Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
It’s probably fair to say that a good number of Minecraft players were pretty shocked when it was confirmed that Mojang had sold the game to Microsoft. Many players refused to play Minecraft just due to the fact that it was now owned by ‘them’. Luckily there are many other alternatives to Minecraft. One of them is Minetest.
Minetest
Think of Minetest as being Minecraft in creative mode. By default, Minetest has no mobs (aka: bad guys) or NPCs (non-player characters), but they can be added via add-ons.
Minetest is also written in C++. Minecraft is written in Java. So, in theory, Minetest should run much faster even on old hardware.
To install Minetest, it’s easiest to add the PPA and install it from there. So, in a terminal enter:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:minetestdevs/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install minetest
After a short time, you’ll see Minetest showing on your desktop menu under Games. Needless to say, clicking that will start the game.
First start
On first start, you’ll obviously have no saved games or worlds, so things will look at bit empty at first.
Clicking NEW will let you create a new world and get building. But have a look at SETTINGS (one of the tabs at the top) to see some nice options you won’t find in the default Minecraft.
You can enable/disable everything from bumpmapping, waving (of tree tops, etc), particle effects, and much more. If you’re on old hardware, it’s probably best to leave these off until you’ve seen how the basic game runs on your machine. If it runs as smooth as butter, then you can start enabling some of these options to enhance the look of the game.
We’ll come back to the other tabs in a moment.
Create a new game and have a play around with it. Everything works exactly as Minecraft except for one thing: picking up dropped items. When a tree drops a shoot or an apple, you need to left-click on it to pick it up. Running over it does not pick it up. I actually like this idea as it lets me be choosy as to what I want to pick up.
Also, the game saves automatically, so don’t panic when you see no save option.
Textures
You may bore of the basic textures and crave something a bit more up-market. Minetest can do that too. Where Minetest shines here is that you don’t have to do some crazy editing/patching to get high resolution textures. You just download one and use it.
For example: you can view the Sphax testBDCraft texture pack here: http://bdcraft.net/purebdcraft-minetest; click to download the 256 or 512 square textures. Download the zip file to somewhere memorable.
Open the Minetest folder on your machine. It’s most probably hidden inside /home/[username]/ (and called /home/[username]/.minetest/), so you’ll need to show hidden folders. If there is no folder in there called ‘textures’ now is the time to create it.
Now go to your download folder and double click the zip file you downloaded. Extract it to the .minetest/textures/ folder. So, in the textures folder you should now have a folder called Sphax TestBDCraft 256x MT04 (or 512x).
Start up Minetest and click the TEXTUREPACKS tab at the top of the screen. You should see the texture pack listed. Click it to apply it to the game.
Load up your game and revel in your new found beauty.
Mobs, Animals and NPCs
If you want to make it even more like Minecraft, then you’ll need to add mods. This is where things can get a bit weird as the quality of the animal/mobs/NPC characters can vary between packs and makers. Some NPCs can look great, while some animals can look weird and out of place. So, don’t expect clones of Minecraft pigs/sheep here.
The mod I was messing around with was simply called Creatures 1.1.4. You can download it from the creators forum post: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=8638. This adds zombies, ghosts and sheep to the game. Unlike other mods, this one fits with the general look of the game, so the ‘creatures’ don’t look out of place.
Installing a mod is the same idea as a texture pack. Open the .minetest folder and create a folder called ‘mods’. Unzip the download in there and you’re set.
Start up Minetest and click the MODS tab at the top. This is where things change from the texture packs.
The MODS tab shows you which mods are in place.
Select your world, but don’t click PLAY. Instead, click CONFIGURE.
Top left it tells you which world you’re configuring (Test World in my case), and, on the right, which mods are enabled for that world. Click ENABLE ALL. The list should go green. Click SAVE. The mods in blue are ones that came with the game, don’t worry about them staying blue.
Now you can choose the world and click PLAY.
I can also recommend the Farming Redo mod which adds more crops to the built-in farming system.
Conclusion
It may take a bit more work to get Minetest to be like good old Minecraft, but it is worth it. Having high resolution textures and the same items/recipes is great as is—it being free. It also has a nice little community forum with mods, texture packs and maps. Because Minetest is written in C++ rather than Java, it’s smooth as silk—even when I ran it on a wide window that spanned across three monitors, and that was with a 256-square texture pack and all the bells and whistles enabled.
Definitely give it a go if you love Minecraft, but baulk at playing a Microsoft game. Or, if Minecraft was just too slow on your machine, give Minetest a try.
Of course, everything I’ve just mentioned doesn’t include the server and multiplayer modes.
Further info:
https://forum.minetest.net/index.php