Introducing Our New Name | Minetest rebrands to Luanti
After more than a year of public and internal discussions, we're ready to announce our new name!
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.
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.
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.
Tbh Luanti is a pretty clever wordplay
Plus it sounds Italian
I don't think it was that bad. I think the new name is better though
Thanks for the TLDR, nice to know the reasons behind the name. And good reasons they are too.
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 was so scared it was going to be something silly.
I don't really like the new name yet, but it's a lot better than Minetest so I really can't complain.
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.
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.
I've seen it a few times in passing and always assumed it was like, a tech demo or proof of concept.
It initially was that. Also the name wasn't meant to stick around forever.
But, out of a sudden, between updates, not even the new website URLs ready?
I don't follow Minetest development that closely anymore, but last time I checked there were no issues or pull requests on their GitHub, nor something official regarding a name change in the forums.
This feels like there are just a bunch of people haphazardly deciding there is a new name now.
"good news honey, they heard your complaint and renamed it"
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.
It made sense at the time...
the new name is equally terrible, at least in terms of pronunciation.
Lu-aunty
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.
You can use the mod lib from contentdb. Also it is worth pointing out that they are moving towards a subgame focus not a mod focus. The original game has been discontinued and isn't preinstalled. You install a game like Asuna to get gameplay and content.
Of course you can still use Minetest game as a base for mods. I do that for simple worlds.
1000s*
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. 🙃
And maybe a really solid UI design. It seems like a not of games don't have a good UI.
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.
Gonna miss the old one but I definitely had to go. I kinda like Luanti too
How are you guys pronouncing this?
Personally, I’ve found it sounds kind of nice when said like “Loon tea”.
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?
Lmao loo nah tee, like illuminati :D
What a terrible name.
Anything is better than minetest which sounded like a hastily written debugging mod for Minecraft
Did they ever fix the game having a maximum map size of like 10.000 by 10.000? That limitation always seemed to put it at a disadvantage compared to Minecraft, for larger communities
They fixed that quite a while back. It is 60000x60000x60000
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!
hope they improve upon it, the old (when the banning was implemented) version of minetest was horrible. I'll be trying it soon :)
It has come a long way. These days it doesn't even come with a game preinstalled. You can play VoxeLibre, Asuna, and so much more. Plus the original Minetest game is still installable. Also there are quite a lot of mods and other content available.
The only gripes I really have is the security and UI design. Neither of them are that bad but they could be better.
Too bad that luanti.org is note available...
Not sure why this was upvoted, the blog says it's theirs.
Moving Forward
With the new name, a few changes will be made in the engine and community. Obviously, all the repositories and community hubs will adopt the Luanti name in some form. You’ll be able to find the website at luanti.org and [snip]
They have already bought .org and .net. I guess they just haven't set them up yet.
Also luanti.net (which would be the most logical step to use that address because of the same TLD).
Why isn't something like this done prior to announcing the new name ...
Minetest doesn't have to turn into Roblox, we already have OpenBlox for that purpose
Edit: person below is now accusing me of promoting crypto
Cool so, you linked to some git repositories that haven't been updated in 4-5 years, and looking at their current website there seems to be some sort of crypto involved now.
They're not to be confused, the lead dev's (openblox.org) one was made on 2014 before some crypto dipshittos (openblox.IO) took their name
Minetest has been more a platform for making games on than a single game for at least a decade, since they added lua scripting. Seems like you're outraged over nothing with no real understanding of what Luanti has been and aims to be.
Why is this news??
Why isn't this news? They are changing the name which is a big deal
I dunno. Doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but your mileage may certainly vary.
I hope this is a joke cause Luanti sucks, stick with the already well known Minetest.
True though, I perfer for it to be called "MineTest"
Minetest is a terrible name. It was created back when it was experimental with no plans for continuous development or direction.
It will take time to switch to the new name we will get there
ok boomer
It's nice to see open-source things copying what dot-coms do when they're bored.
Wait. No it's not. It's actually worrying.
I worked for a company named essentially "The Portland Office", and it had that name for 30 years; because, honestly, who cares about a name? The product should stand out.
Even if you can objectively see the name as just a name, many people sadly can't. It is really difficult to recommend others to join, just because they come with the idea that it's a minecraft clone and since it's not a clone it feels janky.
I'm glad they dropped the name for something new.
Good for you, others are justifying about calling it "LoOaNtI"