[Hamara-devel] some alternatives to minetest

[shirish]

Hi all,
As I was watching minetest yesterday, I could see that there are quite a 
number of forks. I figured that while some of them were forked so that 
PR's (pull requests) can be made, it seemed too good to be true that all 
were forked for the same thing. There were above 140+ forks so figured 
some would be stand-alone genuine forks by themselves. Found the 
following :-

1. voxelands - https://gitlab.com/voxelands/voxelands

http://voxelands.com/

2. Terasology - https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology

https://www.facebook.com/Terasology

3. Freeminer - http://freeminer.org/

https://github.com/freeminer/freeminer/

4. Manic Digger - https://manicdigger.github.io/

Use C# and C

While I haven't looked at the videos which tell/share the progress of 
each, it seems cool that so many people are trying out alternative 
implementations and ideas.

I'm sure there are still a few other projects which escaped my attention 
as well.

Another thing which came to my attention is that minetest as a project 
is more in it to make the engine formidable and the game just sorta 
tests out the engine.

Another thing is that 0,5 version which will be there soonish would have 
some one-time incompatible features to make it easier for the future.

There seems to be lot of refactoring and rewriting going around as lot 
of the code were hacky and not well-commented as shared by the devs. 
themselves on IRC.

Minetest at my end :-

[$] minetest --version
 

Minetest 0.4.12
Using Irrlicht 1.8.1
Build info: VER=0.4.12 BUILD_TYPE=Debug RUN_IN_PLACE=0 USE_GETTEXT=1 
USE_SOUND=1 USE_CURL=1 USE_FREETYPE=1 USE_LUAJIT=1 
STATIC_SHAREDIR=/usr/share/games/minetest

I had a brief look at the code and some of the conversations and could 
imagine not just using the game to get children think of solutions and 
ideas creatively but also use it as a development project to actually 
know how FOSS development happens.

Also as the genre borders or is in fantasy I did see mods for e.g. about 
rail guns and other fantastic objects and animals.

So possibilities exists not just with using the game for education but 
also use the development process to spark FOSS development in education.

I know some friends and acquaintances nephews and nieces who are into 
FOSS development in Pune and surroundings and are in the 12-14 age bracket.

If these concepts and understandings are understood by them, don't see 
any reason this couldn't be scaled up on a school level provided we have 
a good helper/student ratio.

As always, the mind boggles at the opportunities this invokes.
-- 
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal,
Community Lead,
Hamaralinux.org