People don't have the money, at some point all the game publishers will go under or consolidate as people just play already released games and use self hosted servers.
that is correct, you can use Geyser to allow bedrock to join java players. For console or any bedrock client that lacks the direct connection with servers you need to also do some DNS shenanigans on the client where you use a jumper server to jump to the server you actually wanna join though.
I also recommend something like floodgate for authentication so you don't need to have the server in offline mode or have the player need both a java and a bedrock account
edit: I forgot to mention, keep in mind that this is still using JAVA edition as a backend. So when there is feature disparity between bedrock and Java, the java mechanic is what takes precedence. The biggest whiplash for bedrock vs java is usually the fact that java edition minecraft has the stamina system for attacking, so you can't just button mash to attack or you waste durability and have lower attack damage.
They just removed obfuscation from Java Edition. If they even try to do a single stupid move - like with chat reporting a few years ago - it will be simply modded out of the game.
The only thing that they might be able to do is increase the price for buying the game, mess with the accounts or illegally change their EULA - without notifying anyone - again.
Bugrock Edition on the other hand is already a dumpster fire for years, so nobody really cares about that one in the first place...
Nah the modding community would pop the fuck off. Half of the work of the mod devs is keeping up with version compatibility. Imagine they no longer have to worry about version changes ever again? They can just develop their mod and put all of their effort into the latest version of Minecraft.
the main issue will be if they do a major API update right before they do it. Remember the great "flattening"? We lost many great mods when they did that because of the amount of changes they did to base code while simultaneously changing every ID in the game, while forge was also actively undergoing a major API change in how it worked. So as a result many mods stopped being developed at 1.12.
If they did a massive API rewrite right before fully ending support for java, the community will either have to accept another divide or completly forgo the new update and stay locked on the previous.
Not sure if that is a good thing. Some of the best mods came out of someone finding a mod taking too long to update or the creator deciding to skip a version. They then created a new mod to fill that same role, and in some cases becoming the new defacto for that role.
"added in the past decade" is 1.9 to now (1.8.9 released on 9/12/2015, 1.9 released on 29/2/2016).
Things "that anyone really wanted" (By which I mean the highlights of Minecraft additions):
in 1.9.x:
The offhand and shields
Attack cooldown
Mending
Elytra (fireworks didn't work on them until 1.11.1)
Removed Herobrine
in 1.11.x:
Shulker boxes
Totems of undying
Observers
Firework elytra boosting
in 1.12.x:
Concrete
Recipe book
in 1.13.x:
Swimming
Bubble columns
Phantoms
in 1.14.x:
Rerolling villager trades
Other villager improvements
Raid farming for renewable totems and easy emeralds
in 1.16.x:
Netherite
Piglin bartering
Fast automatic food farm (Hoglins)
in 1.17.x:
Moss
Copper
Waxed Lightly Weathered Cut Copper Stairs
in 1.19.x:
Sculk sensors
Allays (Non-stackable item sorting)
in 1.20.x:
Calibrated sculk sensor
Amethyst sculk resonance
Bamboo wood
Armour trims
in 1.21.x:
Crafter
Bundle
Happy ghast
Shelf
Copper golem
ㅤ
Mods? The features I think mods probably would not have done equally or better, or would not have come up with something as unique, are:
Offhand
Removing Herobrine
Raid farms
Piglins
Sculk sensors
ㅤ
Others that idk whether qualify for the list:
Mending
Recipe book
Villager overhaul
Moss
ㅤ
(I'm talking hypothetically about mods here because I have not played old modded (or old versions at all, the first Minecraft version I played was 1.13))
(This is just my opinion combined with comunity reception of things, I'm not trying to argue)
Luanti sucks in modding support compared to minecraft. Luanti mods cant override game code, so the patches to the game code are impossible with mods. Due to this limitation, even the basic things like custom controls or shader support cannot be added using mods.
Luanti sucks in modding support compared to minecraft.
I'm surprised to hear that was your experience
Modding means something very different in Luanti, and is a first class citizen.
Trees are a mod. The base game left them out, so we can mod in how we want "the concept of trees" to behave.
Luanti mods cannot override game code, so the patches to the game code are impossible with mods.
I get you didn't enjoy it, but I think your comment misleads others.
The vast majority of the code in any Luanti game is in the mods. The last 5% is in the game engine, which itself can still be swapped out, as needed.
Having modded both games extensively, Luanti was a breathe of fresh air, to me.
Due to this limitation, even the basic things like custom controls or shader support cannot be added using mods.
I don't care about shaders, so I cannot comment. Since Luanti manages mod sharing - keeping all clients in sync - maybe that creates challenges? Feels worth it to me.
As for custom controls, the Luanti mods on my server have plenty of custom controls, so I don't know what you experienced? Maybe support wasn't there when you tried it before?
This is like saying "why do you need a plugins for an open source software, if you can just edit it?".
If all of the custom stuff should be included in the game, then without modding support, ALL of the stuff should be patched into the game manually. Modding allows to easily add the content and functionality into the game, without editing the game code.
Yeah, but anyone willing to implement shaders for Luanti can just contribute it to the game itself. Then you wouldn't need to do anything to get the support.
This is not how open-source development works. All the various mod authors can just include their additions in the game if it is open-source. And most Luanti games already include vastly more features than vanilla Minecraft because of that.
Other comment pretty much already said it, but I think anyone with hundreds or thousands of mods installed in a game can tell you that literally patching the game code would be a painful endeavor.
Even if you compile your own game and want to change one simple thing, it's better if you can do it via a mod rather than directly editing the game code - this way you don't get merge conflicts when pulling the updated source from git!
That wasn't my point. Mods get developed because the game itself can't be modified otherwise. The Luanti games that are like Minecraft include already a lot of functionality that is only available with mods in Minecraft and it doesn't make much sense to ask for mods in this context.
Mods get developed because the game itself can’t be modified otherwise
Literally not the case.
Even in a game that you can directly modify, it's easier to organize modifications by keeping them modular.
Not everyone wants everything in their game.
Luanti games that are like Minecraft include already a lot of functionality that is only available with mods in Minecraft and it doesn’t make much sense to ask for mods in this context.
It makes sense to ask for mod support because what if you want to extend the game functionality even further, without forcing your vision of the game on everyone (merging it into the upstream project) or having to patch it manually (or via some patch utility that still kinda sucks)
The "Minetest" you tried was likely just the barebones example game that used to ship with the engine. Since so many people got confused by that, they stopped distributing that example game with the engine and now you get asked what fully featured games you want on first start. Voxelibre is the one that is like Minecraft but better.
I tried minetest long ago and was not particularly impressed.
Until a the last couole of years, it wasn't terribly impressive. It is, now.
Has the community grown big enough?
That's a tough question. Minecraft is 3 of the 10 most poplar games of all time. (Measuring every version of Minecraft separately, several versions will crack most "Top 10" lists.)
So compared to Minecraft, the Luanti community is tiny.
But compared to other Indie games, it feels like Luanti is huge now.
It is a joke to compare Minecraft to Luanti because Lunati has significantly more features and game-types than you could ever get with mods in Minecraft. It is just a different development model where "mods" don't make much sense.
Yeah, I second this. Until luanti has the equivalent of GregTech: New Horizons I will stay with Minecraft. Not modern Minecraft, just whatever good modpacks I wanna play
Though, for that reason, I'd play luanti it it has its own "killer modpacks". I play for the mods, not the base game, really
Personally, while I prefer Luanti (it is so much easier to mod and host and play), I don't feel that Launti has reached parity with Minecraft's best mods.
That said, it is really close, and really down to subjective preference at this point.
If you love trains, I think Minecraft comes up short, compared to Advanced Trains on Luanti.
If you love Redstone programming - actually, MeseCraft fixes so many poor early choices that Redstone is stuck with.
But if you love advancing through technology ages, you only have one or two good options in Luanti, whereas I think Minecraft has at least half a dozen - and I think the best Minecraft ones are easily better than the best Luanti ones...for now.
For an all-in-one playthrough, the two most popular are VoxelLibre
and Mineclonia.
I perosnally prefer to roll my own mod set, but starting with a couple of mod packs.
One difference versus Minecraft - when I tried to play Luanti, I thought I needed to keep to just a few mods, to avoid conflicts or lag. I was wrong.
Mods feel way more efficient in Luanti, and almost never clash with each-other. I was able to go to town adding dozens of mods, on six year old PC hardware without any GPU.
Microsoft has been placing Bedrock before Java ever since they named it Java Edition, but Java has survived. I'm sure Bedrock is much more popular now, but I would be worried about Microsoft enshittifying Java further to push players to Bedrock, and any new microtransactions they figure out.
Luanti is actually pretty great so far. Some of it is jank in the way that you can tell its made by people who make software not necessarily artists but its still a good time. A lot of effort has gone into it over the years and I appreciate its existence
It started as minetest, an open source minecraft clone. It has since developed into a full voxel engine, supporting community made game modes and modpacks.
It is a Minecraft clone, but it does a lot more. People are building new games with the same engine. It's called a voxel engine, because that the type of 3D that was popularized by minecraft.
I don't play Minecraft or Roblox, but this sounds like what I heard of the latter, not the former. You make games and they are available for people to play, or is there a difference I'm missing?
You make games and they are available for people to play, or is there a difference I'm missing?
That's pretty good summary of Luanti.
The interesting nuance is that Luanti was originally built as the engine for making a faithful Minecraft clone, so the two popular Minecraft clones are extremely faithful to Minecraft, in ways that a clone built in another engine could not be.
Luanti is the engine that MineClonia runs on, and Mineclonia is a full featured, finished, Minecraft clone.
The Website is rather unhelpful.
Seriously. It's a little sad.
Its just a Minecraft clone?
For practical purposes, it absolutely is.
Grab Luanti for free off of F-Droid or any Linux app store, or out of the SteamDeck Desktop "Software Center". Launch "Luanti", choose "Mineclonia". (Edit: or Windows or Mac, too. - Luanti - Getting Started.
Pick a username to "Register" (local play is identical to server play) and start playing free open, wonderful, easily modded, multiplayer Minecraft clone.
If a friend wants to join, just give them your IP address - even on SteamDeck or Android phone (edit: and Windows and Mac - sorry, no iPhone, I think.)
if you play games, do not buy microtransaction items or, if possible, games that try to sell them.
If you are a parent, do not let your kids buy microtransaction items or games that try to sell them.
If you know a parent who is not a gamer, share these concepts with them. They won't have these sorts of things piped into their bubble under any normal circumstances.
My kids, 10 and 14, are very anti corporate greed and I couldn’t be more proud. They also complain when they aren’t on the local WiFi if they are playing mobile games because the ads don’t get blocked. A couple years ago my youngest asked me to turn ads on so he could hatch monsters or something faster, I bypassed his device and a couple months later he was complaining that the game is a time sink full of ads and he doesn’t want to play it anymore and wants ad blocking re-enabled.
They aren’t perfect and I have never tried to preach to them too much. Not really sure where I was going with this but your post reminded me how much I appreciate that my boys actively avoid and protest against playing games with ads and micro transactions at such a young age and I felt like sharing with someone.
FWIW, simply living with an adblocker for a while will inoculate you to a lot of the most predatory BS. My wife had a similar experience. At first she was annoyed by the dual pi-holes I set up, because they broke her sponsored Google search links. Then she learned to skip those first few links and got used to having ads blocked. We recently moved, and I hadn’t had time to set them back up. I have simply been using the new ISP’s modem/router.
Last week, she basically begged me to find some time to set the network stuff back up, because she hated seeing ads now. She got used to the pi-holes, and then they were suddenly gone. She was like “yeah a lot of my favorite sites are basically unusable now. I don’t know how the hell I ever functioned before you set those things up…” What sent her over the edge was when she noticed an ad on our TV’s sleep screen. Not even in the show we were watching. Just on the sleep screen, because the show had been paused for like 15-20 minutes. That one ad was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because even when the device was idle it was still trying to show her ads.
Microtransactions may make a game an unplayable pile of shit most of the time, but they’re a great way to turn children’s allowances into corporate profit if you’re a gigantic corporation that doesn’t care at all about amount of fun that can be had in a game.
Minecraft Java Edition is Minecraft and Minecraft "Bedrock Edition" is an awful Microsoft rip-off because Microsoft is bad at everything and wholly hostile to consumers and other businesses and run by ants.
But can also choose username, so can bypass blacklist.
I think I recall getting around this by hard-configuring the allowed players list?
I never felt the need to work hard to disconnect from Minecraft's auth servers - but I think I remember doing some command line foo once when the Minecraft auth servers were down for a day, in order to let current players keep playing.
Anyway, all that to say, I think are ways to work around that. It's not ideal, but probably manageable.
Disclaimer: I host Luanti now, instead, so I don't remember all of my Minecraft-foo.
As I understand it, older versions of the app have hacked that call/response so it either doesn't happen or dummies out. Also, lots of minecraft community servers will advertise what version they're using, because certain updates are considered undesirable.
Not really, you can disable online mode and make your own authentication system (or use a plugin someone else made to handle authentication directly on your server). This is usually done to let non-premium (aka pirate) users join (which is, to my knowledge, against the Minecraft EULA), but I'm sure if Microsoft were to really mess up and do something like disabling multiplayer support for older versions ("pre-enshittification versions are not supported by our servers" or some bs), people would just authenticate it themselves, or make their own server software (challenging task but not impossible).
additional context; Katie Scott, a former exec at ubisoft, will be the "Head of Vanilla Minecraft" in 2026. this source writes:
Scott left Ubisoft in November, but her role as vice president of the company's global creative game office saw her specialize in "competitive, live service, and free to play experiences to create games with lasting impact, high retention, and monetization results." She also writes that she focused on "live service strategies and ambitious retention and monetization" in Assassin's Creed and Rainbow Six games
now that sounds bad on paper, but it's unclear to me what exactly she'll be doing in this position. best i could find was this linkedin post advertising the position 7 months ago, which reads:
Join us in shaping the future. Minecraft isn't just a game. It's a platform for creativity, learning, and building community. We're seeking a senior leader, based in Stockholm, to guide our talented teams toward Minecraft's evolution. Help us build a better world through the power of play.
my interpretation of this is that she'll still be under other managers, and wouldn't be making any big decisions alone. regardless, this is not a good look for Mojang, especially at a time where the community are getting impatient with Bedrock's issues.
Minecraft really isn't a game where microtransactions work, at least on the ethical stuff. It's a game about creativity and sharing, which means a lot of people won't be bothered with mtx.
The elephant in the room is that there's a giant ecosystem of paid server nonsense, most of which is basically pay-to-win and gambling for school kids, which Microsoft and Mojang somehow approve. They just think it's unfair they don't get a cut, hence the push for Bedrock marketplace and servers. Thing is, if Microsoft really starts seriously sticking their fingers into that pie, I really hope the regulators start waking up.
They're never gonna put that stuff into Java, that's the fully Mojang version of the game. And even then it'll be as easy as ever to mod anything they try adding out.
so many launchers to pick from! i personally like Modrinth the most
oh yeah and most of those launchers allow for easy modding. want a modpack? click install, wait for it to download, and then just click play in the automatically created instance. want only a few mods but don't want to check endless dependency lists? what is it 2015? also just click install, the launcher will automatically download dependencies (and the right versions of them too!). worry that you'll install a fabric version when you wanted forge? or a mod for 1.20 when you need 1.20.1? relax as when you click "add mods" the launcher automatically applies filters that only show you mods that are tagged for your specific version (filters that you can still disabled though, it doesn't lock you out of installing a mod that's not explicitly tagged as fit for your version, but you know it'll work on it)
though don't get too comfy slapping that install button, there're still two things that can't be automated - incompatibilities between mods, and straight up broken files. launchers nowadays significantly reduce the number of headaches you get when modding, but they don't entirely remove them lol
I'm kinda shocked you've never heard of them but yeah, there's unofficial third-party Minecraft launchers you can get. CurseForge, Modrinth, and Prism Launcher are the top 3 big ones everyone uses. I personally use Prism Launcher simply because it's the easiest to set up modpacks for imo.
Highly recommend Vintage Story to those who love the survival aspect of Minecraft. In my opinion, it also offers a lot more creative freedom but you really have to work for it.
I just started back in November. It's easily become one of if not my all-time favorite game to play. It's absolutely solid and I forget it's still in early access.
NEW: Minecraft CREATIVE DLC. now you can build whatever you'd like with UNLIMITED materials, flying powers and NEVER DYING. for only 19,99$. WHAT A STEAL
Idk if you've been updated with the news, but there have been major management changes, like riot selling the game back to the original devs. The original devs then went back to work on a previous version that was already close to release
I hard passed on vintage story. I was looking into the game, took one look at the community and the toxicity on their support forums and went "yep thats a hard pass".
IMO the company should really do some cleansing on their starting topics. It doesn't look good for a game when there's active toxicity in the community forums arguing over if the game needs to be changed and telling people to get gud and that they didn't have such things when starting out when they make super basic suggestions like starter equipment, or an actual tutorial.
They may have fixed that since then since its been a year or two, but that was a hard turnoff for me. A lesser known game needs community support to function and survive. Even minecraft mods have a vast amount of wikis and community support. An actively hostile community on the official community forums is not a good starting POV.
I haven't checked the forums tbh but I think that YouTube + the in-game help menu (pressing H) do a really good job. Plus there is an amazing mod support (and modding is actively encouraged) so you can really customize the experience the way you want even if the deve don't add a feature you want.
I never played any one of those games. I am mostly playing hitman now. While obviously they keep releasing new stuff for it. They are not microtransactions. I just hate how everything has been so enshittified.
I think the philosophical difference between the two projects is that VoxeLibre has all core Minecraft gameplay features and then adds many of it's own, while I think Mineclonia is more focused on faithfully replicating Minecraft.
(Disclaimer: I'm guessing a bit, because I spend my time in a world where I remixed mods from both of the others into my own preferred blend - starting from the the mostly empty "MineGame" base game.)
For me Minecraft lost its charm around version 1.5/1.6. People don't get that it has been whole different game back then, and the fact that you had limited blocks and items meant you needed to become creative with them. Now they keep adding stuff that is either useless or blocks for building that are nearly the same as other ones.
I was thinking about getting into legacy Minecraft, but I never found people I want to play it with, and right now I don't really have time for it.
Bedrock Minecraft has always been the micro transaction version of Minecraft.
If you're playing Bedrock and are now worried about Microtransactions, that's on you.
Yeah, I'm convincing my daughter to switch to Java or https://www.luanti.org/, the big issue is my ex doesn't have a PC for her, only an Xbox.
We will be forced to rent computers from nvidia soon anywayl
People don't have the money, at some point all the game publishers will go under or consolidate as people just play already released games and use self hosted servers.
Rent Now, Pay Later!
I've never tried setting it up but apparently you can install a Java edition server mod to allow Bedrock players to join (so Xbox users and others)
that is correct, you can use Geyser to allow bedrock to join java players. For console or any bedrock client that lacks the direct connection with servers you need to also do some DNS shenanigans on the client where you use a jumper server to jump to the server you actually wanna join though.
I also recommend something like floodgate for authentication so you don't need to have the server in offline mode or have the player need both a java and a bedrock account
edit: I forgot to mention, keep in mind that this is still using JAVA edition as a backend. So when there is feature disparity between bedrock and Java, the java mechanic is what takes precedence. The biggest whiplash for bedrock vs java is usually the fact that java edition minecraft has the stamina system for attacking, so you can't just button mash to attack or you waste durability and have lower attack damage.
Yeah, been trying out a few different options. Trying to use a controller on luanti has not been working.
I used Geyser / Floodgate on my Java Minecraft so my daughter could play with her friend who had Bedrock Minecraft on her Nintendo Switch.
They just removed obfuscation from Java Edition. If they even try to do a single stupid move - like with chat reporting a few years ago - it will be simply modded out of the game.
The only thing that they might be able to do is increase the price for buying the game, mess with the accounts or illegally change their EULA - without notifying anyone - again.
Bugrock Edition on the other hand is already a dumpster fire for years, so nobody really cares about that one in the first place...
As long as the java edition exists it's still there.
Even if the java edition goes away, it will still be there.
If Java edition "goes away" it will just become a standalone community distributed platform frozen in development time.
Nah the modding community would pop the fuck off. Half of the work of the mod devs is keeping up with version compatibility. Imagine they no longer have to worry about version changes ever again? They can just develop their mod and put all of their effort into the latest version of Minecraft.
the main issue will be if they do a major API update right before they do it. Remember the great "flattening"? We lost many great mods when they did that because of the amount of changes they did to base code while simultaneously changing every ID in the game, while forge was also actively undergoing a major API change in how it worked. So as a result many mods stopped being developed at 1.12.
If they did a massive API rewrite right before fully ending support for java, the community will either have to accept another divide or completly forgo the new update and stay locked on the previous.
Not sure if that is a good thing. Some of the best mods came out of someone finding a mod taking too long to update or the creator deciding to skip a version. They then created a new mod to fill that same role, and in some cases becoming the new defacto for that role.
Change is good for creativity, imo.
What has the base game added in the past decade that anyone really wanted and wasn't better in a mod?
"added in the past decade" is 1.9 to now (1.8.9 released on 9/12/2015, 1.9 released on 29/2/2016).
Things "that anyone really wanted" (By which I mean the highlights of Minecraft additions):
Elytra(fireworks didn't work on them until 1.11.1)Phantomsㅤ
Mods? The features I think mods probably would not have done equally or better, or would not have come up with something as unique, are:
ㅤ
Others that idk whether qualify for the list:
ㅤ
(I'm talking hypothetically about mods here because I have not played old modded (or old versions at all, the first Minecraft version I played was 1.13))
(This is just my opinion combined with comunity reception of things, I'm not trying to argue)
https://www.luanti.org/ has long surpassed anything Minecraft had going for it.
Luanti sucks in modding support compared to minecraft. Luanti mods cant override game code, so the patches to the game code are impossible with mods. Due to this limitation, even the basic things like custom controls or shader support cannot be added using mods.
I'm surprised to hear that was your experience
Modding means something very different in Luanti, and is a first class citizen.
Trees are a mod. The base game left them out, so we can mod in how we want "the concept of trees" to behave.
I get you didn't enjoy it, but I think your comment misleads others.
The vast majority of the code in any Luanti game is in the mods. The last 5% is in the game engine, which itself can still be swapped out, as needed.
Having modded both games extensively, Luanti was a breathe of fresh air, to me.
I don't care about shaders, so I cannot comment. Since Luanti manages mod sharing - keeping all clients in sync - maybe that creates challenges? Feels worth it to me.
As for custom controls, the Luanti mods on my server have plenty of custom controls, so I don't know what you experienced? Maybe support wasn't there when you tried it before?
To add to pinball:
…If one wants to code in shader support, shouldn’t they just PR it? This isn’t like Mojang where the source is set in stone.
You can just edit the game? Why would you want mods for an open-source game?
This is like saying "why do you need a plugins for an open source software, if you can just edit it?".
If all of the custom stuff should be included in the game, then without modding support, ALL of the stuff should be patched into the game manually. Modding allows to easily add the content and functionality into the game, without editing the game code.
Yeah, but anyone willing to implement shaders for Luanti can just contribute it to the game itself. Then you wouldn't need to do anything to get the support.
This is not how open-source development works. All the various mod authors can just include their additions in the game if it is open-source. And most Luanti games already include vastly more features than vanilla Minecraft because of that.
Other comment pretty much already said it, but I think anyone with hundreds or thousands of mods installed in a game can tell you that literally patching the game code would be a painful endeavor.
Even if you compile your own game and want to change one simple thing, it's better if you can do it via a mod rather than directly editing the game code - this way you don't get merge conflicts when pulling the updated source from git!
That wasn't my point. Mods get developed because the game itself can't be modified otherwise. The Luanti games that are like Minecraft include already a lot of functionality that is only available with mods in Minecraft and it doesn't make much sense to ask for mods in this context.
Literally not the case.
Even in a game that you can directly modify, it's easier to organize modifications by keeping them modular.
Not everyone wants everything in their game.
It makes sense to ask for mod support because what if you want to extend the game functionality even further, without forcing your vision of the game on everyone (merging it into the upstream project) or having to patch it manually (or via some patch utility that still kinda sucks)
You don't need a mod for that, you can just fork the game.
And then you're left with hundreds of forks that are incompatible with each other. The whole point of mods is that they're interoperable
Luanti mod support is first class. The mod ecosystem is newer than Minecraft, but the mod architecture is dramatically nicer.
The whole discussion below here feels misinformative. Modding in Luanti games is great.
I think it is mostly that people have a very scewed idea what a mod means when we are not talking about a closed source single game like Minecraft.
It is probably better to compare Luanti to something like Roblox.
I tried minetest long ago and was not particularly impressed. Has the community grown big enough?
The "Minetest" you tried was likely just the barebones example game that used to ship with the engine. Since so many people got confused by that, they stopped distributing that example game with the engine and now you get asked what fully featured games you want on first start. Voxelibre is the one that is like Minecraft but better.
Until a the last couole of years, it wasn't terribly impressive. It is, now.
That's a tough question. Minecraft is 3 of the 10 most poplar games of all time. (Measuring every version of Minecraft separately, several versions will crack most "Top 10" lists.)
So compared to Minecraft, the Luanti community is tiny.
But compared to other Indie games, it feels like Luanti is huge now.
Does it support Minecraft mods, or does it have to have them converted/made special for it?
Because that's going to affect whether or not it has surpassed anything imo.
It has equivalents for most Minecraft mods (and more), but no, it is not directly compatible with Minecraft.
I think you should rather ask if Minecraft mods come even close to what Luanti games can do 😅
It is a joke to compare Minecraft to Luanti because Lunati has significantly more features and game-types than you could ever get with mods in Minecraft. It is just a different development model where "mods" don't make much sense.
Yeah, I second this. Until luanti has the equivalent of GregTech: New Horizons I will stay with Minecraft. Not modern Minecraft, just whatever good modpacks I wanna play
Though, for that reason, I'd play luanti it it has its own "killer modpacks". I play for the mods, not the base game, really
Personally, while I prefer Luanti (it is so much easier to mod and host and play), I don't feel that Launti has reached parity with Minecraft's best mods.
That said, it is really close, and really down to subjective preference at this point.
If you love trains, I think Minecraft comes up short, compared to Advanced Trains on Luanti.
If you love Redstone programming - actually, MeseCraft fixes so many poor early choices that Redstone is stuck with.
But if you love advancing through technology ages, you only have one or two good options in Luanti, whereas I think Minecraft has at least half a dozen - and I think the best Minecraft ones are easily better than the best Luanti ones...for now.
Is there anything like the ATM packs? Those are the majority of what I play, with ATM10TTS being my current playthrough
For an all-in-one playthrough, the two most popular are VoxelLibre and Mineclonia.
I perosnally prefer to roll my own mod set, but starting with a couple of mod packs.
One difference versus Minecraft - when I tried to play Luanti, I thought I needed to keep to just a few mods, to avoid conflicts or lag. I was wrong.
Mods feel way more efficient in Luanti, and almost never clash with each-other. I was able to go to town adding dozens of mods, on six year old PC hardware without any GPU.
There's also cubyz and hytale.
Bedrock has been doing shitty monetisation for ages. Play Java, enjoy.
Like they couldn't find ways to inject MTX into Java?
They could. But Java is much more moddable, so whatever they did the community would undo almost immediately.
Microsoft has been placing Bedrock before Java ever since they named it Java Edition, but Java has survived. I'm sure Bedrock is much more popular now, but I would be worried about Microsoft enshittifying Java further to push players to Bedrock, and any new microtransactions they figure out.
What a fantastic awareness campaign for Luanti!
Luanti is actually pretty great so far. Some of it is jank in the way that you can tell its made by people who make software not necessarily artists but its still a good time. A lot of effort has gone into it over the years and I appreciate its existence
Holy crap the map is 62,000 x 62,000 x 62,000?!?
Alright I'm gonna have to give this a try, I always felt the maps in Minecraft weren't nearly deep enough.
https://luanti.org/
What actually is this? The Website is rather unhelpful. Its just a Minecraft clone?
It started as minetest, an open source minecraft clone. It has since developed into a full voxel engine, supporting community made game modes and modpacks.
Thanks, that's exactly what I was talking about. What does that mean? Its a Minecraft clone?
It is a Minecraft clone, but it does a lot more. People are building new games with the same engine. It's called a voxel engine, because that the type of 3D that was popularized by minecraft.
I don't play Minecraft or Roblox, but this sounds like what I heard of the latter, not the former. You make games and they are available for people to play, or is there a difference I'm missing?
That's pretty good summary of Luanti.
The interesting nuance is that Luanti was originally built as the engine for making a faithful Minecraft clone, so the two popular Minecraft clones are extremely faithful to Minecraft, in ways that a clone built in another engine could not be.
Luanti is the engine that MineClonia runs on, and Mineclonia is a full featured, finished, Minecraft clone.
Seriously. It's a little sad.
For practical purposes, it absolutely is.
Grab Luanti for free off of F-Droid or any Linux app store, or out of the SteamDeck Desktop "Software Center". Launch "Luanti", choose "Mineclonia". (Edit: or Windows or Mac, too. - Luanti - Getting Started.
Pick a username to "Register" (local play is identical to server play) and start playing free open, wonderful, easily modded, multiplayer Minecraft clone.
If a friend wants to join, just give them your IP address - even on SteamDeck or Android phone (edit: and Windows and Mac - sorry, no iPhone, I think.)
Now its a launcher, you can install many Minecraft clones from within
Join meow anarchy modded!!!!!!!
Another little reminder:
My kids, 10 and 14, are very anti corporate greed and I couldn’t be more proud. They also complain when they aren’t on the local WiFi if they are playing mobile games because the ads don’t get blocked. A couple years ago my youngest asked me to turn ads on so he could hatch monsters or something faster, I bypassed his device and a couple months later he was complaining that the game is a time sink full of ads and he doesn’t want to play it anymore and wants ad blocking re-enabled.
They aren’t perfect and I have never tried to preach to them too much. Not really sure where I was going with this but your post reminded me how much I appreciate that my boys actively avoid and protest against playing games with ads and micro transactions at such a young age and I felt like sharing with someone.
FWIW, simply living with an adblocker for a while will inoculate you to a lot of the most predatory BS. My wife had a similar experience. At first she was annoyed by the dual pi-holes I set up, because they broke her sponsored Google search links. Then she learned to skip those first few links and got used to having ads blocked. We recently moved, and I hadn’t had time to set them back up. I have simply been using the new ISP’s modem/router.
Last week, she basically begged me to find some time to set the network stuff back up, because she hated seeing ads now. She got used to the pi-holes, and then they were suddenly gone. She was like “yeah a lot of my favorite sites are basically unusable now. I don’t know how the hell I ever functioned before you set those things up…” What sent her over the edge was when she noticed an ad on our TV’s sleep screen. Not even in the show we were watching. Just on the sleep screen, because the show had been paused for like 15-20 minutes. That one ad was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because even when the device was idle it was still trying to show her ads.
Any tips to get started on in game ad blocking?
I run a pihole as the other commenter stated.
PiHole
If you'd like to build a 4th chest, you will have to buy some chest tokens using minecoins which of course has a tiered pricing scheme.
Thanks, I hate it. Feels too real.
Why do we live in a world where incompetent people are constantly rewarded
they are competent at being leeches, parasites, ghouls and bastards.
Corporate mantra:
Profits Rule Everything Around Me
Microtransactions may make a game an unplayable pile of shit most of the time, but they’re a great way to turn children’s allowances into corporate profit if you’re a gigantic corporation that doesn’t care at all about amount of fun that can be had in a game.
Minecraft Java edition feels like the "community" version of the game while bedrock seems like the awful micro transaction playground for Microsoft.
Minecraft Java Edition is Minecraft and Minecraft "Bedrock Edition" is an awful Microsoft rip-off because Microsoft is bad at everything and wholly hostile to consumers and other businesses and run by ants.
You can just download any of the older iterations of Minecraft and host your own server.
You don't need to be on the latest release.
Doesn’t the server need to talk to Microsoft to work? I thought they built some phone home thing.
They can only release new versions with crippled features rather than taking away what older versions have.
You can disable online mode (weird name but i think still called this) and anyone with minecraft jar can join, no matter if microsoft account or not.
But can also choose username, so can bypass blacklist.
This what happen if play through launcher that allow piracy like prism or fjord.
I think I recall getting around this by hard-configuring the allowed players list?
I never felt the need to work hard to disconnect from Minecraft's auth servers - but I think I remember doing some command line foo once when the Minecraft auth servers were down for a day, in order to let current players keep playing.
Anyway, all that to say, I think are ways to work around that. It's not ideal, but probably manageable.
Disclaimer: I host Luanti now, instead, so I don't remember all of my Minecraft-foo.
As I understand it, older versions of the app have hacked that call/response so it either doesn't happen or dummies out. Also, lots of minecraft community servers will advertise what version they're using, because certain updates are considered undesirable.
Not really, you can disable online mode and make your own authentication system (or use a plugin someone else made to handle authentication directly on your server). This is usually done to let non-premium (aka pirate) users join (which is, to my knowledge, against the Minecraft EULA), but I'm sure if Microsoft were to really mess up and do something like disabling multiplayer support for older versions ("pre-enshittification versions are not supported by our servers" or some bs), people would just authenticate it themselves, or make their own server software (challenging task but not impossible).
... for now.
No, forever
They can't make all the old versions disappear from the Internet. You will always be able to get the old version and host a server.
additional context; Katie Scott, a former exec at ubisoft, will be the "Head of Vanilla Minecraft" in 2026. this source writes:
now that sounds bad on paper, but it's unclear to me what exactly she'll be doing in this position. best i could find was this linkedin post advertising the position 7 months ago, which reads:
my interpretation of this is that she'll still be under other managers, and wouldn't be making any big decisions alone. regardless, this is not a good look for Mojang, especially at a time where the community are getting impatient with Bedrock's issues.
Interesting to see how this pans out.
Minecraft really isn't a game where microtransactions work, at least on the ethical stuff. It's a game about creativity and sharing, which means a lot of people won't be bothered with mtx.
The elephant in the room is that there's a giant ecosystem of paid server nonsense, most of which is basically pay-to-win and gambling for school kids, which Microsoft and Mojang somehow approve. They just think it's unfair they don't get a cut, hence the push for Bedrock marketplace and servers. Thing is, if Microsoft really starts seriously sticking their fingers into that pie, I really hope the regulators start waking up.
My man, have you seen the bedrock edition?
If Roblox gets to why can't we?
-Microsoft
Microtransactions don't work in Minecraft.... yet...
That's exactly why they're getting the experts involved.
They're never gonna put that stuff into Java, that's the fully Mojang version of the game. And even then it'll be as easy as ever to mod anything they try adding out.
Unfortunately, not if it's launcher level
We have third party launchers already? Does that solve da issue
Prism Launcher is amazing btw
:o
Do we?????
:o
so many launchers to pick from! i personally like Modrinth the most
oh yeah and most of those launchers allow for easy modding. want a modpack? click install, wait for it to download, and then just click play in the automatically created instance. want only a few mods but don't want to check endless dependency lists? what is it 2015? also just click install, the launcher will automatically download dependencies (and the right versions of them too!). worry that you'll install a fabric version when you wanted forge? or a mod for 1.20 when you need 1.20.1? relax as when you click "add mods" the launcher automatically applies filters that only show you mods that are tagged for your specific version (filters that you can still disabled though, it doesn't lock you out of installing a mod that's not explicitly tagged as fit for your version, but you know it'll work on it)
though don't get too comfy slapping that install button, there're still two things that can't be automated - incompatibilities between mods, and straight up broken files. launchers nowadays significantly reduce the number of headaches you get when modding, but they don't entirely remove them lol
Modded launchers are, among other things, package managers
I'm kinda shocked you've never heard of them but yeah, there's unofficial third-party Minecraft launchers you can get. CurseForge, Modrinth, and Prism Launcher are the top 3 big ones everyone uses. I personally use Prism Launcher simply because it's the easiest to set up modpacks for imo.
I haven't seen the official Minecraft launcher in a LONG time. Not sure what you trying to imply here.
Highly recommend Vintage Story to those who love the survival aspect of Minecraft. In my opinion, it also offers a lot more creative freedom but you really have to work for it.
Vintage Story is a very different, much more hardcore beast compared to Minecraft.
Yeah, it's awesome. Survival as it should have been.
Been playing VS since before it had seasons or food decay. It's incredible to see how far it's come.
I just started back in November. It's easily become one of if not my all-time favorite game to play. It's absolutely solid and I forget it's still in early access.
Kinda love how they are not on steam and they provide a better refund policy without it.
Dont feel like mining? $.99 will get you a stack of whatever block you need to build a base home!
Don't feel like crafting? Buy blueprints to the most extravagent of builds! Only $19.99
The second one will definitely happen. People already paying builders for nice buildings, and I bet Micro$oft wants in on this market
NEW: Minecraft CREATIVE DLC. now you can build whatever you'd like with UNLIMITED materials, flying powers and NEVER DYING. for only 19,99$. WHAT A STEAL
Good thing there's Luanti
Hytale about to launch early access, bad timing microsoft.
https://hytale.com/
Idk if you've been updated with the news, but there have been major management changes, like riot selling the game back to the original devs. The original devs then went back to work on a previous version that was already close to release
Hytale launch, review look good so far.
What an amazing time to have started playing Vintage Story
I know what they meant, but "head of Minecraft" sounds funny to me. Like "my dad works at Nintendo" vibes lol
Minecraft died in 2014. Microsoft has just been keeping the corpse animated weekend at Bernie's style since then.
Kids in the future going for the minecraft speedrun WR momscreditcard%
Minecraft is already so far down that road. They sell skins.
Shout out to vintage story for replacing Minecraft for me
I hard passed on vintage story. I was looking into the game, took one look at the community and the toxicity on their support forums and went "yep thats a hard pass".
IMO the company should really do some cleansing on their starting topics. It doesn't look good for a game when there's active toxicity in the community forums arguing over if the game needs to be changed and telling people to get gud and that they didn't have such things when starting out when they make super basic suggestions like starter equipment, or an actual tutorial.
They may have fixed that since then since its been a year or two, but that was a hard turnoff for me. A lesser known game needs community support to function and survive. Even minecraft mods have a vast amount of wikis and community support. An actively hostile community on the official community forums is not a good starting POV.
Imo, I don't really interact / care about the community. But if that's a deal breaker for ya then more power to you
I haven't checked the forums tbh but I think that YouTube + the in-game help menu (pressing H) do a really good job. Plus there is an amazing mod support (and modding is actively encouraged) so you can really customize the experience the way you want even if the deve don't add a feature you want.
Theres always Luanti. Its a lot easier to mange for computer lab installs than trying to juggle Minecraft education licenses.
I never played any one of those games. I am mostly playing hitman now. While obviously they keep releasing new stuff for it. They are not microtransactions. I just hate how everything has been so enshittified.
it's well known that when you work at a company, you absorb all of their morals and goals
Further running the game. I quit when m$ bought em.
If only I could get others to move to mine clone /luanti. I wanna play again
Minecraft has been a dead game since microsoft bought it in my opinion. This just adds another layer of shit to the massive shit pile.
... the one that had the blockbuster film come out this year?
That game is dead? The one all the bloody kids play constantly?
Yep. The masses like crap, what can you say.
Still revenue has been falling for years so maybe the movie isn't the best guage?
How is it a dead game?
Microsoft killed it. Can't play without a Microsoft account, so it is dead to me. And a lot of other people too.
Does the world stop when you go to sleep?
I was serious that year over year, revenue for Minecraft has been falling. That is true.
But I also am serious that when Microsoft forced everyone to switch from a mojang account to a Microsoft account that also lost many players.
Bonus: Microsoft can go fuck themselves, I don't want any thing to do with them.
nah some of the updates have been good. not great necessarily, but good.
but yes, holy fuck have they ever enshittified it if you stray beyond self hosting and pay more than the barest attention to the launcher
It has enshittified, but Minecraft Java Edition, the less enshittifed one, is still a very good game. Modded is especially fun.
has anyone made any free and open-source versions of minecraft?
It's not free or anything but I recommend vintage story.
Yes. Two of the more popular ones run on Luanti.
In the Luanti games picker, choose Voxlibre or Mineclonia.
I think the philosophical difference between the two projects is that VoxeLibre has all core Minecraft gameplay features and then adds many of it's own, while I think Mineclonia is more focused on faithfully replicating Minecraft.
(Disclaimer: I'm guessing a bit, because I spend my time in a world where I remixed mods from both of the others into my own preferred blend - starting from the the mostly empty "MineGame" base game.)
Minetest
Check out luanti
For me Minecraft lost its charm around version 1.5/1.6. People don't get that it has been whole different game back then, and the fact that you had limited blocks and items meant you needed to become creative with them. Now they keep adding stuff that is either useless or blocks for building that are nearly the same as other ones.
I was thinking about getting into legacy Minecraft, but I never found people I want to play it with, and right now I don't really have time for it.
Minecraft has been dead for a while now. There's nothing really there apart from nostalgia and some mods.
For anyone looking for a spiritual successor to pre-Microsoft Minecraft, there's Vintage Story.
If you absolutely need to play Minecraft, just pirate it. Microsoft doesn't deserve a single cent.