Luanti (also known by its former name Minetest) is a community-driven, free and open-source scripting voxel game engine based on Irrlicht Engine, and is available on various mobile and desktop devices, including GNU variants, and BSD descendants. Originally, Luanti was a voxel game created in October 2010 by Perttu Ahola (recognized as celeron55 or c55) to explore the mechanics of Minecraft. Over time, Luanti has evolved from the original Minetest game into a general game engine as developers have actively integrated new features.
Luanti'sscripting system is organized into games and modules (commonly called "mods"). A game is a collection of mods that define the major content and overall behavior, while individual mods are Lua scripts that add or modify specific features. The community considers Luanti a game engine rather than a singular game, as it offers no playable content by itself.
Luanti also integrates a built-in browser which allows users to download games and mods from the external ContentDB website.[7] The five most popular games by downloads are VoxeLibre, Minetest Game, Mineclonia, Backrooms Test, and NodeCore.[8]
In October 2024, the project’s name was officially changed from Minetest to Luanti. The new name combines Lua (the scripting language) with the Finnish word luonti, meaning "creation".[9]
Overview
Player character near dry plains, green plains, and jungle biomes
Games are playable through worlds that are assembled by fixed 3D voxels aligned in a fixed position called nodes. Scenery is created by using nodes to represent various types of landscape or immobile objects, such as land, water, trees, and rocks. Conversely, objects are commonly used to create animated beings called mobs (or NPCs) which have the ability to walk, crawl, fly, and so on. Luanti allows users to create their own scenery and mobs, or they can use packages that have been created by other users; these content creators are referred to as modders or developers.
VoxeLibre is the primary example of a game which consists of real-world biomes with a variety of mobs that can spawn. It also has numerous game mechanics which allow for countless objectives such as building houses, farming, smelting, cooking, and so on.
On the other hand, Minetest Game (MTG) was designed without mobs or a clear game objective, since it was designed to be a modding base with sets of nodes and pre-generated biomes.
Snowy conifer biome at the edge of ice plains in first person mode
As players explore the world, new areas are procedurally generated using a map seed optionally specified by the player. A new game puts the player in the center of a map 62 thousand nodes across, so the player can travel 31 thousand nodes in any direction (sideways, up, or down)[10] 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 can include plains, mountains, forests, caves, water, or even lava, depending on the game and mod installed. The in-game time system follows a day and night cycle, with one full cycle lasting 20 real-time minutes by default.
Luanti 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, while Creative Mode provides players with infinite resources to build whatever they want without having to gather them first.[11]
Multiplayer
Built-in Internet server browser
Luanti allows 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 chooses to publish it there by selecting the checkbox.
Rather than the centralized account systems typically used by proprietary games across multiple game servers, Luanti allows registering and logging into accounts on each individual server, thereby allowing players to have multiple different accounts on each server, entirely separate from each other.
Customization
Built-in content browser
Luanti 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.
Luanti 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 2500 packages are available there as of October 2024[12] 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 Luanti 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, 8 April 2012 build
Luanti 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 Luanti 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.[13] 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, it is now 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.[13]
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 and the Irrlicht Engine was forked.[14]
As of version 5.8.0 the Luanti Engine no longer ships with a default game.[15]
Usage in education
Luanti has been used in educational environments to teach subjects such as mathematics, programming, and earth sciences. Such examples are:
In 2017 in France, Luanti was used to teach calculus and trigonometry.[16]
In 2018, for Laboratory Education and Apprenticeships (EDA) at the Paris Descartes University, Luanti 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 Luanti virtual world.[18]
Reception
Opensource.com listed Luanti at #1 in its "Best open source games of 2015",[19] stating that it is maybe "the most complete alternative to Minecraft", and noted its expansibility, saying that it contains a user-friendly API for creating mods in Lua.[20]PC Magazine listed Luanti among "The best Sandbox Creation Games for Minecraft Fans".[21]
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Default texture pack
RPG16 texture pack
Hand Painted high resolution texture pack
