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Minetest is an open source game and game engine much like Minecraft and available for free. It has recently released a major new version.

It adds quite a like like new textures, new sounds, new graphical features, new modding options and the usual assortment of bug fixes.

I tested out the new version and I have to say it has really impressed me. The base game does feel a bit too bare though. I am not the only one who feels that way, as it seems Voxelands was forked from it when Minetest went down the route of being more of an engine than an actual game. Still, it's cool to see it progress and there are a few mods available to make it feel like more of a game.

You can see the full changelog here.

Thanks to AnxiousInfusion for letting me know. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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sonic May 20, 2016
I tried Minetest several times, but never heard of Voxelands - I have to check this game, looks nice!
ElectricPrism May 20, 2016
Thanks for turning me on to Voxels, it will make a nice addition to my Linux Install guide for my noob army looking to quickly learn about stuff that interests them on X.

Anyone remember what a hit Blockscape was? Oh wait that didn't happen the devs fled for the mountains, lol... In anycase its nice to have Minetest and Voxel, I wonder how close their codebase is in porting updates since it is a fork.
GustyGhost May 21, 2016
I follow Minetest development fairly closely and it is frustrating to watch a project that is clearly a Minecraft clone be inhibited by developers who want very badly for it "not to be like Minecraft". So what we're left with is a husk game that has no goals or challenges, and leaves content out in order to appease a group who can never agree on a clear direction for the project. Luckily, they are talented and built a robust Lua API so there are plenty of mods which add things most of us would normally expect from a Minecraft clone. For the uninitiated, Minetest by default does not have mobs, farming/hunger or circuitry(redstone).

But of course, it also has things by default that Minecraft doesn't such as locked chests and much larger world height/depth so don't let me dissuade you from trying it out.
1mHfoksd1Z May 21, 2016
This is the first voxel sandbox game I played. I really liked it, but then I switched to Minecraft. It's a nice game and it was pretty cool playing on modded servers without having to download those mods on your own, you could just join any server.
It was long ago (MC was just updated to version 1.1 back then) so I'm sure this game improved a lot. I didn't play it since then because MC offers pretty much the same experience, except for the modded servers... I will try it again eventually to see how this aspect has improved :D
Samsai May 21, 2016
Yeah, Minetest isn't much of a game as-is and pretty much needs a modpack on top of it to be fun. I myself have played with Carbone NG which adds pretty much all the features I would need in a Minecraft-like. You can find it here.
Seegras May 21, 2016
Minecraft feels so much more polished than any of the clones. Which is sad, because there are some that can sustain massively bigger worlds, higher view distance, more entities and still have a better performance than Minecraft.
Belarrius May 21, 2016
Now want Minetest with Vulkan API :D

I play at Minetest since the start "Minetest C55" the game evolve it's cool!


Last edited by Belarrius on 21 May 2016 at 9:58 am UTC
Guest May 21, 2016
@Liam the game is meant to be modded, you can see this on custom servers. If you check out the public server list and join one of the popular ones you will see the amount of custom stuff in there.


Last edited by on 21 May 2016 at 1:24 pm UTC
Guest May 21, 2016
Quoting: SeegrasMinecraft feels so much more polished than any of the clones. Which is sad, because there are some that can sustain massively bigger worlds, higher view distance, more entities and still have a better performance than Minecraft.

did you look in the public server list? the game is all about modding. Out of the box its basically a barren rev.1 minecraft build.
AskQuestionsLater May 21, 2016
I've been running Minetest (initially for my sons, but I've been playing it too!) for a few weeks, starting at 0.4.13 and now 0.4.14.

Initially, I wasn't that impressed - the base game is pretty quiet and basic. It wasn't until I starting trawling through the forums that I realized there are a metric ton of mods for the base game. Any initial concerns I had that the mods might conflict have evaporated - I've been running a mix of homedecor_plus, farming_plus, throwing_enhanced and mesecons, on top of a goodly set of mobs and it plays well. The extreme mod-ability of the game also helps me balance it out - my youngest is most interested in building and exploring, but doesn't want to fight wolves or zombies (although slimes appear to be okay).

I would recommend anyone interested look around at the mods before starting a server - some mods will affect the generation of blocks within the world (moreores, moretrees, moreblocks) and you probably want those active at the initial world generation.

You might also want to ensure that jungle and dungeon generation are enabled for your world before you generate it too - check out the possibilities for ~/.minetest/minetest.conf
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