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[viskaslietuvai]

I don't know if I need the "further" part as I doubt anyone remembers the first questions. (they were resolved)
I realize that there are other places I can ask about this, but Bay12 is one of the more trusted forums I occasionally frequent.
The setup:
There's a world I'm designing for a game I'm slowly but surely programming. It is a big ol' cylinder. This is so that I can create an entire world, not just a continent and not have to calculate curvature of the planet and other nonsense. It was a means to an end I liked a lot. Also on this planet is an element that explodes when put into contact with open fire among other magical things. There's more to this place to make it interesting but I'm trying to keep this background info brief.

The Questions:
1. How does this place get seasons? The Earth gets seasons because of axial tilt which creates differences in hours of daylight at different times of the year plus some other variables such as intensity of sunlight at different points on the surface of the earth etc. But if a tube tilts then all parts are still exposed to the same amount of light and have the same amount of daylight. The best thing I have at this point is that the sun revolves around the cylinder and throughout the "year" the sun drifts from near the northern edge of the cylinder (actually a tube, but that's another issue) to the southern, thus giving different intensities of light if not different day lengths. As to why this sun can give enough heat while having a small enough mass to rotate around the cylinder, I have an explanation that boils down to a divine black box.
Does this explanation work? Is it ridiculous? Do you have something better, or at least more sensible?

2. How do you have an explosive material and give an explanation for why there are no guns or why they can't make a rudimentary firearm? I don't want to have any point at which I have to tell the player "That's just the way it is" at least unless they come to the point of where the creators of the planet come from. I'm not averse to small explosives like small hand grenades, and I can forbid large explosives with the unstable in large quantities excuse, but guns don't require large amounts of gunpowder for instance. Do I have to scrap the whole thing? Can you come up with something, 'cause this one has me at a loss.

Thanks.

[Psyco Jelly]

For 1. You could have the sun move in an elliptical orbit, thus creating periods of less/more light, and have that ellipse slowly rotate, thus creating seasons. That means that it will be winter on opposite sides of the cylinder, and summer on opposite sides.

For 2, have it create an explosion that is very fiery but has little force behind it, or make it very tough to ignite. A gun can't run on napalm, and a gun would be a waste of it, since it'd be easier to just throw the rock at it.

[Chutney]

For 2, just say nobody has ever thought to design such a thing. Just because WE made guns, doesn't mean every civilization is going to say "hey, let's explode something at this end of a tube, and have it shoot something out of that end!".

Of course, this becomes less viable if anybody uses blowguns...

Another option would be to make the explosion too violent to not shatter anything they'd try to contain it with? Maybe a plot point is they're trying to make cannons/guns but their metals aren't strong enough to withstand the explosion?

[Virex]

Simple: the ellement that goes KABOOM is absolutely essential to making high-grade metal. That means that any gun you make is going to explode violently. This also means that guns aren't completely out of the question, but they could be very rare, since they'd require a tough material that doesn't include this element and that's hard and expensive to make.

Edit: I've devised a way for making "incendary Steel":

The metal itself will spontaniously combust if heated to over 500 degrees Celcius, but that only happens if it comes into contact with oxygen

So the key is to heat it in a kiln where the only source of air has the air pass throught he fuell. This means that the air that heats the Incendary Steel contains only a very small amount of oxygen. To remove the last amount of oxygen and create a hard alloy, something like cokes are added to the melting metal from the top. Some elements in the cokes react with the oxidised metal to form an oxide that dissolves in the metal itself, making it stronger in the process.

The liquid mixture slowly drips into a plaster mould. Once the mould is filled (this is a bit of guesswork) the kill is locked air-tight by locking the valves that connect to it (those valves are probably made of a weaker, but more heat resistant metal) and the kiln is left to cool for several weeks. Once it's cooled down enough, the mould is taken from the kiln and broken, after which the metal object undergoes a final stage of shaping, primarely with the help of a saw. Then to protect the metal it's rapidly diped into a bath of another kind of metal that's liquid and then rapidly quenched. This last step has to be done very fast to prevent the metal from heating up too much and creates both an external protective metal layer as a small layer of oxide to increase the hardness on the outside.

Metal made this way is comparable in hardness to earth's corunds (9 on mohrs hardness scale) and about as flexible and cast iron. It's protect up to a temperature of 500 degrewes after which the outer layer breaks and the poreus oxide becomes exposed. You'd better run then because the oxidation is very rapid and very explosive, forming a white powder and sending still burning shrapnell flying all over the place.

[Giant Snowman]

Have you considered the old halo? If you had it orbiting a star as a whole, it could turn sideways to have a day and night cycle, with a short extra night when the shadow of the night side blocks the sun to the day side. (self-eclipse)

If you tilt it's axis slightly, the area to the bottom of the ring (with it's outside to the sun) would receive no sun at all, making it very cold. The area to the top of the ring (with it's back away from the sun) would have constant sunlight except for two self-eclipses at noon and midnight. It could be very hot here so that most of the outside activity would have to take place during the brief nights.

Then, if you add another rotation so the halo rolls, lands will pass slowly through these two poles, creating seasons.

[viskaslietuvai]

Whoo! Thanks y'all.

I'm thinking that I'll go with psyco jelly's suggestion for the planet, as it's pretty close to what I had envisioned. The halo idea is interesting and will go in the idea repository for possible use with some other thing, though I know not what.
For the explosive conundrum I like psyco jelly's and Virex's but sweet jesus, V's was detailed. It may end up with two separate elements with Virex's taking the old elements place and psyco jelly's being something entirely new. Feel free to give it a baptismal name.
Thanks again.

[Psyco Jelly]

Incindite.

[Rhodan]

For seasons, make the sun smaller and closer to the cylinder.  This way, distance to the sun becomes more important than the angle.  Now you can have the sun circle around the cylinder in any pattern you like in order to create seasons.  It could spiral from north to south and back, for example.

Of course, this depends on what kind of cylinder it is.  Is it a ring or a tube?  Do people live on the inside or the outside?
Extra moons or astronomical bodies blocking the sun also work to make fake seasons.  Or seasons could just be blamed on weather patterns, volcanic activity or mana flows.

[Enzo]

Feel free to give it a baptismal name.

I love making up words! How about...

Explodium.

I'm kidding. Serious suggestion: Ignumite or Baernite, from the latin for fire (Ignus) or old english for burn (Baernan).

[Vactor]

The Questions:
1. How does this place get seasons? The Earth gets seasons because of axial tilt which creates differences in hours of daylight at different times of the year plus some other variables such as intensity of sunlight at different points on the surface of the earth etc. But if a tube tilts then all parts are still exposed to the same amount of light and have the same amount of daylight. The best thing I have at this point is that the sun revolves around the cylinder and throughout the "year" the sun drifts from near the northern edge of the cylinder (actually a tube, but that's another issue) to the southern, thus giving different intensities of light if not different day lengths. As to why this sun can give enough heat while having a small enough mass to rotate around the cylinder, I have an explanation that boils down to a divine black box.
Does this explanation work? Is it ridiculous? Do you have something better, or at least more sensible?

The biggest effector of seasons is having a pole without any sunlight for half of a year, which shifts all the wind belts up or down the planet, which is something that would happen if you tilted a cylinder, assuming the atmosphere continues across the ends of the tube.  I see no reason to have a satellite sun with a wandering orbit