Minecraft sucks, so let's replace it #415

No matter what, you probably think that Minecraft has some problems. Whether you think it's a dozen or a zillion, whether you think they're big or small, and regardless of what exactly they are, i'm certain that you can think of some qualms you have with the game.

And i'm sure a lot of people have a sense of frustration when we see updates happening where so much changes, yet at the same time it feels like so little has changed when we keep coming across the same problems over and over again. Maybe you don't feel this way; if that's the case, well, you can probably ignore this thread.

But it's the case for me, and i'm certain it's the case for a lot of other people. And frankly, i feel like we can't just sit around waiting for Microsoft to fix these problems. They've had plenty of time to clean up their act, but year after year goes by with them doing, if you'll excuse my language, fuck all.

We've cut them enough slack. It's time to take matters into our own hands.

So that's why i've started a project on sourcehut to replace Minecraft with something better. Particularly, i've created this issue ticket for everybody to list the problems that they have with Minecraft that this project can hopefully fix. (You don't even need a source hut account to participate, as explained here​,so you have no excuse for not participating.)

Now, i'm not a superhuman, and i won't be able to do this by myself. I'm going to need your help if this project is to succeed in its goals, and i hope you'll be willing to lend that help.

We can do this. We can take Minecraft back.

I don't really agree with you about what many of the problems with minecraft are, how software should even be structured in general, or why people play video games at all. so, I don't think that we could agree on a direction or a design for such a thing, if I were to help.

I also aim to create a minecraftlike, and my design goals are for it to be very extensible and implement the mechanics I would like to see in a minecraftlike, as well as world generation that begets interesting and strange environments. I haven't, however, made very much progress at all on my own project, so regardless of the direction of your project, I probably wouldn't be of much help anyway.

my project doesn't aim to replace minecraft. I don't really think that goal makes sense, and I don't think such a goal would result in an actually good game. if you make a new game, it's a new game. a game which is different does not replace minecraft by definition. this is why people play different versions of minecraft. sometimes I want to play minecraft 1.8. sometimes I want to play the latest version of minecraft, or with mods, etc. sometimes I want to play minetest. you don't seem to comprehend that people want to play different kinds of games at different times, as when I pointed this out to you before, you called it "addiction to novelty".

it would be a different story if the goal was to attempt to reimplement minecraft as an open source piece of software, which would be venerable. there is already a project to do this, called mineclone, which is made in minetest. however, there are many deficiencies yet that prevent it from acting as a complete replacement for minecraft.

i agree with the sentiment above

I don't really agree with you about what many of the problems with minecraft are[…]

I would like to know what problems you have with it anyways. I want to collect all the problems people have with it first and sort through them later.

[…]how software should even be structured in general[…]

I feel like you're referring back to a previous conversation, but i can't remember which; could you please remind me?

[…]or why people play video games at all.

Personally, i play video games for fun. Therefore, i think it would make the most sense for this project to prioritize fun above all else. This is what i intend to do. If the consensus of the populace is that doing something would be the most fun, that's what should be done; if everybody's saying that something isn't fun, it should be removed; if experiments reveal that people find something more fun than expected, that should influence the decisions.

I also aim to create a minecraftlike[…]. I haven't, however, made very much progress at all on my own project, so regardless of the direction of your project, I probably wouldn't be of much help anyway.

That's okay. I'm not going to force anybody to help me with this. I'll be happy with any help people are able to provide, and i'm saying that genuinely, not saying it out of cultural expectations of politeness. (I'm curious about what you specifically mean by the design goals you listed, though.)

my project doesn't aim to replace minecraft. I don't really think that goal makes sense, and I don't think such a goal would result in an actually good game. if you make a new game, it's a new game. a game which is different does not replace minecraft by definition.

Perhaps i stated my goal wrong. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be that i want to create a game that's better at being Minecraft than Minecraft is. Or perhaps i could say that there's a certain happy feeling i used to have when playing Minecraft when i was younger_{and less disillusioned with the world}, and i want to be able to recreate that feeling. Or perhaps i could say that i don't like the way that Microsoft is maintaining Minecraft, and i'm frustrated with it and think that it would be better if it was maintained by the community. Or perhaps i could say that i think that Minecraft always had the potential to be good, and that's why people played it, but it never reached that potential, and i want to create something that does.

Maybe one of these makes it more clear what i want to work towards. Maybe they don't, and i'm just waxing poetical in the blindness of nostalgia. Truthfully, i don't even really know what i was saying just then; sometimes i just don't understand myself. But i hope that i was in some way able to say something that made my thoughts more clear.

you don't seem to comprehend that people want to play different kinds of games at different times, as when I pointed this out to you before, you called it "addiction to novelty".

I don't remember if that's what i said or meant when i used the phrase "addiction to novelty", but i don't think that's how i'd use the term now. When i refer to an addiction to novelty, i refer to a specific practice in the development of video games where updates are made that only or mostly focus on adding in new things while not working on fixing up the old things, making sure the old things work with the new things, or even really caring about the new things at all. If one were to stick with one update of these games forever, they probably would get rather bored of it rather quickly, because there isn't an incentive to make deep, rich mechanics that you can always find new and interesting things in when there's going to be another batch of new crap thrown at you in a year or so to satiate any boredom that might crop up anyway.

In contrast, a well-designed game would, to me, not be like this. To me, a well-designed game would be one where a few simple, basic building blocks (metaphorical) synergize together in a multitude of ways so that even if the basics never change, there's always something new and interesting and exciting and fun to discover by combining the basics in new ways. And there are definitely examples of this being pulled off. Consider the board game Catan, for instance: it's pretty simple and easy to learn, yet masterfully designed in such a way that it's very difficult for it to get old. Or consider the board game Go, a game that's been entertaining people for millennia and still has new things to discover. Something like this is the type of video game i want to create.

it would be a different story if the goal was to attempt to reimplement minecraft as an open source piece of software, which would be venerable.

This is not a goal of this project i've created. I do not want to reimplement Minecraft; i want to make something better than it.

I feel like you're referring back to a previous conversation, but i can't remember which; could you please remind me?

consider the case of modding APIs, or breaking compatibility. whether or not a modding API is a good fit for this game specifically, I find that you have taken hardline stances on software that I disagree with in the past.

Perhaps i stated my goal wrong. Maybe a better way to phrase it would be that i want to create a game that's better at being Minecraft than Minecraft is. Or perhaps i could say that there's a certain happy feeling i used to have when playing Minecraft when i was youngerand less disillusioned with the world, and i want to be able to recreate that feeling.

I see now. that could be interesting.

If the consensus of the populace is that doing something would be the most fun, that's what should be done; if everybody's saying that something isn't fun, it should be removed; if experiments reveal that people find something more fun than expected, that should influence the decisions.

that certainly makes sense.

(I'm curious about what you specifically mean by the design goals you listed, though.)

well, I plan extensibility in the form of a module system, in which the game is constructed from modules which interact with each other by exposing public APIs and which can be used in different combinations at whim (as long as they don't conflict).

in terms of actual game mechanics, I want to design the game such that blocks in the world have interesting interactions, and hopefully emergent mechanics. my ideas hinge heavily on my reinterpretation of the voxel engine, wherein multiple blocks at once can fit within a space. this is implemented partially and inelegantly in minecraft in the case of waterlogging and slabs, but I wish to implement this generally.

I think that the main mechanics that the player will interact with to make mechanisms and generally get things done are heat and water. water, unlike in minecraft, will actually be finite and flow into different blocks akin to minecraft. heat will likely be producible by combusting fuel and by other means, and I think it will be the means to power mechanisms like pistons.

pistons will be akin to those in minecraft, but they will be much more powerful. utilizing the ability to contain multiple blocks in a space, one will be able to apply a gluelike block to the sides of blocks, which will cause them to be moved as one when pushed by a piston.

for implementing logic, my current idea is to have a funguslike substance whose stem conducts heat very well and whose head implements logic gates. the fungus would be found on the roof of a certain type of cave underground, and may be cultivated by the player once found.

pertaining to world generation, I want to feature detailed and fantastical environments. the world generation will take advantage of the "infinite" nature of the world, both horizontally and vertically. as one moves further from the center of the world, the environments become more fantastical, and as one ventures deeper into the ground, one is able to stumble upon the otherworldly. I'm not sure what should be in the sky, but perhaps there would be floating islands or celestial objects.

the inhabitants of the world, i.e. mobs, will generate with the world and not spawn spontaneously (at least, predominantly), unlike minecraft. though some might be dangerous, none of the mobs will exist simply for the purpose attacking the player (except maybe for one exception that I have in mind). I wish to have them exist in a sort of simplistic ecosystem, where the actions of the player could affect their populations.

in any case, your elaboration of your goals has given me a better idea of the project, and I think it could be cool.

pertaining to the module system, my ultimate goal would be to create a package manager and repository, but this would depend on package ecosystem/playerbase to exist first.

I feel like this has been tried a lot and not worked.

making video games? yeah.

gollark: When has it been tried before? Those tries can be analyzed to see why they didn't work so that what they did wrong can be avoided in the future.

Making Minecraft clones/replacements. There are rather a lot.

right. the problem with them is only that they're predominantly unfinished, which is just... what happens with video games. it's just hard in general to make video games.

I've noticed that there haven't been any responses to the ticket i linked to in my initial message for this thread besides my own, and i'm thinking it might be because people don't want to bother getting invested in what might seem like just another Minecraft clone. Perhaps i need to do something to instill faith in people that this won't just be another dud. Perhaps i need to show that this time's gonna be different. After all, i want this to be for everyone, not just for me.

(I hope it's not that my own reply to the ticket has set an intimidating precdent or something—i want any problems people have with Minecraft, regardless of how long individual people's lists may be. On the other hand, maybe it was just that i started this thread at a time when not many people were online on Apionet to see it get bridged—hopefully i'm timing this message correctly so that this is counteracted. (If anyone happens to be reading this message because it was bridged to Apionet, please see the first message in this thread. (I really hope these sentences i've typed in this message aren't making me come off as pushy.)))

as cool as it sounds, i'm unlikely to be able to contribute meaningfully to the creation of a project right now. maybe i'd consider it more if it already existed and i could contribute to it, and it also had a cool codebase that was cool and not bad.

i agree with heav here. i do actually agree with several of your criticisms of minecraft, and i probably would be interested in contributing to this project once it exists.

(also, i'm currently working on my own project which is vaguely similar to this? it's not a minecraft clone, it's played on a 2d hex grid for instance, but i am planning to address in it many of the same weaknesses of minecraft that you've talked about too. in particular the stuff about variety of worldgen, and structures and things. actually i'd be quite interested to talk about how worldgen without biomes might work but i don't want to derail this thread more than i already have)

Gotcha'all. It seems that having the project exist would make a lot of people more interested in this project. I will work on making it exist. Once it is what i deem sufficiently existent, i will come back to this thread to state its existence.