An in-game browser lets users download games and modifications from the ContentDB website.[8] The five most popular games by downloads are VoxeLibre, Minetest Game, NodeCore, Tutorial and Subway Miner.[9]
Over a decade of active development Minetest has garnered critical acclaim and gained in popularity; the games, mods and texturepacks on ContentDB have over 12 million downloads combined[10] , and the Android version of Minetest has over a million downloads on the Google Play store[11] .
Gameplay
Player character near dry plains, green plains, and jungle biomes
The game world of all Minetest games is composed of voxels which are mostly cubes aligned in a 3D grid. However the player and creatures can move around freely. In Minetest voxels are called nodes. Different nodes represent various materials, such as dirt, stone, ores, tree trunks, water, and lava.
The most popular games for Minetest are VoxeLibre (formerly Mineclone2) and Minetest Game.[12] Both are sandbox building games.
VoxeLibre is a full game with animals, monsters, interesting biomes, whereas Minetest Game is a lifeless sandbox with mostly landscape nodes.
While technically playable without, Minetest Game relies on modifications to add creatures, more biomes, gameplay mechanics, armours, weapons, tools, decorative nodes and so on.
The gameplay of VoxeLibre revolves around picking up and placing these nodes, gathering materials, crafting items and nodes by placing them in a crafting grid in the inventory window, smelting ores in the oven, farming crops, animal husbandry, eating food and defeating monsters to survive. Some nodes can only be picked up with certain held tools the player has to craft.
Snowy conifer biome at the edge of ice plains
As players explore the world, new areas are procedurally generated, using a map seed specified by the player. A new game puts the player in the center of a voxel cube 62 thousand nodes across, so the player can travel 31 thousand nodes in any direction (sideways, up, or down)[13] before reaching the invisible wall at the end of the world.
The world is divided into biomes ranging from deserts to jungles to snowfields; the terrain includes plains, mountains, forests, caves, and various lava/water bodies. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, and one full cycle lasts 20 real-time minutes.
Minetest provides two play style options across games: Enable Damage and Creative Mode. Disabling damage prevents dying, thus losing items and the possible frustration it might cause and Creative Mode provides players with infinite resources to build whatever they want without having to gather them first.[14]
Multiplayer
Built-in Internet server browser
Minetest offers players to play together over the internet or the local network by joining a server or hosting their own.
Players can either connect by IP or select the server from the built-in server browser if the host chose to publish it there by selecting the checkbox.
Instead of centralized account systems proprietary games use for the whole software, Minetest allows registering and logging into accounts on each individual server.
Customization
Built-in content browser
Minetest provides an interface for games and mods written in Lua. Mods are server-side and work out of the box when playing on servers, with no installation required.
Minetest features a built-in content browser showing packages uploaded to ContentDB, allowing users to install games, mods and texture packs with a single click. Over 2300 packages are available there as of May 2024[10] and many more on the forums.
Default texture pack
RPG16 texture pack
Hand Painted high resolution texture pack
Crystal cave biome generated by Underground Realms mod
Mods can be used to add or modify nodes, gameplay mechanics, tools, weapons, armour, monsters, player skins and the user interface.
The full source code of Minetest and most of its games and their artistic assets such as textures and sounds, are distributed under free licenses, making it easier to publish modified versions and derivatives.
Interior design using Home Decor mod
A horse from the Mob Horse mod
Development
Minetest-c55 0.4.dev, April 8, 2012 build
Minetest was originally released in November 2010 under a proprietary license.[6] Shortly afterwards the license was changed to the GPL-2.0-or-later license.[5] By agreement among major contributors, in June 2012 the project license was to be changed to LGPL-2.1-or-later, though at the time small parts still remained under the GPL-2.0-or-later license.[4] In September 2013, the transition was complete.[3] While LGPL-2.1-or-later remains the main license for the Minetest engine, other free and open-source licenses are used for various other parts of the latest release.[2]
Perttu Ahola was the only developer working on the project for about six months, until Ciaran Gultnieks started making code contributions in May 2011.[15] The roster of contributors grew and changed over the years. As of July 2020, there are 9 active core developers and 15 active contributors. Project participants do not have set roles, but rather keep their activity within their respective areas of expertise. Perttu Ahola's role morphed over the years: whereas initially it was engine development, now it is mostly Web-hosting and administration, assigning core developer, moderator, and other roles to people, as well as being the final word in cases where other developers are unable to render a decision.[15]
Since version 5.0.0 the in-game browser lets users download games and modifications as well as their dependencies from a website called ContentDB.[8]
As of Minetest 5.8.0 the Minetest Engine no longer ships with a default game.[16]
Usage in education
Minetest has been used in educational environments to teach subjects such as mathematics, programming, and earth sciences. Such examples are:
In 2017 in France, Minetest was used to teach calculus and trigonometry.[17]
In 2018, for Laboratory Education and Apprenticeships (EDA) at the Paris Descartes University, Minetest was used to teach life and earth sciences to year 6 students who could not observe some phenomena in person but could experience them in the Minetest virtual world.[19]
Reception
Opensource.com listed Minetest at #1 in its "Best open source games of 2015",[20] stating that it is maybe "the most complete alternative to Minecraft", and noted its expansibility, stating that it contains a user-friendly API for creating mods in Lua.[21]PC Magazine listed Minetest among "The best Sandbox Creation Games for Minecraft Fans".[22]
In 3D computer graphics, a voxel represents a value on a regular grid in three-dimensional space. As with pixels in a 2D bitmap, voxels themselves do not typically have their position explicitly encoded with their values. Instead, rendering systems infer the position of a voxel based upon its position relative to other voxels.
Video game modding is the process of alteration by players or fans of one or more aspects of a video game, such as how it looks or behaves, and is a sub-discipline of general modding. Mods may range from small changes and tweaks to complete overhauls, and can extend the replay value and interest of the game.
Multi Theft Auto (MTA) is a multiplayer modification for the Microsoft Windows version of Rockstar North games Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas that adds online multiplayer functionality. For Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the mod also serves as a derivative engine to Rockstar's interpretation of RenderWare.
The Spring Engine is a game engine for real-time strategy (RTS) video games. The game engine is free and open-source software, subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.
An open-source video game, or simply an open-source game, is a video game whose source code is open-source. They are often freely distributable and sometimes cross-platform compatible.
A sandbox game is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or alternatively with a goal that the players set for themselves. Such games may lack any objective, and are sometimes referred to as non-games or software toys. More often, sandbox games result from these creative elements being incorporated into other genres and allowing for emergent gameplay. Sandbox games are often associated with an open world concept which gives the players freedom of movement and progression in the game's world. The term "sandbox" derives from the nature of a sandbox that lets people create nearly anything they want within it.
Teeworlds is a free, open-source sidescrolling multiplayer shooting game originally created by Swedish developer Magnus Auvinen and now maintained by the community. It features simple cartoon-themed graphics and physics and relies heavily on classic shooter weaponry and gameplay. Currently there are official versions for Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS and it has been available via digital distributor Steam since 2015. The source code is publicly available.
CastleMiner is a 2011 video game developed by American indie studio DigitalDNA Games and released on Xbox Live Indie Games on July 27, 2011. It is a block-building sandbox game that uses Xbox Live Avatars as the player characters. Less than four months after its initial release, a sequel to the game called CastleMiner Z was released on November 9, 2011. A third game, CastleMiner Warfare, was released for Windows PCs in 2013.
Simple and Fast Multimedia Library (SFML) is a cross-platform software development library designed to provide a simple application programming interface (API) to various multimedia components in computers. It is written in C++ with bindings available for Ada, C, Crystal, D, Euphoria, Go, Java, Julia, .NET, Nim, OCaml, Python, Ruby, and Rust. Experimental mobile ports were made available for Android and iOS with the release of SFML 2.2.
The Powder Toy is a falling-sand game originally created by Stanislaw K. Skowronek. It is now developed and maintained by LBPHacker, Simon, jacob1 and other contributors on GitHub. The Powder Toy is free and open-source software licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.0. A total of 185 different in-game materials, each with custom behavior and interactions, are available in the game.
Vox is an independent voxel-based adventure and role-playing video game developed by Canadian studio AlwaysGeeky Games.
Keen Software House is an independent video game developing company based in Prague, Czech Republic. The company was founded by Marek Rosa in 2010.
StarMade is an effectively infinite open-universe space simulation sandbox game in development by Schine for Windows, macOS, and Linux. StarMade is currently in alpha and is free to play, during alpha.
Factorio is a construction and management simulation game developed and published by Czech studio Wube Software. The game was announced via an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign in 2013 and released for Windows, macOS, and Linux on 14 August 2020 following a four-year long early access phase to positive reviews. The game was released on Nintendo Switch on 28 October 2022.
User modification, or modding, of video games in the open world sandbox Grand Theft Auto series is a popular trend in the PC gaming community. These unofficial modifications are made by altering gameplay logic and asset files within a user's game installation, and can change the player's experience to varying degrees. Frequently created by anonymous modders, modifications are presented in the form of downloadable files or archives. Third-party software has been indispensable for building Grand Theft Auto mods, due to the lack of official editing tools from the developer, Rockstar Games. Mods for Grand Theft Auto are generally developed for use on the PC versions of the games, since the platform does not prevent modifications to installed software; however, similar content for console and mobile phone versions does exist to an extent.
A Minecraft mod is a mod that changes aspects of the sandbox game Minecraft. Minecraft mods can add additional content to the game, make tweaks to specific features, and optimize performance. Thousands of mods for the game have been created, with some mods even generating an income for their authors. While Mojang Studios does not provide an API for modding, community tools exist to help developers create and distribute mods. The popularity of Minecraft mods has been credited for helping Minecraft become one of the best-selling video games of all time.
Hytale is an upcoming sandbox game by Hypixel Studios. Production began in 2015 by developers from the Minecraft multiplayer server Hypixel with funding from Riot Games, who later bought the studio in 2020. It is scheduled to release for Windows and macOS operating systems, as well as consoles and mobile devices.
Vintage Story is a sandbox survival game developed and published by Anego Studios. The founders of Anego Studios, Tyron and Irena Madlener, began development on a standalone version of an earlier mod for Minecraft called Vintagecraft. An old version of the game is available for free download. The game is in early access and can be played in singleplayer or multiplayer modes.
Teardown is a 2022 sandbox–puzzle game developed and published by Tuxedo Labs. The game revolves around the owner of a financially stricken demolition company, who is caught executing a questionable job and becomes entangled between helping police investigations and taking on further dubious assignments. Teardown features levels made of destructible voxels, and the player follows the campaign through consecutive missions. In most missions, the player must collect or destroy objects connected to a security alarm. The player has unlimited time to prepare and is given upgradable tools, vehicles, and explosives to create a path within the level that allows them to complete the objectives as quickly as possible. A timer starts as soon as the security alarm is triggered, and the player must complete all required objectives and reach a getaway vehicle within sixty seconds, though the alarm can be adjusted from the settings.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Default texture pack
RPG16 texture pack
Hand Painted high resolution texture pack
