MineClone2, inspired by Minecraft, gets renamed to VoxeLibre

I thought the new name was a joke, guess they really went with it then. Terrible.

I knew from when I first played it that the name would inevitably be changed eventually, and here we are. I don't know what the other options in the running were, but now they've picked one hopefully it'll let them branch out more than the old name would've.

Inspired by the core gameplay of Minecraft, the name MineClone2 was not a particularly good one and it seems the developers were aware and so it's gone through a rebrand to be now called VoxeLibre.

They could have chosen a better new name :P

Wow, that sure is a name for a game where you mine and build things

We had a community vote over the name, after a months long period of gathering suggestions. Obviously some preferred other names, but most of the votes went to VoxeLibre and we switched to it. Jokingly, I mentioned the other day in our chat that if Microjang ever renames, I'd be happy to take the name "Minecraft" off their hands because it sounds pretty good.

The Minecraft-specific mobs won't disappear, but they're going to be reskinned and renamed to avoid poking the bear. And for the gameplay to remain the same, the functionality and drops will stay the same.

The rename was important for two main reasons:
1. it wasn't great on its own (it sounded like a cheap knockoff, and it was never a parody game anyway)
2. it set the expectation to strictly follow Minecraft's footsteps

The obvious problem with the latter is that it could've put the project in a bad position if someone at Microjang decided we were following them too close. No one wants to feed that beast at the expense of years of hard work to make this free and open source game.

There are plans for additional content, but that will be tackled sensibly, likely initially with official mods to test the waters and see if our community enjoys the new stuff and prefers having it in the base game. And then there may be new content that doesn't affect the core experience in any way.

As expected, there's no shortage of great ideas floating around. But it's a community project and feedback is quite important in shaping it, especially now, so you can join us on Discord or Matrix for real-time feedback and even cast votes when it comes to that. :)

How is it spelled through ? Is it the Spanish Libre of Cuba Libre, a English libre (no idea ho it is spelled in English) or something different ?

I've been in IT for a long enough time to know that people will call stuff they way it rolls on their tongue the easiest. Resistance is futile.

Now considering the combination of Voxel and Libre, a fairly close pronunciation would sound like vox-uh-lee-breh.

Thanks for the information! Honestly, I'd love to see ex Mineclone move on a bit, change up the dimensions and add more stuff.

Oh, I'd love that too. Quite a while back, before we even started looking for a new name, I had a bunch of ideas to enhance the base game with an extra dimension, mobs and NPCs that would've kept the base gameplay unaffected while also giving plenty of additional content.

The main point was specifically to have something that doesn't alter the balance of the game in any way, so that Minecraft "purists" could enjoy the game as they want, even in multiplayer with people who would make use of the extra features. The secondary point was to stay within the existing mechanics and APIs, so that making it happen would not require changes, but rather additions. And the third point was to allow updating the game and adding this to existing worlds without breaking anything.

This might just be a happy case of procrastination, because along with the rebranding we could consider even non-purist features. But now is the time to write it all down, so everyone can nitpick it and see what happens. :)

I actually dreaded putting the whole thing "on paper" because after I wrote a whole page making the case for this non-trivial addition, I realized that the approach was bad - too much to read and digest. And by non-trivial I mean the content generated by this would be pretty significant, like 2-3 Minecraft releases, despite not adding new mechanics. Well, the new dimension would have some specific limitations, so to speak, mainly to make it scalable to multiplayer. But I don't want to divulge any of it at this point. I hope I'll manage to write it all down so our developers and art contributors can dissect it and run with it.

VoxeLibre ? Are there voxeL's in this game

correct me if im wrong (and i know you will) but i though the game was polygons ?

Might aswell have called it PolyLibre ..

or better yet Polycraft

open source developers not choosing he word open or libre in their project names:

!link

How is it spelled through ? Is it the Spanish Libre of Cuba Libre, a English libre (no idea ho it is spelled in English) or something different ?

I don't think there's an English world "libre". There's a French word, but in the context of open source software it's almost always the Spanish that's being invoked. Don't know why--either there's more Latin American involvement in open source than French involvement, or US Americans sometimes speak Spanish but rarely speak French.

It would have been nice if the naming schema could have followed the other Libre names.

Libre Chat

Libre Office

Libre Worlf

Libre tro ;P

But in all seriousness in my opinion LibreVoxe is way better than VoxeLibre and easier to remember and rolls off the tongue better IRL speech.

How is it spelled through ? Is it the Spanish Libre of Cuba Libre, a English libre (no idea ho it is spelled in English) or something different ?

I don't think there's an English world "libre". There's a French word, but in the context of open source software it's almost always the Spanish that's being invoked. Don't know why--either there's more Latin American involvement in open source than French involvement, or US Americans sometimes speak Spanish but rarely speak French.

Wild guess but this might relate -- RSM -- https://youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw

I'm not sure about other english speakers but I have always taken the word "Libre" to be short for "Liberty" as in "The Statue of Liberty" -- or to mean 'freedom for the individual'

I'm guessing this is part of what the french were conveying when they gifted the Statue of Liberty to USA + New York?

It would have been nice if the naming schema could have followed the other Libre names.

Libre Chat

Libre Office

Libre Worlf

Libre tro ;P

But in all seriousness in my opinion LibreVoxe is way better than VoxeLibre and easier to remember and rolls off the tongue better IRL speech.

There's a free (public domain recordings, by volunteers, of public domain books) audiobook site called 'LibriVox' https://librivox.org/ -- they may have wanted to avoid the names getting conflated.

But in all seriousness in my opinion LibreVoxe is way better than VoxeLibre and easier to remember and rolls off the tongue better IRL speech.

There's a free (public domain recordings, by volunteers, of public domain books) audiobook site called 'LibriVox' https://librivox.org/ -- they may have wanted to avoid the names getting conflated.

And also you'd lose the Voxel wordplay by putting the Libre first.

I don't think there's an English world "libre". There's a French word, but in the context of open source software it's almost always the Spanish that's being invoked. Don't know why--either there's more Latin American involvement in open source than French involvement, or US Americans sometimes speak Spanish but rarely speak French.

AFAICT, the usage of 'libre' stuck after a suggestion by Stallman to differentiate between the 'gratis' (free as in beer) and the 'rights and responsibilities' (free as in speech) conceptions of freedom: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

Though somewhat ironically, the latinate 'liber' doesn't quite capture the sense RMS has in mind either; because it designates freedom from constraint in both its Latin origin, and how it's been taken up in the Anglophone world in notions of 'liberty', 'liberalism', and so on: Being 'freeborn', as opposed to a slave; freedom to trade, travel, etc., without being tied to some 'lord', 'king', whatever. -- whereas RMS's conception is more 'contentful', so to speak, in that it involves being part of a system of mutual constraints among equals, that is, having rights as well as responsibilities.

So, 'libre' software would better describe MIT & BSD licensed software if we were being more pedantic with our terminology.

VoxeLibre ? Are there voxeL's in this game

correct me if im wrong (and i know you will) but i though the game was polygons ?

Might aswell have called it PolyLibre ..

or better yet Polycraft

The game is based on Minetest - an open source voxel game engine.

About the name, considering we received tens of suggestions, it's funny that most people didn't even try to search the name before proposing it. Most are actively used by other projects or companies.

We're well aware that a better name would've been nicer. But despite the many suggestions we got, we could barely use a handful in the community vote. We could've waited for more suggestions, or move on and focus on the game's next steps. It won't take long until barely anyone will care about the name, as it happened with many projects. Because in the end it has to do one job, and this one is about having fun in a free and open source way. :)

We'll make it so.


Last edited by kneekoo on 17 Apr 2024 at 4:41 pm UTC

yikes, that name wont do anything besides confuse people. Spelled wrong and feels backwards. Genuinely hope im wrong, love the project.

Spelled wrong

I feel like I'm missing something - what about it is spelled wrong?