The Age of Man

[Damion Rayne]

So I wanted to actually sit down and discuss "Age" with everyone, not of course how old a person is in terms of years lived but in the case of the "Iron Age" and "Bronze Age" and the like. Now it intrigues me a good deal that FC is talking about "Ages" and the fact that he plans on moving the mod into a new age as he moves forward with it.

Now this has me wondering, currently the end of the tech tree for the mod and the items that are highly coveted and take a good deal of work and planning to get to, are the Refined Tools made from Steel. To me Steel should have been in vanilla minecraft from day one. I'm glad that FC is using it and has added more uses for netherrack. I wonder what the logical progression of ages for the mod would be, to me now that we have steel at the end of the current tech tree it only makes sense to use it to continue forward into the next "Age" of the mod.

Now I don't expect FC to reply to this, but I'd just like to pick his brain with out him being here as there are a lot in the community that understand him and his desires with the mod.

I also think it would be great to see Steve continue forward with learning to use new resources, as we have Wind and Water based mechanical power, next would be Geothermal and Solar.

Anyway just going for general conversation here.

-DR

[morvelaira]

I don't want to discourage discussion on this, but there is a thread titled BTW: Design Philosophy that you should check out in this forum. There is a lot of discussion similar to what you are talking about in there. :)

[Damion Rayne]

I don't want to discourage discussion on this, but there is a thread titled BTW: Design Philosophy that you should check out in this forum. There is a lot of discussion similar to what you are talking about in there. :)

Ah, thank you.

I looked and couldn't find anything, guess I didn't look hard enough.

-DR

[Urian]

From what I can remember, there are quite a lot of speculation about the ages and tech tree progression in the Design philosophy thread, the thread is kinda large though (not just in number of posts, the posts there are usually quite a lot longer than the average forum post) so it's quite understandable if you didn't find it.

As for the next age, the general opinion seems to be that the next age might have something to do with steam and steam power. It is merely speculation of course, mainly based on some discussions about steam that pre-date these forums and that several of the more recently introduced items in BTW could be used for steam engines and power (although they can also be used for a number of other applications of course). Flower did say in the hour long interview that he plans to add more kinds of power similar to the mechanical power already in place. Steve will probably to advance through the technological ages in a manner similar to what humankind did, going form simple tools made out of wood and stone to, probably, more advanced contraptions. The scarcity of metals, primarily iron if we're hypothetically staying close to realism, is a problem if it will become a primary resource similar to how wood is currently being used. This might be one of the reasons that with the latest update Steve got the ability to reforge iron items back into their ingots without any loss - making recycling a good option for people who have already played a lot on their world and might have their iron tied up in other items but want their ingots back for turning into e.g. steel.

[Damion Rayne]

From what I can remember, there are quite a lot of speculation about the ages and tech tree progression in the Design philosophy thread, the thread is kinda large though (not just in number of posts, the posts there are usually quite a lot longer than the average forum post) so it's quite understandable if you didn't find it.

As for the next age, the general opinion seems to be that the next age might have something to do with steam and steam power. It is merely speculation of course, mainly based on some discussions about steam that pre-date these forums and that several of the more recently introduced items in BTW could be used for steam engines and power (although they can also be used for a number of other applications of course). Flower did say in the hour long interview that he plans to add more kinds of power similar to the mechanical power already in place. Steve will probably to advance through the technological ages in a manner similar to what humankind did, going form simple tools made out of wood and stone to, probably, more advanced contraptions. The scarcity of metals, primarily iron if we're hypothetically staying close to realism, is a problem if it will become a primary resource similar to how wood is currently being used. This might be one of the reasons that with the latest update Steve got the ability to reforge iron items back into their ingots without any loss - making recycling a good option for people who have already played a lot on their world and might have their iron tied up in other items but want their ingots back for turning into e.g. steel.

Thanks Urian, I'll go look that thread up now and give it a read. As for steam power, it is a logical progression of technological discovery, but I suppose we will all have to wait and see.

_DR