VoxeLibre (formerly MineClone2) v0.87 released moving away from Minecraft

Quoting: kneekoo

Quoting: blindcoderWill it ever get proper PLAYER documentation? Like what to do early, mid, late game? How to get X, Y, Z resource? You know, stuff that kids want to know when playing.

Since the game was focused on offering the same experience Minecraft had, our little help system (the "?" icon in the player inventory) mostly focused on the details that are particular to the engine it's built upon. That means the Minecraft wiki largely applies to our game, and many "first day" tutorials about Minecraft work just the same.

Thank you for this information! THAT is what I'd have needed to know a lot sooner. I've never played Minecraft, ever. And, well, the title bar in the Minetest launcher literally says "It's NOT Minecraft" so when trying to search for Mineclone tutorials, I completely skipped the Minecraft ones, because of course I did.

I'll probably dive back into the game soon then! Much love for all the work!

I have mixed feelings about "moving away from Minecraft". Sure, I can just play Minecraft if I want Minecraft.

Then again, Minetest + VoxeLibre/MineClone so far has provided an alternative that was

a) free (as in beer)
b) performing better on low end hardware
c) staying close to Minecraft content

And this was definitely of value to the existing players. So for now, I am mildly anxious what happens next.

Quoting: hardpenguinI have mixed feelings about "moving away from Minecraft". Sure, I can just play Minecraft if I want Minecraft.

Then again, Minetest + VoxeLibre/MineClone so far has provided an alternative that was

a) free (as in beer)
b) performing better on low end hardware
c) staying close to Minecraft content

And this was definitely of value to the existing players. So for now, I am mildly anxious what happens next.

i loved it as mineclone, despite i missed better shader-options.

d) runs on android alongside pc

Quoting: hardpenguinAnd this was definitely of value to the existing players. So for now, I am mildly anxious what happens next.

Same feelings here. But thankfully there is still Mineclonia on this front, right?

Quoting: blindcoderThank you for this information! THAT is what I'd have needed to know a lot sooner. I've never played Minecraft, ever. And, well, the title bar in the Minetest launcher literally says "It's NOT Minecraft" so when trying to search for Mineclone tutorials, I completely skipped the Minecraft ones, because of course I did.

I'll probably dive back into the game soon then! Much love for all the work!

That quote is "It's not in MC!!1" and it's a tongue in cheek poke at a few of our players who were adamant that we stay strictly with Minecraft features, nothing different. Adding the hamburger to right-click a villager to follow you caused some drama some time ago, but since the engine still doesn't have the technical capability to draw lines, we couldn't implement the leads (and still can't) and someone decided to contribute his idea of adding a new item until we can have leads. There's a mod that does it, but the performance of that is not what the engine could offer, so the majority vote went to adding the hamburger.

The strong reluctance of some people to stay strictly on Minecraft's footsteps also didn't sit well with most of us. Sometimes it's about solving issues so that the players don't struggle. Sometimes we simply wanted to add stuff that made sense without being intrusive to the expected Minecraft gameplay.

Here's 3 tiny differences that are nice and useful:
- we have gold stairs
- our Nether portals are not required to be rectangular, they just need a closed frame of obsidian blocks
- our sugar cane can be placed even diagonally next to water (strange thing for Minecraft to hydrate farms diagonally but not hydrate sugar cane the same way :P)

Quoting: hardpenguinI have mixed feelings about "moving away from Minecraft". Sure, I can just play Minecraft if I want Minecraft.

Then again, Minetest + VoxeLibre/MineClone so far has provided an alternative [...]

And this was definitely of value to the existing players. So for now, I am mildly anxious what happens next.

We like what Minecraft has to offer and we wanted that experience in a free and open source game that's much easier to mod, and functional on older PCs. It's a lot easier to find people to play with when the requirements are low. So every now and then I spend a few hours playing the game on my 15-year old laptop to see how our performance is doing - it's much easier to catch performance regressions on that.

The base gameplay and existing Minecraft tutorials will still just work, and it's important for us to keep it that way because we like our main source of inspiration. We simply want to expand the scope of the project and make sure that we avoid legal trouble. People who strictly want a Minecraft experience can indeed choose to play that game.

Hey, everyone! :) To those reading this message, we're getting closer to the next release and we would appreciate some help with testing some rather big changes - fixes, polish, code refactoring.

VoxeLibre 0.88 includes work on over 100 issues. They're 75% completed at this point, and a few of the ones left require more thorough testing:

Minecart Update
Download: https://git.minetest.land/teknomunk/MineClone2/archive/minecart-update.zip
Feedback: https://git.minetest.land/VoxeLibre/VoxeLibre/pulls/4213

Improve mob smartness
Download: https://git.minetest.land/kno10/VoxeLibre/archive/leap_of_death.zip
Feedback: https://git.minetest.land/VoxeLibre/VoxeLibre/pulls/4479

Projectile refactor
This needs verification that projectiles (especially arrows/rockets, but other ones too) work at least as good as before, and not worse.
Download: https://git.minetest.land/VoxeLibre/VoxeLibre/archive/projectile-refactor.zip
Feedback: https://git.minetest.land/VoxeLibre/VoxeLibre/pulls/4433

Shield improvements and bugfixes
Download: https://git.minetest.land/VoxeLibre/VoxeLibre/archive/shieldy_shields.zip
Feedback: https://git.minetest.land/VoxeLibre/VoxeLibre/pulls/4582

Both new and old worlds would be good for testing, and of course make sure you make backups of your old worlds, just in case. And since our goal is to support the 2 most recent major Minetest releases (5.8 and 5.9), reports for either/both are useful to us.

Thanks in advance for your help! :)