26 replies to this topic

[rpiller]

I'm looking for some real ore types for my game. Currently I have: Gold, Iron, Silver, Coal, Diamond, Copper, & Tin. Any others that I'm missing that are fairly common and used in a good deal of products or did I get the most popular?

[thade]

That depends on how deep you want to go. I took one look at this and was a bit intimidated haha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ore

 

Maybe a better question to ask is what purpose you want these ores to serve? Building edifices? Crafting weapons? Might be enlightening to approach it from the other direction: knowing what you want to build then deciding what kind of materials it would require.

[Servant of the Lord]

Platinum, Zinc, Lead, Magnesium, Silicon, Nickel, Sulfur (non-metal but useful and abundant). 

Aluminum is a by-product of ore smelting - or something, I haven't researched it before.

 

Loadstone? 

 

Apparently, when mining ore, the ore isn't 100% copper or 100% iron or 100% gold, and in the refining process, you separate out alot of other metal types.

Metals like Steel are what you get when you re-mix them together (using just the minerals that you want, to strengthen it). Steel even contains Limestone, if I recall correctly.

 

There are also rare earth minerals that are rather important in electronics.

Edited by Servant of the Lord, 23 January 2013 - 03:09 PM.

[swiftcoder]

Dwarf Fortress also has a fairly imposing list of ores.

[rpiller]

@thade Just trying to get some types that I recognize. I'm going to add the basic ones that I know are just used in a good deal of "things" and over time I'll probably expose others are needed. Thanks for your post.

 

@Servant Some good ones there that I haven't thought of. Thanks!

 

 

Open to other common ones anyone else can think of.

[Milcho]

Aluminum is a by-product of ore smelting - or something, I haven't researched it before.

 

Aluminum extraction didn't become viable until the late 19th century, and it was still quite expensive at first. Current process involves electrolysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-Héroult_process). Aluminum production was so expensive at first that it exceeded the cost of gold or silver.

 

I'm just pointing this out because aluminum would only be an 'ore' in a modern or futuristic setting, and requires a rather different process than most other metals. (i.e. a smeltery would not be able to produce aluminum for any major use). That's probably why aluminum isn't an ore in many medieval themed rpgs.

Who knew my APChem class knowledge would one day come in handy on a game dev site?

[Katie]

" Steel even contains Limestone, if I recall correctly."

 

Limestone is added to iron as it's smelted in order to combine with acidic impurities and make them solid; at which point they float to the surface and are either skimmed off before pouring or are just left behind if the iron is tapped from the bottom.

[sunandshadow]

Silver and gold are functionally pretty redundant with each other, unless the color matters for jewelry making.  How about lime if you are including non-metals?

[Milcho]

Silver and gold are functionally pretty redundant with each other, unless the color matters for jewelry making.  How about lime if you are including non-metals?

Or electric conductivity... but that just brings up what serratem...err, I mean, thade, said - what type of ores or materials are available in a game depends on what the game focuses on. In some games Gold is just a luxury resource that increases happiness of your population (Civ IV), while in others its a material used to recruit certain unit types (Empire Earth series). 

It'd be interesting to actually make mining and refining gold/silver yield gold/silver currency though (in a rpg-ish game). It's reminiscent of how gold nuggets used to be freely accepted as payment in the wild west. ... Anyway, like thade said, game type is pretty important.

[Legendre]

I'm looking for some real ore types for my game. Currently I have: Gold, Iron, Silver, Coal, Diamond, Copper, & Tin. Any others that I'm missing that are fairly common and used in a good deal of products or did I get the most popular?

 

Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire, Bronze, Platinium?

[Stormynature]

Geological Ore deposits

 

Hope this helps

[TheChubu]

You might end up with an ore-refining simulator...

[Prinz Eugn]

Depending on how modern your game is, you can't really ignore petroleum derivatives you're thinking about useful end products. Half the stuff we use is made out of processed old dead things.

[Postie]

Take a look at the middle section of the periodic table of elements. You'll find metals like Iron, Cobalt, Nickel, Tungsten, Mercury, as well as radioactive ones like Uranium, Plutonium...

 

Also, don't neglect your alloys. You don't dig them out of the ground as ore, but they can exist as ingots. Bronze and steel were already mentioned, but there's a lot more out there.

 

[wodinoneeye]

Some of your ores/products of ores will be used as 'tools' to extract/process the actual target material.

 

 

As mentioned, Limestone (certain type with certain quality and composition) is used to process iron  (as is coke which is processed coal)

 

Mercury is used to process gold/silver for example

 

Lead ore is used to extract silver from another kind of raw silver ore

 

Fuels are a obvious 'tools' to use in many of these processes.

 

Water actually is another.

 

[Leikaru]

I'm looking for some real ore types for my game. Currently I have: Gold, Iron, Silver, Coal, Diamond, Copper, & Tin. Any others that I'm missing that are fairly common and used in a good deal of products or did I get the most popular?

Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire, Bronze, Platinium?

All of that is fine except Bronze, which is a mixture of several metals, but mainly of Tin and Copper.

Here is a suggestion: Rutile Ore. Rutile Ore is where Titanium comes from, however, I think it also uses a few more metals. Not too sure .

As well as that, there are actually different types of Copper Ore, not just one ore. There is a Copper Ore, but also part of the Copper family is Malachite, Turquoise (yes, there is an ore called Turquoise, look it up if you don't believe me ). There is also Azurite ore. It's the same with Iron too. You have Pyrite (which is the traditional Iron in reality), Marcasite, Hematite and Magnetite. Also, have you though about adding Zinc? That's a pretty cool ore, especially since it's used as a vitamin a lot these days. You could make medicines with it. Most natural resources are ores, if you think about it.

Hope I helped.

Edited by Leikaru, 30 January 2013 - 09:07 AM.

[thade]

Every time I see this thread pop up, it makes me think back on EVE Online. Each planet had a certain set of materials on it you could mine for; you fly up to the planet, set up a little mining operation that scoops up materials that you could have launched into orbit, scoop up, then sell on the market. Other players would buy some of these materials to refine the first tier of goods...which other players would buy to manufacture a second tier, and so on (to like a fourth or fifth tier). This entire part of the game was just a living, breathing Trading game. Planetary Interaction it was called (the mining part, anyway).

 

Have a look at the full set of materials you can work with in EVE Online in Planetary Interaction, here. Keep in mind that is not the full set of materials in the game by any means...just the set you can get out of Planetary Industry and Interaction (mining a planet, basically). There are a lot of materials and they all take real world time (in the order of days or even weeks) to mine and refine. The point is that it simulates a career as an industry pioneer, hence the focus that this part of the game has on materials, costs, and time...all of which benefit from traditional business efficacy analyses.

 

I'll level with you: I played that part of the game and it bored the crap out of me; it's interesting in theory but it's not fun. I feel like Farming Simulator is more fun. Other than a game where the entire point is manufacturing and trading, I don't know what use there is in dozens upon dozens of unique materials with as many or more unique use cases.

[Iron Chef Carnage]

You should think about whether you're making the ores as a means to regulate acquisition of materials or as a part of the world.  In Anno or Civ or whatever, you are basically making an "Iron Farm" and just jumping through the appropriate hoops to get the material you need.  Calling it "Iron Ore" is fine, and you can just stick it around the map to make hotspots for control and development.

 

In the Dwarf Fortress example, if you want Iron, you have to harvest either Magnetite, Hematite or Limonite, all of which can be used as rocks for building and crafting, and which can be processed at a smelter to produce iron bars.  Some ores, like Galena, are more complex, since smelting that produces a bar of lead and half a bar of silver, but you can use the ore with gold nuggets to make electrum, complicating the tech tree even further.

 

I'd never suggest that anyone make a mineral tech tree as complex as DF's, unless you're a sadist or are making a game about geology, but the "list of ores" question can be answered with the wiki links above, so you need to focus a bit more on the uses of ore in your game before you can decide what you need.

[Leikaru]

You should think about whether you're making the ores as a means to regulate acquisition of materials or as a part of the world.  In Anno or Civ or whatever, you are basically making an "Iron Farm" and just jumping through the appropriate hoops to get the material you need.  Calling it "Iron Ore" is fine, and you can just stick it around the map to make hotspots for control and development.

 

In the Dwarf Fortress example, if you want Iron, you have to harvest either Magnetite, Hematite or Limonite, all of which can be used as rocks for building and crafting, and which can be processed at a smelter to produce iron bars.  Some ores, like Galena, are more complex, since smelting that produces a bar of lead and half a bar of silver, but you can use the ore with gold nuggets to make electrum, complicating the tech tree even further.

 

I'd never suggest that anyone make a mineral tech tree as complex as DF's, unless you're a sadist or are making a game about geology, but the "list of ores" question can be answered with the wiki links above, so you need to focus a bit more on the uses of ore in your game before you can decide what you need.

 

Dwarf Fortress's main idea isn't about Geology at all, so he could go for advanced ores. In fact, if he's looking to make a realistic game, then yeah, I'd advise that he does go for the complex trees that DF has.

[swiftcoder]

Dwarf Fortress's main idea isn't about Geology at all

Dwarf Fortress may not set out to be a geology simulator, but that doesn't change the fact that it is (perhaps incidentally) a geology simulator.

 

There is a world of difference between the Settlers' brand of "iron + coal => sword", and Dwarf Fortress' complex mineral trees.