BTW: Design Philosophy

[morvelaira]

morvelaira: I'm going to disagree slightly with you here, morvelaira. While I agree that there can be greater creativity without limits, useful creativity requires channels, strictures, boundaries. Even the greatest of artists often imposed restrictions on themselves - only working with certain mediums, in certain sizes, or even only painting/sculpting/composing certain subjects, etc. The imposed restrictions of games prevent things like Battlecat mentioned - having a chest full of resources and no idea of what to do with them.

Oh, you'll get no argument from me with that precise point. All I believe I said is that removing restrictions will increase the volume of productivity - that says nothing about its quality. ;)

Here's to hoping tonight's bedtime thoughts yield as much insight into Ages as last night's did. Can't wait to wade into the topic tomorrow.

[Urian]

Oh, you'll get no argument from me with that precise point. All I believe I said is that removing restrictions will increase the volume of productivity - that says nothing about its quality. ;)

Here's to hoping tonight's bedtime thoughts yield as much insight into Ages as last night's did. Can't wait to wade into the topic tomorrow.

That reminds me of a theory we discussed in a psychology class I took some years ago. Unfortunately I've forgotten who wrote the article but the gist of it was something like this; every person has a "chaos cloud" and a "filter" in their minds. The cloud is a complete mix-up of all kinds of ideas and they often defy normal logic, conventions and limitations. The filter determines how much and what of the cloud that actually makes it into the conscious mind. Both creativity and insanity are signs of a filter that allows more of the cloud to pass, leading to ideas that people with a more "normal" filter wouldn't think of. If this is the design for a new invention or the thought that it would be fun to see what batteries taste like depends on what criteria the filter uses.

[FlowerChild]

Hehe...having a great time reading this guys. I didn't really have a chance to read it all until this evening (had to get the 1.7.2 update out ;) ), but I'm all caught up with the thread now.

I won't respond to individuals, but I will chime in with a couple of points:

I've actually said a few times on the old thread, that I personally believe constraints to be the source of all creativity, so I definitely agree with the poster that put that one out there ;)

To me it's just a variation on the age-old adage that "necessity is the mother of invention".

The design for the mod has evolved as time has gone on (and continues to evolve) based largely on what I've seen people create with the features I've put into it.

The first "design" was only for 6 simple block-types that were meant to be a significant improvement to vanilla Minecraft (or vM as you guys have been calling it ;) ), while being easy to implement, and which would plug what I found to be glaring holes in the game.

Like one of my big initial objections was that I loved working with redstone, but there was just so little you could do with it. It seemed like this huge wonderful feature that had been put in the game, and left largely untapped.

So many of those first 6 (which included stuff like the Light Block, Hibachi, and Block Dispenser) were really just along those lines. Beyond those 6 there was really no plan, or even an intent to expand beyond it.

I guess what wound up happening was that I started being really blown away by the reaction I was getting out of people with those simple blocks, and also by the creations they started posting in the old forum thread using them, and it motivated me to keep going. At first, my approach to this was just to keep on addressing aspects of the game that bugged me.

I think a big turning point came around the time when the Cauldron got put in the mod. Hand feeding food into the furnace one at a time always annoyed the hell out of me in the vanilla game, so I decided to do something about it, and tried to figure out a logical way to pull that off.

When I clued into the idea of a multi-block solution, I think I knew I was onto something much bigger than this individual problem I was trying to tackle, and back at that time, the thread quickly exploded into discussions about how this could be expanded that spiraled all the way into conversations about steam-power.

I agree whole-heartedly with what others have said here about how the vanilla game just hasn't exploited this concept close to enough. To me, it is one of the huge potential strengths of the way Minecraft works, and doing things this way is a heck of a lot more interesting than just trying to cram complex devices into a single 1 meter cubed area, giving the player a pre-packaged solution to a problem that totally stifles any potential for creativity on their part.

To me, the fun of Minecraft largely revolves around coming up with creative solutions to problems given the tools at hand (which are the constraints in this context). Therefore, the more room you leave open for player creativity in the features you add, the better.

Anyways, when this multi-block thing occurred to me is when I think I started to take the overall design of the mod more seriously, and as the ideas began to pour out of that source I began to structure them into a more coherent form, which has evolved into a much more elaborate design with multiple tech-levels and all that jazz.

I do agree however with what one poster said earlier about these tech-levels needing to flow organically into each other. This really should be a seamless experience for the player, I just view it as different "levels" because it helps me structure my various design ideas, and because I've also built in "bottle-necks" at certain points where the player will have to have accomplished various tasks in order to move up to the next level.

For example, the entry requirement into "Age of Wood" that we're currently at, was the farming of Hemp (and you can see from various YouTube videos that people have made just how much work they put into it). For the next Age, it involves the tanning of leather, as well as the harnessing of mechanical power from the previous age. Without having accomplished these goals, you just won't be able to move any further forward in the tech-tree because you need those materials to build the basic items that lead into the next level (and even then, the next level is going to take some major thought on the part of the player to attain...it's much more involved and technical than the current one).

Hehe...ok, I rambled on a little longer than I intended to with this. I mainly wanted to just provide you guys with a bit of back story on the evolution of the mod to further your discussion. I think my main point in all that, is unlike game-designs I have created in a professional capacity in the past, where I'd usually write out the whole thing in detail before development began, in this case, the design has evolved very organically, and the "master plan" has only really emerged with time.

It's definitely been an interesting experience for me working in this way. I think I've actually learned a lot from it, and have been exposed to an aspect of game-development that I never really was before.

[Fracture]

steam-power.

Read the post twice, but this about 50 times. Steeeaaam. I can't really see a way for any steam system to work, though, without Finite Water. Boiling the same square of water for infinite steam would be kinda broken. Hm... Time to formulate enough ideas for a potentially (albeit doubtfully) useful suggestion.

Then again, Steve's probably a ways away from steam-power yet, so I'll take my time.

On Topic: That actually makes a lot of sense with the context of how the mod is currently. I'd wondered, occasionally, why there were half a dozen new redstone devices-- and then it was practically abandoned, but for braking, in favour of mechanical.

I also hadn't noticed until now that multi-block solutions are something that, until Pistons (and excepting cannons, I guess), had never really been part of vM. And to be fair, they weren't even the Mojang team's idea.

[Adjudicator79]

Wow. So, there's obviously going to be a lot of information to unpack from FlowerChild's amazing post. And believe me, we'll definitely be tackling some of the elements he mentioned in future discussions. However, for today, we are going to move ahead with our planned discussion of Ages.

What we are going to attempt to do is to first define the term "Age" (with a capital A). What do we mean when we talk about an Age. Are there clear formats for deciding when one age begins and another ends? Obviously, FlowerChild's insight into his development process on this topic will be key. The working definition I stuck in the OP was "Age: Roughly, a distinct era of technological development with a beginning and ending point" but that is completely open to revision.

Next, once we've hammered out a general consensus on what an Age is, we'll look at the key elements. What does it need to include? How do we determine starting and ending points, if we decide those are needed. If it's more organic, as FlowerChild states, should we even bother looking for a clearly defined start and ending point? And, especially interesting to me, what are the differences between vM's Ages and BTW's Ages.

So let's get the ball rolling!

[empath]

Speaking of finite water -- any thoughts on integrating it with this?

[Fracture]

Wow. So, there's obviously going to be a lot of information to unpack from FlowerChild's amazing post. And believe me, we'll definitely be tackling some of the elements he mentioned in future discussions. However, for today, we are going to move ahead with our planned discussion of Ages.

What we are going to attempt to do is to first define the term "Age" (with a capital A). What do we mean when we talk about an Age. Are there clear formats for deciding when one age begins and another ends? Obviously, FlowerChild's insight into his development process on this topic will be key. The working definition I stuck in the OP was "Age: Roughly, a distinct era of technological development with a beginning and ending point" but that is completely open to revision.

Next, once we've hammered out a general consensus on what an Age is, we'll look at the key elements. What does it need to include? How do we determine starting and ending points, if we decide those are needed. If it's more organic, as FlowerChild states, should we even bother looking for a clearly defined start and ending point? And, especially interesting to me, what are the differences between vM's Ages and BTW's Ages.

So let's get the ball rolling!

vM, I find, has simply two "Ages"-- Nomadic and Sedentary. The power-progression of vM tools allows for no tech-tree, really. You achieve redstone after a while, but that's about the only major change brought by iron+. However, the typical style is one starts nomadic, moving about, establishing small shelters and gathering resources, until one finds a bountiful mine/area. The player then sets up a more permanent dwelling, building inwards the various items and farms he or she needs, along with storage.

When the area is exhausted, the player will often return to a Nomadic state, repeating the cycle.

In the case of the BTW "Ages", I think an age is more defined by having some pre-requisite technologies to allow you to properly exploit a given material. I was going to go somewhere with that, but I need sleep like now, so I'll post this lest I pass out into my post.

[Creepig]

Now that I've read through the intellectual titan that is this thread, I guess it's time to chime in. Like many people, I found BTW through the Yogscast. (Please don't fault me for that.) Before that, I was an IndustrialCraft/BuildCraft player, but I always felt that there was a massive disconnect between vM and IC. Granted, Steve's tech level increases rapidly as you play, from wooden tools to stone, then to iron, but with IC, you go from iron rather abruptly to electricity and automation. It always felt a little weird as I would make that jump, skipping millennia of human development with the discovery of rubber, and leaping from the Stone Age directly into the Atomic Age.

Thus, my take on BTW is the same as that of many others; it integrates more seamlessly with the vanilla game. I've essentially ditched IC/BC at this point, since I find BTW to be more fun to muck around with. Minecraft has always been about the second word for me, and I've found myself abandoning my old massive factory in favor of building a village around a babbling brook, complete with a mill on a weir.


Now then, shifting gears to Adjudicator79's discussion of Ages, I have to agree with Danyo and FC that they are organic, and any beginning or end to an age would be purely arbitrary. However, I'm willing to toss out a few suggestions here. Keep in mind that the ages I'm suggesting overlap significantly.

• Age of Tools: Begins when Steve crafts pick, axe, and shovel. Though he may continue to punch wood or dirt for a while, the necessity of doing so is essentially over.
• Age of Iron: The Iron Age doesn't start when Steve first discovers it. Rather, it begins when he has accumulated enough of it to actually start using it for tools, armor, etc. The delimiter is when iron ceases to be a rarity, and becomes a tool of convenience. The Age of Tools ends here.
• Age of Agriculture: Up until this point, pigs have been the primary source of food. The Age of Agriculture begins with the first serious farm, and the cultivation of wheat, reed, and in BTW, hemp.
• Age of Automation: This age begins with the construction of a water mill or wind mill. Previously mundane tasks like milling and sawing become faster, and more time can be spent away from the workshop.
• Age of Redstone: This age begins when Steve starts actually using Redstone to automate previously mundane tasks, instead of for nonsense. The Age of Redstone surpasses the Age of Automation. Complex elevators, automatic storage units, and automated sawmills are common products of the Age of Redstone.

[SterlingRed]

I think I agree with flowerchild's definition of an age's starting and ending point. With BTW we have a bottleneck to start the wood/mechanical power age. Hemp is required for nearly every process created during that age. FC said that the next age will have a bottleneck by the way of tanning and mechanical power. So I would say that the current BTW age/tech level starts with hemp production and ends with the harnessing of mechanical power. The next age, whatever it may be, will begin with large scale tanning. (guess i should get that auto dung factory going)

Using a bottleneck as the definition for ages, I really only see 2 ages in vM. Starting out with wood/stone tools/furnaces/gathering resources etc would be considered the first age. The botteneck preventing the second age is iron. Iron is really the only thing that prevents you from being able to use the rest of the craftable items since the materials can't be obtained without iron. Arguably redstone could be considered a third age, however I wouldn't define it as one since vM doesn't have a direct amount of tools to use and guide the use of redstone. The implementation of redstone in vM is very much directionless sandbox play and as such there isn't really a tech tree/age to speak of. Perhaps on the players side of learning and gaining knowledge of circuitry there is progression through a 'tech tree' of redstone from simple circuits, to logic gates, to adders, and all the way to gpu, cpu's. But there isn't a tech tree inherent in the game for it.

[Danyo]

Well, I've already kinda went over the way I view the ages should be, since I was the one that made the organic overflow comment. I was happy to see flowerchild agreed aswell.

From a development standpoint, I can see where you're coming from that you need some guidelines, and like I said aswell, it's fine if we look a bit more into it, we can see them aswell, the difference is that you think of it before you implement things, we can look back up on it.

But to go a bit further with the ages standpoint, I don't think they need to neccesarely represent ages, like in my previous posts, I've been referring to them as (st)ages for a reason, I think it's more about a progression of steve and his technology then actually ages, so referring to it as stages will make a bit more sense. You can probably compare it more to the crafting in a rpg game if you look at it that way, you progress further into the game, and are able to craft better things and more of the same things easier after you're experienced with it.

I probably made the discussion a bit more complicated but hey, that's what we are here for right? :)

ps.: congratulations on becoming a turtle adjudicator79 :)

Edit.: On the concept of ages of vM, I have once again go to my standpoint of not being able to call it ages, especially not in vM. You pretty much just have character progression, upgrading your gear ( hey, another rpg element xD ) and tools, and then are able to play around a bit with redstone, then you're pretty much done for with progression in vM.

[James_Past]

This whole discussion reminds me of when I played portal and how the game teaches/forces you to figure out how to do something so later on you can use it easily and with greater efficiency and creativity. Also to add on to that factor BTW gives you a wide range of goals, while which one you go towards first is your own choice, each goal intuitively leads you to the next.

For example lets look at a small part of my first BTW experience

For me being an avid explorer and spelunker I found the ropes to be very enticing which lead me to create a mill stone and by making a millstone I then went on to make a water wheel. Now powered by water (and google) I created an automated system, I felt empowered and I noticed my loyal friend who accompanied me when I once roamed the lands of minecraftia as a nomad, had just shat upon my shoe.


As for the "Ages" I find that it's more defined as how you set and face your goals and not just the things you use,

Such as how when you first spawn you set your goals with great urgency and with risk weighing in as a large factor as in how you decide to face those goal. This could be described as the survival/exploration age and will continue to be until you feel safe enough to experiment with what you have around you and how well you will be able exploit these elements. This could be described as the Experimentation Age and would continue until you have the ability to create machinery and use it to have easy access to materials to allow you to create larger structures and more complex machinery allowing for more elaborate constructions. This could be described as the Exponential Age and would continue until there are new things to experiment with or you decide to explore the world around you more.


Exploration Age : Sets goals based upon survival and settlement and chooses to face them very cautiously
Experimentation Age : Sets goals to gather materials and see what they can do to benefit himself in the best way possible and chooses to approach them through experimentation and with very little concern for resources and safety.
Exponential Age: Sets goals to automate resource production and use previous knowledge to create useful construction and achieves this however the hell they want

[Creepig]

Well, I've already kinda went over the way I view the ages should be, since I was the one that made the organic overflow comment. I was happy to see flowerchild agreed aswell.

Edited my own post to credit you for the idea. I'm not a mon- well, I guess a creepig would be a monster.

[Triskelli]

An "Age" as defined by Oxford is:
Any great period or portion of human history distinguished by certain characters and characteristics real and mythical, as the Golden Age, the Patriarchal Age, the Bronze Age, the Age of the Reformation, the Middle Ages, the Prehistoric Age

But in the context of Minecraft, an Age is the discovery and widespread use of a previously unattainable resource. In the case of the Wood Age, it's the growing of Hemp that allows mastery over Wood and machinery. In Vanilla, one could argue about an Age of Redstone: Once Steve is able to reach that level Redstone is an incredibly abundant resource.

So call it a bottleneck or a milestone, the beginning of Ages are marked by a significant discovery or achievement. The Atomic Age was heralded by Hiroshima; the computing era began with the ENIAC. Be it the Declaration of Indepedence or the Bessemer Process, it's easiest to associate an age with an event.

[Battlecat]

An "Age" as defined by Oxford is:
Any great period or portion of human history distinguished by certain characters and characteristics real and mythical, as the Golden Age, the Patriarchal Age, the Bronze Age, the Age of the Reformation, the Middle Ages, the Prehistoric Age

But in the context of Minecraft, an Age is the discovery and widespread use of a previously unattainable resource. In the case of the Wood Age, it's the growing of Hemp that allows mastery over Wood and machinery. In Vanilla, one could argue about an Age of Redstone: Once Steve is able to reach that level Redstone is an incredibly abundant resource.

So call it a bottleneck or a milestone, the beginning of Ages are marked by a significant discovery or achievement. The Atomic Age was heralded by Hiroshima; the computing era began with the ENIAC. Be it the Declaration of Indepedence or the Bessemer Process, it's easiest to associate an age with an event.

I think this is particularly well stated. From the sounds of thins FlowerChild intends to have the ages of Better than Wolves dependant on one another. For example, you would be hard pressed to skip the current Age of Wood to the next level since there is an allusion to the machinery being necessary for the next Age. And that's a move I applaud, more integrated and interdependent systems can only help the game. Something in the current Age will act as the "gateway" to the next Age and that would be the herald you describe above. As we don't know what the next age will be yet, that herald is very hard to identify.

Ages exists in a very rudimentary form in Vanilla minecraft. We have ages of wood, stone, iron and diamond as defined by your picks. You need a wood pick to get stone to make a stone pick. You need a stone pick to get the iron to build an iron pick. And you need an iron pick to get the diamond to build a diamond pick. This chain of events culminating in acquiring diamond is the only real mandatory tool chain in mineceraft if you want to be able to access all resources (obsidian). All the other tools (shovel, hoe, axe, etc) are just more efficient versions of the basic tool, the pick is the only tool with built in restrictions on what resource can be accessed with a particular material.

Better than Wolves takes this basic concept from the Vanilla game and runs with it. In the realm of design the Ages act as an easy way to describe the essence of your current goal.

[Adjudicator79]

Great beginning to our Ages discussion, gang.

Fracture: This is a completely different way of thinking of Ages than I had preloaded into my brain. It definitely is not what we originally seemed to be discussing with the "logical progression of technology" comments, but it actually does a great job of encapsulating, in my mind, at least, the complete lack of Ages in vM. When all one can really point to is the impact that technology has on your choice to wander or build, then there does seem to be a key breakdown in the design structure of the game. I think vM fails here to provide that structure - and I've already established my opinion on the need for structure with relation to useful creativity. Just because a game pursues a sandbox style of play doesn't mean its developers can use a sandbox style of design philosophy. In fact, I'd argue that it takes more intentional design on the part of the developers to create a quality sandbox design than it does to create a solid linear gameplay design.

As for your comment on BTW Ages, I'll tie in my response to that a bit further down.

Creepig: Great first post, mate! I love the obvious time you put into reading the thread and coming up with a great response. Always happy to add a new substantive contributor to the thread!

As for your breakdown of Ages, I find the overlap to be interesting. I was originally envisioning these Ages as a part of the earlier logical progression discussion and thus saw only an area for a linear overlap. But your breakdown is stretching me to think of them a bit more broadly than that, which is always good! As for your specific ages, I'm not sure I agree with an actual Age of Redstone. I feel like there's too little in the game to justify redstone as its own Age. If I were to use your Ages, I'd probably fold redstone into the Age of Automation.

I am curious though. Are these the Ages you see in vM only or do they flow into what you see in BTW?

SterlingRed: I find I really like the bottleneck idea of technological progression as well. It's at the core of what I meant when I talked about learning curves back here - viewtopic.php?p=496#p496. And it does seem to fit well as a method for defining Ages, at least in BTW.

If we were using the bottleneck test to measure an age, I do think I'd add another age to vM, however. I agree that Iron gets you everything you need to find the rest of the regular world game in vM, but the ability to create diamond pickaxe and use that to get obsidian is what opens up the Nether. Yes, technically, you can create lava blocks and flood them to do it with iron, but that's a bit of a workaround in my mind. The use of diamond is your final bottleneck to reach the last Age in vM, which would be an Age of Exploration (going back to Triskelli's use of it here - viewtopic.php?p=159#p159).

Danyo: Hmm, I can see using the "stages" term to try and move away from the implied rigidity of "Ages" - but I think if we define our "Ages" to be inherently organic, as FlowerChild clearly indicated they are to him, then there shouldn't be any confusion on the issue in this forum. I might be more inclined to change the term if we were stuck back on the official forums, but even here on sargunster's, I'm willing to bet the group of us that is going to engage in these discussions is a pretty small part of the general readership.

James_Past: Another new contributor! Glad to have you! Portal is definitely a good example of learning curve theory. You quickly get to the point in that game where you have to be able to pull off previous concepts almost instinctively, or you won't be able to progress.

As for your take on Ages, I think there's a difference between defining Ages from the perspective of the player and from the developer. Your description of goal-driven Ages is valid, but I see it as distinct from a discussion of developer-driven design (how's that for alliteration!). The player can get by with much less explicit thought about an Age because he's simply employing the technological opportunities made available to him to progress through the tech tree. The developer has to design that tech tree, design the method for accessing new pieces of it, design the actual effect of the technology, and design the radical shift that will come when a new Age is encountered. And I'm sure we could flesh out even more that should go into the design of an Age from a developer's perspective if we chose to put our minds to it.

This again is where I see a failing in vM. I feel like there hasn't been the thought given to the design of technological progression that BTW offers with a few very simple additions to the vM code.

It is also interesting that James brought us back to the 4X discussion. Is it enough to identify the Ages as they fit within the 4X context and go from there? Should there be a separate idea of technological progression beyond the traditional strategy game paradigm?

Triskelli: I like that the dictionary identifies both "real and mythical" characteristics as part of distinguishing Ages. I do like the idea of "use and mastery" as a defining term. It fits with my feeling that the player should be so comfortable using a particular resource that when he switches to the next Age, he doesn't have to stop and think about how to do a certain action with the resource that defined the previous Age.

Ooh, I got this nifty little notice saying "at least one new post has been made to this topic. You may want to review your answer in light of this." Ninja Protection! Sweet!

Battlecat: I think you're directly on point with the dependency statement. The idea of learning curves is key here and I think we can add that to the list of future topics for discussion. Your review of vM Ages matches my feeling as well. I'd simply add that all of the vM discussion points out the obvious gaps (at best - one could argue they are worse than gaps and actually fall into the flaws category) in Mojang's current design philosophy.

Now for my own take. I think I've made clear my feelings on vM's use of Ages - ie: they don't exist. Or at least, they don't exist in any meaningful way when discussing design theory.

As for trying to define an Age as we'd like to see it in BTW and eventually vM, here goes.

I think an Age needs to have a clearly identifiable beginning and end point. Again, this is from the developer's perspective, not the player's. I also think it needs to have a clear resource attached to it (though this doesn't exclude the use of other resources during that Age, obviously), and a bottleneck towards the end to allow for the learning curve theory to be implemented. Let's take FlowerChild's clearly identified Age of Wood as an example.

Others pointed towards hemp as the beginning of the Age of Wood, but I disagree. I see that as the crafting table (CT). Sure, the table is used far beyond the Age of Wood, but it makes sense, I believe, to have your first Age kick off with a monumental shift in the way the player interacts with the environment. And the CT does that. Think about it, prior to the CT, you have the ability to craft, but it's extremely limited. The CT opens the floodgates (now literally!) for crafting design. It also serves to root you to a space. Yes, it's deconstructable and movable, but you are still tied to a location, even if just for a few minutes. And that changes your interaction with the world around you.

The CT gets you access to basic tools, which in turn gets you access to your basic resource of the Age - wood. And the CT, through the hoe, gives you access to hemp as well. With these three things (CT, wood, and hemp), you have the basic tools needed to progress through the Age of Wood. If we accept the "use and mastery" argument of an Age, then we have to look at what defines mastery over the Age of Wood. I see this as the saw. Once you have a piece of equipment that allows you to make the aesthetic elements in panels, moldings, and corners, then you've arrived at a mastery over the resource of that Age.

Personally, I'd also like to see the saw be used as the bottleneck into the next Age, which I think it seems to be, given some of FlowerChild's statements. He's said that dung is going to have a much larger use in the future (so get your dung farms going, people!) and since you can't make a saw without belts, which require straps, which require tanned leather, which requires dung, well, you see where it's going.

I have to cut off there, as my lunch break is almost over. I'm DMing tonight, but I'll log back on before I crash to catch up on what people have been saying.

Great discussion so far, everyone!

[BinoAl]

An "Age" as defined by Oxford is:
Any great period or portion of human history distinguished by certain characters and characteristics real and mythical, as the Golden Age, the Patriarchal Age, the Bronze Age, the Age of the Reformation, the Middle Ages, the Prehistoric Age

But in the context of Minecraft, an Age is the discovery and widespread use of a previously unattainable resource. In the case of the Wood Age, it's the growing of Hemp that allows mastery over Wood and machinery. In Vanilla, one could argue about an Age of Redstone: Once Steve is able to reach that level Redstone is an incredibly abundant resource.

So call it a bottleneck or a milestone, the beginning of Ages are marked by a significant discovery or achievement. The Atomic Age was heralded by Hiroshima; the computing era began with the ENIAC. Be it the Declaration of Indepedence or the Bessemer Process, it's easiest to associate an age with an event.

This basically sums up my thoughts on ages. An age starts when you get the materials to make new and innovative devices/materials, and is best associated with an event. You put that perfectly ^.^

[Danyo]

Danyo: Hmm, I can see using the "stages" term to try and move away from the implied rigidity of "Ages" - but I think if we define our "Ages" to be inherently organic, as FlowerChild clearly indicated they are to him, then there shouldn't be any confusion on the issue in this forum. I might be more inclined to change the term if we were stuck back on the official forums, but even here on sargunster's, I'm willing to bet the group of us that is going to engage in these discussions is a pretty small part of the general readership.

Personally, I'd also like to see the saw be used as the bottleneck into the next Age, which I think it seems to be, given some of FlowerChild's statements. He's said that dung is going to have a much larger use in the future (so get your dung farms going, people!) and since you can't make a saw without belts, which require straps, which require tanned leather, which requires dung, well, you see where it's going.

Yes, I did not imply to change the way we call the different (st)ages, it was merely an observation that it could be interpretted differently, and it's probably how I feel it suits it. So there is definitly no need to change it, since ages is probably also more of a natural feel, wich fits both vM and BTW better as a term, unlike stages.

I wanted to comment on the part of the bottleneck, I think if you'd choise the saw as a bottleneck, it'd be pretty limited ( perhaps ), but I think the belts would make a really good "overflow" to the next age, where they become the new "hemp" of the age pretty much. I'd perhaps even go as far as saying the saw might already be dabbling in the next age. Even if it requires mechanical forse already to operate, it requires a bit more sophisticated workings then just the mechanical force, with the belt in it.

I do agree with your statement of the CT being the start of the wood age, but I think it depends on more on what you would consider the start, do you count the thing that you need to get going the start, or do you call the "discovery" of a new material that opens up the door to a whole set of new inventions the start? I think that also kinda goes hand in hand with my previous paragraph, if that makes sense.

[Creepig]

Creepig: Great first post, mate! I love the obvious time you put into reading the thread and coming up with a great response. Always happy to add a new substantive contributor to the thread!

As for your breakdown of Ages, I find the overlap to be interesting. I was originally envisioning these Ages as a part of the earlier logical progression discussion and thus saw only an area for a linear overlap. But your breakdown is stretching me to think of them a bit more broadly than that, which is always good! As for your specific ages, I'm not sure I agree with an actual Age of Redstone. I feel like there's too little in the game to justify redstone as its own Age. If I were to use your Ages, I'd probably fold redstone into the Age of Automation.

I am curious though. Are these the Ages you see in vM only or do they flow into what you see in BTW?

I have never thought that linear ages worked unless they're vast and general like Bronze Age. If we were going to do that, we'd have to call the whole of Minecraft the Steve Age, and I'm not content with that. Also, yes, these are BTW ages as well as VM ages, except for the Age of Automation as I defined it.

I struggled a lot with the Age of Automation and the Age of Redstone, and I agree that you could lump them together. I don't think it works though, because there is a certain technological leap caused by building a windmill or water wheel. Suddenly, you don't have to be around the workshop anymore, cranking for hours. You can leave and do other things while work gets done.

Now, the reason that I split out the Age of Redstone is because of what can truly be done with redstone when one is willing to devote time to utilizing it. Perhaps this Age is better named Age of Wonders. Not everyone gets here, some people hit the Diamond Reset before it. Two good examples of Age of Wonders legends would be Battosay and Urien. Some of the things they've built have blown my mind, and I follow Etho religiously, so my mind is hard to blow. This Age of Wonders, out of necessity, would always be at the end of the game, close to the Diamond Reset, or perhaps even past it.

That's just my two cents on ages, but I like the discussion, and I'm going to definitely continue watching this thread.

[SterlingRed]

Great beginning to our Ages discussion, gang.

SterlingRed: I find I really like the bottleneck idea of technological progression as well. It's at the core of what I meant when I talked about learning curves back here - viewtopic.php?p=496#p496. And it does seem to fit well as a method for defining Ages, at least in BTW.

If we were using the bottleneck test to measure an age, I do think I'd add another age to vM, however. I agree that Iron gets you everything you need to find the rest of the regular world game in vM, but the ability to create diamond pickaxe and use that to get obsidian is what opens up the Nether. Yes, technically, you can create lava blocks and flood them to do it with iron, but that's a bit of a workaround in my mind. The use of diamond is your final bottleneck to reach the last Age in vM, which would be an Age of Exploration (going back to Triskelli's use of it here - viewtopic.php?p=159#p159).

Ah yes I'd agree gaining access to the portal in vM could be considered another age. For some reason I'd completely forgotten about that, perhaps since the Nether is largely useless in vM.

[FlowerChild]

I wanted to comment on the part of the bottleneck, I think if you'd choise the saw as a bottleneck, it'd be pretty limited ( perhaps ), but I think the belts would make a really good "overflow" to the next age, where they become the new "hemp" of the age pretty much. I'd perhaps even go as far as saying the saw might already be dabbling in the next age. Even if it requires mechanical forse already to operate, it requires a bit more sophisticated workings then just the mechanical force, with the belt in it.

Bang-on here about the saw (well, at least part of what you said). The Saw is actually straddling the border between the "Age of Wood" and the next one while not really being part of either.

I've mentioned a few times before that the Saw will actually have a change to it's recipe soon that will require another component that isn't in the mod yet, and which will bump it up further in the tech-tree.

It's more or less intended as a reward for mastering the "Age Of Wood", as it basically gives you a much greater ability to auto-harvest it, thereby effectively ending your dependency on the resource. But it is NOT intended as one of the Bottle Necks I was talking about. You'll actually be able to move up to the next age without ever building a single saw if you really wanted to.

[Battlecat]

Personally, I'd also like to see the saw be used as the bottleneck into the next Age, which I think it seems to be, given some of FlowerChild's statements. He's said that dung is going to have a much larger use in the future (so get your dung farms going, people!) and since you can't make a saw without belts, which require straps, which require tanned leather, which requires dung, well, you see where it's going.

Interesting comment on the saw being a potential gateway to the next age. At this stage, barring the addition of more products to the device, that would imply that panels/moulding or corners become raw materials in future since they are the only materials produced by the saw that we can't produce in another way. Of course, I believe there were mutterings by Flowerchild that the saw would be moved further up the crafting tree, thus removing it as the gateway device. (Confirmed by Flowerchild just as I finish writing this)

In a way, the mastery of mechanical power really is the gateway to a new technology. Since the saw requires iron at the moment, it's possible it's recipie could change to require a forged steel blade. Thus the next Better than Wolves Age could be the iron age starting with a powered forge powered and heated by mechanical energy.

A quick visit to the waterwheel wiki (real world) page suggests the importance of the waterwheel as a gateway device. While Iron production predates the waterwheel, the invention of that device appears to have provided the power to increase and enhance iron production:

1: Hammermill: Used in Europe for iron production and working but it was also used in cloth production and to beat pulp into paper.
2: Piston Bellows: Used in China for heating forges and creating cast iron.

In both places, the waterwheel and the mechanical power provided was critical to increasing iron production speed and yield. In game right now we use iron very inefficiently. People were working iron long before the mechanical approach, mechanisation improved efficency and quality (more heat = better steel). Perhaps a mechanical approach could yield new options in minecraft as it did in the real world. The iron age seems to be an obvious next step, particularly within FlowerChilds state goal of enhancing and extending minecraft without massively altering the original gameplay.

[Adjudicator79]

snip

Bang-on here about the saw (well, at least part of what you said). The Saw is actually straddling the border between the "Age of Wood" and the next one while not really being part of either.

I've mentioned a few times before that the Saw will actually have a change to it's recipe soon that will require another component that isn't in the mod yet, and which will bump it up further in the tech-tree.

It's more or less intended as a reward for mastering the "Age Of Wood", as it basically gives you a much greater ability to auto-harvest it, thereby effectively ending your dependency on the resource. But it is NOT intended as one of the Bottle Necks I was talking about. You'll actually be able to move up to the next age without ever building a single saw if you really wanted to.

I can easily see Danyo's original point, confirmed by FlowerChild, of the saw as straddling both ages. I especially like FlowerChild's comment on the saw as a reward. This is exactly what I think the learning curve theory promotes. That there is tech available at the end of the tree that rewards mastery of the previous Age. I'd assume, though, that advancement in the next age would require use of the saw. But either way would make sense from our discussion of Ages in the context of building a logical technological progression into the gameplay. You could have the saw as purely a reward for those that wanted to pursue the automation it allows when combined with mastery of the Age of Wood, or you could have it be an essential element of the next Age so that, even if a player can make it to the next Age without ever building a saw, they would eventually need to in order to progress further.

Shouldn't be posting at work, but I just had to jump in on this one! :-)

[SterlingRed]

I can easily see Danyo's original point, confirmed by FlowerChild, of the saw as straddling both ages. I especially like FlowerChild's comment on the saw as a reward. This is exactly what I think the learning curve theory promotes. That there is tech available at the end of the tree that rewards mastery of the previous Age.

Shouldn't be posting at work, but I just had to jump in on this one! :-)

I hadn't thought of the saw as a reward for completing the tech tree for the wood age before but now that you guys mention it, it makes sense as it provides a more efficient means of producing gears in mass and gives a bit of an aesthetic reward as far as molding/corners go. I really like the idea of having one of the last pieces of the tech tree sort of act as a reward/make production more efficient as well as 'bridge' into the next age. Pretty awesome.

PS: I'm also posting from work. Not much to do in tech support when nothings broken.

[Triskelli]

Triskelli: I like that the dictionary identifies both "real and mythical" characteristics as part of distinguishing Ages. I do like the idea of "use and mastery" as a defining term. It fits with my feeling that the player should be so comfortable using a particular resource that when he switches to the next Age, he doesn't have to stop and think about how to do a certain action with the resource that defined the previous Age.

Thanks! I added that caveat because history has shown several instances where a new idea has arisen but not widely used. Perfect example would be Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, and his planned Analytical Engine. While often considered to be the first concepts of a computer, those ideas were never fully explored in their time despite being logically sound. It took another hundred years for computers to appear how Babbage had concieved them, and even longer to master their use. (My father took a computing course in the 80s, and even then he had to use punch-cards). But now, everyone has and is skilled at using computers.

A similar situation happens to Steve in-game. By sheer luck someone may manage to stumble across iron or gold on the first day, but achieving "mastery" of that element takes significantly longer (i.e. minecarts & rails)

Others pointed towards hemp as the beginning of the Age of Wood, but I disagree. I see that as the crafting table (CT).

That's brilliant... I had never thought of it that way, but it's an excellent point.

If we accept the "use and mastery" argument of an Age, then we have to look at what defines mastery over the Age of Wood. I see this as the saw.

Like FlowerChild said, the saw doesn't so much mark the beginning but the end of the Age of Wood. At this point our new items stop revolving around wood but instead around some previously unrevealed mechanic.

I have to agree with Battlecat, but argue that instead of the Iron Age, it'll be the Steel Age that we enter next, but with a greater focus on machining and mechanization. Nethercoal is key here, and by smelting iron ingots in either the furnace or an as-yet introduced forge with Nethercoal will produce steel.

Steel will let us make sharper blades, finer mechanisms, and sturdier buildings. I'm not assuming how Flower will accomplish it, but it's a natural progression from the Medieval Era we seem to be stuck in to progress to a new use for an old resource. This will also push us to create larger and more efficient mines, likely aided by new components.

Not sure how dung will do all that, though =/

[Battlecat]

I have to agree with Battlecat, but argue that instead of the Iron Age, it'll be the Steel Age that we enter next, but with a greater focus on machining and mechanization. Nethercoal is key here, and by smelting iron ingots in either the furnace or an as-yet introduced forge with Nethercoal will produce steel.

Steel will let us make sharper blades, finer mechanisms, and sturdier buildings. I'm not assuming how Flower will accomplish it, but it's a natural progression from the Medieval Era we seem to be stuck in to progress to a new use for an old resource. This will also push us to create larger and more efficient mines, likely aided by new components.

Not sure how dung will do all that, though =/

Good point about it likely potentially being the Steel Age. Minecraft does a poor job of distinguishing between Iron and Steel which are very different materials. I hope that if the next Better than Wolves age is Steel that it improves that distinction somehow. Iron produced easily in a classic forge, steel produced through some new method.

I expected the introduction of belts made out of scoured leather as a critical component in future mechanical devices will account for that. Since dung has a limits to how much leather it can scour, a large a complex machine would likely need lots of the material. The scoured leather could also be a component in bellows (for increasing the heat of fires) and other factory items. Granted, cows would be a more of a limiting resource than dog dung if scoured leather is the limited material, so there might be something else planned.

There are few other historic uses for dung. Fertilizer is about the only other obvious one I can track down on short notice. Only other thing I can think of is Flowerchild has something completely unexpected in mind, which would suit me just fine!

Idle thought here: Maybe the dung could substitute as the flux/carbon source in steel production.