[slmbrhrt]

But cobblestone, wood, and even charcoal and water are infinite resources in the game. The problem isn't the supply of resources, it's the short-sightedness of the players in the game that figure it's easier for them to mine cobblestone from beneath or clear-cut a natural forest in the game with no intention of replenishing the supplies because they don't imagine they'll be playing long enough for it to matter.

[zeteo]

If they're infinite, the article doesn't do a very good job of even making this basic point. In any case, this bears little relation to what is ordinarily meant by urbanization.

[rcfox]

They're infinite in the sense that more will always exist, but you'll have to keep walking further and further to get at them.

[lotharbot]

Actually, in Minecraft, you don't need to walk farther to get those particular resources. Wood, charcoal, water, and cobblestone are all infinitely renewable resources.

Wood and charcoal are straightforward -- harvesting a tree gives you wood and saplings, saplings grow into trees, and wood can be cooked in a furnace to make charcoal (you can even use saplings, more wood, or more charcoal as fuel.)

If you make a 2x2 depression in the ground and put water in opposite corners, the remaining corners will immediately fill. You can then pull water out of any corner, and it will immediately refill.

Cobblestone can be generated by making water and lava flows touch.

[rcfox]

> Cobblestone can be generated by making water and lava flows touch.

In real life, we can always make more iron (or insert other resource we might be lacking) by smooshing smaller atoms together. That doesn't mean it's viable source for any scale of use.

[Natsu]

In Minecraft, cobblestone generators are highly viable and much better than mining, in fact. High-density tree farms are a lot more sustainable, too. Examples of both are on the wiki.

If you really need to speed up the tree farms, even though they're a lot better than harvesting wild trees, get bonemeal by creating a trap around an enemy spawner. Or just create a giant dark pit where water feeds the monsters into a trap in the center (either a pitfall or a lava blade). Again, it's all on the wiki. Infinitely sustainable. I've made all of these, except for the enemy trap, which I'm still working on... by using the cobblestone generator.

[bdonlan]

The process can be automated using pistons and a redstone repeater, as shown here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLuEO6xOM4&feature=playe...

This can produce cobblestone as fast as you can mine it, at a cost of three lava, three iron (for pistons), and a bit of redstone dust (plus items derived from wood, water, and cobblestone, which are all renewable resources)

There are other designs which use even less non-renewable resources as well.

[rcfox]

Ah, I haven't had a chance to play with pistons yet. I guess my knowledge is a bit out of date.

[Ideka]

Actually, a lot of people have created "cobblestone generators" in Minecraft. They are pretty easy to make, and are infinite and fully automatic (a cobblestone appears, you destroy it, loot it, and another one appears instantly).

[lotharbot]

A fair point.

Still, I have a hard time seeing any Minecraft scenario under which "there's not enough cobblestone" is a valid complaint. Even without using cobblestone generators, it's incredibly abundant.

The other resources I listed (wood, water, charcoal) are all renewable in a practical sense.

[keeperofdakeys]

Actually, I believe a recent update stopped the water regeneration, so now it acts like lava.

[lotharbot]

As of about 3 minutes ago, it still works.

[jokermatt999]

Somewhat. Trees and other plants can be replanted via saplings and bonemeal, cobble can be made with a simple cobblestone generator, and water is extremely easy to make an infinite spring for. The more rare elements are things like glowstone, iron, gold, diamond, obsidian, and lava. If you aren't near a desert, beaches sometimes will be strip mined for sand, but that's it.

I think the spreading apart generally has less to do with resources and more to do with personal space. You don't want your awesome house in your modern style to be next to your neighbor's medieval castle. It just looks weird. People do tend to have their own mines (at least in my experience), but that's less of a reason to spread apart.

[InclinedPlane]

All resources are infinite in Minecraft in that context. Rather what is meant is that even if you kept within a single small area of the map you could generate infinite supplies of those resources. When you cut down a tree the leaves drop saplings which can grow new trees, for example. There's a list of renewable Minecraft resources here: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Renewable_Resources