Introducing Our New Name
blog.minetest.net
After more than a year of public and internal discussions, we're ready to announce our new name!
  • @daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    3•1 hour ago

    I like the meme.

    I just wish they would merge the “truly infinite worlds” branch. The horizontal limits are to tight for this kind of game.

    • @Rogue@feddit.uk
      2•13 minutes ago

      Anything is better than minetest which sounded like a hastily written debugging mod for Minecraft

  • qazEnglish
    67•15 hours ago

    I don’t really like the new name yet, but it’s a lot better than Minetest so I really can’t complain.

  • Sunny' 🌻
    25•14 hours ago

    This is good news! Anyone here played it recently? How far has the game come in terms of content compared to Minecraft or Vintage Story?

    • down daemonEnglish
      31•13 hours ago

      it’s just a framework, it depends on the mods you use. you can use mineclone2 if you want all the features of minecraft

      • @walderan@sh.itjust.works
        13•7 hours ago

        Btw, mineclone2 also rebranded as Voxelibre, months ago, and for the same reasons. Voxelibre now actively moves away from copying Minecraft exactly.
        If you want the closest copy (and my personal recommendation) check out Mineclonia.

    • @MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
      8•12 hours ago

      Mobs kinda suck, because the engine has no native mob API.

      There are great mapgens who take advantage of the 1000’s of blocks world height.

      • Possibly linuxEnglish
        2•1 hour ago

        You can use the mod lib from contentdb. Also it is worth pointing out that they are moving towards a subgame focus not a mod focus. The original game has been discontinued and isn’t preinstalled. You install a game like Asuna to get gameplay and content.

        Of course you can still use Minetest game as a base for mods. I do that for simple worlds.

  • Ms. FalconEnglish
    22•15 hours ago

    never thought i’d see mintest rebranding itself (if rebrand is the correct word at all anyway)

  • data1701d (He/Him)English
    7•12 hours ago

    How are you guys pronouncing this?

    Personally, I’ve found it sounds kind of nice when said like “Loon tea”.

  • @HipsterTenZero@dormi.zone
    181•22 hours ago

    this is ok. minetest was an awful name.

    for those of you without the patience to read a blogpost, the new name’s actually a bit of wordplay.

    “Luanti” is a wordplay on the Finnish word luonti (“creation”) and the programming language Minetest Luanti employs for games and mods, Lua. The goal was to avoid yet another plain English word (good luck finding something unique…) and highlight the core principles of the project. The fusion of celeron55’s Finnish nationality and the platform’s focus on content creation resulted in the birth of “Luanti”.

    • comfy
      79•20 hours ago

      IMO, the worst thing about “Minetest” is that it sounded like it was just a test creation, a prototype or experiment. It’s certainly well beyond that now. The announcement introduction mentions people associate it with being a Minecraft clone or alpha release, but even further, to me the name initially gave me the impression it was [still] someone’s small hobby project. ‘Luanti’ is much better.

      • comfy
        46•20 hours ago

        On this note, another thing I appreciate is what they said about “Free” and “Libre”: those names are great for saying “This is a free/libre/open clone of [x]”, and that’s what I’ll think when I see it. Software like LibreOffice aims to support Microsoft Office documents, OpenRTC2 and OpenTTD are for people who want to see those games pretty-faithfully cloned, even if extended. Luanti is not OpenMinecraft.

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      3•19 hours ago

      I don’t think it was that bad. I think the new name is better though

  • Possibly linuxEnglish
    50•19 hours ago

    I actually like the new name. It seems like when a community project renames it always is something even worse than the original name. This is a great name that doesn’t sound silly to say out loud.

  • Ephera
    19•17 hours ago

    Man, I saw them initiating discussions around the name like a year ago. I did not expect anything to actually come from that after all this time. But yeah, glad that it did.

    Now we just need a better default font. 🙃

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      1•1 hour ago

      And maybe a really solid UI design. It seems like a not of games don’t have a good UI.

  • @hperrin@lemmy.world
    68•21 hours ago

    Oh thank god. Minetest was the worst name, and the game is actually pretty cool. It definitely deserves a cool name, and Luanti sounds cool.

    • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
      5•10 hours ago

      It IS a terrible name. But it also is an over one decade old brand.

      It will be hard to propagate the new name and have it as recognizable as “Minetest”.

      • @IcyToes@sh.itjust.works
        3•7 hours ago

        Those in open source circles will see through places like GamingOnLinux, Lemmy, Reddit and the official IRC/Discord. Those that don’t find out probably are no where near the open source gaming community so it won’t really matter.

      • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
        2•6 hours ago

        It initially was that. Also the name wasn’t meant to stick around forever.

        But, out of a sudden, between updates, not even the new website URLs ready?

        I don’t follow Minetest development that closely anymore, but last time I checked there were no issues or pull requests on their GitHub, nor something official regarding a name change in the forums.

        This feels like there are just a bunch of people haphazardly deciding there is a new name now.

        • Norah - She/TheyEnglish
          3•5 hours ago

          Here’s a post from May in the Minetest Luanti forums discussing the name change: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?p=425205#p425205

          I’m not going to search further to find the original discussion, but another user in this thread mentions seeing talk of this about a year ago. I agree that it’s not very professional for the new website to be in a less than functional state, but it feels like excitement or decision fatigue may be the culprit, not a rushed process. Then again, it’s an open source video game, not everything has to be “professional” all the time. Meanwhile, enjoy this meme from luanti.org:

          • 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘬
            2•3 hours ago

            I’m not going to search further to find the original discussion, but another user in this thread mentions seeing talk of this about a year ago.

            There were plenty of those threads and discussions happening during the past few years. This is a constant topic that came up in the forums and sometimes GitHub over and over again.

            • Norah - She/TheyEnglish
              2•3 hours ago

              Yes, and in the last twelve months those discussions clearly accelerated, and that post made it clear the lead/original dev had made their mind up. Which very much negates you saying this was rushed.

    • @als@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      9•6 hours ago

      Minetest has been more a platform for making games on than a single game for at least a decade, since they added lua scripting. Seems like you’re outraged over nothing with no real understanding of what Luanti has been and aims to be.

    • Norah - She/TheyEnglish
      17•10 hours ago

      Cool so, you linked to some git repositories that haven’t been updated in 4-5 years, and looking at their current website there seems to be some sort of crypto involved now.