Oh man, I remember this from years ago when the only 1-up on Minecraft it had, was that I could run it at 60 FPS, infinite chunks in all directions, no extreme lag spikes while generating the map, and further view distance.
Zero mods back then, so I'm happy to see the mod support!
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”.
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.
Agree 100%. I always though the name suggested it wasn’t quite a complete game. In fact at first I didn’t think it was a game at all.
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.
Thanks for the TLDR, nice to know the reasons behind the name. And good reasons they are too.
I don't really like the new name yet, but it's a lot better than Minetest so I really can't complain.
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.
Is this an out-of-season April Fools' joke?
That woul've been: Minetest Immortal
No, it is something that has been discussed for quite some time. No one could decide on a good name until now
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.
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.
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?
it's just a framework, it depends on the mods you use. you can use mineclone2 if you want all the features of minecraft
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.
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.
Literally just yesterday my wife learned of Minetest's existence and said it was a terrible name
Just tell her that you told them your wife didn't like the name so they changed it.
"good news honey, they heard your complaint and renamed it"
I've seen it a few times in passing and always assumed it was like, a tech demo or proof of concept.
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".
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.
never thought i'd see minetest rebranding itself (if rebrand is the correct word at all anyway)
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. 🙃
How are you guys pronouncing this?
Personally, I’ve found it sounds kind of nice when said like “Loon tea”.
It's finnish, so like it's written. Foreign concept for english speakers, I know.
It is quite literally a foreign concept to anyone who only speaks English. That's how foreign languages work.
How is the word pronounced though?
It just looks like "Loo wan tee" to me.
Edit: Actually, just read the article, and considering the name Luanti is a mix between the Finnish word "creation" and the LUA programming language; and I'm preeetty sure LUA is pronounced "loo-wah" or "lew-ah", I think the Luanti pronunciation is more likely to be "loo-wun-tee".
Loo-wun-tee?
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