Minecraft clone: VoxeLibre/Luanti (is free, Open Source)

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The Open Source geeks made up their own Minecraft alternative, called VoxeLibre. Once one installs the Luanti game engine...
https://github.com/luanti-org/luanti/releases

Then the VoxeLibre "game" (tries to be as Minecraft-like as possible) can be downloaded within Luanti:

("Content" tab -> "Browse Online Content" button -> "Games" tab -> tap/click "VoxelLibre" -> "Install" button)



They support several platforms: Android, Windows, MacOS, Linux.

For those of you in Linux, there's a flatpak of Luanti here:
https://flathub.org/apps/org.luanti.luanti

For those of you in Android, look in F-droid for Luanti:
https://f-droid.org/

Wow, it's fantastically performant, even on a six-year old Android phone I have. (There were some big performance gains in their latest version, 5.12)

Luanti 5.12 is also very performant on an 8-year old laptop I have, which has very modest integrated Intel graphics. We could all play this game with whatever hardware was available, pretty much, so long as that hardware isn't an iPad or iPhone. No gamepad required.

There are dozens network servers available to play on, and it's even possible to host one's own (open-source) luanti server on a rented VPS.

For networked gameplay (play with friends, on a team, etc), the trick would be to find servers where the players are within about 150ms network latency of each other. So basically everyone from the USA or Canada could play together, but Europe and Asia would be "too far away" (too laggy; network latency > 150ms). Or everybody from Europe could play together, but North America or Asia are "too far away". Or everybody from Asia could play together, but North America and Europe are "too far away".

Just out of curiosity, what is Minecraft? I've heard of it but don't really pay any attention to video games. My idea of a video game is like playing backgammon against the computer.

Some recent gameplay:



I'm not that player featured, by the way.

I have a couple of VPS' where I could potentially run a VoxeLibre server. One is in Canada (I'm Canadian), and one is in SIngapore.

But the question is who would actually be interested in playing? If you are in Canada/US, or Asia region, and are interested, I can install "OpenSpeedTest" on these servers (to allow the testing of network latency from your location). Here's what this web-based tool looks like, when used:



Then when you test your connectivity using this tool, the network latency in milliseconds could be measured (Ping ms). If there are even three interested people, within 150ms of either server (I'm currently located in Asia), then I'll consider next installing a VoxeLibre server, intended just for the Autistic community.

Note: if you have older wifi ("Wifi 5", Wireless N, or Wireless AC), that wifi can also introduce latency. Consider using wired ethernet instead, or upgrade your laptop's wifi M.2 card to "Wifi 6e" or "Wifi 7"). Myself, I upgraded two of my laptops to "Wifi 6e". It was inexpensive, $23CDN, or $17US (before shipping and taxes) for one Intel AX210 M.2 wifi/bluetooth card. The wifi latency dropped way down to a couple of milliseconds, after this upgrade! Also note: my wifi router supports Wifi 6. These routers are also quite inexpensive (mine was $60CDN, $44US), which was a lightly used router, bought second-hand

Oops, The gameplay doesn't really start until 21:54 in:

So far I've tried this game in Linux and Android only. Not Windows or MacOS. I didn't run into any bugs so far. Having said this, the game is said to be in Beta status.

On Github, all Luanti Issues are all public, should anyone want to know about existing bugs, or find an unreported bug (and ideally you would report it):
https://github.com/luanti-org/luanti/issues

Similarly, VoxeLibre has its own public Issues:
https://git.minetest.land/VoxeLibre/VoxeLibre/issues