Simple suggestion: we should NOT be able to break much of anything with our hands. It really breaks the feel of the game, IMO. It utterly defeats the purpose of steel doors, locking mechanisms, and such, if they aren't even a real hindrance. Can't get through the door, go through the wall to the side, or hell, go through the door. Beat it down. Sure, as-is you don't get the resources without the proper tool, but that's hardly a consideration. This would also work to slow down griefers, but my main concern is just the feel of the game.
Now immediately you might be thinking, "well, it's not that difficult at all to get a wood pick". And you'd be right. Now here's were I expand on this premise.
Firstly, more resources need to be added and the availability of others needs to be adjusted. Many people have said it, and I'll say it again, we need tin, copper (from which we'd get bronze), and a few varieties of stone of varying hardness, and new trees, or at least a difference between hardwood and softwood.
We're going to skip wood tools altogether and jump imediatly to stone. "But how?", you might ask "If we can't break trees or stone with our hands". Well, very simply. Firstly, foliage will drop sticks. Secondly, we will be able to find stones on the ground, much the same way as we find flowers. These stone can be "broken" with one hit, because we aren't actually breaking them, simply picking them up. These stones can be combined with an adhesive (i.e. mortar) to make cobblestone blocks. Since we don't have any adhesive yet, these stone will be used to make tools instead. Furthermore, when a stone block is broken, it will no longer yield a cobblestone block, but will instead yield 3-5 stones. So you would combine two sticks, and one stone, on your 2x2 crafting grid to get a simple hatchet. A crude tool that allows you to break wood, if only very slowly. Once you harvest a few logs, you make your crafting table and make the bigger stone tools.
Once you have your first stone tools, you'll only be able to harvest the softest stone, and copper. The latter could be smelt, to make tools once aquired. Copper would require at least hardwood logs to smelt, and maybe something more like bellows (not sure how those could be added, but would be a resistor to jumping right from wood to copper). Stone however, could then be used to make tools. But a stone pick, would not be able to break anything harder than itself. So your early stone pick could only be used to remove soft stone from your path and mine copper and hardwood. This soft stone could still be made into blocks, but shoddy weak, and easily broken blocks. Just a stepping stone to better materials.
Now once you've got your copper and hardwood logs, you can smelt it to remove the stone it is encased in and get your copper ingots. From There you craft your copper tools. Only marginally more effective than the stone tools you were using, but allows you to remove stone faster, lasts a little longer, and allows you to break the next level of stone, along with getting at coal and iron.
But before you can make iron tools, you need to make a better furnace. I suggest making clay a little more available and having to construct your next furnace out of brick. Because of the way clay bricks work, they are a much better resistor than stone. Stone conducts heat very well, making it a poor choice for containing heat, especially when you need a lot of it. So you'd get a shovel, collect some clay, make brick blocks, and use that to make the next level furnace. I'd also like to see the addition of being able to make charcoal, then I'd say you need to build an ashery so you can make coke THEN you can smelt your iron. But I'm not entirely sure how to tie charcoal into the game otherwise so we'll leave that out for now. At any rate, you get your iron ingots by placing iron or in your new furnace with coal. You then make iron tools with which to break even harder stone.
Finally once you've aquired tin, you'll be able to make bronze tools. In order to space THIS out though, I would suggest the addition of some specialized alloying tool/bench, perhaps made out of iron, to facilitate this process. You'd then smelt your copper and tin and get bronze which would allow you to harvest the final types of stone (marble and granite). These would of course be incredibly durable and would, if this shoddy tech tree I just cobbled together were fleshed out better, require a bit of work before they could be broken.
As always, the player can still make buildings out of the lesser materials, and are not limited to HAVING to work up to the good stuff before they can build anything.
But anyways, a very circuitous way of making a single point, but otherwise my proposal is left with a lot of holes.
I was also toying with the idea of mortar and having a coble and smooth version of the initial three levels of stone. Cobblestone (whatever it's made of) would be easy to acquire while smooth stone would take a little more work, but be harder and more aesthetically pleasing.
YES. You can easily bust open a steel door which is really annoying if u want an awesome private house :I. some things should indeed be prohibited from breaking by hands. Also, other things should have its durability enlarged such as steel doors and brick
Sorry, a chain of thought broke out while writing the OP. I'm currently MASSIVELY editing and adding to the OP. So if you've got any gripes, please hold off just a minute or two.
This is an idea, although I'm a bit worried about the amount of complexity this would have. Would "softer" blocks produce different materials? How would you tell the difference? Would there be different saplings for hardwood and softwood trees (so if harder blocks produce higher-tier materials, we could plant a hardwood forest)? How would the durability of each of these new items be decided?
Personally, I agree with your idea that anything cobblestone or harder should be impossible to break without a tool, but I think it's possible to add that (and leave unarmed log cutting alone just for now) without completely overhauling (or at the least, drastically complexifying) the mining/tools system.
This is an idea, although I'm a bit worried about the amount of complexity this would have. Would "softer" blocks produce different materials? How would you tell the difference? Would there be different saplings for hardwood and softwood trees (so if harder blocks produce higher-tier materials, we could plant a hardwood forest)? How would the durability of each of these new items be decided?
Personally, I agree with your idea that anything cobblestone or harder should be impossible to break without a tool, but I think it's possible to add that (and leave unarmed log cutting alone just for now) without completely overhauling (or at the least, drastically complexifying) the mining/tools system.
Yes, softer blocks would produce softer materials. They would have a different skin. Probably just an adjustment in color of some sort. So it's not TOO confusing, it wouldn't just be darker or lighter grey. We could add in dots of another color to help distinguish them.
As for logs, both the log and the trees they come from would be different from one another. Logs would have different colors and textures. Leaves would have different colors and be arranged differently. For example, a pine tree, which is a soft wood, would have the typical conical configuration, while something like oak, a hardwood, would have the umbrella arrangement. Hardwood trees would drop hardwood saplings and softwood would drop softwood saplings.
As it is, the durability of everything in the game is determined by a formula with a single variable. I'm not sure if it's the same formula for everything or not. Regardless, the softest material would just have a variable of 1 and each subsequently harder material would increase it's durability by 1. Some materials would have the same durability, but that's okay.
It seems to tie in a lot with tech trees, which I think'd be great. So I'll give my insight semi-related to that.
Copper and bronze are definitely good additions. Copper should be much more common than iron, so you have something that's better than stone, but that won't eat into your ability to make iron-based items like minecarts.
Copper should be as strong as iron is currently, and iron should be twice as strong as copper is. Bronze should be twice as useful as that, making bronze 4 times stronger than copper.
Regular furnaces should still be in-game, exactly as they are. You smelt ore and get ingots. But, you wouldn't be able to craft metal tools until you make an anvil, presumably after a bit of iron (maybe 6 pieces, arranged in a vaguely anvil shape?) This'd be the big padding out between primitive tools and metal tools, so people need to mine enough to get enough iron for an anvil.
To make bronze, you'd need to make a casting station, which would require another investment in resources and be higher up the tech tree. This would be a combination of a furnace and blacksmith, requiring fuel to smith things. Here, you'd be able to make bronze, as well as craft metal armours.
Different rocks is a yes for me, but I think it should mainly be an aesthetic function. Sandstone's needed, and marble and granite should be findable in the game (deep underground.) The latter two would be stronger than regular stone, but not hugely. Again, it'd mostly be for visual difference.
As for the harder stone thing, here's how I think it would work.
You have the basic dirt layer. Always near bodies of water and sometimes in random locations, there would then be a fairly large clay layer, clay being a bit tougher than dirt, and obviously being used for brick making. Clay in general should be way, way more abundant than it currently is, both for gameplay and real life-like ness.
Underneath clay/dirt would be a mixed stone layer. Digging this out by hand would be pretty tiring, so using a shovel is much more needed. This layer would vary, from 0-5 blocks on average. After that is the regular stone layer and other fun things.
You'd get cobblestone from mining stone as normal, but by crafting cobblestone and clay together, you'd get a dirt-stone block. If you fire this, it'll turn into a regular stone block, regular stone being beefed up in hardness a bit (but not a lot.)
Idk if it's revolutionary, but if a change is wanted, that's how I'd vaguely do it.
I don't like the idea of making iron smelting harder. Partially because actually making iron really is just melting down ores (it's steel that requires coke,) and also because iron is a strategic creative resource, allowing you to make minecarts, and in the future things like lanterns. Those are important to not tie in with a tech tree, as they're mostly for making the game interesting, and that should be iron's late game focus (when tin's easier to mine en masse making bronze tools the norm.) It also gives incentives for players to continue using copper when iron tools start getting more readily available, as people do now with stone.
So yeah. Mostly what I said back in LightWarriorK's tech tree thread, with some new stuff. How does that work for ya op?
Not bad. You tied up a few loose ends that still existed in my OP. I have to disagree with you on a few things, but they are minor.
Quote from Blue_vision »
Regular furnaces should still be in-game, exactly as they are. You smelt ore and get ingots. But, you wouldn't be able to craft metal tools until you make an anvil, presumably after a bit of iron (maybe 6 pieces, arranged in a vaguely anvil shape?) This'd be the big padding out between primitive tools and metal tools, so people need to mine enough to get enough iron for an anvil.
ANVILS! That's what I was looking for. I'm still leaning towards a brick furnace, but anvils solve the problem I was addressing with the brick furnace. Furnaces are just too easy to make is all. They are so easy to make that I can usually sustain myself when I go mining. Stone is so abundant that I have abandoned furnaces all over my maps. Needing Brick makes them a little more difficult to make, necessitating that you return to the surface to get your smelt on.
Quote from Blue_vision »
Different rocks is a yes for me, but I think it should mainly be an aesthetic function. Sandstone's needed, and marble and granite should be findable in the game (deep underground.) The latter two would be stronger than regular stone, but not hugely. Again, it'd mostly be for visual difference.
Quote from blue-vision »
You'd get cobblestone from mining stone as normal, but by crafting cobblestone and clay together, you'd get a dirt-stone block. If you fire this, it'll turn into a regular stone block, regular stone being beefed up in hardness a bit (but not a lot.)
I still really think there should be noticeable, if not large, differences in stone hardness. That would be the reward for working up the tech tree; the ability to work with the hardest materials.
I also don't think marble and granite needs be deep in the earth, because they really aren't IRL. (I'm sure there is some down there, but there is plenty on the surface as well) If they are hard enough, and require the higher tier tools to harvest, this would balance out their presence on the surface. This would also allow you to have an open-air quarry for granite and marble and be able to find them rather easily, rather than have to mine deep for them.
Quote from Blue_vision »
(it's steel that requires coke,)
hmmm, you're right. Not sure what I was thinking. Well then, we should add in steel as well. Steel should be labor intensive and resource intensive to create, to balance the fact that carbon is already WAY too abundant. But not entirely sure on that one yet.
So yeah, I agree with a lot of what you said. If I didn't address it, assume I agree. The MOST important point though is that we can NOT even BREAK the materials without the appropriate tool. Not that you were disagreeing with that, Blue, but I just want to make sure that readers understand that THAT is the point of this thread, and that the tech tree is just there to balance that.
Simple suggestion: we should NOT be able to break stone or anything harder with our hands. It really breaks the feel of the game, IMO.
There's a gameplay reason you're able to do that. What happens when you're trapped with stone all around you and you don't have a pickaxe handy? That's it, you're pretty much ****ed, you can't even commit suicide to respawn for the most part. If there's anything you can't break with your bare hands, it should be something man-made - honestly, making smooth stone the sole exception would be enough for me.
Besides, the fact you get no resources out of fisting hard blocks (besides wood, anyway, but again that's for gameplay reasons) is enough of a deterrent to prevent people from making tunnels without tools anyway, if the ludicrously slow mining speed wasn't already enough.
Didn't read anything else in the thread to be honest, just had to respond to that bit in particular.
There's a gameplay reason you're able to do that. What happens when you're trapped with stone all around you and you don't have a pickaxe handy? That's it, you're pretty much ****ed, you can't even commit suicide to respawn for the most part. If there's anything you can't break with your bare hands, it should be something man-made - honestly, making smooth stone the sole exception would be enough for me.
Besides, the fact you get no resources out of fisting hard blocks (besides wood, anyway, but again that's for gameplay reasons) is enough of a deterrent to prevent people from making tunnels without tools anyway, if the ludicrously slow mining speed wasn't already enough.
Didn't read anything else in the thread to be honest, just had to respond to that bit in particular.
Then we should have a suicide button. Ctrl+Alt+X. That way you can't accidentally hit it.
Your remark was actually my first thought, getting stuck. In a hole, outside a metal door you just placed, etc. There's no way around breaking wood with your fists (except hardwood, which I mentioned) game-play-wise. But making smooth stone the ONLY exception leaves a lot of holes in the proposal.
But like I said, it's about the FEEL of the game. Not getting any resources for a material when you break it with your hands isn't really a deterrent. I think you should NEED the tools.
I still agree with the getting stuck thing though. How about this: a compromise.
Hitting blocks above "limits" will slowly deal damage to you. So you can break stone with your bear hands, but if it takes longer than 5 seconds to break you get 1/2 heart damage. longer than 8 seconds and it takes away a full heart. etc, increasing. That way the quick to break stuff like sand or dirt does nothing, but if you keep mining the same block for a long period of time it has to be a higher level block.
That way, no getting stuck, but not frivolous mining with hands. Also, glass should hurt you when you break it with your hands. I mean, seriously, punching a block of glass till it shatters against your hands should hurt :smile.gif:
ANVILS! That's what I was looking for. I'm still leaning towards a brick furnace, but anvils solve the problem I was addressing with the brick furnace. Furnaces are just too easy to make is all. They are so easy to make that I can usually sustain myself when I go mining. Stone is so abundant that I have abandoned furnaces all over my maps. Needing Brick makes them a little more difficult to make, necessitating that you return to the surface to get your smelt on.
Yeah, (not trying to sound cocky,) but I think anvil is a way better idea. I think that the reason that brick seems like such a rare item is because the way clay is used is kind of broken. As I suggested before, clay should be way, way more abundant than it currently is.
And requiring iron makes it so that you're already fairly well off in metal and mining by the time you're finished, meaning that you'll probably be itching to use all your copper (and maybe some iron you didn't use in the anvil.) It'd just move the game along better, while highlighting the development differences between wood and stone tools, and metal ones.
Quote from Sneferu »
I still really think there should be noticeable, if not large, differences in stone hardness. That would be the reward for working up the tech tree; the ability to work with the hardest materials.
I also don't think marble and granite needs be deep in the earth, because they really aren't IRL. (I'm sure there is some down there, but there is plenty on the surface as well) If they are hard enough, and require the higher tier tools to harvest, this would balance out their presence on the surface. This would also allow you to have an open-air quarry for granite and marble and be able to find them rather easily, rather than have to mine deep for them.
Hmm, actually that's a pretty good point. Heres how I'd see it working.
Everything I said before about stone and stuff still stands. Sandstone (and maybe a white limestone just as a visual/biome effect,) would be as hard as regular stone is. Bricks might be a bit harder. And then, you get into the smelted stone, which is significantly harder than it is now (2x or even more.) This would make mining harder, which I think is necessary, as well as make metal tools a much better option. But I'm still not sure how the padding out between that would work. You need to mine stone to get stone tools, but you shouldn't be able to mine stone at all using wooden tools (or your hands.)
I think the best solution would tie in with the dirt layer previously mentioned. When you get to mixed dirt, it'd have a chance to drop either cobblestone or clay. You'd use the cobblestone to make stone tools, which would allow you to (very tediously,) carve out mines to search for metals.
But I'm not sure how an even harder stone would work. I'm not sure I totally agree that there should be a harder stone that's impervious to stone tools, or if even a widespread stronger stone would work that well. It's worth exploring though. I think that just making stone harder would accomplish a similar function, making someone attacking your fortress with stone tools much less of a threat than one using metals.
As for marble and granite, Marble is only findable as a result of tectonic upheval. Marble is formed deep underground, and the only aboveground deposits are when mountains push it up. So I think that marble at least should be findable deep underground, but also around mountains (which I think would be best to count as deep underground for all resources when more advanced map gen is worked out.) But I'd make marble mostly an aesthetic block. Granite might work as a "stronger rock" though, being more abundant deeper underground (but also in outcroppings and such.)
Quote from Sneferu »
hmmm, you're right. Not sure what I was thinking. Well then, we should add in steel as well. Steel should be labor intensive and resource intensive to create, to balance the fact that carbon is already WAY too abundant. But not entirely sure on that one yet.
So yeah, I agree with a lot of what you said. If I didn't address it, assume I agree. The MOST important point though is that we can NOT even BREAK the materials without the appropriate tool. Not that you were disagreeing with that, Blue, but I just want to make sure that readers understand that THAT is the point of this thread, and that the tech tree is just there to balance that.
Yeah, though the tech tree does a hell of a lot of a good job of balancing it! I'd say that it's a very creative solution to making the game more layered and interesting though, mixing the tech tree up with engineering.
But for steel, I don't like the idea. Having copper, iron and bronze as workable metals really brings a balance to the game. Copper is your basic tool metal which you'll be using a lot of early in the game. But as you progress, start finding lots of tin and start making bronze, you use up copper resource to make said bronze, but also keep the usefulness of iron by having it used in things like minecarts, lanterns, and assumedly other useful non-tool things. If you add steel into the mix, you take out the strategic and usefulness of both copper and steel, which have very useful roles in a steel-less system. It's an important balance to have, and I think in a game, any coolness factor that might come from steel needs to be sacrificed for balanced items.
But yes, in general, it's an awesome idea! :biggrin.gif: Still needs some polishing down to a sheen, but I do like the concept.
EDIT: But on second thought, I wonder if this'll all just make the game too complicated rather than add depth.
While I completely agree that marble would be mostly there for aesthitics, I would suggest it be "harder" for gameplay reasons. The harder it is, the more rewarding it is to work with. On top of that, it would suck to build a grand Roman-esque temple, for it not to be able to stand up to stone tools. so I understand where you're coming from, but still don't COMPLETELY agree.
And maybe there shouldn't be a stone that is impervious to stone tools, but at the very least it shouldn't drop any resources if not broken with the proper tool. If you want to use marble or granite IRL, you have to remove it in a chunk at least as large as the final product. You can't patch stone back together (at least not if you want it to look pretty).
Quote from Blue_vision »
But for steel, I don't like the idea. Having copper, iron and bronze as workable metals really brings a balance to the game. Copper is your basic tool metal which you'll be using a lot of early in the game. But as you progress, start finding lots of tin and start making bronze, you use up copper resource to make said bronze, but also keep the usefulness of iron by having it used in things like minecarts, lanterns, and assumedly other useful non-tool things. If you add steel into the mix, you take out the strategic and usefulness of both copper and steel, which have very useful roles in a steel-less system. It's an important balance to have, and I think in a game, any coolness factor that might come from steel needs to be sacrificed for balanced items.
Yeah, like I said, I'm not 100% for steel either. But here's an idea. We could first, split the uses of iron and give some to steel. Rail for example, is usually made of steel, not raw iron. And I'm sure more uses for iron will come. Some of which we could give to steel. Along with being able to make toosl out of it, of course. But to balance steel, just like with including tin so we can make bronze, we can include some rarer substance that is the key to acquiring it. What we could do, is have three types of coal. lignite, anthracite, and bituminous. Lignite would be found near the surface, bituminous below that, and anthracite way down near the bedrock. Steel would require the rare and hard to acquire anthracite. Each of the three coal types could burn at different temperatures (anthracite>bituminous>lignite) but all three could still be used in a furnace. But like I said, just a thought.
Quote from Blue_vision »
EDIT: But on second thought, I wonder if this'll all just make the game too complicated rather than add depth.
Naw. IMO it's not complicated ENOUGH. But that's just me. I mean, alpha is already quite a departure from creative. Requiring us to have certain tools to get certain resources, as is already in the game, changed the game and brought depth to it. Why have the path of Minecraft just be tangential to creative? Take the next step.
While I completely agree that marble would be mostly there for aesthitics, I would suggest it be "harder" for gameplay reasons. The harder it is, the more rewarding it is to work with. On top of that, it would suck to build a grand Roman-esque temple, for it not to be able to stand up to stone tools. so I understand where you're coming from, but still don't COMPLETELY agree.
And maybe there shouldn't be a stone that is impervious to stone tools, but at the very least it shouldn't drop any resources if not broken with the proper tool. If you want to use marble or granite IRL, you have to remove it in a chunk at least as large as the final product. You can't patch stone back together (at least not if you want it to look pretty).
Oh, that was just me thinking aloud. Marble definitely should be very hard to mine, I'd say only using iron or bronze tools. But, I was thinking that it could be weird to see giant marble walls rather than stone ones. But, I guess that while marble should be uncommon but found in rather large pieces (I'd say 50+ pieces,) that's still not enough to make a fortress out of, so it should still be all good.
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Quote from Sneferu »
Naw. IMO it's not complicated ENOUGH. But that's just me. I mean, alpha is already quite a departure from creative. Requiring us to have certain tools to get certain resources, as is already in the game, changed the game and brought depth to it. Why have the path of Minecraft just be tangential to creative? Take the next step.
I think so too, but survival mode isn't all about surviving. Minecraft is still a creative game at heart. I think survival just makes your creating all the more rewarding, requiring you to toil for your creations.
So, you'd have to have a system that balances gameplay for creative-ness. I think that this does that well. After you've gotten to metal tools, you can basically do what you want (though the tech tree should continue to go up from there,) but having to go through more advanced wood and stone to get up there would certainly make it more rewarding, and I'll agree that stone should be a lot harder to mine. 2x or 3x harder, which would make people rely more on metal tools when you have the whole copper-iron-bronze thing going.
EDIT: Does making stone 3x harder sound good? It means that mining with a copper pickaxe will still be slower than it is currently with a stone one, but I think that's necessary. And iron will be be almost as good as it is for mining now.
yeah i like the idea of making things taking longer depending on the tool you have but i dont like the idea of soft material to hard material tiers
Well they already kind of exist. Dirt and sand and be broken through in a second or two with your fist. Stone takes a bit longer and if you want the material for it you need a tool. Cobblestone takes even more time, even with a tool. All the way up to obsidian, which takes FIFTY SECONDS to mine without a diamond pickax. And still takes 15 with one.
So we're not suggesting anything all that radical. Just polishing it up.
To add to the general idea of imposing more limits in game, I think we should further limit our carrying capacity. Right now we can carry 2304 blocks of whatever. That's rather ridiculous if you ask me. I think our ability to carry each item should be limited by it's "weight". The blocks don't necessarily weight that much, but I'm just using their general RL weight as a jumping off point. So you'd be able to carry more wool per stack than logs, and more logs than than stone, and more stone than iron, etc., etc. This would definitly lead to more logistical thinking when doing... just about anything.
Now immediately you might be thinking, "well, it's not that difficult at all to get a wood pick". And you'd be right. Now here's were I expand on this premise.
Firstly, more resources need to be added and the availability of others needs to be adjusted. Many people have said it, and I'll say it again, we need tin, copper (from which we'd get bronze), and a few varieties of stone of varying hardness, and new trees, or at least a difference between hardwood and softwood.
We're going to skip wood tools altogether and jump imediatly to stone. "But how?", you might ask "If we can't break trees or stone with our hands". Well, very simply. Firstly, foliage will drop sticks. Secondly, we will be able to find stones on the ground, much the same way as we find flowers. These stone can be "broken" with one hit, because we aren't actually breaking them, simply picking them up. These stones can be combined with an adhesive (i.e. mortar) to make cobblestone blocks. Since we don't have any adhesive yet, these stone will be used to make tools instead. Furthermore, when a stone block is broken, it will no longer yield a cobblestone block, but will instead yield 3-5 stones. So you would combine two sticks, and one stone, on your 2x2 crafting grid to get a simple hatchet. A crude tool that allows you to break wood, if only very slowly. Once you harvest a few logs, you make your crafting table and make the bigger stone tools.
Once you have your first stone tools, you'll only be able to harvest the softest stone, and copper. The latter could be smelt, to make tools once aquired. Copper would require at least hardwood logs to smelt, and maybe something more like bellows (not sure how those could be added, but would be a resistor to jumping right from wood to copper). Stone however, could then be used to make tools. But a stone pick, would not be able to break anything harder than itself. So your early stone pick could only be used to remove soft stone from your path and mine copper and hardwood. This soft stone could still be made into blocks, but shoddy weak, and easily broken blocks. Just a stepping stone to better materials.
Now once you've got your copper and hardwood logs, you can smelt it to remove the stone it is encased in and get your copper ingots. From There you craft your copper tools. Only marginally more effective than the stone tools you were using, but allows you to remove stone faster, lasts a little longer, and allows you to break the next level of stone, along with getting at coal and iron.
But before you can make iron tools, you need to make a better furnace. I suggest making clay a little more available and having to construct your next furnace out of brick. Because of the way clay bricks work, they are a much better resistor than stone. Stone conducts heat very well, making it a poor choice for containing heat, especially when you need a lot of it. So you'd get a shovel, collect some clay, make brick blocks, and use that to make the next level furnace. I'd also like to see the addition of being able to make charcoal, then I'd say you need to build an ashery so you can make coke THEN you can smelt your iron. But I'm not entirely sure how to tie charcoal into the game otherwise so we'll leave that out for now. At any rate, you get your iron ingots by placing iron or in your new furnace with coal. You then make iron tools with which to break even harder stone.
Finally once you've aquired tin, you'll be able to make bronze tools. In order to space THIS out though, I would suggest the addition of some specialized alloying tool/bench, perhaps made out of iron, to facilitate this process. You'd then smelt your copper and tin and get bronze which would allow you to harvest the final types of stone (marble and granite). These would of course be incredibly durable and would, if this shoddy tech tree I just cobbled together were fleshed out better, require a bit of work before they could be broken.
As always, the player can still make buildings out of the lesser materials, and are not limited to HAVING to work up to the good stuff before they can build anything.
But anyways, a very circuitous way of making a single point, but otherwise my proposal is left with a lot of holes.
I was also toying with the idea of mortar and having a coble and smooth version of the initial three levels of stone. Cobblestone (whatever it's made of) would be easy to acquire while smooth stone would take a little more work, but be harder and more aesthetically pleasing.
Gimme your thoughts.
Personally, I agree with your idea that anything cobblestone or harder should be impossible to break without a tool, but I think it's possible to add that (and leave unarmed log cutting alone just for now) without completely overhauling (or at the least, drastically complexifying) the mining/tools system.
Yes, softer blocks would produce softer materials. They would have a different skin. Probably just an adjustment in color of some sort. So it's not TOO confusing, it wouldn't just be darker or lighter grey. We could add in dots of another color to help distinguish them.
As for logs, both the log and the trees they come from would be different from one another. Logs would have different colors and textures. Leaves would have different colors and be arranged differently. For example, a pine tree, which is a soft wood, would have the typical conical configuration, while something like oak, a hardwood, would have the umbrella arrangement. Hardwood trees would drop hardwood saplings and softwood would drop softwood saplings.
As it is, the durability of everything in the game is determined by a formula with a single variable. I'm not sure if it's the same formula for everything or not. Regardless, the softest material would just have a variable of 1 and each subsequently harder material would increase it's durability by 1. Some materials would have the same durability, but that's okay.
It seems to tie in a lot with tech trees, which I think'd be great. So I'll give my insight semi-related to that.
Copper and bronze are definitely good additions. Copper should be much more common than iron, so you have something that's better than stone, but that won't eat into your ability to make iron-based items like minecarts.
Copper should be as strong as iron is currently, and iron should be twice as strong as copper is. Bronze should be twice as useful as that, making bronze 4 times stronger than copper.
Regular furnaces should still be in-game, exactly as they are. You smelt ore and get ingots. But, you wouldn't be able to craft metal tools until you make an anvil, presumably after a bit of iron (maybe 6 pieces, arranged in a vaguely anvil shape?) This'd be the big padding out between primitive tools and metal tools, so people need to mine enough to get enough iron for an anvil.
To make bronze, you'd need to make a casting station, which would require another investment in resources and be higher up the tech tree. This would be a combination of a furnace and blacksmith, requiring fuel to smith things. Here, you'd be able to make bronze, as well as craft metal armours.
Different rocks is a yes for me, but I think it should mainly be an aesthetic function. Sandstone's needed, and marble and granite should be findable in the game (deep underground.) The latter two would be stronger than regular stone, but not hugely. Again, it'd mostly be for visual difference.
As for the harder stone thing, here's how I think it would work.
You have the basic dirt layer. Always near bodies of water and sometimes in random locations, there would then be a fairly large clay layer, clay being a bit tougher than dirt, and obviously being used for brick making. Clay in general should be way, way more abundant than it currently is, both for gameplay and real life-like ness.
Underneath clay/dirt would be a mixed stone layer. Digging this out by hand would be pretty tiring, so using a shovel is much more needed. This layer would vary, from 0-5 blocks on average. After that is the regular stone layer and other fun things.
You'd get cobblestone from mining stone as normal, but by crafting cobblestone and clay together, you'd get a dirt-stone block. If you fire this, it'll turn into a regular stone block, regular stone being beefed up in hardness a bit (but not a lot.)
Idk if it's revolutionary, but if a change is wanted, that's how I'd vaguely do it.
I don't like the idea of making iron smelting harder. Partially because actually making iron really is just melting down ores (it's steel that requires coke,) and also because iron is a strategic creative resource, allowing you to make minecarts, and in the future things like lanterns. Those are important to not tie in with a tech tree, as they're mostly for making the game interesting, and that should be iron's late game focus (when tin's easier to mine en masse making bronze tools the norm.) It also gives incentives for players to continue using copper when iron tools start getting more readily available, as people do now with stone.
So yeah. Mostly what I said back in LightWarriorK's tech tree thread, with some new stuff. How does that work for ya op?
ANVILS! That's what I was looking for. I'm still leaning towards a brick furnace, but anvils solve the problem I was addressing with the brick furnace. Furnaces are just too easy to make is all. They are so easy to make that I can usually sustain myself when I go mining. Stone is so abundant that I have abandoned furnaces all over my maps. Needing Brick makes them a little more difficult to make, necessitating that you return to the surface to get your smelt on.
I still really think there should be noticeable, if not large, differences in stone hardness. That would be the reward for working up the tech tree; the ability to work with the hardest materials.
I also don't think marble and granite needs be deep in the earth, because they really aren't IRL. (I'm sure there is some down there, but there is plenty on the surface as well) If they are hard enough, and require the higher tier tools to harvest, this would balance out their presence on the surface. This would also allow you to have an open-air quarry for granite and marble and be able to find them rather easily, rather than have to mine deep for them.
hmmm, you're right. Not sure what I was thinking. Well then, we should add in steel as well. Steel should be labor intensive and resource intensive to create, to balance the fact that carbon is already WAY too abundant. But not entirely sure on that one yet.
So yeah, I agree with a lot of what you said. If I didn't address it, assume I agree. The MOST important point though is that we can NOT even BREAK the materials without the appropriate tool. Not that you were disagreeing with that, Blue, but I just want to make sure that readers understand that THAT is the point of this thread, and that the tech tree is just there to balance that.
Besides, the fact you get no resources out of fisting hard blocks (besides wood, anyway, but again that's for gameplay reasons) is enough of a deterrent to prevent people from making tunnels without tools anyway, if the ludicrously slow mining speed wasn't already enough.
Didn't read anything else in the thread to be honest, just had to respond to that bit in particular.
Then we should have a suicide button. Ctrl+Alt+X. That way you can't accidentally hit it.
Your remark was actually my first thought, getting stuck. In a hole, outside a metal door you just placed, etc. There's no way around breaking wood with your fists (except hardwood, which I mentioned) game-play-wise. But making smooth stone the ONLY exception leaves a lot of holes in the proposal.
But like I said, it's about the FEEL of the game. Not getting any resources for a material when you break it with your hands isn't really a deterrent. I think you should NEED the tools.
Hitting blocks above "limits" will slowly deal damage to you. So you can break stone with your bear hands, but if it takes longer than 5 seconds to break you get 1/2 heart damage. longer than 8 seconds and it takes away a full heart. etc, increasing. That way the quick to break stuff like sand or dirt does nothing, but if you keep mining the same block for a long period of time it has to be a higher level block.
That way, no getting stuck, but not frivolous mining with hands. Also, glass should hurt you when you break it with your hands. I mean, seriously, punching a block of glass till it shatters against your hands should hurt :smile.gif:
And requiring iron makes it so that you're already fairly well off in metal and mining by the time you're finished, meaning that you'll probably be itching to use all your copper (and maybe some iron you didn't use in the anvil.) It'd just move the game along better, while highlighting the development differences between wood and stone tools, and metal ones.
Hmm, actually that's a pretty good point. Heres how I'd see it working.
Everything I said before about stone and stuff still stands. Sandstone (and maybe a white limestone just as a visual/biome effect,) would be as hard as regular stone is. Bricks might be a bit harder. And then, you get into the smelted stone, which is significantly harder than it is now (2x or even more.) This would make mining harder, which I think is necessary, as well as make metal tools a much better option. But I'm still not sure how the padding out between that would work. You need to mine stone to get stone tools, but you shouldn't be able to mine stone at all using wooden tools (or your hands.)
I think the best solution would tie in with the dirt layer previously mentioned. When you get to mixed dirt, it'd have a chance to drop either cobblestone or clay. You'd use the cobblestone to make stone tools, which would allow you to (very tediously,) carve out mines to search for metals.
But I'm not sure how an even harder stone would work. I'm not sure I totally agree that there should be a harder stone that's impervious to stone tools, or if even a widespread stronger stone would work that well. It's worth exploring though. I think that just making stone harder would accomplish a similar function, making someone attacking your fortress with stone tools much less of a threat than one using metals.
As for marble and granite, Marble is only findable as a result of tectonic upheval. Marble is formed deep underground, and the only aboveground deposits are when mountains push it up. So I think that marble at least should be findable deep underground, but also around mountains (which I think would be best to count as deep underground for all resources when more advanced map gen is worked out.) But I'd make marble mostly an aesthetic block. Granite might work as a "stronger rock" though, being more abundant deeper underground (but also in outcroppings and such.)
Yeah, though the tech tree does a hell of a lot of a good job of balancing it! I'd say that it's a very creative solution to making the game more layered and interesting though, mixing the tech tree up with engineering.
But for steel, I don't like the idea. Having copper, iron and bronze as workable metals really brings a balance to the game. Copper is your basic tool metal which you'll be using a lot of early in the game. But as you progress, start finding lots of tin and start making bronze, you use up copper resource to make said bronze, but also keep the usefulness of iron by having it used in things like minecarts, lanterns, and assumedly other useful non-tool things. If you add steel into the mix, you take out the strategic and usefulness of both copper and steel, which have very useful roles in a steel-less system. It's an important balance to have, and I think in a game, any coolness factor that might come from steel needs to be sacrificed for balanced items.
But yes, in general, it's an awesome idea! :biggrin.gif: Still needs some polishing down to a sheen, but I do like the concept.
EDIT: But on second thought, I wonder if this'll all just make the game too complicated rather than add depth.
While I completely agree that marble would be mostly there for aesthitics, I would suggest it be "harder" for gameplay reasons. The harder it is, the more rewarding it is to work with. On top of that, it would suck to build a grand Roman-esque temple, for it not to be able to stand up to stone tools. so I understand where you're coming from, but still don't COMPLETELY agree.
And maybe there shouldn't be a stone that is impervious to stone tools, but at the very least it shouldn't drop any resources if not broken with the proper tool. If you want to use marble or granite IRL, you have to remove it in a chunk at least as large as the final product. You can't patch stone back together (at least not if you want it to look pretty).
Yeah, like I said, I'm not 100% for steel either. But here's an idea. We could first, split the uses of iron and give some to steel. Rail for example, is usually made of steel, not raw iron. And I'm sure more uses for iron will come. Some of which we could give to steel. Along with being able to make toosl out of it, of course. But to balance steel, just like with including tin so we can make bronze, we can include some rarer substance that is the key to acquiring it. What we could do, is have three types of coal. lignite, anthracite, and bituminous. Lignite would be found near the surface, bituminous below that, and anthracite way down near the bedrock. Steel would require the rare and hard to acquire anthracite. Each of the three coal types could burn at different temperatures (anthracite>bituminous>lignite) but all three could still be used in a furnace. But like I said, just a thought.
Naw. IMO it's not complicated ENOUGH. But that's just me. I mean, alpha is already quite a departure from creative. Requiring us to have certain tools to get certain resources, as is already in the game, changed the game and brought depth to it. Why have the path of Minecraft just be tangential to creative? Take the next step.
Minecraft! Warning: some assembly required!
[url] I think so too, but survival mode isn't all about surviving. Minecraft is still a creative game at heart. I think survival just makes your creating all the more rewarding, requiring you to toil for your creations.
So, you'd have to have a system that balances gameplay for creative-ness. I think that this does that well. After you've gotten to metal tools, you can basically do what you want (though the tech tree should continue to go up from there,) but having to go through more advanced wood and stone to get up there would certainly make it more rewarding, and I'll agree that stone should be a lot harder to mine. 2x or 3x harder, which would make people rely more on metal tools when you have the whole copper-iron-bronze thing going.
EDIT: Does making stone 3x harder sound good? It means that mining with a copper pickaxe will still be slower than it is currently with a stone one, but I think that's necessary. And iron will be be almost as good as it is for mining now.
Well they already kind of exist. Dirt and sand and be broken through in a second or two with your fist. Stone takes a bit longer and if you want the material for it you need a tool. Cobblestone takes even more time, even with a tool. All the way up to obsidian, which takes FIFTY SECONDS to mine without a diamond pickax. And still takes 15 with one.
So we're not suggesting anything all that radical. Just polishing it up.
Why thank you.