Minetest_game: Add niter ore and charcoal to rationalise TNT (gunpowder) crafting

[paramat]

Current mess:
TNT is crafted from gunpowder.
Gunpowder is crafted from coal and gravel.

I think we should consider TNT to be gunpowder, as gunpowder doesn't look like TNT, but TNT could easily be gunpowder. But also to make it suitable for all eras:
Gunpowder "... is the earliest known chemical explosive. ... Gunpowder was invented in 9th-century China and spread throughout most parts of Eurasia by the end of the 13th century."
TNT "... Its explosive properties were first discovered by another German chemist, Carl Häussermann, in 1891".

////////////////////////////////

EDIT: New proposal:

Add charcoal to default (TNT mod depends on default), it's useful anyway for crafting torches without needing coal.

In the TNT mod:
Register niter ore to provide the other main ingredient of gunpowder, potassium nitrate.
Change the TNT node texture to a crate of gunpowder.
Possible changes:
Add a 'fuse' or 'gunpowder trail' item to use instead of 'a barrel of gunpowder per node of gunpowder trail', allowing us to raise the cost of the gunpowder item and therefore improve the crafting of 'TNT' and not use those useless TNT sticks.

[NathanSalapat]

ooh, I like this idea. The current craft recipe never made any sense to me.

[An0n3m0us]

Great idea! Although, TNT and gunpowder seem to be quite different from each other.

Gunpowder: "consists of a mixture of sulfur (S), charcoal (C), and potassium nitrate (saltpeter, KNO3)."
TNT: "is made by adding 3 NO2 groups (from nitric acid) to toluene" (simplified)
So TNT is not gunpowder, and neither is gunpowder TNT. Gunpowder was first used around the 9th century and TNT in 1863.

Anyway, back to the topic;

The Technic mod has a really nice texture for sulfur minerals:
https://github.com/minetest-mods/technic/blob/master/technic_worldgen/textures/technic_mineral_sulfur.png

And sulfur lump texture:
https://github.com/minetest-mods/technic/blob/master/technic_worldgen/textures/technic_sulfur_lump.png

Sulfur dust texture if needed:
https://github.com/minetest-mods/technic/blob/master/technic_worldgen/textures/technic_sulfur_dust.png

[paramat]

Yes, i relaise TNT and gunpowder are very different, i was considering which to consider as the other.

[Extex101]

XD I was actually making a mod for this

^ Softwood charcoal which is required for gunpowder.

^ Hardwood charcoal just to be consistent

^ Saltpetre

^ Sulphur

Crafting:
Using correct ingredient proportion

we can forget about saltpeter

Saltpetre is the main ingredient.

I think we should change the names and textures to be more accurate.
TNT is not made of gunpowder

Maybe change the texture to be a bomb or something

A few functionalities in order to obtain the items
Sulphur gathers above lava

Lava checks for cave ceiling after a timer or something
Adds sulphur to ceiling (sign-like node)
This means that you can have sulphur farms (which would be cool)

And Saltpetre as an ore of some kind ore found in the mountains

Charcoals are made by cooking

I think that adding a group hardwood and softwood to all the trees would be the best way to do it

Tell me what you think

[ghost]

Ah, so that's how you make TNT!

I think we should change the names and textures to be more accurate.
TNT is not made of gunpowder

Maybe change the texture to be a bomb or something

I think it's interesting, how we strive for "realism" at times. I really
like this quake3 mod called Urban Terror, but at least there they have a
slogan: "Fun over Realism." Cheers!

On Wed, Sep 18, 2019 at 12:04 AM Extex101 [e-mail] wrote:

XD I was actually making a mod for this
[image: gunpowder_softwood_charcoal]
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/33675971/65095452-14cf2980-d976-11e9-8be7-37c5f707c607.png
^ Softwood charcoal which is required for gunpowder.
[image: gunpowder_hardwood_charcoal]
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/33675971/65095450-14369300-d976-11e9-965d-998363ccfb63.png
^ Hardwood charcoal just to be consistent
[image: gunpowder_saltpeter]
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/33675971/65095451-14369300-d976-11e9-8445-a684b9cb459b.png
^ Saltpetre
[image: gunpowder_sulphur]
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/33675971/65095454-14cf2980-d976-11e9-8bcc-afbf1e26a337.png
^ Sulphur

Crafting:
Using correct ingredient proportion
[image: v4-760px-Make-Black-Powder-Step-5]
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/33675971/65095808-822f8a00-d977-11e9-8690-4b7a28db9414.jpg
[image: Screenshot_2019-09-17-18-13-47-1]
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/33675971/65095812-8491e400-d977-11e9-96ef-ce2b076a0f95.png

I think we should change the names and textures to be more accurate.
TNT is not made of gunpowder

Maybe change the texture to be a bomb or something

A few functionalities in order to obtain the items
Sulphur gathers above lava
[image: 2019-09-17 20 36 49]
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/33675971/65105917-3e468000-d98b-11e9-8731-d3b5daa5f3b7.png
Lava checks for cave ceiling after a timer or something
Adds sulphur to ceiling (sign-like node)
This means that you can have sulphur farms (which would be cool)

And Saltpetre as an ore of some kind ore found in the mountains

Charcoals are made by cooking

I think that adding a group hardwood and softwood to all the trees would
be the best way to do it

Tell me what you think

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[Ferk]

It might be a bit more accurate to add niter (or nitre, whatever spelling) as an ore instead of sulfur.
It's the mineral form of saltpeter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niter

TNT and gunpowder are different, but the one thing they have in common is the presence of nitro radicals, which is what actually makes it explode and the one thing that saltpeter provides (the other components are for it to be flammable and have fuel, throwing just some pure saltpeter into fire also makes a small explosion IRL, or at least a violent burst of flames). I think you could make something close to gunpowder without sulfur, but not without nitro.
Having sulfur in TNT makes no sense, since it has no atom in common. At least coal could sorta be considered a relative to toluene.

[Extex101]

OK so after some research I've found that gunpowder can be sulphur free
The purpose of sulphur is to decrease the explosion temperature but it's much much harder to ignite

But I think that sulphur would make it harder to craft, which is what we want isn't it?

[Ferk]

I still think it's better to add niter/saltpeter (or at least some nitro compound) than sulfur, it makes a bit more sense. And then make it as hard to find as you want if you want gunpowder to be hard to craft.

Other possible applications for saltpeter would be fertilizers and food preservative for meat (I'm not really proposing it, I'm just saying).

[Extex101]

I think Nitre is a good idea
I was just saying that gunpowder can be made without sulphur so that is possible in RL.
But if we want a harder crafting sulphur is still an option

[paramat]

Saltpetre is the main ingredient.

Heh ok, i thought it was the more minor ingredient.

Maybe change the texture to be a bomb or something

Fine for me.

There is no way for the Biome API decoration code to place sulphur only near lava, using Lua code to do this would be too slow/intensive.

It might be a bit more accurate to add niter (or nitre, whatever spelling) as an ore instead of sulfur.
It's the mineral form of saltpeter:

Ok, this seems a good idea, sulphur is difficult to integrate into mapgen anyway.

[paramat]

Updated first post with new proposal.

[Extex101]

Nitre Ore

[sfan5]

There is no way for the Biome API decoration code to place sulphur only near lava

Is there anything (such as complexity) preventing the implementation of such feature?
I can see it being useful for in more situations.

[paramat]

A decoration can be placed on cave ceilings, but this would be on all ceilings not just caves flooded by lava. Such a decoration can be limited to biomes that have lava-flooded caves, but that does not help much.

I cannot think of any reasonably non-complex non-intensive way to do this. Ores/decorations that depend on a particular cave liquid are rarely required so i do not think it is justified in core mapgen code.

Besides, i prefer to not get too realistic with this recipe, niter and charcoal are the primary ingredients, that seems enough.

[paramat]

Reply to IRC comments:

The intention here is not to have an ultra-realistic gunpowder recipe, we are leaving out sulphur after all. The issue is how ridiculous it is to craft from coal and gravel, both easily found at the surface in large amounts. Explosives need to have higher cost.
MTG is not ultra-realistic, but it is loosely realistic, and coal and gravel was a sloppy recipe choice.

[Extex101]

The point of sulphur in gunpowder is to reduce the explosion temperature.
Which isn't exactly needed when you're blowing holes into cave walls

Also I think we should change the mod name and stuff to remove the TNT
It was a copy off of MC anyway, and it was stupid in MC too:
A pack of dynamite with the label TNT on it, which was crafted from gunpowder? It just doesn't make sense

[paramat]

It's probably too disruptive to remove the TNT words from node name and mod name. Mods and games register TNT so the registration API can't be changed. We could change the texture and description of the 'TNT' registered in the mod though.

[Extex101]

We could do something like create a global variable called bomb or something and make another called tnt and make tnt equal bomb

[Extex101]

An idea: Maybe we could put nitre ore in desert stone

[paramat]

IRC http://irc.minetest.net/minetest-dev/2019-12-21#i_5625404

19:15 Krock for game#2472: The recipe should be kept simple. It's not accurate but I doubt there will be many mods that make use of the new ores
19:15 Krock they don't have any other purpose in the game
19:15 Krock as long it's solely for TNT: no. If it finds more use-cases: welcome.

@Ezhh any comment?

[Extex101]

Nitre/Potassium Nitrate can be used as a fertilizer and to cure meats

[paramat]

@SmallJoker
Potassium nitrate does have other uses that mods can use. From Wikipedia:

Potassium and other nitrates are of great importance for use in fertilizers and, historically, gunpowder. Much of the world's demand is now met by synthetically produced nitrates, though the natural mineral is still mined and is still of significant commercial value.

So there are other uses, and fertiliser is something modders seem to like due to the MC influence.
So perhaps you support this?

A big problem with the current gunpowder recipe is it is far too easy to find the ingredients. Which is why we added TNT sticks (a mistake) to try to increase the cost. Gunpowder should have higher cost and deeper ores.
MTGame is of course only loosely based on reality and not precisely realistic, but the gunpowder recipe is not even loosely realistic, it is just crude and stupid and something we would not accept in a PR today.
As for simplicity, the proposed resource and recipe is a simplification of gunpowder crafting, this is still simple.

[paramat]

Ugh, i have just seen that the crafting of gunpowder into TNT comes from Minecraft, so the original mod was just cloning MC even though it is a mess of 2 types of explosive.
I dislike how early MTG development cloned Minecraft in so many ways. Some horrible stuff was allowed into MTG early on.

[Ferk]

Another very clear MC carry over is wool. Imho, it should have been named "cloth" which is more generic (and would be valid for it being crafted from both sheeps and cotton).
With no sheep it makes no sense for there to be wool. It being crafted from cotton is weird too. The only way is to rationalize it in some way by imagining it's some sort of synthetic imitation of wool made of cotton.

The issue is that wool has been a primary block for a long time and changing it, even if it's jsut the name, might not be a popular move.

[paramat]

imagining it's some sort of synthetic imitation of wool made of cotton.

I agree with this. Node descriptions could possibly be changed to 'synthetic wool'.
And i disagree with adding sheep to produce the same MTG 'wool' nodes, as that makes this mess even worse (although it is ok if optional mods do this).

Shows how standards in MTG have risen so much, any old MC-clone crap used to be accepted =)

[tenplus1]

All for adding charcoal to the game but please keep tnt recipe simple without the need for new ores.

[paramat]

Please can core devs state their opinion on this? I get the impression it is possibly disapproved, but cannot close the issue because no-one is stating this here.
Even if it was approved i could not be bothered to work on this.
@sfan5 @SmallJoker @rubenwardy

[sfan5]

Sounds like a good change to me but if there's no interest in working on this go ahead on close it.

[paramat]

Closing due to #2710