dxdt

The main use I find for sticks are torches and ladders. It probably has a lot to do with my playing style, as I prefer to prospect vertically (digging lots of deep 2x1 holes, with ladders on one side and torches on the other).

Just head for the nearest jungle and you'll find chickens.

I get the same bug with the top of the bloomery staying like it was when it was lit, but I don't have to refill and relight it in order to get the bloom - I just break the two blocks, as I earlier would have broken the one block and then get my bloom.

Yeah, well, that would be one option. But I'm really not too fond of steam punk to be honest. My idea with the whole steam vs electricity was that steam would require a higher degree of maintnance and have bulkier, more expensive and localised power distribution, wheras when you progressed to electricity the wiring and distribution would be a lot easier to manage. This is a bit how I envisioned my mod: Stone age: Everything is pretty much vanilla, with the exception of the minecraft boat. The ordinary plank boat is removed and replaced with a slower (walking speed) canoe, crafted with logs and paddles. Bronze age: Introducing the age of sailing. Using bronze, you'll be able to craft a small sailing boat out of planks that is faster than the canoe, provided that there is "wind" in the right direction where you are, otherwise it would be as slow as the canoe. The "wind" would be a vector field, derived from the gradient of the already present scalar temperature field. Iron age: Introducing the age of mechanics. Using wrought iron you'll be able to craft a wind mill to hook up to the quern, powered by the earlier mentioned wind. This mechanical wind power would be impossible to transfer, and thus the windmill would have to be directly hooked up to the quern using the power from it. On the nautical front you'll be able to craft a slightly larger sailing vessel with chests onboard. Steel age: Would allow you to build a slightly larger sailing vessel with more cargo space. Age of steam: Once black steel is discovered, it would allow you to craft the boiler, piping and various appliences such as hooking up a steam powered quern, hammer, pistons, pumps and so forth. However, the range of how far you could practically transport the steam from the generation point to the consumption point would be rather limited, and considering that the only fuel so far would be coal it would be kind of tedious to operate. On the nautical front you'll be able to craft a steam powered ship, that's always fast irregardless of the wind. Age of oil: Once you have the steam pumps you'd be able to pump up oil. Oil could be found earlier, but only brought up on a bucket by bucket fashion, and with out any real application other than perhaps as oil lamps. One might also implement a prior use of oil as a lubricant in mechanical devices, prolonging their durability. However, once you'll be able to pump it up in bulk, you'll be able to use it as a power source, giving a way to fuel the boilers in a less tedious way than coal. Note however that the internal combustion engine isn't available yet. Age of electricty: I'm not excatly sure how to restrict the availability of this age, but probably I'd work in a restriction such as that you would require to have access to blue steel in order to craft an electric generator. This generator could be hooked up either to the wind turbine from the iron age providing a free but unreliable and limited power source, but also to a steam turbine allowing the centralised production of power which could then be transfered to a larger area. Many, tought not all, of the steam powered appliances would have a coresponding electrical device. And of course we've got electrical lighting. In order to make electrical lighting more attractive perhaps we need to put a time limit on earlier lighting technology. Maybe in such a way that a torches last for and ingame week and oillamps for an ingame month? Age of internal combustion: Using forexample red steel it would be possible to craft internal combustion engines. These engines could be hooked up to generators to allow an easier and more maintnance free way of converting oil to electricity, and also it could be used to craft a diesel vessel that unlike the steam ship wouldn't need to be hand fed coal every so often, but could just be fueled up with oil when near a cistern. Also, I have quite a lot of ideas about petrochemical processing. For use in the combustion engines, the crude oil you pumped up would have to be processed. Age of plastics: Using processed oil you'd eventually be able to produce plastic, which could be used to substitute wood in many crafting recipes as well as be used to craft entirely new objects, such as plastic bottles that don't have the risk of breaking on use for example. On a side note I also have an idea about making food spoil as a function of the surrounding temperature. In order not be spoiled, they would have to be stored in a chest with ice blocks (which could be harvested in a similary fashion as raw stone) which would be used up as time passes. This would provide an interesting trade off when chosing where to settle: If you settle near the equator, it would be easier to grow crops, but the food would spoil easier. If you settle far from the equator, the crops would grow slower, but the food wouldn't spoil as fast. In an SMP setting, this would lead to increased incentive for people to settle in different spots and conduct trade: Ice going toward the equator and vegetables and fruit going polewise. However, once the age of electricity is reach, this could be overridden with the use of electrical refridgerators.

Good initiative! I was actually thinking about the possibilty of a similar mod just the other way.First step beyond the age of steel would be steam power, then after a while you would be able to use steam power to pump up oil which you initially only could use as a fuel but later could turn in to plastic (and craft unbreakable bottles!). And then we've got the whole age of electricity. Too bad I'm writing my thesis at the moment, so I have no time to code. But come january, I'll probably have a bit more time on my hands and I'll definiatley revisit my ideas.