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Minetest, a voxel game engine created to be something like a Minecraft clone, is finally smashing apart the chains to become more its own unique thing.

Announced in a blog post the team explained why it was originally created and how it's grown with a huge community. Minetest itself of course, is just a voxel game engine, a platform for various games. And so with that in mind, it needed its own identity to finally throw off the "Minecraft clone" comments and so the era of Minetest is now over with the introduction of Luanti.

The name is a play on the Finnish word luonti (“creation”) and the programming language used for games and mods, Lua. Combined together, that's Luanti. They're still in the process of getting all bits of it renamed, so it may take a while.

Seems quite a fitting name and I like the idea behind it, although it's not particularly memorable, but then again for most people it will be the games made with it that create the memories. If you missed it we also had MineClone2, a game for Minetest Luanti, recently change its name to VoxeLibre as well.


Pictured - VoxeLibre

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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13 comments
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pb Oct 14
Bad name, bad decision, IMO.
dpanter Oct 14
Clever name in some regards, terrible in others. It's... fine?
Should avoid lawsuits at least, but I pretty much feel the same way about this as I did with MineClone2 -> VoxeLibre change. Meh.
Tchey Oct 14
I see no interest about this game/project, beside being "open". I see no interest in clones in general. So much more can be done from the same prime idea.

Vintage Story, Colony Survival, Elsewhere... Yes !
Maybe they could have called it "TORILLE!"
hm11 Oct 14
I don't vibe with the name.. usually because the name has to be about the game. I get the french and code mixture, maybe is because i don't know french Lol but the name is just not good in my humble opinion, doesn't give me anything about the game.
Salvatos Oct 14
I always felt like "Minetest" sounded like a debugging tool for Minecraft servers or something, so I’d say good change as far as that goes. I don’t see how that will help "throw off the 'Minecraft clone' comments" though, since that’s exactly what it is regardless of the name.

Quoting: hm11I get the french and code mixture, maybe is because i don't know french
What French?
WYW Oct 14
Good to change away from the MineTEST name. Suggesting the game/engine and people would always ask, "Test. is it like a demo?". At least now it has a name that isn't a misnomer and elicits a little curiosity.

LUA + Creation = Luanti isn't a bad notion but of course people don't like change in general.
whizse Oct 14
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Quoting: hm11maybe is because i don't know french Lol
Configuration error. Set your language parser to Finnish!
Ehvis Oct 14
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This was always a project that was due for a name change. The "test" always made it seem like some tech demo code that's not meant to have a future. You can argue about the new name, but at least it now sounds more like a game engine.
Well, reasonable that they changed the name. As names go, it's a nice enough name for some sorts of things . . . it would be a fine name for a random open source infrastructure project, or a Linux distro or something. It has a pleasant sound and a clever derivation. For games though I do tend to prefer that names be sort of descriptive, I find these abstract names are unmemorable, don't give me anything to hang onto to remind me that this name belongs with that thing.
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