>>13961675
>there's no native entity framework
theres a native entity framework, its just very simple. what people are making are vehicle or mob APIs, or whatever else would use entities.
>There was some fork that tried adding basic gameplay features in response to Minetest going down this route, but I forget the name of it.
Freeminer claims to do that, but IIRC the only notable thing about it was that it had an Android port before Minetest. Voxelands is a fork of Minetest before the Lua Modding API existed, so you can expect it to lack features compared to using a bunch of mods in Minetest. basically its Minetest for very potato computers.
theres also Squaresville C, but thats a fork based on dev builds mostly focused on a map generator. a lot of it used to be lua mods: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15410
>>13961600
i've had "volcanoes" in minetest, due to the magma conduits mod and the dynamic liquid mod (magma conduit generates high enough in a hill or mountain), can be pretty chaotic. ethereal has a lava biome where pools of lava are generated as well.
>Mega structures like giant trees
this was a minetest mod: https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?t=16503
>spooky creepy altars
the bastet mod adds statues 900 statues randomly placed in the game world, they can summon mobs. theres also the pyramids mod and the ziggurats mod.
>Cloud layer height
the cloud API in minetest lets you do this apparently.
>jutting cliffland in the ocean
v7 mapgenerator in minetest
>coral
in minetest_game and in the ethereal mod
>lotus
dunno if theres a mod that added generating them but its definitely possible
>mountains that reach the height limit
minetest generates mountains taller than 256 sometimes, but minetest's actual height limit is much higher than that.
>>13968608
you'll see them sometimes in minetest, at least in the v7 mapgenerator.