Messages

Oh, you know what I'd love to see? A patrol boat. I don't know how or if it would be possible to restrict a vehicle to water tiles only, on either the tactical or the world maps, but that would be so cool, and potentially it could make island colonies viable for a change.

Oh wow! These are perfect, and with your permission, I'd like to stick them in for the initial release.

If I can make a few small requests? One thing I had wanted was a tiny sort of pot, that could be placed on table tops. So smaller than small sculptures. It made sense to me, as clays are generally used for little things, and only rarely for large sculptures or constructions. I'd leave the rest up to you in terms of how much you feel like making, but the things I'd had in mind were: a tea pot, a little spice jar, a stoneware bowl, and a Chinese moon flask. Obviously, you don't need to worry about the painting details. I'll figure that step out while I make masks for these.

No pressure, but please keep in touch! I'm actually just shy of ready to release the first version. I finally got sculptures working! There's no way for me to require that they be fired before being displayed, but with pottery, I can add that extra step, no problem.

I might brighten up the red brick end product for sculptures as well. I like the color for the actual bricks, but for sculpting, it's kinda dull. I still need a graphic for the sculpting clay resource as well. I may be able to manage that on my own. It's just a slab of clay after all.

[attachment deleted due to age]

Oh thank you! I definitely plan to add flooring once I've got the basics in place, and if you can make some vanilla style art that's exactly what I need! The kilns and most of the art were done by Atlas, so in a way I'm just curating and refining his work.

To answer the question, there's going to be one research topic (brick making) that enables the fueled kiln and all the recipes for bricks and adobe, as well as terracotta and porcelain recipes.

The electric kiln and bulk brick making recipes will be unlocked by electricity, since they're a very simple tech. A recipe for sculpting clay will require fuel refining, since chemfuel is an ingredient. But this way it won't add much to the research table at all.

I'm working on a materials mod for the early game, with utility in any tech level, that's focused on clay. Atlas told me he wasn't ever totally happy with the Atlas Materials mod, and it steps on a lot of other popular mods' toes, since it introduces so many materials. My aim was to strip it down to the most basic element, and then expand on that.

So I focused on clay and bricks. Both present there, but not in many other mods. I've personally wanted a stand alone clay and adobe mod since I got frustrated with Medieval times, but missed that building material after I removed it.



As of now, the mod adds three new minables, red, blue, and grey clay, with hues about as close to real life as I can manage. I'm not happy with the vanilla stone texture for them, so I'm considering borrowing from Cupro's stone mod, to see if I can get it more detailed looking.



In addition to the two clay types, there are designated spots for digging sand and mud from appropriate ground types. You can also crush chunks into sand. I'm working on a compatibility patch between that and Rainbeau Flambe's fertile fields and Concrete mods which also feature sand pits and rock crushing.

The clays can be combined with sand, and baked into bricks at kilns (fueled and electric variants) which allow you to produce a fair number of cheap building materials, more resistant than wood, but less so than stone. For maps with little rock to mine, or scarce wood to spend on cheap construction, they're a nice boost.



Mud can also be combined with hay and baked in the kilns to produce adobe, which is far easier to come by the materials for, but generally on par with wood in terms of quality. Minus it's not being flammable. The result is cheap materials, potentially infinitely producible (provided you have power/fuel, and pawns with nothing better to do than slowly dredge up materials) AND which have some significant limitations on what they can be used to build.



Rather than be considered "Stony" stuff, theses are all "Bricky" stuff. They can be used to construct walls, but not doors, and only some types of furniture. They can't be used to make weapons, though in a pinch, you can grab a sack of bricks and throw them at attackers.

My next step is to expand the concept a little bit. Clay as a sculpting material is proving strangely difficult to implement. But once I have it sorted out, I intend to have three simple materials for artists to work with, which are likely better than most stones, but will require an investment of time and skill to make. Sculpting Clay, Terracotta, and Porcelain statues should all be in place before I launch this, officially. I'm considering a few additions down the line, such as classical style pottery sculpture alternatives, but the mod is basically functional now, and tests well.

Well, the way I have it set up, they are. Clay is a mined resource that spawns on map generation, like compacted steel and such. But even if you mine all of it out, you can dig in muddy or marshy soil to produce small quantities of it forever. Mud is produced this way as well, but more quickly, and in larger quantities. Sand can also be produced in large quantities by pulverizing stone chunks, or else be dug up quickly from from gravel, or the sandy soil types. Most of this is Atlas materials' function. The dig spots, and new resources. All I did was tweak it to remove a few steps and intermediate materials, like coal and ash.

So short answer; yes, but they require either two types of opposed terrain to be on the map (mud AND sand, which is a semi-rare combination) or else just the mud and a climate you can grow hay in.

Personally, I like Cupro's Alloys, and the brand new Simple Chains: Steel.

Cupro's adds a bunch of new metals, and the ability to smelt them together to create various alloys for artistic and structural purposes. Some are quite beautiful, and others offer an alternate option to sterile tile and the like. I find it's quite well balanced!

Simple Chains: Steel is brilliant, in that it transforms all the steel deposits into iron ore. So you can use it as cheap and easy iron, OR you can process it at a smelter into proper steel, and because of the way it's implemented, anything construction or crafting recipe that requires steel will automatically use the new steel instead!

Well, at the very least, I've finished what I set out to do. I've created a version of Atlas Materials which is stripped of all content but the Mud, Sand, Clay, Brick, and Adobe resources (slightly tweaked for better balance and realistic color,) and the kilns needed to work the materials. I suppose I'll try and contact Atlas to see how he feels about me sharing it or uploading it, for anyone who's interested. 

You mention that this is compatible with Garden Medicine, but how do they interact exactly? The bandages and several of the medications seem like they would overlap in function, so is one mods version given priority over the other?

Feel a little bad putting my expert chefs out of work, but fuck it, I have better things for them to be doing. Like sweeping.

The difference is in manufacturing! Where chunks need to be mined out, and then cut into blocks, brick and adobe are readily available anywhere you can find a pinch of sand and some muddy soil. I would view brick and adobe as inexpensive, maybe wooden tier materials for construction, ideal for places where wood is scarce, but gravel, sand, or mud are abundant. They'd be quicker to produce than proper stone, but weaker in general. Basically, they'd be a quantity option compared to stone's quality option. You can put together a lot of bricks in the time it takes to cut an equivalent amount of stone.

I know Atlas' materials mod adds a few resources to make a complex web of material production chains. But I think, the minimum would be a source of clay for Brick, and mud for Adobe, and a kiln of some sort to bake them in. Proper bricks are made with clay and coal ash, and adobe is usually baked mud, or baked mud mixed with straw or hay grass to give it more resilience. Thinking about it, the bloomery from your simple steel chain could make a nice kiln. Not exactly the same thing, but similar looking ancient tech.

I don't really know how to build a mod from the ground up, though I've been learning what I can where I can. My current effort is to strip the brick production from Atlas' materials, and it's coming along very well. But I couldn't in good conscience share something like that with the community.

My word. I wonder if those have any actual function? I've been thinking about building a base out of "beached warships," but this is even better.

There area a handful of mods I know of that add Clay as a resource or even a mine able wall type, and that allow you to make adobe and/or bricks, but it seems that they all also add a lot of other things. In every case, I'm bumping into them adding redundant things, that don't play well with other mods I use. Fertile fields is a little clunky about clay, and steps on Vegetable Garden's toes a bit. Atlas' Materials adds a whole bunch of materials, like glass, and plastics, but things like Rimefeller also add plastic. Medieval Times adds a whole extra era's worth of content.

I'm in the process of patching some of my industry and material mod favorites together, but I'm wondering if anyone might do me a favor and create a mod that just adds Clay and Bricks.

Good lord, someone needs to make a Cheddar Goblin loop! I NEED my pawns to reflect on the incredible senselessness of living, in the worst way!

Is it possible to have beardless dwarven women? Or even just a beard option that is no beard? I'm not sure what I'd have to do to mod the mod myself, but for the sake of being able to tell one dwarf from the other, I would really appreciate this.

Dying for this one to get updated to 1.0. Is it waiting on Combat Extended? I know you mentioned it was built with that in mind, but I really like it on it's own. It's cowboy season afterall!