladders sort of float in the air. Signs seem to flat and lifeless. sort of blocky world. The reality trying to be mimicked falls through. Its nothing more than a bunch of voxels with grainy HD textures plastered on.

The great thing though, is that the community is so active, and changes and improvements are not as hard to implement as in Minecraft. But until it becomes polished (a subjective term, I know), Minetest will remain only a "good" game, not a great one.

TL:DR - It's lifeless because it has none of the small little interactions that reinforce the idea that the world responds to your stimuli. The dropping blocks. The subtle sounds. The "invisible" feedback that makes it more than some textured blocks.

[Don]

I think what is missing is money. What I really mean by that is peoples moral compass. If people could make money with minetest then they would help develop. Because this is an open source project that is free then most developers are not interested. Money is overly important to too many people.

The people who develop this game do it for free. Altruism is a great thing that many people cannot understand. Thank you to all who have helped develop this game.

Another thing that Minetest does that is both a good thing and a bad thing is support for older computers. Minetest runs on really old computers. This allows many people of low income to be able to play. Many countries in the world benefit from this approach. The problem with this approach is that it will hold the game back from many newer advancements. Minetest would benefit from putting a limit on the age of tech they support. On the other hand many people of the world benefit from the moral decision the Minetest team has made to support older computers. I personally think it is better to help the people who need the most help then to have better graphics.

This is just me giving my opinion. I am a humanist so the people of the world are more important then a computer game. I really hope that the developers continue to support older computers.

[PoignardAzur]

Minetest is missing a lot of things, and has a lot of problems that won't be fixed by making a todo-list and dumping in to the developers. I'm not that familiar with the community and the game itself, but from my peripheral view of it, I notice two big problems :

- The subgames are too similar. Basically every subgame I've seen on this forum is some form of minecraft clone. There's a lot of games you can build with a voxel engines : FPSs, RTS games, MOBAs, tower-defense games, third-person plateform games, Rogue-likes, singleplayer RPGs, Point&Clicks, Rollercoaster tycoons... yet for some reason every subgame out there is a first-person sandbox with a crafting system where you spend your time mining ores.

- There's a huge team working (for free) on the game. This is usually a really bad thing for indie developing, because it causes diffusion of responsibility ("someone else will take care of this"), which make people less productive individually and less inclined to take initiatives.
Large team of developers can also be a problem for professional projects, mind you, but indie projects tend to suffer more from diffusion of responsibility, because usually don't have bosses and managers making sure they work as hard as they should. The minetest community doesn't seem to put much pressure on the developers, which is really nice on an individual level, but also means developers dont have much incentive to work fast. The fact that developers can put off something and go "meh, the community will make a mod for this" doesn't help.

[Dragonop]

PoignardAzur, both your points are wrong. There are lots of original subgames, and the "team" that is developing is not huge.

[PoignardAzur]

There are lots of original subgames,

I think our definitions or "original" differ. Like, can you find me three finished (or at least, semi-finished and not abandoned) subgames that do not revolve around destroying nodes with tools you craft for resources you amass ?

and the "team" that is developing is not huge.

There's around ten core developers, right ? Most indie games are developed by two or three people.