Notes

5 Open Source Alternatives To Minecraft

It's not difficult to see why Minecraft is a top game for millions. Since it's written in Java, it can run on a variety platforms including Linux. There are a lot of Minecraft tinkerers who would love to have access to the source code and get to work on it. Unfortunately, the source is not accessible to the general public.



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But there's good news. Minecraft's popularity has led to a variety of attempts to recreate the game and others in the same vein, as open source software. Are you looking for a free Minecraft alternative? Here's a brief overview of some Minecraft clones and derivatives that you must definitely check out.



These projects are at varying levels of completion and are used to achieve a number of different goals. Some seek to duplicate the Minecraft experience in full or at the very least provide a very similar experience. Others are pushing the voxel-based gaming idea in completely new directions. Some are more of a framework which can be used to create your own game or creation.



Minetest



The first game on our list is Minetest. Minetest, a "near infinite-world block sandbox game" and a "game engine", is the most complete alternative to Minecraft. It includes multiplayer games and subgames, and has a range of terrain generators, as well as a variety of default biomes. It also comes with a user-friendly API to create mods that can be created in Lua.



Minetest is an open-source software under the LGPL. It is written in a majority using C++, which makes it much quicker than other scripting languages. Minetest runs on Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, FreeBSD, and possibly other operating systems, too. You can find the source code on GitHub.



Minetest screenshot, Minetest website, CC-BY-SA 3.0.



Terasology



Terasology might be the winner of the best rendering engine award in the pack. Its shadows are beautiful and terrifying. The game began as an experiment in the creation of procedural terrain. It has since evolved into a fully-featured, fully-featured game featuring multiplayer and a range of add-ons that allow players to experiment with various gameplay mechanics.



Terasology is written in Java and is made available for free under the Apache 2.0 license. Because of its Java-based system it should be able to run on any platform with sufficient power, provided that you have the Java 8 virtual machine installed.



Terasology screenshot, Terasology code repository, Apache 2.0.



Voxel.js



Voxel.js is the only one in this list. It's not a video game and doesn't claim it to be. Instead, Voxel.js is a JavaScript library that lets you build your own Minecraft-style games, renderings, or other interactive widgets, using JavaScript and HTML, enabling embedding on any website without any special plugins required for any browser that supports WebGL.



Voxel.js is put together as a number of related projects, so you can use as much or as little of the code as you wish when creating your ideal game. The main library, voxel engine is a basic engine for rendering small-sized scenes, but there are more than 200 add-ons available. You can see examples of other engines in the gallery. The engine itself is released under a BSD-style license. other add-ons could be licensed differently, so it's worth checking before you make assumptions.



Screenshot of voxel forests made with Voxel.js by Jason Baker



TrueCraft



TrueCraft is written to be very similar to the original game. It is described as a Minecraft "implementation," as instead of a clone and is compatible with official Minecraft server versions. The author of TrueCraft is seeking to implement beta version 1.7.3, which he considers "nearly perfect" during the development of Minecraft. TrueCraft is a snapshot that was deliberately frozen in time. He seeks feature-parity to Minecraft.



Because it is so similar to the original, TrueCraft has taken great care to avoid copyright issues by allowing developers only to code that they haven't decompiled or had access to the original game's source code, but those who have had access are encouraged to contribute in different ways. TrueCraft is written in C# and is open-source under an MIT License.



TrueCraft screenshot, TrueCraft code repository, MIT license.



Craft



Craft is another open-source Voxel engine that has the look of Minecraft. Its development appears to have slowed or stopped but there are over 200 forks, including many (such as the school project not2bad-craft) with significant improvements. Craft's simplicity may appeal to you if you're interested in building an alternative to Minecraft but don't know where to start The game engine is encapsulated in only a few thousand lines of C code and makes use of OpenGL for rendering. It uses simple algorithms to generate terrain and other tasks and is stored in an SQLite3 database. It's worth investigating the possibility of a multiplayer server based on Python.



Craft is made accessible under an MIT license.



Craft screenshot, Craft code repository, MIT license.



Other excellent alternatives



It is also worth checking out these other notable mentions:



Freeminer is a second sandbox-based game that is inspired by Minecraft and inspired by Minetest. As a fork, the authors are determined to "make the game fun while sacrificing a bit of perfectionism." It includes installers for Linux and Android. ClassiCube is a Minecraft Classic clone written in C#. It is open-source under the OpenTK License and can be installed on Linux, Solaris, Windows OS, Solaris, Windows OS, Mac OS and in browsers.



There you go. This isn't a complete list. There are many more options available to explore. As more people start to play these games or develop their own, we will undoubtedly discover more options. Which one is your favorite and which one did we miss that you would have included?


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