When comparing AssaultCube vs Minetest, the Slant community recommends Minetest for most people. In the question“What are the best open-source games?” Minetest is ranked 13th while AssaultCube is ranked 24th. The most important reason people chose Minetest is:
An easy to use lua API, and a large variety of existing modifications and games that can be downloaded and installed easily.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Minimal resource usage
AssaultCube is extremely fast, small, and network efficient for an FPS game.
Pro Cross platform support
AssaultCube runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Pro Fast-paced multiplayer FPS gameplay
AssaultCube does a good job of adding fun, fast paced shooter gameplay (like in Counter Strike) to the open source world.
Pro Activity in multipayer
Many people online. You can play it every time you wish.
Pro In-game level editor with support for realtime multiplayer editing
Admins of a server can enter edit mode for a map during gameplay, updating components of the map live without needing to run other software or develop any code or image assets.
Pro Variety of fun game modes
Pro Has a decent number of community servers
Pro Easily customization through LUA mods
An easy to use lua API, and a large variety of existing modifications and games that can be downloaded and installed easily.
Pro Open Source
Pro Runs fast and clean
Runs on Low-End Hardware, runs Fast, Spartan on Memory.
Pro Cross platform
Can be played on Android, Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Pro Fewer griefers than Minecraft
The smaller community means fewer players, and that mean fewer griefers than on Minecraft.
Pro Built for plugins from the beginning
Pro It's Free
Pro Fun and thorough tutorial
There is a tutorial game that you can download that teaches you how to play Minetest in a fun and intuitive way. There are even collectable gems you can try to find in the tutorial.
Cons
Con Few weapons
Few weapons. Really. One assault weapon, one pistol, one sniper rifle and one shotgun. Boring.
Con Lack of gameplay refinement
AssaultCube does not have that many weapons (though they do have some variety). Additionally, the game is not very balanced, as spawn points are sometimes in vision of other enemy spawn points.
Con Outdated graphics
Based off the original Cube engine, which has dated quite a bit.
Con Lack of mobs
Yet mobs can be installed through mods or subgames. However, if the server is not optimized, these can make the game run slower.
Con Not much to do even with mods
All I do in the game is dig underground and mine the ore within the caves. There are no monsters to fight, dungeons to explore, or any leveling systems/progression mechanics to keep me playing.
Con No weather
There's no built-in weather. However, there are mods which add this feature and extend it far beyond what you might expect from basic weather.
Con Rips off Minecraft
And not very well either.
Con Certain graphics are really bad
Parts of the games's graphics and functionality are really bad. Mob mods or default mobs look like a 4 year old drew them. However, the devs seem to be slowly sweeping through these issues. Come back soon if you don't like what you see yet.
Con Server lags
Almost everything is done server side, so the game can feel very janky on some servers.
Con Minecraft mod ecosystem separate from Minetest
Minetest is obviously an opensource implementation of Minecraft but the only problem is all the mods made for Minecraft do not work in Minetest. They could have designed their clone in such a way say fix it at 1.7.10 forge so that you could load up forge mods straight up and have them work somewhat. There's so much great content for Minecraft that is completely lost and unusable in Minetest, however at this pace of developement, maybe that will change in the future.