Introducing Our New Name

[MetaNomad]

Yeeeeyyyy !

I have been a bit busy IRL thoses last weeks and didn't pray much attention to minetest news, so I got a bit surprised on a first time.

But, even I'm not a very active member of the community, I spent loooot of time on my singleplayer world and playing around with lua and mods thoses last years. I'm also part of the people "commenting" on the weirdness of "minetest" name when I first step in the community.

So I'm very happy of this change, and I like really much "Luanti" and the etimology of it !

Still need a couple of month to really get used to it, but I think it's a good thing 😁

Long live to Luanti !

[kuboid]

That said, my first impressions of "Luanti" were "lunatic", "what an arbitrary, random name", "sounds like an esoteric social project somewhere in Africa".

But on second thought: it's just a name.
1) They removed "test", makes it sound more mature.
2) They removed "mine" which points to the fact that this engine is not all about games where you are supposed to mine ores or whatever else.
3) Dropping "Lua" into the name is a bit strange. What if we ever switch the script language? Although: the "lua" part in the name is not obvious, you could change the script language and still keep the name. Noone would notice, eh?

You can give a product a name as shitty as "Google". If the product succeeds then the name will eventually make it into dictionaries like "to google = to search the internet for something".

So I'm fine with it. I will get used to it, I think. I will support it. We all should support it. A decision is better than no decision. Even if you find it a bad decision.

[TenPlus1]

Since you are setting up luanti.org, can you add a dark theme to the forums, would be appreciated :)

[SylvesterKruin]

I see the Minetest Wikipedia article has been updated :)

[repetitivestrain]

That doesn't address the resulting confusion at all, especially considering that, according to hearsay, threats are being issued on IRC to remove the original name at an unspecified future time. See: https://codeberg.org/mineclonia/mineclonia/issues/2189

There is always someone who wants to "clean up" the old stuff by "deprecating" (I hate that that term gets thrown around so much, it's actually quite a strong word in origin, meaning "I pray this thing would just go away") and then removing it. Those people I will continue to strongly argue against, because they are just obstructive.

The Mineclonia discussion is just a suggestion, which most Luanti mods&games will have to face, about how and when to drop the old name. Cora mentioned GreenXenith's comment, but GreenXenith isn't a core dev. The comment that it wouldn't be made until 6 is just how the policy of deprecation in Minetest works, but then GreenXenith also says "it's cheap to keep around" - exactly! So why remove it? I'll argue against ever doing it myself.

No doubt prompting many users to pose the question why their "Luanti" save files are being stored in a directory named "minetest."

To which they can get a quick history lesson. Yes, it does create a bit of a disconnect, for now at least.

Of course, we can't say that the main directory won't move in future. BUT that for the foreseeable future, compatibility would be maintained for old installations. Putting a .myappname directory straight into a Linux home directory is a big no-no these days; with the amount of software that the average desktop user installs, it quickly adds up to dozens or more than a hundred subdirectories causing clutter. That's why stuff now lives in ~/.local and ~/.config. Seriously, I have almost 70 .directories in my home directory right now. Maybe you disagree with the practice of moving stuff to those directories; that's fine, I can understand that there are objection to that as well.

As for the sysadmins of the world, it is and has always been their job to migrate stuff to new versions, or suffer the consequences of obsolescence. But since a lot of them just install through their distro and get security patches through backports their distro does, there's no reason they can't also keep their server in place for 10 years or something if they so desire, never moving from ~/.minetest. Heck, people are still on 0.4.x after all this time. Sysadmins make their choices, hopefully more consciously than other users.

I can only disagree, when K9 Mail evidently felt this problem to be sufficient to justify divesting Thunderbird for Android into a separate application.

Email and instant messaging occupy the space more of client-server architecture, where the messages sit on the sever and are just synced to clients. I'm not that much of an Android developer; surely there is a way to share data from one app to another to move over certain options. Minetest-Luanti would pose a bigger problem in that we need to make sure people can keep their worlds, that much is definitely true.

This name may be new, but ContentDB is not, and it would be foolish to expect a new name for the engine to attract popularity away from that genre of games which currently dominates it in that respect.

True, it would be foolish purely to hope for that, but I hope that would help anyone who is actively looking for alternatives of their own accord to choose Luanti rather than snubbing their nose at "Minetest". Ah well, it's all speculation.

I doubt there is as wide a constituency for such superficials as the name of a game engine as you suspect, but even if there is, what is the value of doting users who pass judgement on a computer game engine by some fleeting impression left by its name? Minetest is very successful, and prospering, now, for what it is, and though the small number of questions prompted by the name are annoying to some, yet trying to address them with a rebrand is killing a fly with a sledgehammer, and a poor judgement call for many other reasons also. "Leaving behind the ghost of the past" and other inspirational speeches to that effect are just hyperbole, and in my experience, written to justify the decision after the fact. If the project was indeed haunted by such a specter, this new name will not make it pass.

And OldCoder will receive another opportunity to gloat and to poach our users or misdirect those who come looking for us.

[Blockhead]

Rather, I'd like to make a suggestion to perhaps get improved feedback and ideas in the future. I suspect most players of Minetest don't follow forum/blog posts, IRC etc. They just want to play. So for any important news or significant announcements, including asking for feedback/polls that truly reflect players thoughts & ideas, why not have something like a "News Banner" in the logon window, maybe above the "Favorites"

The problem with Minetest is it's.. too free? (can anything be too free?) What I mean though is that you can get a copy of it and use it without ever visiting the website, and even if you use ContentDB, you have no real idea about its community (was discussed here) or development (have to follow it on GitHub basically, blogs are few and far between).

Veloren has Airshipper, their launcher, which shows you the patch notes and news. Actually Veloren are a very similar game: blocky world & free software. Now while I do like going straight into the game rather than using launchers, I'm fine with optional launchers. I think though that the right way to do it would be to put news posts in another tab on the main menu, and track whether the player has visited the news tab since the last post, to show a number like the Content tab does when your packages are out of date.

This new section could go somewhere completely different of course if the main menu was redesigned, but still serve up the same content. Also, we'd need someone to be regularly writing updates - something we've struggled with, whereas Veloren has made it part of their process to do update posts.

Once there's a central place to be connected to update posts inside of Minetest, and someone posting regularly to it, I think it will be easier to keep up and give feedback.

[nazalassa]

Wow - after reaching the end of the first page, it took some time for me to understand there are at least two more pages, and after reading all of them, well, I have a feeling the name change will cause more problems than it will solve, maybe because all it solves is removing "mine" and "test" from the name.

I liked the name minetest, and I feel a bit sad it is gone. Not that I do not especially dislike Luanti, but the new name sound more distant to me, whereas plain minetest did not - perhaps because minetest is based on English words and not Luanti. Or because Luanti does not include any recognizable words (not everyone speaks finnish iiuc) that can describe the game (Lua is not really a word that describes it, it only describes what is behind). Minetest did have "mine" and "test"; I personally do not consider it is really about "mining", although the "testing" part does fit very well. Then, maybe, it is because I like to write mods and test new stuff, so this is a purely personal opinion.

Be it Luanti if it really needs to, or if people really want it to. But for now it is going to remain minetest for me. Unless compatibility is broken with installations that use "minetest" (be it now or in the future), I do not really care. After all, how I name stuff may differ from how that stuff calls itself.

[Melkor]

Since you are setting up luanti.org, can you add a dark theme to the forums, would be appreciated :)

Please

[Linuxdirk]

I so wish for a hard cut … This won’t happen, though.

[TheMinetestMAN]

Honestly, this is terrible. I really dislike the name change. Minetest has been around for years, building a dedicated community and a recognizable brand. Changing the name to "Luanti" seems unnecessary and confusing. A thriving game like Minecraft would never make such a drastic change because its identity is tied to its name. Minetest has always been the best name for the game, reflecting its roots and what players have come to know and love. Why fix what isn't broken?

[Chem871]

The new name is fine, I just don't like that the old name was changed in the first place.

[isaiah658]

My actual first reaction was that I thought it was an error. Luanti doesn't register as anything meaningful and doesn't roll off the tongue. Sorry to say, but I'm just going to keep calling it Minetest. At least I can say the name.

Also Luanti just sounds like lua-anti which makes no sense because the project uses Lua and isn't anti-Lua.

[Erdbeere]

Of course, we can talk about the name for a long time here. The only important thing is that we don't weaken our community further and that this is at the expense of the game (and platform). Nobody wants to ride a dead horse.

Therefore, developers should provide guidance as soon as possible on what the clear roadmap will look like to implement this name change in practice. Ok, domains exist. What are the next steps?

And just a name change alone would be self-employment. What are the upcoming big steps for Luanti in the future? We must all be of the opinion that this will be a great project in which we want to invest our live time. Then the name is ultimately secondary.

[celeron55]

am I really the only one who is unhappy about a name change ?

something about renaming twelve years of my life just rubs me the wrong way

How about 14 years for me? Yes, it feels wrong. I don't think the feeling will last very long though, especially if we start seeing some benefits of the new name. I expect it will feel pretty good after a year or so.

[celeron55]

Minetest as a name isn't going to be completely gone for a loooong time due to filesystem paths, message content on the forums and such. I don't expect newcomers to become unconscious of the history of this project and the history includes the old name. You will find lots of useful content on the internet using Minetest as a search word and people don't forget useful things.

But we will use the new name to make a more presentable brand over time.

[PiTTi]

hello
as former MC players we are happy that there are alternatives to MC at all. Minetest was the best game of its kind for us, and now it will be called Luanti. You will get used to the new name. It's all a matter of getting used to it, right?
We would like to thank everyone involved in this great game, especially celeron55 for having the idea for this "mining test" :-) And thank you that M$ hasn't got his hands on it yet........
We have been playing Minetest since 2012, and we will be playing Luanti for the next few years.
Names are just empty words in the end, it's the content that counts. And it's great (for us). Thank you Minetest/Luanti team for all the work to ensure that we players have a great time with this game.
(just my 50 cent)

[basxto]

Finally the test got concluded. I honestly think that minecraft and minetest developed apart that much that the name was kinda misleading.
It should be faster to start for people who type the name since luan should have significantly less possible conflicts than mine

[sfan5]

picking up some unanswered questions

• When will this be "active"?
• When will this be reflected in code? (I understand using core instead of minetest, but will there be luanti, too?)
• When will this be reflected in branding (UI, logos, icons, packages, etc.)
• Did you reach out to the luanti.net owners for buying the domain?
• What is the suggested short name (Minetest -> MT, Luanti -> ??)

• Immediately :)
• As for the Lua API the future suggestion will be to use core. minetest will naturally stay as an alias. Other things will be renamed over time.
• The clear consensus is that we want to adjust the branding for the upcoming 5.10.0 release.
• We already own this domain
• No idea.

And just a name change alone would be self-employment. What are the upcoming big steps for Luanti in the future? We must all be of the opinion that this will be a great project in which we want to invest our live time. Then the name is ultimately secondary.

While the name change does reflect the eventual transition from a "game" to a "game engine" (or "platform") we've been going through, it is really just that, a name change.
There are no imminent major changes to development direction.

That doesn't address the resulting confusion at all, especially considering that, according to hearsay, threats are being issued on IRC to remove the original name at an unspecified future time. See: https://codeberg.org/mineclonia/mineclonia/issues/2189

It would be wise not cause a commotion based on nothing but hearsay.
And there's no need to guess either, you can reference our version scheme here. Effectively that means unless you see plans for a 6.0.0 release (there are none) that there's no risk of the minetest namespace disappearing.
And if you aren't sure about that you can always ask directly in #minetest-dev.

[nazalassa]

Just a random thought: maybe 'minetest' could be used to refer to the engine itself, whereas 'Luanti' could refer to the engine + any game installed (including none). So the average user who does not delve deep into the specificities of the game would see 'Luanti', while anything directly related to the engine itself would still be logically referrable to as 'minetest'.

[Astrobe]

Remember to update https://libregamewiki.org/Minetest . It's also worth noting that a few Minetest games are advertised there ( https://libregamewiki.org/Category:Minetest_games ), but some don't give much details about the installation process. The Minetest/Luanti page could mention that they can just install Luanti and get the game they wish to play from the GUI.

[Astrobe]

Once there's a central place to be connected to update posts inside of Minetest, and someone posting regularly to it, I think it will be easier to keep up and give feedback.

Yes, except that nobody cares but game makers about the game engine or platform now named Luanti, the same way players don't really care about Godot, Unity or Löve.

The features you describe should talk about the selected game. For instance, the recent major visual improvements for players (dynamic shadows, godrays,...) are only available if the game supports them, so let the game makers communicate about them (they have to tell their players to update Luanti itself, if nothing else, until Luanti gets the usual automatic update check).

Just letting a game customize a couple of links/buttons (forum, news, ...) like they can customize banners, background images, menu music would be helpful. It sort of already exists in the Contents tab.

[blowgundude]

This will probably take some getting used to considering I sort of grew up with Minetest, but I guess it makes sense. This project has gone in a different direction since then. It's not too different from when MineClone 2 became VoxeLibre. Nonetheless, I feel like a number of people, including me, will probably still be in the habit of calling it "Minetest" for quite a bit. It's just one of those things.

[Neuromancer]

am I really the only one who is unhappy about a name change ?

something about renaming twelve years of my life just rubs me the wrong way

I wouldn't say unhappy, but in my heart it will always be Minetest.

[Neuromancer]

Is it horrible to say that I liked the plain and simple name of Minetest ?

No it's not.

[TumeniNodes]

I think this is a good move forward.. eventually, hopefully sooner than later.
.. confusion sets in along with it's pal "the unknown"

It's a good name, I like it.
For so long, some kept asking for a name change,
now that it's eminent.. basically has occurred, some are worried or upset.
You cannot and will not ever please everyone all the time, if ever at all.

.. and now this, because it fits:

"And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration
If we don't we're gonna blow a fifty-amp fuse"
Sing it to me,

You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, well, you might find
You get what you need
Ah, yeah"

Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Keith Richards / Mick Jagger
You Can't Always Get What You Want lyrics © Abkco Music Inc.

and also:
"Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo"
... just because