MineClone2 is pretty much as close as you can get to Minecraft without playing Minecraft. It's free, open source and runs on the Minetest voxel game engine. A new release is now available with version 0.81.0.
I doubt it will need much of an introduction for people new to it: a sandbox game where you go and do whatever you want. The new release requires either 5.5.1 or 5.6.0 at a minimum.
Some of the main highlights from the new version include:
- A rewrite of signs, including coloured text.
- Villager schedule implemented, villager fixes.
- Nether terrain generation improved for a lot more open space.
- Nether bulwark (mini-bastion) added.
- Nether bridge fragment.
- Strider mob added.
- Raids added.
- Axolotl mob added.
- Beehives and honey added.
- Ocean temples added.
- Lots more including various AI improvements.
Minetest has quite a lot of mods, and a few big game packs like this. If you've not tried Minetest or MineClone2 for a while, it looks like a good time to jump back in.
Some you may have missed, popular articles from the last month:
Quoting: MayeulCAlso, it runs better on low-end machines in my experience, though the sort of low-powered machine that can barely run minecraft is getting harder to find, thankfully :P
Yup, Minecraft is a pain on my old Intel Core i5-661 (iGPU). And versions newer than 1.16 won't run on it, due to raised OpenGL requirements - that iGPU it stuck with OpenGL 2.1. Minetest + MineClone2 work reasonably well. And now that the 0.81.1 performance hotfix is out, I'm curious how the game would run on that oldie. I don't expect a huge boost, but thankfully that's just a "vacation PC". :D
The PC I normally play the game on is also fairly old (Intel Core i5-4690K + Intel HD Graphics 4600, OpenGL 4.5), but it's good enough for a long gameplay.
As previously said, it's nice that you don't need an online account to play MineClone2. You can also start a LAN game by just checking a box in the Minetest GUI (Host Server), although if you do the necessary port forwarding, people from the outside can join too, even from Android devices.
P.S. I'm part of the MineClone2 team, mainly doing testing and bug reporting. If any of you feel like contributing to Minetest (the engine, in C++), that would benefit all the games based on it, including MineClone2. :) As for MineClone2, Lua makes it tick. Minecraft is great but, unsurprisingly, Microsoft is a bit too intrusive for some people. It's well worth having a free software alternative, so any help is welcome.
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