After buying this game and playing for a little bit of time, I've begun to think that every limited resource I use has to be used productively and professionally. It may seem irrational and nearly impossibly far away from the moment, but I get scared that every diamond I mine could be my last. With a little imagination, I've been trying to think of ways in which everything in the game could be renewed indefinitely. So here are my ideas as sidebars to the main purpose of the thread which is to survey the community because I'm weird.
LAVA
I think that if lava flows down then the area at the bottom of the fall should become a source block. This or if two sources have one space in between them it should become a source.
Iron
Iron ore can be harvested from golems, which spawn at levels of 19 or lower, and the nearest route to the sky by travel of air is at least X blocks. This means that an open- air quarry may not spawn with golems, but a natural cave accessed by digging would. Golems would be small creatures that spawn in groups of around 4 and stay together. They would kind've look like Geodudes with legs. They wouldn't deal much damage per hit and would attack slowly, but they'd be tough little creatures, each possibly having as many as 6.5 hearts. Occasionally one might stumble upon a boss golem that could dish out more valuable gems.
Gem Block Harvesting
If you leave a cluster of refined blocks in a dark, spacious room, possibly with things like flowing water. Maybe in exchange for the darkness it could be encased on at least 4 sides by lava. But anyway, if you do all that, the ore version could spawn adjacent to it, or it could pop out little raw items on occasion. This process would take a very long time. I think it could work because if you're in a dark room with plenty of space and stone and water, you really probably weren't working on anything important like a complex structure. Also, I believe in the redstone block idea. Shoutout to my homey with the redstone block idea to support vertical structures.
Sand and Gravel
Gravel can be crafted from 9 Cobblestone blocks at a one to one ratio, and gravel to sand in the same way. This was just a quick brain-storm seeing as gravel is basically crushed stone, and sand is repeatedly crushed pebbles, basically.
Dirt and Clay
Whole stacks of dirt, I think, should be craftable by one iron bar one stone, and a log. That keeps it relatively useless, but if for some reason you run out of dirt, you can get some more on demand and cheaply. Clay should be crafted from one bucket, one sand, and a fish for a set of four. That keeps it accessible on demand, but time consuming to get in bulk.
Those last two ideas were stupid, I know. But if you were thrown off by my ideas, but like the idea of a renewable world, don't hesitate to say so.
I have similar thoughts as you said, such as "I wonder if it would be possible to run out of iron or coal?". Therefore, I have always wanted a way to have renewable coal or diamond. And, according to science, coal and diamond ARE renewable, but to a VERY limited extent. The process takes millions of years, but coal is eventually created underground. I really like your ideas, except for the dirt one. Dirt is virtually everywhere in minecraft, and the only way you could run out is by hacking, then if you did, you could just hack more in as needed. for your awesome ideas!
You can't actually run out, because the world is infinite. You can only exhaust the supplies within a given area.
Now sure, you might not want to devastate your home area for building purposes - that's where the Nether comes into play. Make a portal, put a long railroad through the Nether, and stick a portal on the other end - now you've got a new land to harvest from, far enough away from your home region that it won't be an eyesore, even if you dig up entire deserts for sand.
In my opinion, the issue of renewable fuels has been solved since Beta 1.2, with the inclusion of Charcoal (http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Charcoal)
As far as renewable ores, I think the current system makes perfect sense as far as gameplay goes. I would also like to point out that it's literally impossible to run out of ores in your world. The world generates new chunks as you explore it, and with each new chunk new ore veins arrive: if you somehow find a use for all the iron in your immediate area, you can always find more in unexplored territory.
Interesting thoughts. I find myself conscientiously replanting trees and filling in creeper craters, trying to have as little impact on the land as I can, but then I remember the structure of the Minecraft universe, and also I remind myself that it IS a game, so like in a flight simulator I can do things that would be unconscionable in the real world. That's when I started building automated mob farms and open pit mining with TNT.
But here I think it's probably not a good idea to make everything renewable, not only because the game world is effectively infinite in space and resources, but also because in the real world resources are depleted as well, and so local scarcity in Minecraft is an appropriate challenge. There's only so much recycling of certain materials we can do before entropy kicks us in the butt.
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First note: matter can't replicate, so relation to Minecraft? :wink.gif:
Lava/magma doesn't act like water because it's not got much use. On a side note, water does 'replicate' because of previous bug problems I think it was that caused Notch to make water act like it does today.
Golems... maybe in Minecraft theme for 1.8, I'm not seeing it work though. Also iron is in pretty common supply. Go dig out entire chunks and you shouldn't be short.
Gem blocks making random items? Overpowered and time wasting. You'd need to sit around it for the object to spawn and for the chunk to update so the time you spend too far away from it doesn't keep track of it's function so doesn't keep it's time up-to-date.
Dirt = everywhere and underground.
Clay = rare 'cause it's got not much in the way of productive use?
Lava: I don't know what you're talking about with lava not being useful. It's essential for grief-proofing and griefing many structures, making obsidian, and making cobblestone. It's good for traps and garbage disposal and mob harvesting and 'erry 'tang.
The whole creation of matter thing: Trees? Water sources? Bone Meal? Spontaneous animal spawning?
Golems: But what if your a casual farmer? Iron is not fun to harvest by mining. Seriously, spelunking and mob-killing is far more thrilling. And like I said, it's just the idea that the existing matter in the minecraft universe CAN run out.
Gem Blocks: Chunk Updates: The same thing happens for just about everything else time-based, too, so I'm not particularly worried about that.
Time-consuming: I see it as a sort of casual farm for the people that go lumber jacking in the day and mining by night. It's the equivalent of banking for interest. You COULD use that cash to make more cash, but it's a roll of the dice to see which takes longer, and it's likely that farming would be easier and less boring, as you can do other things.
Overpowered: I wouldn't throw that word around so quickly. I'm not saying it would be quick, the process, and you'd have to stack together multiple blocks. That means it's slow and you have to be rich in the mineral before. The time and the amount of blocks could be adjusted to fit the game, too.
Dirt: I think it would be useful if you want to build underground farms or you need generic easily destroyed blocks at your disposal for maybe piping up trees or building temporary stairs. You could even probably use them to dance around mobs.
Clay = rare 'cause it's got not much in the way of productive use?
Did you just say that clay is so scarce because it's so useless? Granted, it has no purpose aside from looking good once you turn it into bricks, but by using that same logic I can go ahead and declare that diamonds deserve to be EVERYWHERE-- say, about as plentiful as iron.
I hope this clears up your feels of running out of diamond
(It takes over 100 millennia to mine all the diamond)
That is a very good link. While I would like to obtain Gravel by mining cobblestone by hand (making it free via cobblestone generator, but takes a long time for sizable amount), and from there I would like to craft Sand from Gravel (maybe via some kind of sifter?). But all the other stuff is unneeded. I would like to find clay underground instead of dirt though.
Did you just say that clay is so scarce because it's so useless? Granted, it has no purpose aside from looking good once you turn it into bricks, but by using that same logic I can go ahead and declare that diamonds deserve to be EVERYWHERE-- say, about as plentiful as iron.
Well in a lot of games there are extremely rare items that do next to nothing. There are also rare items that do a lot.
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I think that if lava flows down then the area at the bottom of the fall should become a source block. This or if two sources have one space in between them it should become a source.
Iron ore can be harvested from golems, which spawn at levels of 19 or lower, and the nearest route to the sky by travel of air is at least X blocks. This means that an open- air quarry may not spawn with golems, but a natural cave accessed by digging would. Golems would be small creatures that spawn in groups of around 4 and stay together. They would kind've look like Geodudes with legs. They wouldn't deal much damage per hit and would attack slowly, but they'd be tough little creatures, each possibly having as many as 6.5 hearts. Occasionally one might stumble upon a boss golem that could dish out more valuable gems.
If you leave a cluster of refined blocks in a dark, spacious room, possibly with things like flowing water. Maybe in exchange for the darkness it could be encased on at least 4 sides by lava. But anyway, if you do all that, the ore version could spawn adjacent to it, or it could pop out little raw items on occasion. This process would take a very long time. I think it could work because if you're in a dark room with plenty of space and stone and water, you really probably weren't working on anything important like a complex structure. Also, I believe in the redstone block idea. Shoutout to my homey with the redstone block idea to support vertical structures.
Gravel can be crafted from 9 Cobblestone blocks at a one to one ratio, and gravel to sand in the same way. This was just a quick brain-storm seeing as gravel is basically crushed stone, and sand is repeatedly crushed pebbles, basically.
Whole stacks of dirt, I think, should be craftable by one iron bar one stone, and a log. That keeps it relatively useless, but if for some reason you run out of dirt, you can get some more on demand and cheaply. Clay should be crafted from one bucket, one sand, and a fish for a set of four. That keeps it accessible on demand, but time consuming to get in bulk.
Those last two ideas were stupid, I know. But if you were thrown off by my ideas, but like the idea of a renewable world, don't hesitate to say so.
Now sure, you might not want to devastate your home area for building purposes - that's where the Nether comes into play. Make a portal, put a long railroad through the Nether, and stick a portal on the other end - now you've got a new land to harvest from, far enough away from your home region that it won't be an eyesore, even if you dig up entire deserts for sand.
As far as renewable ores, I think the current system makes perfect sense as far as gameplay goes. I would also like to point out that it's literally impossible to run out of ores in your world. The world generates new chunks as you explore it, and with each new chunk new ore veins arrive: if you somehow find a use for all the iron in your immediate area, you can always find more in unexplored territory.
But here I think it's probably not a good idea to make everything renewable, not only because the game world is effectively infinite in space and resources, but also because in the real world resources are depleted as well, and so local scarcity in Minecraft is an appropriate challenge. There's only so much recycling of certain materials we can do before entropy kicks us in the butt.
Lava: I don't know what you're talking about with lava not being useful. It's essential for grief-proofing and griefing many structures, making obsidian, and making cobblestone. It's good for traps and garbage disposal and mob harvesting and 'erry 'tang.
The whole creation of matter thing: Trees? Water sources? Bone Meal? Spontaneous animal spawning?
Golems: But what if your a casual farmer? Iron is not fun to harvest by mining. Seriously, spelunking and mob-killing is far more thrilling. And like I said, it's just the idea that the existing matter in the minecraft universe CAN run out.
Gem Blocks: Chunk Updates: The same thing happens for just about everything else time-based, too, so I'm not particularly worried about that.
Time-consuming: I see it as a sort of casual farm for the people that go lumber jacking in the day and mining by night. It's the equivalent of banking for interest. You COULD use that cash to make more cash, but it's a roll of the dice to see which takes longer, and it's likely that farming would be easier and less boring, as you can do other things.
Overpowered: I wouldn't throw that word around so quickly. I'm not saying it would be quick, the process, and you'd have to stack together multiple blocks. That means it's slow and you have to be rich in the mineral before. The time and the amount of blocks could be adjusted to fit the game, too.
Dirt: I think it would be useful if you want to build underground farms or you need generic easily destroyed blocks at your disposal for maybe piping up trees or building temporary stairs. You could even probably use them to dance around mobs.
Clay: Hmmmmwhat?
Did you just say that clay is so scarce because it's so useless? Granted, it has no purpose aside from looking good once you turn it into bricks, but by using that same logic I can go ahead and declare that diamonds deserve to be EVERYWHERE-- say, about as plentiful as iron.
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ModeratorThat is a very good link. While I would like to obtain Gravel by mining cobblestone by hand (making it free via cobblestone generator, but takes a long time for sizable amount), and from there I would like to craft Sand from Gravel (maybe via some kind of sifter?). But all the other stuff is unneeded. I would like to find clay underground instead of dirt though.
Well in a lot of games there are extremely rare items that do next to nothing. There are also rare items that do a lot.
Want some advice on how to thrive in the Suggestions section? Check this handy list of guidelines and tips for posting your ideas and responding to the ideas of others!
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-discussion/suggestions/2775557-guidelines-for-the-suggestions-forum