Uses for Gypsum/Uses for gems/Sculpting expansion [Now with pictures]

[Hubertus 29]

When I mined my first gypsum, I was quite exited, since I knew of its many uses throughout history. To my great surprise, it had no uses whatsoever. TFC uses lime mortar instead of gypsum mortar, sylvite instead of gypsum for fertilizer, and has no sculpting applications. Let's do something about that. Note that this thread is to suggest an idea that could actually work in game. Please provide input about wether you like the idea conceptually(The idea of having plaster, setting gems, casting metals, ect.), as well as wether you like the idea logistically(Baking the gypsum and grinding vs. just baking, creating a metal sculpture by casting vs. chiselling).

 

MORTAR

 

Currently we produce mortar by putting sand in a barrel of limewater. This creates lime mortar, which has been used in construction for thousands of years. Also used in construction in the same time period was gypsum mortar, created by combining gypsum plaster(ground baked gypsum+water) with sand. I think a crafting recipe that allows us to use gypsum plaster instead of limewater would be beneficial to people who:

• [*]Don't have access to flux because of unfortunate world generation, but do have the means to make a chisel. This will let them make stone bricks for more stable home construction. [*]Don't have an abundance of flux (because their only source is quite far away) and would rather reserve its use for welding.
  

But what is gypsum plaster? See my next suggestion.

 

PLASTER

Gypsum plaster (plaster of paris) is produced by first heating Gypsum to about 150 degrees centigrade, and then grinding it and mixing with water. For porting the process to the game purposes, you could either add baked gypsum and make us grind it, or simply make the powder the result of the baking. The powder must then be mixed with water to produce plaster of Paris. I propose we allow this to be done by adding ground gypsum to a barrel or water, much like we turn a barrel of water into limewater by adding flux. Gypsum plaster can then have sand added to it to make mortar.

 

Plaster can also by used to make molds. Simply combine a bucket of plaster and a tool head (finished tool would work too, I suppose) to make a mold of that tool. This would allow us to make tool molds for casting without needing to burn through our clay supply (personally, I hoard my clay for ceramic vessels, which I can never have enough of).

Some caveats: Plaster of Paris molds cannot withstand more than 1200 centigrade, making them unsuitable for anything other than copper and bronze. Also, the plaster reacts ferrous metals, meaning they can't be used with iron. Luckily, TFC doesn't allow the casting of iron anyway, so there really isn't an issue there.

 

Plaster of Paris and alabaster (same as poP, just more finely ground) were also used as sculpting materials. Plaster would be poured into a large container and left to harden, creating large blocks of plaster that would be sculpted much like stone. I propose that a barrel/ceramic container of plaster harden after a week or so, producing plaster blocks in accordance to how much plaster was in the container. These blocks can then by sculpted much like stone, chiselled stone, and plank blocks.

 

The final use for plaster I propose is for making molds. Just as you can make a blueprint using a marking and a chiselled block, you can make a plaster mold by using a bucket of plaster on a chiselled block. These molds can then be used to create replicas of the original by placing them (They'd lust look like a big plaster cube with a hole in the top) and then using a bucket of plaster (or alabaster, if that's added) on it. Now, you might be thinking: "why not just make a blueprint and chisel a plaster block?". Good question! Casting would require less plaster than a plaster block, but you're right, that's not a lot of use. Adding plaster molds will make more sense once you read my next suggestion.

 

Alabaster

Alabaster is simply a clearer, nicer looking form of plaster. Alabaster is made just like plaster of Paris, but by grinding the baked gypsum into a finer dust than in plaster of Paris. Because of this, it becomes more beautiful, but less useful for construction (hence no mortar recipe). Alabaster would merely be a decorative building block that can be used in sculpting.

 

Alabaster on the left, plaster on the right (Just quick textures I whipped up as examples)

 

SCULPTING

Right now, the only materials we can sculpt out of are raw stone, chiselled stone, and plank blocks. I propose we add plaster/alabaster blocks (See above), logs(Because the bark looks quite different from the inside on some trees, and could make very cool sculptures), and metal sculpting.

Yes, metal sculpting. Metal sculpting is not done by taking a chisel to a metal block (Not very believable at all), but rather by pouring molten metal into a plaster mold (See above). Simply take a ceramic vessel with a set number of molten units (Let's say 500 units to start with) and right click the plaster mold to produce a sculpture made of that metal, much like how you can create a stone sculpture with a blueprint. Now, to make this a little easier, a mechanic for adding molten metal to a ceramic vessel might be needed (Such as: pouring from an ingot mold into the vessel, putting the vessel in the side slots of a forge or crucible, ect.). Now you can line your castle with serene bismuth bronze urns and extravagant gold lions.

Urn and Random Structure Cast in Gold, Hubertus, c 2014

 

List of blocks we could add to the sculptable family:

Plaster(See above)

Alabaster(See above)

Logs

Ice

Lapis Lazuli Blocks

Lapis Lazuli Urn, Hubertus, c2014

 

Ice Urn in Lava, Hubertus, c2014

Gem Setting

It's been mentioned many times before, so I won't be saying too much about it. Basically the idea is to allow you to place gems into a chiseled block. Chipped gems already have a use, so I'll leave those out. A flawed gem could give you a 2x2 microblock (A full block is 16x16, so a 2x2 takes up 1/8th by 1/8th blocks, or 1 block.) that is less colourful than the base colour of the gem. For example, it could be greyed out by 50%. A normal gem gives you a 2x2 microblock with a lesser greyness factor, say only 15%. A flawless gem gives you a 2x2 microblock of regular colour, and an exquisite gem gives you a 4x4 microblock (that's 2 block by 2 blocks). I've never seen a comment from the developers in regards to get setting, so I have no idea how huge a pain in the behind it would be to code.

 

To describe it a little clearer, think of it like this: A block is 16 by 16 pixels. A pixel is a single coloured square. When we chisel blocks, they are divided into 8x8 microblocks of 2x2 pixels each. When you chisel out 1 square, you take away 1 microblock of 2x2 pixels. Flawed->flawless gems would give you 1 microblock, or 2x2 pixels. An exquisite gem would give you 4 microblocks arranged in a square. The difference between 4 flawless gems and 1 perfect gem is the texture: 4 flawless gems would look like 4 seperate gems aranged in a square. A perfect gem would have a smoother texture to give the semblance of 1 gem, assuming you don't chisel it. Gems, once placed, could be chiseled away just like stone once placed.

 

Special note about gem setting: Because of Minecraft's limitations in regards to graphics, adding gems to your statues would cause more lag.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my suggestion! Any and all feedback is welcome.

 

Posts with other ideas for gypsum (Like fertilizer):

http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/7306-how-about-that-gypsum/ (Different recipe for mortar, also suggests as a building block. Mentions fertilizer)

http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/4588-numerous-additionmod-suggestions/ (Also suggest plaster sculptures, and fertilizer)

http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/6170-frames-and-plaster-scaffolding-and-building-block/ (Different plaster recipe, plaster frame idea)

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Because of the poll and the obvious effort put into this post, I will let this one single exception pass even though it broke forum rules.

 

There is literally a post about gypsum still on the front page that was posted 2 days ago. http://terrafirmacraft.com/f/topic/7306-how-about-that-gypsum/

[Hubertus 29]

I didn't want to hyjack somebody else's thread with post much larger than the opener, where it would either be ignored by people coming to the thread later, or forcing the origonal poster to update their opening post. In hind sight, I probably should have checked first about how to post it. Sorry! (<- best approximation of appologetic smile)

[Palisight 34]

Maybe I should state my objections to gem setting and metal casting are based off the perceived difficulty of actually implementing those suggestions into the game

 

Those sound to me at least really difficult to implement (I may or may not be right about this), and it doesn't seem reasonable to ask the devs to try to implement them for that reason

 

Of course, I could be wrong and it might be easier to implement than I think it is

[Necoxus 54]

Coding it would be hard, but could be done. The bigger issue is the memory, as is just chiseling blocks can crash players, server, etc. I like the idea of the metal better than the gem setting though. I really like this post as I had to do a project on gypsum and its uses for school a month ago, and they pretty much told us gypsum is boring and not that cool. I don't agree with that, and I'm glad a good post was made on the subject.

[Remnant 0]

I like the idea of another type of mortar to use as a building/decorative block. It's honestly the only thing i miss from vanilla minecraft by having more than wood and stone (as i don't use thatch as a building block, just straw storage XD) It'd be nice to make a colonial looking house with plaster blocks and logs and the possibility of having a use for those "useless" ores to make decorations for our bases is kinda cool. I said no to the gem setting only because i don't really see a need myself for that kind of  tiny detail and the possible lag/crash of their use (as many detailed blocks lags out TFC) is kind of a deterrent for me >.>

[Hubertus 29]

People are commenting! Wooooooo!

@Palisight I haven't actually looked at TFC's code, since reading other people's code gives me headaches, but here's how I see it.

A blueprint is made by using an item on a sculpted block. That means there's code that recognizes the proper item, and what happens when the appropriate block is right clicked. So you can easily copy that code, change the item value from marking to bucket of plaster, and change the output from blueprint to mold.

Now, that's unfortunately where the similarities end, but it gets us a huge part of the way. Handling right clicking the mold with the vessle is also pretty easy (I would guess).

The tricky part is placing the mold in the world, waiting for metal. However, there IS precedence for placing specialized items in the world (See maps). It shouldn't be impossible to place an item in the world (which only has 1 texture) which has special data attached to it (Namely, the sculpture).

Now, I'm not the guy who has to code it all, so I can't say it would be easy. But in my opinion, using code that already exists it shouldn't be too difficult to do.

 

Hope that alays some fears

 

Now, gem setting....I have no idea how the microblock code works, so I couldn't say how hard it would be. Really depends on how it is implimented.

 

@Powerman

Yes, metal sculptures would be subject to the same lag as current sculptures. Personally I have a house filled with the things and have never had a touch of lag, but my computer is pretty beefy.

 

As a note: the gem would be part of the larger block, so should cause any more lag. To the best of my knowledge, every chiselled block causes the same amount of lag, no mater how you cut it.

[TonyLiberatto 364]

Not a coder myself, so I am most probably wrong, but I think there is a difference when coding a chiseled block and adding gems to a block. As far as code goes a chiseled block is divided and each position just have 2 values 0 or 1, either the microblock is removed or it remains. When you talk about adding a microblock from a different material you need to create a specific mini code for each position that would accept that material and render it properly.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

To the best of my knowledge, every chiselled block causes the same amount of lag, no mater how you cut it.

 

In regards to block lag, you are correct that it doesn't matter how the block is chiseled. However, in regards to FPS lag, it makes all the difference. A detailed block that you have simply clicked on once to turn into detailed will cause about the same amount of FPS lag as a standard block. The problem that Minecraft has with rendering is when it comes to faces. For every additional face beyond the standard 6 of a cube, there will be an increase in FPS lag. This lag will get even crazier when multiple textures come into play, and the block has to figure out which texture it needs to render on which face.

[Hubertus 29]

Ahhh, I see what you're saying. The lag issue doesn't come from MC not being able to handle the number of mini blocks, but from having to render all of their faces. An uncut block has 6 faces, whereas a block with a corner knocked out has 6 + the three you exposed. Then with multiple textures, you're adding a texture check for each microblock. Hmmmm..... Is the fps lag really such a large issue? Like I've said, I've never experienced it and my whole house is covered in tables, chandeliers, ect.

[Hubertus 29]

Now that I'm finally caught up on midterms, I've had the chance to add some pictures to help visualize what it all might look like.

[ChucklesTheCheat 1]

Really nice post Hubertus, this is much better than what I suggested about metal casting. Liked!

[SuuuuuuuuushiXD 3]

I've been thinking about the gem placing for a long time now, ever since i got myself a chisel and tried to make a statue of myself (it was a huge fail), so i like how someone else has thought of this too... I can imagine trying to make statues again, what if we add rocks too? 

[iPotato13 10]

Seems like a great idea! Maybe I can make myself a gold trophy and encrust it with my useless jewels :3

[Bunsan 323]

Decoration addon, formally Lanterns addon, allows gems to be placed. Only in center of block side though. They also emit light.