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[MirceaKitsune]

First thing first: If you're a Minecraft clone hater, this might not be the best topic for you. If you wish to reply, please don't start any "anti Minecraft clone" attacks. I seen that most topics about other games get filled with that sort of thing, and I'd like that not to happen here please.

There are many Minecraft clones out there, but none good enough to get me into playing them (or that seem to be going anywhere). I found one a few months back however, that is evolving fast and got to a quite impressive stage already. Not many people know of it yet though, which I find pretty sad.

Its current name is MineTest. It's a MineCraft clone written in C++, that uses OpenGL for rendering and LUA for scripting. The project is entirely open source, and developed by a person named celeron55. From my observation, it aims to reproduce the original Minecraft in most aspects, which I personally find a good thing with some parts.

The project is still in a basic state, but is evolving fast. It already has most basic features that Minecraft does... including a terrain generator that works the same way (generates the world as you explore it), water that flows, a working multiplayer system (which requires no registration), a daytime cycle, items such as mining tools and torches, a crafting system similar to Minecraft's, and more. Some of the advanced features include working chests and furnaces, tools of different types and materials (rockpick shovel and axe, craftable in wood stone and iron versions), signs you can put text on, a health system, and it seems a mob system is currently in the works.

The project's current website is located here. If you wish to chat with the developer and players, you can visit the IRC channel at irc.freenode.org #minetest . Please show this project some love if you like it! A reasonable amount of work is being put into it, and making it grow so fast. Here are a few videos from the world (screenshots can be seen on the main page linked above):

[DjBunn3h]

This looks simply amazing. I new a guy on an old server of mine trying to re-write Minecraft in C++ but gave up. I would love to see this become successful and available to everyone!
EDIT: Playing it right now. Runs amazingly smooth and has basically the same feel as Minecraft. Excellent!

[coin409]

I played it, ran into a snake type thing... either way it is very good.

[MrWpie]

I'll play it, since Minecraft runs at 3 Fps since 1.5...

[UltraJake]

MrWpie, on 23 May 2011 - 11:47 PM, said:

I'll play it, since Minecraft runs at 3 Fps since 1.5...

One thing I ask of you:
Don't make it exactly the same. I love playing clones for the variety of ideas and content they present. If you plan to just do a free clone of Minecraft then it's disappointing.

[Hopfenkaltschale]

I found myself starting Minetest almost more often than Minecraft lately, mainly due to the fact that there's seemingly infinite height/depth (it's actually "only" 31.000 something, but hey).
What's also cool is the possibility to toggle the visibility of all generated chunks which enables view distance as far as your pc allows without having to reload. Downside is that chunk loading is rather slow (or maybe it's just the radius around the player being pretty narrow). Plus every time I restart new I have to regenerate chunks that have been generated in a previous session. I would've welcomed it if I could just push "r" when coninuing an old map and have it displayed without generation beforehand.
Other than that it's quite the astonishing piece of free software. And I'd say there's no reason to not like it since it's one guy doing it for free for his own enjoyment and it's still only getting better.

Personally, I'm a big supporter of "clones" (eurgh, I said the bad word), so to say. People writing their own block engine have increased a lot lately and I can't help but anticipating further developement of every one of them, chiefly and most noteworthy imho (yeah, imho), Hexahedra (http://hexahedra.blogspot.com/) as well as Craftworld (http://www.craftworldgame.com/). The guy from Hexahedra had his stuff posted here already, think it was in one of the More-Heigt-Please-Threads, so you might've already know it, too. And man, looking at them landscapes, you can't be a Minecraft fanboy and not love 'em. So, Notch's already got my money, why not support more devs daring a different approach with a block engine kinda thingy, very promising ones, too?
As for craftworld, the physics implementation alone is reason enough for myself to give it a try.
And last but not least a video of yet another voxel block engine that actually tries a more slopey terrain:

Ah well, exciting times for fans of those kind of engines like myself.

[UltraJake]

Hopfenkaltschale, on 24 May 2011 - 12:12 AM, said:

I found myself starting Minetest almost more often than Minecraft lately, mainly due to the fact that there's seemingly infinite height/depth (it's actually "only" 31.000 something, but hey).
What's also cool is the possibility to toggle the visibility of all generated chunks which enables view distance as far as your pc allows without having to reload. Downside is that chunk loading is rather slow (or maybe it's just the radius around the player being pretty narrow). Plus every time I restart new I have to regenerate chunks that have been generated in a previous session. I would've welcomed it if I could just push "r" when coninuing an old map and have it displayed without generation beforehand.
Other than that it's quite the astonishing piece of free software. And I'd say there's no reason to not like it since it's one guy doing it for free for his own enjoyment and it's still only getting better.

Personally, I'm a big supporter of "clones" (eurgh, I said the bad word), so to say. People writing their own block engine have increased a lot lately and I can't help but anticipating further developement of every one of them, chiefly and most noteworthy imho (yeah, imho), Hexahedra (http://hexahedra.blogspot.com/) as well as Craftworld (http://www.craftworldgame.com/). The guy from Hexahedra had his stuff posted here already, think it was in one of the More-Heigt-Please-Threads, so you might've already know it, too. And man, looking at them landscapes, you can't be a Minecraft fanboy and not love 'em. So, Notch's already got my money, why not support more devs daring a different approach with a block engine kinda thingy, very promising ones, too?
As for craftworld, the physics implementation alone is reason enough for myself to give it a try.
And last but not least a video of yet another voxel block engine that actually tries a more slopey terrain:

Ah well, exciting times for fans of those kind of engines like myself.

I've heard of Craftworld, but not Hexahedra. It looks promising and I'll enjoy that colored light feature. (which is possible in Minecraft as a mod has done it before, even enabling different colored lights to blend to a new color when close) I do enjoy clones, but if they don't plan to diverse at all from the game they are cloning, I'm preparing the flame posting.

[Cwolfx]

Not bad. Would love to see this developed more.

[MirceaKitsune]

Glad that everyone likes Development is going in a happy rate so far. Two days ago, timed grass got implemented (grass used to grow instantly on dirt blocks when placing them). The next day, fences were added next

[Nocte]

I hadn't looked at Minetest for a while, so I grabbed the latest nightly build and took a stroll through C55's multiplayer map. Lots of cool new stuff! Not to mention it runs smooooth. Definitely a project to keep a close eye on.

MirceaKitsune, on 23 May 2011 - 11:28 PM, said:

It's a MineCraft clone written in C++, that uses OpenGL for rendering and LUA for scripting.

Aww man, I was so stoked when I read Minetest now has Lua scripting, but I've just looked at the forums and it seems the developer has decided against it. :/

Hopfenkaltschale, on 24 May 2011 - 12:12 AM, said:

The guy from Hexahedra had his stuff posted here already, think it was in one of the More-Heigt-Please-Threads, so you might've already know it, too.

*waves sheepishly*

And holy shit, Block Engine 16 looks impressive!

For those who like alternative engines, check out Sea of Memes.

[NakedFury]

I like the slopyness of the video engine 16.

Gonna try minetest right now.

[MirceaKitsune]

Nocte, on 26 May 2011 - 09:44 AM, said:

Aww man, I was so stoked when I read Minetest now has Lua scripting, but I've just looked at the forums and it seems the developer has decided against it. :/

Yeah... just found out a few days ago he decided to drop scripting support for now. Maybe he'll revive it some other time, though I don't think there are any plans for that currently.

[NakedFury]

This is ambitious and I like the word ambitious when used next to minecraft. I will keep watching for progress.

[MirceaKitsune]

More info on the progress. I recently looked into the minetest-delta version (fork which contains experimental features), and some nice things are on their way. Someone is working on implementing a smooth daytime cycle, with visible sun and moon (much prettier than the old one). New objects were added also... such as clay that you can make bricks from, cactuses that spawn on sand, and papyrus is being worked on right now (spawns near water and you can craft books and book shelves from it). I'm also working on implementing workbenches, but having trouble with the code. Here are some screenshots of the new stuff (the round sun is an old one):

[DancingPandaAU]

it runs so much smoother then minecraft
and the player movment feels better

[Nocte]

MirceaKitsune, on 03 June 2011 - 12:16 PM, said:

More info on the progress. I recently looked into the minetest-delta version (fork which contains experimental features), and some nice things are on their way.

There's a fork with more cool stuff?! Ah dammit, I always hear about these things just before I'm leaving for a few days.

I'm a bit disappointed though that all this effort is spent in copying Minecraft as closely as possible. :/

Seems not all hope is lost yet on the Lua front. Since I'm also building scripting into my own engine, I offered the developer to combine our efforts and design the API together.  He's going to focus on other things for a while, but may take up on it in the near future.

[MirceaKitsune]

The workbench code was finally finished today, and should be working exactly as intended and without any bugs. Currently, the workbench works exactly like the one in MineCraft, but I personally find that perfect. Someone else is also working on a better cloud system.