• HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone
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    1 month ago

    this is ok. minetest was an awful name.

    for those of you without the patience to read a blogpost, the new name’s actually a bit of wordplay.

    “Luanti” is a wordplay on the Finnish word luonti (“creation”) and the programming language Minetest Luanti employs for games and mods, Lua. The goal was to avoid yet another plain English word (good luck finding something unique…) and highlight the core principles of the project. The fusion of celeron55’s Finnish nationality and the platform’s focus on content creation resulted in the birth of “Luanti”.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      IMO, the worst thing about “Minetest” is that it sounded like it was just a test creation, a prototype or experiment. It’s certainly well beyond that now. The announcement introduction mentions people associate it with being a Minecraft clone or alpha release, but even further, to me the name initially gave me the impression it was [still] someone’s small hobby project. ‘Luanti’ is much better.

      • comfy@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        On this note, another thing I appreciate is what they said about “Free” and “Libre”: those names are great for saying “This is a free/libre/open clone of [x]”, and that’s what I’ll think when I see it. Software like LibreOffice aims to support Microsoft Office documents, OpenRTC2 and OpenTTD are for people who want to see those games pretty-faithfully cloned, even if extended. Luanti is not OpenMinecraft.

      • idotherock@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        Agree 100%. I always though the name suggested it wasn’t quite a complete game. In fact at first I didn’t think it was a game at all.

    • idotherock@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      Thanks for the TLDR, nice to know the reasons behind the name. And good reasons they are too.

  • hperrin@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Oh thank god. Minetest was the worst name, and the game is actually pretty cool. It definitely deserves a cool name, and Luanti sounds cool.

  • qaz@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I don’t really like the new name yet, but it’s a lot better than Minetest so I really can’t complain.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    1 month ago

    I actually like the new name. It seems like when a community project renames it always is something even worse than the original name. This is a great name that doesn’t sound silly to say out loud.

    • ouch@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Just tell her that you told them your wife didn’t like the name so they changed it.

    • Zikeji@programming.dev
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      1 month ago

      I’ve seen it a few times in passing and always assumed it was like, a tech demo or proof of concept.

      • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
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        1 month ago

        It initially was that. Also the name wasn’t meant to stick around forever.

        But, out of a sudden, between updates, not even the new website URLs ready?

        I don’t follow Minetest development that closely anymore, but last time I checked there were no issues or pull requests on their GitHub, nor something official regarding a name change in the forums.

        This feels like there are just a bunch of people haphazardly deciding there is a new name now.

        • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 month ago

          Here’s a post from May in the Minetest Luanti forums discussing the name change: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?p=425205#p425205

          I’m not going to search further to find the original discussion, but another user in this thread mentions seeing talk of this about a year ago. I agree that it’s not very professional for the new website to be in a less than functional state, but it feels like excitement or decision fatigue may be the culprit, not a rushed process. Then again, it’s an open source video game, not everything has to be “professional” all the time. Meanwhile, enjoy this meme from luanti.org:

          • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            I’m not going to search further to find the original discussion, but another user in this thread mentions seeing talk of this about a year ago.

            There were plenty of those threads and discussions happening during the past few years. This is a constant topic that came up in the forums and sometimes GitHub over and over again.

            • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              1 month ago

              Yes, and in the last twelve months those discussions clearly accelerated, and that post made it clear the lead/original dev had made their mind up. Which very much negates you saying this was rushed.

    • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      It IS a terrible name. But it also is an over one decade old brand.

      It will be hard to propagate the new name and have it as recognizable as “Minetest”.

      • IcyToes@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Those in open source circles will see through places like GamingOnLinux, Lemmy, Reddit and the official IRC/Discord. Those that don’t find out probably are no where near the open source gaming community so it won’t really matter.

  • Detective'@slrpnk.net
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    1 month ago

    This is good news! Anyone here played it recently? How far has the game come in terms of content compared to Minecraft or Vintage Story?

    • down daemon@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      it’s just a framework, it depends on the mods you use. you can use mineclone2 if you want all the features of minecraft

      • walderan@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Btw, mineclone2 also rebranded as Voxelibre, months ago, and for the same reasons. Voxelibre now actively moves away from copying Minecraft exactly.
        If you want the closest copy (and my personal recommendation) check out Mineclonia.

    • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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      1 month ago

      Mobs kinda suck, because the engine has no native mob API.

      There are great mapgens who take advantage of the 1000’s of blocks world height.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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        1 month ago

        You can use the mod lib from contentdb. Also it is worth pointing out that they are moving towards a subgame focus not a mod focus. The original game has been discontinued and isn’t preinstalled. You install a game like Asuna to get gameplay and content.

        Of course you can still use Minetest game as a base for mods. I do that for simple worlds.

        • MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          No, mobs, not mods. Monsters, animals, NPC’s. The lua libs are nice and all but they are always glitchy in hitbox and position.

          Edit: you meant the second sentence? My bad.

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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    1 month ago

    Man, I saw them initiating discussions around the name like a year ago. I did not expect anything to actually come from that after all this time. But yeah, glad that it did.

    Now we just need a better default font. 🙃

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    I like the meme.

    I just wish they would merge the “truly infinite worlds” branch. The horizontal limits are to tight for this kind of game.

    • Rogue@feddit.uk
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      1 month ago

      Anything is better than minetest which sounded like a hastily written debugging mod for Minecraft

  • sparky@lemmy.federate.cc@lemmy.federate.cc
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    1 month ago

    Did they ever fix the game having a maximum map size of like 10.000 by 10.000? That limitation always seemed to put it at a disadvantage compared to Minecraft, for larger communities

    • mintyogi@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      Currently, the world dimensions are larger than that (according to the wiki):

      “Minetest’s world is a huge cube with a side length of ca. 60000 blocks. Each dimension (X, Y and Z) ranges from −30912 to 30927.”

        • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          I find the increased world height much more important. Luanti can generate actual mountains, and caves where you’ll want to bring ladders for your descent.
          It was the first time, I felt like it made sense to build minecarts and intermediate mining bases, because the ores reach far deeper.

          • Mike1576218@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            I played some minetest and then looked at Minecraft. Is minecraft really limited to -64 +256??? I read it a couple of times but still can’t believe it. Ho can a game with °mine° in its name be so limited? More like Buildcraft Imo.

            • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              I believe, they increased it a little while ago, so it’s actually -64 to +320 now.

              But yeah, I don’t think anyone’s actually happy about the limited world height. It’s so limited, because of the way Minecraft works on a technical level. It loads the map in chunks, which are just massive pillars, reaching from the bottom of the world all the way to the sky, across the whole 384 blocks.

              As a result, if they increase the world height, they increase how many blocks have to be loaded at once, which increases the lag.
              Luanti doesn’t have this problem, because it uses cubic chunks instead.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          It is basically infinite. I would be very surprised if you could reach the end. Having a pregenerated map also makes the game a lot lighter. (At the cost of longer world creation)

          • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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            1 month ago

            Yeah I also never reached the end, though I imagine if playing multiplayer, with enough players and time, that then at some point there won’t be any untouched land.

        • mintyogi@lemmy.zip
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          1 month ago

          Yeah, I hear that. Although, I’ve travelled many thousands of blocks in Minecraft worlds, I’ve never travelled tens of thousands, so the limits in Luanti work for me. The increased world depth in Luanti seems more beneficial to me. YMMV

  • TriflingToad@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    hope they improve upon it, the old (when the banning was implemented) version of minetest was horrible. I’ll be trying it soon :)

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      1 month ago

      It has come a long way. These days it doesn’t even come with a game preinstalled. You can play VoxeLibre, Asuna, and so much more. Plus the original Minetest game is still installable. Also there are quite a lot of mods and other content available.

      The only gripes I really have is the security and UI design. Neither of them are that bad but they could be better.

        • Mike1576218@lemmy.ml
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          1 month ago

          Online play is 100% unencrypted or authenticated. Client executes lua code sent by the server. I hope the code is kinda sandboxed but wouldnt put my hopes up there.

          • orgrinrt@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            As far as I’m aware, most of the “dangerous” lua api (io/network etc) is blocked and only available to mods during the startup phase, and not otherwise during runtime.

            But I’m sure there are workarounds. For one, I’ve written mods with rust for it, and you can require and then call any dynamic library through lua, with all of the io and networking you’d want, as long as it is brought in during the init phase. And the mods that do access the “dangerous” api, have to be explicitly given rights to do so (but again, by the server, not the clients) in the config before it works.

            It’s not that bad for the most cases, as long as you trust the server. If playing single player, you personally control which mods get the secure environment access, so at that point it’s entirely your own fault, if you get exploited.

            • Mike1576218@lemmy.ml
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              1 month ago

              I hope they can build on some work from the lua devs. Isolating stuff like that is not always easy. But given lua is used extensively for embedded scripting, there is a good chance they can.

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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            1 month ago

            Also there isn’t necessarily a clean environment between mods. This means one mod could modify another mod.