I feel accomplished! I've begun work on my mod's first functional block: the Steel Mill.
So far, all I've gotten is the block itself and the recipe down-packed, but there will be more! Yes, I'm moving on from the Composite Bow for now, until I can get it to render properly. The textures are likely temporary til I can get someone to make me a proper set.
What's its purpose? To make steel, of course! I'll have a semi-companion block/machine called the Flint Grindstone that will allow you to grind down soft materials like sandstone, cobble, and for the purposes of the Steel Mill, coal and charcoal, into usable dusts or softer blocks like sand or gravel. The Steel Mill requires two kinds of fuel to operate: proper coal or charcoal in one slot, and coal or charcoal
dust in the other, to lend carbon to the inputted iron, thus creating steel. I plan on it working about the same speed as a vanilla furnace, maybe a little bit faster, but one set of fuel will only last 4 smeltings instead of the 8 you get with a vanilla furnace.
However, char/coal isn't the only solid fuel you can use! Any fuel that will work in a vanilla furnace will work here. So, if you want to use a bucket of lava, you can use a bucket of lava and get 50 steel! However, I might make an add-on block for it that can store and utilize liquid fuels from various mods like BuildCraft, Forestry, or GregTech to burn steel in it. At least...until you get the upgraded version of the Steel Mill, the
electric version that only requires char/coal dust, works 25% faster than its lesser cousin, and gives you 10 ingots per dust: the Steel Foundry!
