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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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hardpenguin Oct 15
The names are bad, the games are good.
I think it's a good name. I had mixed feelings at first, but seeing as it is more of a game engine than a game unto itself, I think Luanti fits really nicely.
kneekoo Oct 18
Quoting: TcheyI see no interest about this game/project, beside being "open". I see no interest in clones in general.

It's not a game, but an engine, and it's not even designed to replicate everything that Minecraft does, which is why VoxeLibre doesn't have everything a Minecraft player would expect. What they give you is a user interface with access to their Content database (games, mods, textures) and the means to manage your installed content, along with the settings related to the engine and installed games and mods.

When you look at the list of games for this engine, of course most of them offer something similar to Minecraft because it's a voxel game engine and people love making that kind of games. But different kinds of games are possible, and there are a few small games that have been made during their game jams - see 2023.

Here are two interesting Minetest/Luanti games:
- Exile (pretty brutal survival game)
- Hades Revisited (tough survival game on a hellish planet; incomplete, but it offers content for a lot of hours of gameplay)

P.S. The 2024 Luanti Game Jam is now live.


Last edited by kneekoo on 19 October 2024 at 6:48 am UTC
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