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> Should my child learn Minecraft or Roblox? No, they should learn Minetest¹, which is more limitless than Minecraft and more accessibly scriptable than Roblox

> Should my child learn Minecraft or Roblox? No, they should learn Minetest¹, which is more limitless than Minecraft and more accessibly scriptable than Roblox, with an infinite world in all dimensions and basic modeling² and coding³ tools that work within a running game, but more importantly is Free software. Free as freedom from micro-transaction pushing companies, and free as in freedom to learn and tinker in the depths of the engine core and transform the entire world⁴. 1: https://www.minetest.net/education/ https://www.minetest.net/education/ 2: https://content.minetest.net/packages/random_geek/meshport/ https://content.minetest.net/packages/random_geek/meshport/ 3: https://mesecons.net/luacontroller/ https://mesecons.net/luacontroller/ 4: Literally: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?t=15643 https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?t=15643

Datagenerator 6y ago
This. Freedom to setup your own server and tinkering with the LUA scripts is very accessible. Removing some creatures to allow small children to play without getting scared? Ten minutes tops, really useful. The mountain generator, how does it work and what happens if we alter the recursive functions? Just play and learn with Minetest :)
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  It's Lua, not LUA (http://lua.org/about.html#name http://lua.org/about.html#name)
hoseja 6y ago
This feels a little like Windows vs Mac vs Linux, respectively.
Toutouxc 6y ago
Also none of your kid's friends will know or want to play it and the game looks and feels like something from Aliexpress.
- boogies 6y ago
  > Also none of your kid's friends will know or want to play it Kids I know have enjoyed it. > the game looks and feels like something from Aliexpress https://media1.tenor.com/images/883860f55cb3da5a24413c972dfcefab/tenor.gif https://media1.tenor.com/images/883860f55cb3da5a24413c972dfc... I personally disagree about the (subjective) looks at least with texture packs (https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=txp&sort=score&order=desc https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=txp&sort=score&o...), but I’d say the feel was part of the charm when I played Roblox as a kid. There were and now probably are more of polished games like Phantom Forces, but my favorites always included unpolished ones like the old disaster survival games with shops of dozens if not hundreds of copypasta items from little half-broken handheld video game players and RC toys to the essential [anti-]gravity coil to hot sauce that made you run faster to freeze guns that let you entrap innocent bystanders in blocks of ice. And every few waves of disaster some slightly retextured blocky noob character would be spawned in the sky and fall down only for rapid unscheduled disassembly because its physics engine joints were broken, and if you were unlucky its spherical head would fly into and one-hit kill you on contact. The games felt like something a kid could make, and I tried to, but I couldn’t see the source for any I enjoyed and I never learned nearly as much as I did when given root on an (airgapped) old spare computer revived with Puppy Linux and loaded with Pygame, including example games which I learned to code by modifying. Later my favorite Roblox games became Armored Patrol and Urban Patrol, which had no micro transactions and used the physics engines to great effect — as long as you learned to enjoy being flung into the sky far enough to see the world unload, or finding the similarities between its mapgen and modern art. As I did: https://ibb.co/dKFght1 https://ibb.co/dKFght1 https://ibb.co/CtxZ6wF https://ibb.co/CtxZ6wF https://ibb.co/2YqJWdL https://ibb.co/2YqJWdL https://ibb.co/nP0m8kd https://ibb.co/nP0m8kd

Datagenerator 6y ago

This. Freedom to setup your own server and tinkering with the LUA scripts is very accessible. Removing some creatures to allow small children to play without getting scared? Ten minutes tops, really useful. The mountain generator, how does it work and what happens if we alter the recursive functions? Just play and learn with Minetest :)

DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
It's Lua, not LUA (http://lua.org/about.html#name http://lua.org/about.html#name)

hoseja 6y ago

This feels a little like Windows vs Mac vs Linux, respectively.

Toutouxc 6y ago

Also none of your kid's friends will know or want to play it and the game looks and feels like something from Aliexpress.

boogies 6y ago
> Also none of your kid's friends will know or want to play it Kids I know have enjoyed it. > the game looks and feels like something from Aliexpress https://media1.tenor.com/images/883860f55cb3da5a24413c972dfcefab/tenor.gif https://media1.tenor.com/images/883860f55cb3da5a24413c972dfc... I personally disagree about the (subjective) looks at least with texture packs (https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=txp&sort=score&order=desc https://content.minetest.net/packages/?type=txp&sort=score&o...), but I’d say the feel was part of the charm when I played Roblox as a kid. There were and now probably are more of polished games like Phantom Forces, but my favorites always included unpolished ones like the old disaster survival games with shops of dozens if not hundreds of copypasta items from little half-broken handheld video game players and RC toys to the essential [anti-]gravity coil to hot sauce that made you run faster to freeze guns that let you entrap innocent bystanders in blocks of ice. And every few waves of disaster some slightly retextured blocky noob character would be spawned in the sky and fall down only for rapid unscheduled disassembly because its physics engine joints were broken, and if you were unlucky its spherical head would fly into and one-hit kill you on contact. The games felt like something a kid could make, and I tried to, but I couldn’t see the source for any I enjoyed and I never learned nearly as much as I did when given root on an (airgapped) old spare computer revived with Puppy Linux and loaded with Pygame, including example games which I learned to code by modifying. Later my favorite Roblox games became Armored Patrol and Urban Patrol, which had no micro transactions and used the physics engines to great effect — as long as you learned to enjoy being flung into the sky far enough to see the world unload, or finding the similarities between its mapgen and modern art. As I did: https://ibb.co/dKFght1 https://ibb.co/dKFght1 https://ibb.co/CtxZ6wF https://ibb.co/CtxZ6wF https://ibb.co/2YqJWdL https://ibb.co/2YqJWdL https://ibb.co/nP0m8kd https://ibb.co/nP0m8kd