I was tinkering with my unused VPS and thinking about how to use it when I got the idea. I remembered the Minetest project. It's an open-source voxel engine with an open world. I played it many years ago when it was just a simple engine to prove the concept. It has recently been renamed Luanti, and there are "games" based on the engine which can be downloaded through the main Luanti client. Minetest is one of these games. However, the game that interests me is Mineclonia. It is an attempt to reimplement all Minecraft features in the Luanti engine. I gave it a try and found it really interesting. I remember really liking the Minetest project, but it wasn't very challenging as it lacked interactivity and the mobs were boring and not challenging enough.
However, Mineclonia is a game changer. It's really challenging and contains almost all the features of Minecraft, so there's a lot to explore.
I decided to use my VPS to host the Mineclonia server. Setting up the basic game was really easy. The tricky part was keeping it running and setting up an auto-start. After some unsuccessful attempts with systemd and cron, I created a .sh script to configure and start the server. Then I added it to my favourite PM2 daemon.
Everything worked really well after that. Now I am just adding some necessary mods, customising the settings, and preparing the necessary permissions.
The server is running smoothly and is already highly playable. The only remaining things are some small adjustments, and then we can enjoy it. If you are interested, feel free to contact me and I can give you the credentials to join us. When everything is ready, I might open the server to the public.
Jan "Jenkings" Škoda - blog
Simplifying IT, Amplifying Knowledge