FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Why is bronze crafted from steel and copper?!?!?!? Bronze is made from copper and tin!

Can someone add the bronze and copper images to the wiki so i can write a bronze article?

It was made without tin (rather, steel) because some developers didn't want to add tin to the game to begin with (because then there would somehow be too many ores). I argued at length about this, to no avail.

12Me21 wrote:

Wikipedia wrote:Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive

Usually doenst mean necessarily. And as VanessaE said, too many "useless" ores are not good ("useless" = only 1 usage). So steel is a good choice.
Copper is also an "add on" for steel, wich makes it last longer. Copper is just a name for this "add on", it isnt really meant to be the RL copper.

I've wondered if we should change steel into iron -- because steel is what you get when you smelt iron with carbon to make it far more durable. Just melting iron ore gets you iron ingots.

Bronze is often an upgrade to Iron, but a downgrade from steel -- especially modern steels.

So, if we had:

Iron ore -> Iron ingot -> Iron tools
Iron ingot + copper ingot -> Bronze ingot -> Bronze tools
Iron ingot + carbon -> Steel ingot -> Steel tools

then:

Iron tools < Bronze tools < Steel tools

this would be more accurate, I suspect, to modern metallurgy

There's no reason we couldn't have copper tools, too, though most native peoples abandoned them because they weren't any better than stone (at least for weapons. They made super-shiny armor, tho)

(see also: http://www.differencebetween.net/object/difference-between-iron-and-bronze/ )

btw, this is my first post, but I've been lurking for a few months, and just loving minetest. My 9 and 7 year old sons also adore minetest, and we love playing with the mods. I look forward to walking my eldest son through the code, and getting him to document things on the wiki, to further his own (and other people's) understanding of the game and mods.

I kinda wish mithril had made it into the base game, too. =)

andersje wrote:I've wondered if we should change steel into iron -- because steel is what you get when you smelt iron with carbon to make it far more durable. Just melting iron ore gets you iron ingots.

Well...sort of. Historical references to "iron" (e.g. "cast iron" and "wrought iron") are not the pure elemental iron from the periodic table we think of today. Actually they had far, far too MUCH carbon (and/or other impurities) in them. Smelting steel was really about REMOVING almost all of the carbon (and other undesired elements) naturally present in iron ore to leave a small enough amount that it could strengthen rather than weaken the metal's structure.

Well, play RealTest if you want a realistic game. The default game(s) do not aim for realism.

I think that gold lumps should be called gold nuggets, and coal lumps should just be called coal.

12Me21 wrote:I think that gold lumps should be called gold nuggets, and coal lumps should just be called coal.

And you say Minetest shouldn't be like Minecraft? ._.

Calinou wrote:

12Me21 wrote:I think that gold lumps should be called gold nuggets, and coal lumps should just be called coal.

And you say Minetest shouldn't be like Minecraft? ._.

I've never played minecraft, and I only suggested that because it is more realistic and calling everything a lump is boring.