What's Minetest still missing over Minecraft?

[jojoa1997]

From what I've noticed, and no one else seems to have really brought out yet, is that Minecraft is more immersive because it makes more sense to the eyes.

Minecraft's default rendering and lighting seems to be much more realistic than MT's, and does a good job drawing you in. There's even a few things you rarely notice, such as a subtle vignette around the corners of the screen. The interface as well is much more obvious, contrasting, and consistent. Additionally the resolution of the rendering seems to be significantly higher on MC, especially for the selection box.

As was already stated, Shaders would be a good addition, even better default shaders. A smaller selection box too perhaps?

Lol I agree with that but I like to play with fast graphics and no light smoothing. Also this reminded me, in Minetest when you look at a block there is this ugly black outline and it looks even worse with nodeboxes. Maybe making it barely noticeable and either making it the only setting or adding an option would make the game look better.

[Sol]

In my opinion, minetest's primitive player animation is a big downside. I'd really want to see head movements like in MC.

[stormchaser3000]

In my opinion, minetest's primitive player animation is a big downside. I'd really want to see head movements like in MC.

i actualy kind of prefer the animations we have now.

[Evergreen]

In my opinion, minetest's primitive player animation is a big downside. I'd really want to see head movements like in MC.

I think kaeza was working on head movements, but I don't think he is anymore.

[Napiophelios]

.... I think ambient sounds should be added to the client.

I think Minetest would be nicer with more sounds effects and maybe some light music, but adding ambient sounds mod to the client would be a big mistake for the simple fact that the sounds the player hears are not the sounds of actual things in the game environment. You dont hear bats in every cave you enter unless there are some bats present. I shouldnt hear echoing sounds of dripping water unless maybe I am in a cave near or under a water source...not while tunneling thru a specific type of rock.
Dont get me wrong I like ambient sounds mod; I have and use like four different versions.
But right now it is just not where it needs to be in order to force it on everyone who wants to
stay up to date with future Minetest releases.

[SAMIAMNOT]

Well I think we really need some nice neutral (and builtin and auto-spawning!) NPCs. It was fun to watch a friend show me his ghost town and then populate it with Villagers. Me? Im stuck with the Vombies and NPCs from Animals Modpack. Also why do Vombies look more like Villagers than NPCs? In the modpack I mean.
And I played minetest on a Windows 8 laptop and I had the volume was like 100 and I still heard no sounds. Why is that?

[Evergreen]

Well I think we really need some nice neutral (and builtin and auto-spawning!) NPCs. It was fun to watch a friend show me his ghost town and then populate it with Villagers. Me? Im stuck with the Vombies and NPCs from Animals Modpack. Also why do Vombies look more like Villagers than NPCs? In the modpack I mean.
And I played minetest on a Windows 8 laptop and I had the volume was like 100 and I still heard no sounds. Why is that?

I do agree that the models and textures of mobf do leave a bit to be desired. You could use BlockMen's creatures mod, it adds minecraft-like zombies, and sheep. (as well as ghosts) As for the sound issue, it might just be a missing library for minetest. (don't quote me on that though, I don't use windows)

[rubenwardy]

Ambient sounds is better on the client. The client can still read the map around it.

[jojoa1997]

Well I think we really need some nice neutral (and builtin and auto-spawning!) NPCs. It was fun to watch a friend show me his ghost town and then populate it with Villagers. Me? Im stuck with the Vombies and NPCs from Animals Modpack. Also why do Vombies look more like Villagers than NPCs? In the modpack I mean.
And I played minetest on a Windows 8 laptop and I had the volume was like 100 and I still heard no sounds. Why is that?

You need to install OpenAL. I had the same problem and remembered that was how I got sounds on my Windows 7 laptop. I suggest installing OpenAL and the OpenAL SDK if you are wanting to build Minetest, but OpenAL is the needed one for client side sounds. On the mobs some are still waiting on the so called Mob API which still has not been made after so long.

[Jordach]

Well I think we really need some nice neutral (and builtin and auto-spawning!) NPCs. It was fun to watch a friend show me his ghost town and then populate it with Villagers. Me? Im stuck with the Vombies and NPCs from Animals Modpack. Also why do Vombies look more like Villagers than NPCs? In the modpack I mean.
And I played minetest on a Windows 8 laptop and I had the volume was like 100 and I still heard no sounds. Why is that?

The original OpenAL installer is kept here http://sfan5.duckdns.org/upload/data/oalinst.exe and was uploaded by me.

[Sokomine]

Well I think we really need some nice neutral (and builtin and auto-spawning!) NPCs. It was fun to watch a friend show me his ghost town and then populate it with Villagers. Me? Im stuck with the Vombies and NPCs from Animals Modpack. Also why do Vombies look more like Villagers than NPCs? In the modpack I mean.

Try npcf, peaceful_npc or my trader mod. Those all add mobs that more or less could be seen as villagers. Then there's Adventuretest which comes with villages, villagers and babarians. The animals modpack from Sapier has its strenght when it comes to animals.

[SAMIAMNOT]

Thanks. Yes I will get NPCF, no girls or kids but the deco mob looks awesome.
Thanks guys for your help.
BTW it looks like peaceful_npc is discontinued. Any word on it?

[jojoa1997]

Thanks. Yes I will get NPCF, no girls or kids but the deco mob looks awesome.
Thanks guys for your help.
BTW it looks like peaceful_npc is discontinued. Any word on it?

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=4167&p=153492#p153492

[SAMIAMNOT]

Okay good.

[hasufell]

Probably a paid developer base.

It's possible to make money with opensource and even free software, but especially in the game development field it hasn't been tried very often. IMO, the best projects are the ones that are free software + have a paid developer base.

For instance, there are some people who have greenlit their GPL or whatever games on steam for money. That is perfectly legal, since the code is still accessible and under a free software license. Really, free software doesn't necessarily mean "gratis" or even "noncommercial".

Since Minetest is LGPL-2.1 you are even allowed to create a whole non-free game on top of it (if you don't use the fonts, textures, artwork etc). So there are lots of open doors for people to enhance Minetest.

EDIT: A very interesting example of the widespread use of free software compatible game engines is Ren'Py which features a plethora of gratis as well as non-free commercial games.

[Evergreen]

Probably a paid developer base.

It's possible to make money with opensource and even free software, but especially in the game development field it hasn't been tried very often. IMO, the best projects are the ones that are free software + have a paid developer base.

For instance, there are some people who have greenlit their GPL or whatever games on steam for money. That is perfectly legal, since the code is still accessible and under a free software license. Really, free software doesn't necessarily mean "gratis" or even "noncommercial".

Since Minetest is LGPL-2.1 you are even allowed to create a whole non-free game on top of it (if you don't use the fonts, textures, artwork etc). So there are lots of open doors for people to enhance Minetest.

EDIT: A very interesting example of the widespread use of free software compatible game engines is Ren'Py which features a plethora of gratis as well as non-free commercial games.

True, but who is going to pay them?

[Krock]

True, but who is going to pay them?

Maybe add some advertising in the forums and get money from visitors which click those by accident?

/badidea

[Calinou]

In my opinion, minetest's primitive player animation is a big downside. I'd really want to see head movements like in MC.

The real problem right now is that players and entities don't send pitch angle to the server: thus, you can't know whether someone is looking upwards or downwards, which is quite important when building and fighting.

Since Minetest is LGPL-2.1 you are even allowed to create a whole non-free game on top of it (if you don't use the fonts, textures, artwork etc). So there are lots of open doors for people to enhance Minetest.

What's the point in having enhancements if we can't backport them? The LGPL doesn't allow such a thing anyway. The GPL → LGPL switch in June 2012 was done in the hope to get non-free games to use it; it was a complete fail. Freeminer even changed back to the GPL (mostly to prevent Minetest from taking changes, but also avoid the LGPL loopholes).

EDIT: A very interesting example of the widespread use of free software compatible game engines is Ren'Py which features a plethora of gratis as well as non-free commercial games.

This shouldn't be done.

[hasufell]

Since Minetest is LGPL-2.1 you are even allowed to create a whole non-free game on top of it (if you don't use the fonts, textures, artwork etc). So there are lots of open doors for people to enhance Minetest.

What's the point in having enhancements if we can't backport them? The LGPL doesn't allow such a thing anyway. The GPL → LGPL switch in June 2012 was done in the hope to get non-free games to use it; it was a complete fail. Freeminer even changed back to the GPL (mostly to prevent Minetest from taking changes, but also avoid the LGPL loopholes).

With enhancement I meant creating your own game which uses the engine (as in: links to it). That is perfectly legal, even if the game itself is proprietary.

EDIT: A very interesting example of the widespread use of free software compatible game engines is Ren'Py which features a plethora of gratis as well as non-free commercial games.

This shouldn't be done.

I have no idea what you mean.

[hasufell]

True, but who is going to pay them?

Ehm. Customers.

[Evergreen]

True, but who is going to pay them?

Ehm. Customers.

What customers? I don't think there are any plans of making money off of minetest.

[hasufell]

True, but who is going to pay them?

Ehm. Customers.

What customers? I don't think there are any plans of making money off of minetest.

I didn't claim that there are any plans. I just said that it's possible and pointed out some ideas.

[rubenwardy]

Customers to the paid version, he means.

[Evergreen]

Customers to the paid version, he means.

Ah, right. If someone actually made a fork of minetest that wasn't crappy (globeminner anyone?) I think the community wouldn't be so hard on it.

[Calinou]

With enhancement I meant creating your own game which uses the engine (as in: links to it). That is perfectly legal, even if the game itself is proprietary.

If you do so, you would have to release the engine source code since it's a derivative work, only the game logic (which is Lua) could be proprietary, such as being obfuscated and released under a non-free license. Which brings me to my next point…

This shouldn't be done.

I have no idea what you mean.

I believe it's unethical and that it doesn't contribute to society.

[spamyak]

It's missing a restrictive EULA, angry developers, and Microsoft ownership, clearly.

Seriously though, the jumping and UI could be better, there is no redstone equivalent, there are not multiple worlds per server or block logging plugins (both essential for good multiplayer servers). All that being said, I'm switching to this game over Minecraft.

[hasufell]

This shouldn't be done.

I have no idea what you mean.

I believe it's unethical and that it doesn't contribute to society.

I can understand that, but it's irrelevant as long as minetest is LGPL-2.1.

Again: my first point was that "free software" doesn't have to be "gratis". A lot of people think that, but it isn't accurate. So, you can give the user all the freedoms and still charge a fee.

[Calinou]

It's missing a restrictive EULA, angry developers, and Microsoft ownership, clearly.

Seriously though, the jumping and UI could be better, there is no redstone equivalent, there are not multiple worlds per server or block logging plugins (both essential for good multiplayer servers). All that being said, I'm switching to this game over Minecraft.

What's wrong with jumping and the UI exactly?

We have Mesecons, which aims to provide similar functionality to Redstone. It is however more “realistic” and electronics-oriented.

[spamyak]

The jumping just has a little bit of an issue where when you are on the side of a block and hold down space, you seem to "double jump". The UI isn't terrible per se, it's just not as nice to look at as Minecraft's, or most games for that matter.

[SAMIAMNOT]

I actually think that Minetest is better than Minecraft despite its appearent shortcomings because if theres something you feel is missing someones probably made a mod for it. And with all the mods, texture packs and games theres actually more to minetest than minecraft. That should be the goal.
Wouldn't it be awesome if they made a free version of Minetest for iPad, iPhone and Android whereyou can access all the mods on this site? Thatd blow Minecraft for iPhone outta the water.