Subject: List of Minetest projects For: #Minetest and personal associates Image: Screenshot of the world Legends of Dragons Short link: https://dansu.org/minetest-projects As some FOSS #gamers know, over the past decade, Minetest has split into five branches and/or groups. I’ll offer the list below. This post was prompted by an email exchange 📧 today with McKaygerhard of #Minenux. I’ll post the email exchange separately. Minetest 1 of 5. #Luanti aka Trolltest [led largely by Andrew Ward aka Rubenwardy]. The name change to “Luanti” was due partly to the desire to have a “cool” name and partly to the facts that I personally exist, I’ve been minetest.org since 2012, and web searches for the Minetest Wiki 📚🔎 go to me. Personally, I feel that the name change was a mistake ❌ from a business goodwill perspective. The Luanti group tossed a decade of investment in the original name. However, I can’t complain as this leaves me with the party with the primary claim to the name. Link: https://luanti.org/ Minetest 2 of 5. MultiCraft from Maksym Hamarnyk. #MultiCraft was a commercial fork of the original Minetest. Andrew Ward’s group reviled Maksym for seeking to make money. 💸💲Some of them then crept round to Maksym’s back stair to beg for a share. I’m told that sfan5 aka The Ninja Kitten cut a deal with Maksym. Supposedly, both Maksym and sfan5 are retired now based on profits from the project. In an odd note, sfan5 is one of the leads on the “vlc” project. 🍿 Technical notes: a. “MultiCraft” was a poor choice of name due to the fact that multiple products were already using it. b. The name “Maksym Hamarnyk” might be a pseudonym. It shows up in business filings overseas, but this isn’t proof that the name is real. Link: https://github.com/MultiCraft Minetest 3 of 5. There are multiple commercial forks of Multicraft. These include, for example, Kawaii World. Some of these forks are illegal due to failure to comply with FOSS license rules. Sample link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kawaii.craft.world Minetest 4 of 5. Final Minetest aka Final MT. This is the only Minetest in existence that is maintained, largely complete, stable, completely FOSS, not a walled garden, and not run primarily by anonymous parties. This is also 1 of only 2 active Minetest projects that continue to support MT4 clients. [The other project is Minenux.] Final MT has improved APIs and other features that we’re proud of. Our Unified Food API, for example, merges most of the different Food mods🥤 🥗🍔🍟 in existence and smooths over gaps. We were the first Minetest to fully merge the abandoned 3D Armor 🛡️ code into a skins framework. Our curated collection of skins is arguably the best in existence. We have a Unified Water API that can easily produce everything from sewer water to accommodate post-apocalypse worlds to buildings made out of bouncy Jell-O (tm) or walls that fish can swim in. 🐟 🫧 Main link: https://minetest.org/ Wiki link: https://wiki.minetest.org/ Gitea link: https://git.minetest.org/ Minetest 5 of 5. Minenux. This is McKaygerhard’s MT4-compatible Minetest. Link: https://github.com/minenux To clarify some of the preceding points: a. The commercial Minetests are moving to walled garden status. 🔒 This means that they aren’t really FOSS and that players don’t get to own or even keep the content that they create. The players are essentially being farmed for the benefit of would-be millionaires. 💰 b. Luanti isn’t commercial or a walled garden. However, it’s about as stable and backwards compatible as a sneeze or a nightmare where the plot thrashes about continuously. They’ve even dropped support for “minetest_game”. Additionally, the Luanti group consists largely of anonymous parties including trolls. 👹 They’re prone to making death threats. A few years ago, I was forced to file a police report 👮 related to one of the trolls that I was able to identify. Fortunately, he was located in the U.S. so that did make a difference. ⚖️ c. McKaygerhard’s Minenux is FOSS and he’s not anonymous. However, he’s preoccupied with IRL issues presently. I should add that most of the Minetest projects are diverging in terms of protocols. In the end, clients for one Minetest won’t work with most other Minetests. It’s regrettable. The history of the Minetest project as a whole is regrettable. It’s also colorful and it provides object lessons related to community, FOSS, and self-organizing projects as well. A related book is in progress. 📕 The screenshot is of the Final Minetest world Legends of Dragons. 🐉 For long-time MT people, the “owners” and builders have included Real Ved, Block Kawaii, Hero Alex, Kiwi, and REAL Zulfikar. The world is located at chillcorner.org port 30088 but is down at times for bug fixes and updates. Both MT4 and MT5 clients should work up to a point. #Linux #games #gamedev #voxel @Wuzzy