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Trails of dust: new use for gunpowder, sugar and glowstone dust

We have redstone placeable in trails, for a purpose that we are familiar with. Now, I have an idea for other types of dust trail:

- Gunpowder trail: Gunpowder could form a trail and burn at 1/5 of a block every second tick when ignited, moving away from the ignition block's centre. Entities caught in the flame should take some damage, and TNT blocks touched by the flame are triggered. Gunpowder dust shouldn't be waterproof,  and should be extinguished and/or washed away by water, and should be ignited by lava.  Burning gunpowder should provide light at 15 at the block at which it burns.

- Sugar Trail: If ants or termites are implemented, they could follow sugar trails, then when they reach the end, they go back, removing the trail as they go if there is no branch.

- Glowstone Trail: Glowstone dust could be used in the off-hand, and 1 could be placed automatically onto every block that the player traverses. It would glow with a minimal light (level 1), but if one end of the trail is exposed to sunlight, it would glow much more brightly (say, level 5) along the shortest path from the player back to the sunlit area. Moonlight would be the same, but only make the dust glow at level 3. This would be a trail of breadcrumbs/ball of string type pathfinding tool. There could be ripples of light travelling along the dust trail from the outdoors to give direction.

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• July 01, 2020 12:09
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  • June 26, 2024 14:31
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  I was going to post a similar idea, so ill add it here hopefully bumping this post!

  Similar to your Glow dust idea, but i actually didnt even think of glowstone dust until now and i do like the concept! I was thinking redstone dust trails, much thinner than the placement of the redstone dust we have already, but can be powered/illuminated by redstone torches or blocks.

  I was thinking that a type of pouch/container item could be introduced, filled, and manually opened or closed when held in the offhand or main hand. While held and open, it will leave a trail behind the player as they walk, RS dust would require placing RS torch/block/repeater (not that it would be worth repeaters lol) periodically to keep it illuminated.

  Perhaps this container could also be filled with sand (lasts only 5-10 minutes while in that chunk or otherwise active distance, like how item despawn timers pause when you get too far. Not sure of the actual term for this), glow stone dust (the brightest, but perhaps it actually attracts certain mobs and they might follow the path in either direction, possibly catching up to the player), or even crushed bread as actual breadcrumbs (but some mobs may eat them, typically surface animal mobs).

  I also do like the gunpowder dust idea, but personally i think that would function best as a long distance fuse, whereas soul sand could be used for a light emitting trail of fire. Or maybe mixing the two, to make the trail ignite and illuminate when sparked.