Since Alice was about six years old, we’ve played Minetest together and with friends and cousins. It’s like Minecraft but FOSS (free and open-source).
The base game isn’t much, just an engine, but the strength of the game is that you can mod it like crazy and turn it into just about anything you want. There are many games, mods, and servers based on things like PVP, racing, parkour, survival, RPG, etc – all running on the same base game!
Many years ago I started poking around and modding a very popular addon/game called Lord of the Test. As I made changes, I’d incorporate them into our family’s gaming sessions. Cousins and friends have come and gone over the years, and we still play together about once a week.
After many hours of coding and tweaks/ideas of my own, the project has taken on a life of its own over the years. This is called “forking” a project.
Since I started with very old code to begin with, much of my work has been patching it over as updates to the base game came out. Things that used to work fine sometimes end up breaking. But I’ve more or less kept up with it for about ten years.
Recently I submitted my project to the game’s own repository – a collection of mods and games you can download from the game itself. It was accepted and published this past week! While I’m no professional coder, it’s encouraging that my code and ideas for the game will be enjoyed. I’m also quite thankful for the many [real] coders whose shoulders I stand on. I have borrowed code and ideas from so many and just tweaked them slightly. Fortunately this is encouraged in the FOSS world!
My game is called TolkienTest. Here are some screenshots of fun times we’ve had over the years playing it!
Leave a Reply