Luanti, the free and open source survival game engine formerly known as “Minetest”!

I’m pretty late to the party on this one, because I’ve been hearing about this project for years. But I’ve finally gotten into trying it out and it has been a ton of fun!

At a basic level you can think of it as a free and open source reimplementation of Minecraft. But there’s actually a whole lot more to it than that because Luanti isn’t just a single game with a single set of entities and rules, but actually an entire platform for making a wide variety of voxel-based games. It’s extremely modular and all written in Lua, so there are a lot of opportunities to customize the experience and every server you join can be wildly different. There’s everything from classic Minecraft-esque survival and create experiences, to Factorio-esque automation games, and even weird little experiences and silly PvP servers.

So there’s a lot of stuff to explore in the Luanti community, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I’ve joined other people’s servers, I’m self-hosting another one for my friends, and I’ve even started hacking in some mods that I think will make the game even more fun for our group.

I can totally recommend it to anyone who has even so much as a passing interest in Minecraft-like games.

Outside of that I’ve been enjoying other video games lately, including Zelda Ocarina of Time Switch 2, Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition, and Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart.

Lotta video games. Still playing Gears E Day, and now Ocarina as well, and soon to be GTA.

A little weird maybe, but…exercise.

A nice workout session gets my brain to making the happy juice.

Other than that, the usual…modular synthesis, beats, poetry…

I found a little underground music club about 20 minutes from my house that hosts both local and national touring acts for dirt cheap. For 30-40 bucks I can get three hours of live music in an intimate setting and enjoy the vibe. Been trying to go at least once a month. Doesn’t matter if I know the acts; I get to experience new music and support upcoming artists.

I signed up for pickleball. Gonna give it a try.

Meshtastic!! I did not get the hype but…its like knitting for nerds. Or something. Its just fun. And theres a good community around me I had no idea.

Sure its cheap electronics from China, maybe a bit wasteful. But fun to do.

I’ve been acquiring pins and patches and such for my battle jacket

These are both sort of in-progress pics (as if a battle jacket is ever truly finished,) I’ve added a couple more band patches to the front and finished adding the pyramid studs around the bottom edge, and the fish wasn’t sewn on for that pic of the back but is now

It’s at a place where I’m pretty happy with it now, but still on the lookout for more things to add to it.

Had some board games arrive this week and got in several plays with my teens. Specifically Herbcraft, Pyramido and Targi have been especially fun.

Researching transition. Also plan on going clothes & accessory shopping with my friend. I have never wanted to do that or gave a shit and suddenly I’m kind of excited about clothes shopping. Still kind of limited on what I plan on buying because ATM I just look like a scrawny guy and I’m not brave. But some accessories, hats, rings, gloves, etc are planned purchases. And I’m really excited!

Also since learning I’m trans I suddenly want to actually do things again in general: I’ve been playing my video game backlog more actively. Playing the new Quake 1 expansion Dawn of The Machine. Its pretty good.

Been a little light on the socializing as of late.

Other than that though unfortunately a lot of more boring stuff relating to insurance, chores, diet planning, my car, and work.

Signed up to a challenge called GRIT100 where you do 100 miles of activity in November. I hurt my back a little while ago and it really put a dent in my fitness routine but it’s been really fun to have a challenge I can still get stuck into, have fun and feel like I’ve still achieved something.

Picked up my old box of floppy disks and an USB floppy drive, and have been doing some archeology. I already found one of my ancient assembly files, dated 1997.

Bit of trolling on Lemmy, got a few likes.

Reading TTRPG rulebooks. If you have the mentality of “any interaction with the system is play”, I’ve been playing quite a bit even though schedules and conflicts abound. The most recent one I’m going through is Ker Nethalas: The Midnight Throne, which is a solo dungeon crawler.

Replaying Red Dead Redemption 2 and just roaming around in chapter 2 hunting and having a good time. I got my raccoon skin hat that I always wear and I’m avoiding all the story quests!