Wuzzy wrote:I take a very pragmatic approach here:
Clone the good features, ignore the bullshit, and have own ideas.
Discussions should be based on the merit of the idea itself. Whether it improves Minetest. These are the only relevant arguments. It is completely irrelevant if the idea is or was used in any other game.
But since Minetest is obviously heavily based on the idea of Minecraft, it makes a lot of sense to still take a good look at Minecraft. Minecraft has both good features but also some bullshit or features which may be OK for Minecraft, but are questionable for Minetest.
Good things: Lots of gameplay (not part of Minetest's goal, of course), Fluid animations, rich mob system, tons of commands, support (!) for other parrallel worlds (called “dimensions”), items are forced out of solid blocks instead of being stuck, …
Bullshit: Complicated crafting system for no reason, height limit of 256, no in-game help whatsoever (MC is unplayable without wiki or crafting guide), being proprietary software, weak privilege system (basically just op/mod/nobody), a few hardcoded controls, the name “dimensions” (seriously, dimensions are X, Y and Z. What they mean are parrallel worlds) …
Bad for Minetest:
- Hardcoded 20 HP
- Crafting system almost EXACTLY like in Minecraft (it has many problematic implications, like even very basic crafting recipes with more than 9 of the same items are impossible without rolling out your very own crafting replacement)
- Weird Forge nonsense
- Overloaded rightclick
- …
Also, deny it all you want, but Minetest IS heavily influenced by Minecraft. And it's okay, it's no reason to be ashamed of. While not a direct clone, many of the core aspects are OBVIOUS direct copies of Minecraft. Sometimes I think Minetest cloned Minecraft a little TOO well, like why do we still have 20 HP hardcoded? Or why does the crafting system suck so much? Etc.
Minetest can never be a direct clone of Minecraft because it is an engine.
But this doesn't mean this engine can't be used for Minecraft clones. :P I'm currently making MineClone 2, a mostly direct clone of Minecraft and probably the closest Minecraft clone in the world as of now (even it is very alpha). :-)
But even here I am not 100% strict. I try to stay true to the gameplay but I won't fear from deviating from Minecraft when I think the UI or usability sucks. That's why I added a crafting guide.
This is one example of the principle of “Clone the good stuff, ignore the bullshit” in action. :-)
Exactly!
Big problem is we need to have a designated modding base (basically what minetest_game is now), and then an actual game where we can make a good "vanilla" game, not this messy in between (minetest minmal game is not used mch, due to being too barebones-ish), and any engine-ish features added to minetest_vannilla game, (i.e. mobs/mob framework, armour" would get added to the minetest mod devving subgame.
Due to the weird "balance" of modding base/game that minetest_game has right now, no one (not even some/most of the core devs) know what features should be a seperate mod, and what should be in an actual "game", thus causing the issues with what PRs should get merged, and which ones shouldn't.