How did people first find metal?

[SegFault22]

As we progress in the development of Minetest, some of us want the game to seem more realistic. But, there's something blocking this idea - how did early people find/use metals? They couldn't have just made simple ''wooden pickaxes'' and use them to mine anything, we all know that most stone is much harder than the average tree. And taking down trees is much harder than just punching the tree apart, right?
From searching the entire internet, I can find nothing about how people collected metals without their standard-issued steel pickaxes and stuff. So, can someone try to find an archive somewhere that will solve this issue?

[sapier]

You know there's an age called "stone"-age ... men created tools from wood and stones. Most likely they started with stones lying around, used them to break bigger stones. Of course this took some time.

Btw ancient egyptians even used drills (sticks and sand) and dry wooden sticks that got water to break huge stone blocks.

So what does this mean for minetest? ... Probably replace wood pickeaxe by gravel pickeaxe.

[SegFault22]

Or, maybe life above-ground can be more habitable (flint-piles generating randomly in gravel hills next to mountain caves?) and maybe, simple axes/weapons made of larger flint stones, that are used to gather wood, and that is used to make homes and water-mills for grinding wheat grains into flour for bread, and a way to heat food/bricks over a ''bonfire'' or something, the bricks then being used for ovens that cook stuff faster, and maybe even clay bowls/buckets used to move water...?
This would make living above-ground a lot better, and then once the player has gotten enough resources, they can go into caves and search for exposed ore, then punch it with a ''chisel and hammer'' and after some time it will drop some ore lumps...?

[leo_rockway]

I would like a MT game where you go from caveman to scientist who makes a portal to the moon or something. Kind of like Civilization.
The "tech" tree should be fairly long, though, so playing it singleplayer should take a few days to complete, at least. Playing it multiplayer could be two teams competing to see who does it faster (or you could steal / sabotage the other team).

I don't know if it's possible, but the MOBs could change depending on the level of technology around. At first there could be dinosaurs (although that wouldn't be realistic, but it sounds fun) and the moment you build an alloy weapon the enemies could be replaced with crusaders and then when you effectively get gunpowder you get attacked with proper guns, etc.

I really really want to see a game like that and I think that would be a great difference from MC.

[cornernote]

i was thinking about making some skyblock levels with a tech-tree theme.

all the items have the be defined, question is how do you stop people using them?

i don't think you can prevent a user from crafting something, but i can look more into it

you can control if they can place or pickup something

im interested in other peoples ideas on this cos i would like to make this kind of game a reality

[mrtops]

As far as I know, what happened is this:

Stone age man enclosed fires in stone walls to prevent the fires spreading and setting the wooden hovel alight.

They may have also done this with big bonfires for celebrations and the like.

If they inadvertently used an rich ore of a low melting point metal for their stones, like tin or copper ore, they may have noticed shiny rivulets of cooled metal when they cleaned up the next day.

From there it's a small leap to a theory of extracting metal from rock and the inevitable progress to iron and thence uranium :)

[leo_rockway]

i was thinking about making some skyblock levels with a tech-tree theme.

all the items have the be defined, question is how do you stop people using them?

i don't think you can prevent a user from crafting something, but i can look more into it

you can control if they can place or pickup something

im interested in other peoples ideas on this cos i would like to make this kind of game a reality

One solution would be that more advanced crafts require a bigger craft table and you can prevent the user from placing the bigger craft table until certain conditions are met. It's not elegant, but it's a start...

[cornernote]

thats an idea leo, and with inventory_plus, i can give them a 2x2 to start with, then at the next level i allow them a 3x3, and maybe even more as they increase in level.

edit: or a 1x1 to start with =)
edit2: or a slot where you can put your craft table, but its still in player inventory