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”.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the TLDR, nice to know the reasons behind the name. And good reasons they are too.
I don’t think it was that bad. I think the new name is better though
Tbh Luanti is a pretty clever wordplay
Plus it sounds Italian
What a terrible name.
Anything is better than minetest which sounded like a hastily written debugging mod for Minecraft
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.
Minetest doesn’t have to turn into Roblox, we already have OpenBlox for that purpose
Edit: person below is now accusing me of promoting crypto
Minetest has been more a platform for making games on than a single game for at least a decade, since they added lua scripting. Seems like you’re outraged over nothing with no real understanding of what Luanti has been and aims to be.
Cool so, you linked to some git repositories that haven’t been updated in 4-5 years, and looking at their current website there seems to be some sort of crypto involved now.
They’re not to be confused, the lead dev’s (openblox.org) one was made on 2014 before some crypto dipshittos (openblox.IO) took their name
Okay, but openblox.org doesn’t resolve a website at all, directing users instead to a domain registrar.
Lead dev no longer renews that domain for the site. Thats why the repo needs to be revived
Okay… So it sounds like a dead project to me? When Luanti seems to have a huge community around it already…
hope they improve upon it, the old (when the banning was implemented) version of minetest was horrible. I’ll be trying it soon :)
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 are that bad but they could be better.
What is the problem with security?
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.
Also there isn’t necessarily a clean environment between mods. This means one mod could modify another mod.
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.
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.
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.
Oh man, I remember this from years ago when the only 1-up on Minecraft it had, was that I could run it at 60 FPS, infinite chunks in all directions, no extreme lag spikes while generating the map, and further view distance.
Zero mods back then, so I’m happy to see the mod support!
Is this an out-of-season April Fools’ joke?
No, it is something that has been discussed for quite some time. No one could decide on a good name until now
One could argue they still haven’t
You could argue but you would be wrong. The name gas changed. There is still some work needed to move domains but that’s minor.
Since Minecraft blew up with 12 year olds using potatoe hardware I think the criteria required would be:
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12 year old thinks name is great and can spell it
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it can run on a potatoe
Who wants to volunteer to collect this data
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That woul’ve been: Minetest Immortal
I’m sure it is
Too bad that luanti.org is note available…
They have already bought .org and .net. I guess they just haven’t set them up yet.
Also
luanti.net(which would be the most logical step to use that address because of the same TLD).Why isn’t something like this done prior to announcing the new name …
Not sure why this was upvoted, the blog says it’s theirs.
Moving Forward
With the new name, a few changes will be made in the engine and community. Obviously, all the repositories and community hubs will adopt the Luanti name in some form. You’ll be able to find the website at luanti.org and [snip]
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. 🙃
And maybe a really solid UI design. It seems like a not of games don’t have a good UI.
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Why isn’t this news? They are changing the name which is a big deal
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I hope this is a joke cause Luanti sucks, stick with the already well known Minetest.
ok boomer
Minetest is a terrible name. It was created back when it was experimental with no plans for continuous development or direction.
It will take time to switch to the new name we will get there
True though, I perfer for it to be called “MineTest”
never thought i’d see minetest rebranding itself (if rebrand is the correct word at all anyway)
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?
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.
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.
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.
1000s*
it’s just a framework, it depends on the mods you use. you can use mineclone2 if you want all the features of minecraft
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.
