Comment by RUN12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by RUN12 | Hacker News Reader

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As someone who used to be a part of the Minetest scene, it's not even remotely close. While it's low-end requirements are better, it runs remarkably poorly for what it is. It's (default subgame is) a decade behind Minecraft in terms of usability/features. It's barely maintained, especially after one of the big modders and graphics developers died to a heart disease.

And with the mods, it's only "easier" at the very surface level. Unlike the Java-edition of Minecraft, where anything can be changed, you are limited to their modding API in Minetest. And this API is thin.

No dynamic skyboxes, no full entity rotation, no way to handle subgrids. Entities have huge pop in/out issues and forget about anything crazy like having animal heads rotate to face you. No custom keybindings, no overriding mouse controls. Forms have terribly poor ergonomics and it's taken a few years now to have elements displaying at the correct coordinates (for a while, different elements had slightly different interpretations of the grid). Tons of stuff is hard-coded, like how tools work, damage calculations, HUD. And none of this can be added or changed without a fork of the underlying C++ engine codebase.

For the longest time they had no client-side modding and when they added it, they ended up barely having anything in it. So if you want a mod with some kind of vehicle, it is a complete hitchy mess since the client-side's would interpolate wrong and need to be forcefully corrected by the server dozens to hundreds of milliseconds later.

I spent a lot of time making mods for the couple folk I played with. I eventually quit because it was so frustrating trying to work with that engine and constantly jury rig and compromise solutions. Went back to Minecraft for those times I want to play a block game.

I know I'm being a bit brutal, but Minetest doesn't stand a chance when the expectation is set that it is/will be in the same ball park as Minecraft's level of quality or moddability.

> It's (default subgame is) a decade behind Minecraft in terms of usability/features. It's barely maintained,

This is intentional and the default game will be removed by default. Users will instead be directed to the built-in content downloader to install a game. The default game is designed to be modded, and you're also encouraged to install other games. Minetest is a game platform and a game engine, rather than just a game

> especially after one of the big modders and graphics developers died to a heart disease.

We have a new graphics developer, they've added dynamic shadows and a post processing stage. This improves the performance of tone mapping, and allows for effects like godrays, bloom, and depth of field. They've also worked a fair bit on performance improvements and bug fixes, like better depth sorting

> No dynamic skyboxes, no fulrotation

Both of these have been supported for years

> no way to handle subgrids

This is mostly out of scope, Minetest is a block voxel game engine. But you can do this anyway, see the go mod - it allows you to place pieces on a board

> no overriding mouse controls.

You can rebind mouse controls using the config file. There's a settings redesign coming soon as well, the plan is improve the keybindings menu there too

> Forms have terribly poor ergonomic

This is one of our roadmap goals. One of our developers is working on a new UI API, there's also work on a new mainmenu and maintenance on the existing API

The current UI API has improved a lot in the last couple of years

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You are right about a lot of the limitations though, such as custom keybindings. We are working to improve this - we have adopted a roadmap to provide focus. You can keep up with development on our blog: https://blog.minetest.net/

> No custom keybindings, no overriding mouse controls.

You can, but you have to change it in the config file. Instead of resolving this limitation, they documented it on the wiki: https://wiki.minetest.net/Controls#PC

I don't understand how things can be this mediocre for so long; other open source implementations of popular proprietary games aren't like this. OpenTTD, OpenRCT2 and OpenMW are all more feature rich and polished than the originals, so I don't think it's a fundamental limitation of volunteer projects. I think maybe, Minetest deliberately keeps the edges rough to stay off Microsoft's turf.

I suspect Minetest's status owes a lot to its name that sort of implies being a test implementation rather than a game proper.

Any MC alternative will becomr popular when MS removes or closes down MC JE, which is imminent because presumably without it people can publish patches that bypass protections as described in the linked thread

I don't know about the others you listed but as OpenTTD is a logistics management simulation, it surely draws a more mature target audience than Minecraft does. An audience that is more likely to possess the necessary expertize to further its development.

That's an interesting hypothesis, I'm not sure about it.

OpenRCT2 is a re-implementation of Roller Coaster Tycoon 2; a business simulation game in which you build theme parks. It's similar to TTD (which was a predecessor from the same developer), but with much less focus on logistics and more focus on artistic creativity. OpenMW is a re-implementation of Morrowind, a fantasy roll-playing game that, by modern standards, is a bit unforgiving to beginners and doesn't have much hand holding. All three are from the 90s and arguably nerdy.

On the other hand, it's my perception that minecraft has a mature and nerdy following too. Lots of kids play it as well, but there seems to be no shortage of tech workers who are into it. I think minecraft's redstone has more to offer a nerd than any of the three above games. And there is a mature modding scene for minecraft, making the game even more technical. I think/hope throwaway290 is right, that minetest will get much more attention from capable developers once Mojang strangles the life out of Java Edition.

Could it be that network effects are much stronger for Minecraft? Morrowind is a single-player game. OpenTTD has network play but I have always played it solo and I suspect many others are the same. I don't play Minecraft but from what I have seen, cooperative play is a big part of it. Players may be less motivated to work on a FOSS alternative when they know that they would then also have to convince the community to move to it, which is much harder. Same way it's difficult to build a real FOSS alternative to WhatsApp, for example.

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