And today in “The Dimmest Silhouette of a Potentially Less Poop Future”, Mumbo Jumbo, the famous Minecraft redstone creator/general famous Minecraft-player on YouTube released this week what was initially meant to be a video of him just goofing around in “Minetest” a Lua-based, open-source Minecraft-like game that was designed to basically be a base game engine where folks could build their own game onto it using the integrated modding system. But by the end of it, he was having legitimate fun playing with the redstone-analogue mod he downloaded, and openly talked about the waves of nostalgia he got exploring the game in general, as it slightly, but notably, varied from OG Minecraft.
Now, I’m actually a touch less cynical about the way MC has been handled by Microsoft in the past few years than some folks (though the recent debacle about them cracking down on suggestive content and gun mods has me a more than a little worried about them legitimately beginning to overreach beyond sense. As though the single most downloaded video game in existence needs help with its image). But I legitimately think stuff like this is an amazing potential starting point for folks, especially YOUNG folks, to get excited about FOSS gaming. And open source software in general.
Minecraft’s greatest asset was its modability, but its growing monetization in Bedrock Edition, and the general corporate vibes coming off of a lot of its high-level decisions since MS bought it has really taken its toll on that prospect. But with stuff like Minetest, and other games like it that seek to give people free, open-source tools to build and share their creations and passions amongst each other, I think there really stands to be a chance for folks who, like myself just a year ago, never really paid much mind to open-source, community-driven software to have a chance to jump into the scene. And maybe find out they feel better for it.
Discussions welcome in the comments! I don’t expect everyone to share my hopefulness. But I do hope you give it a chance. A measured level of scrutiny is key to any movement, but so are good amounts of positive vibes and aspirations for the future. So if nothing else, I’d love to hear what y’all think about the potential for FOSS gaming in general, and/or what you think FOSS gaming and the greater adoption of FOSS alternatives could look like if fate favours it and/or efforts by the community increase in the future.
Hope you’re having/had a good day!
My 6 year old and I play Minetest all the time. The basic Minetest is more of an engine, you really need to mod it, but they build the mod loader and search into the game. It’s great imo.
If you like that, also check out Veloren.
There are also other free and open source games that are quite good as wel.
I know I’m not the target aydience, but deer god I can’t stand minecraft channels. Absolutely obnoxious camera spanning, 95% of the video is zoomed in a minecraft characters face, obnoxious speech.
That said, I welcome new alternatives.
@dog @AdaghastTheMad If you’re open to watching Minecraft content you can’t really go wrong with any of the people on Hermitcraft. They’re all mostly chill and spend 90% of their videos in first person just playing the game. Grian and Mumbo, being the two biggest creators on Hermitcraft tend to have a bit more of what you dislike but you could try Xisuma, JoeHills, DocM77, ImpulseSV, TangoTek or PearlescentMoon to name a few.
Shout out to my boi goodtimeswithscar
Not currently watching any, but they do come useful whenever I get the mood to play Minecraft. It’s not too often anymore, might start a fresh new world next big patch though, albeit there were already quite a few big patches recently. Will check out the others though.
I can’t stand his and other MC channels clickbait garbage. I think Etho is the only one I still watch to this day. No weird titles, no weird thumbnails, no asking for subs, just genuine good content.
Etho is wonderful, his channel is probably the longest subscription I have on youtube, not gimmicky just being himself and having fun with the game.
I actually used to feel the same way, but Mumbo is the reason I finally started playing Minecraft. I bought it way back during the beta, but it just never looked interesting. His his tour of SciCraft video came across my recommended feed and something about it clicked for me. I started playing and watching his Hermitcraft shenanigans. I eventually started watching other hermits, but after a while it just got samey and boring.
And if anyone’s interested check out the scicraft guys like ilmango and xcom6000. They’re don’t do annoying stuff and the things they create are mind boggling.
Have you watched Direwolf20’s videos? They’re not about camera span or zoomed in faces, just close to raw modded Minecraft gameplay.
This is maybe an odd first comment on my own post, but does anyone know about the etiquette regarding cross-posting on Beehaw? I feel like the Open Source Software community channel would also appreciate this, but I don’t know if I should just repost it wholesale there also, or if there’s some actualy functionality to X-post it over there built in yet. Thoughts?
I see a crosspost button just below the title of your post. I haven’t used it so I don’t know the full process yet, but the functionality appears to be there.
Just cross-posted and it seems to work! Though, if they like it or not is a whole different story. Wish me luck!
This is already cross post. It was posted somewhere few days ago.
Aw nuts. I just posted it in the community. Hopefully the conversation I aim to start around it is at least a slightly different vibe from the last one. If folks complain, I’ll happily remove it, but I’ll cross my fingers in the meantime!
Eh, if it was posted before I missed it. If people don’t want to see it / have already they just won’t upvote, it’s no big. Sometimes a level of reposting is nice because none of us should be glued to social media 24/7 to catch everything all the time anyways.
Yeah, I made a post about it a couple days ago
I just downloaded it for Android. I’m really impressed by it’s performance! Plus it has a in game mod browser! Awesome!
I remember the days when Notch said he would release Minecraft’s source code under creative commons. And then a bunch of genuinely bad stuff happened to him and left him a broken man.
That’s a nice way of saying that he turned his inner asshole inside out.
Loneliness and social-media algorithms are a dangerous combination. I think he could have ended up differently if he had more friends around him that offered a counterbalance to the narrow perspective he has been likely been spoonfed by the likes of Twitter and YouTube. As would many other rich, white men (see: Elon Musk) that unfortunately tend to end up with leeches and yes-men.
I see you are also a Mumbo Jumbo enjoyer. A person of culture.
I know it’s not Minecraft obviously and the Minecraft community probably don’t care about Minetest, but still I’m a bit disappointed at how small is the Minetest community and how difficult is for it to grow when it’s ready to compete with Minecraft (I know it needs more features, but it’s a complete game and it’s not a simple bad quality copy!).
Most people aren’t aware of it. It’d be interesting if a good portion of MC modders would instead turn into Minetest contributors instead.
A bit of hijack but these guys have been going at it for 11 years now and it’s still going (albeit a lot slower compared to previous years).
Open source MC server implementation in C++
Oo this looks super fun, I’m gonna download it and play it for myself.
I did not expect to see Mumbo in my feed one day, wild
This was a really interesting video to check out. I expected this game to be much worse judging by it looks but it really reminds me of some Minecraft mods!
Wait, there was a mod crackdown? When did that happen?
