Minecraft clones

Posted on:April 18 2011

Since most people now heard of Minecraft and its unbeliveable commercial success, Minecraft clones are popping out everywhere on the web, implemented in various languages and using lots of different technologies.
For example celeron55 created Minetest c55 using the Irrlicht 3D engine, and it looks like this:


Runs on Linux and Windows, features multiplayer support and is very fast. Nice project :)

I think the reason for all those Minecraft clones is not that people think they can also get a lot of money out of this (they wouldn't anyway), but that it is a nice programming challange: You don't need a 3d artist and the algorithm for rendering and doing game logic in that 3d world is quite fun, from a programmers point of view.

But I think it won't be long until commercial, big money funded Minecraft clones with non-programmer-art graphics will see the light. Sadly, game development today is mostly merging together two or more already existing game concepts which worked before. Will be interesting to watch what the big players will make out of this, and I hope to see them fail. :)





Comments:


"Sadly, game development today is mostly merging together two or more already existing game concepts which worked before." sounds sense making to me. you made a diablo clone yourself. although yours is boring :p minecraft was inspired by infiniminer too.

"Will be interesting to watch what the big players will make out of this, and I hope to see them fail. :)" you hope they wont make a better game than minecraft? why? notch surely made enough money by now.
Matthias
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2011-04-18 09:12:00


I didn't make a diablo clone but a game which is a mix of two other games similar to diablo!1!! :) Didn't know infiniminer was before minecraft, interesting.
niko
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2011-04-18 10:06:00


i dont think we should look for innovation. games should evolve. pick a good idea and make your own, hopefully better, version of it. the market will sort it out.

if everyone just ignored everything that came before (if that's even possible) we'd just have a stream of shitty games.
Matthias
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2011-04-18 11:07:00


I'd like to see some worldspace texture mapping applied =)
zog
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2011-04-18 12:35:00


It's much faster than Minecraft.
Thanks for sharing.
bull
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2011-04-18 15:54:00


"I think the reason for all those Minecraft clones is not that people think they can also get a lot of money out of this (they wouldn't anyway), but that it is a nice programming challange: You don't need a 3d artist and the algorithm for rendering and doing game logic in that 3d world is quite fun, from a programmers point of view."
- That is so very true! :)

Other than that, what Matthias said! ;-)
Correct
Quote
2011-04-19 09:30:00


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