Feature: Growing trees
ScottKillen opened this issue · 12 comments
Consolidated from #103:
keybounce
Imagine a tree that would attempt to have its leaves decay; if a sapling generates, it would "root" in the nearby wood of any tree, and on growth would attempt to spread off to the sides, and then down. If it finds a different type of wood, it replaces it as a spreading infection -- if I understood that tree correctly, it entwines around other trees to choke them and replace them.
Over time, this would become a giant tree, spreading horizontally, with a full canopy that blocks out all the light, making a dark land in the daylight.
Now, give it no food from the leaves. Make the color as ugly of a wood color as you can. Perhaps this wood can only be used to make sticks, not wood planks (log structure is too weak to make planks from). So you could get charcoal, or sticks, but no planks. No food, and it wipes out all other more useful trees.
Self planting saplings? Sure. But maybe you don't want those saplings to plant in, and replace, so many other useful trees.
Annysia
...but the basic concept was that the trees actually had life cycles....
It would be very cool to have something like this...it would make the biomes seem even more alive.
keybounce
This idea adds the idea of a specific tree that spreads differently than other trees, based on a real life tree that spreads in that different manner.
Should all trees grow, and spread as a function of time? Maybe.
Should there be some type of tree that grows differently than others, based on a real life tree that grows differently? Why not.
ScottKillen
It is balanced by firespread, so it would also mean unnerfing that.
AnonTheMouse
Now, my one concern is this, if we add spreading trees and spreading ground, how big a performance hit are we likely to get? I actually use a pretty low-end PC myself, so I am keenly aware of how even small changes to performance can add up.
ScottKillen
I was very fond of the way the Nature Overhaul altered saplings so that they took root just before spawning out.
This had some interesting effects:
- Unless you needed them for something, you could let sapling lie were they fell and your forest would sustain itself.
- Overabundant saplings were never a problem clogging up storage because you didn't feel the need to collect them.
- Tree canopies prevented overgrowth (as in RL.)
- You could watch a forest fire devastate a forest and then have the forest regrow before you eyes--those times were amazing in game experiences.
Really...if saplings can root and grow in there own, fire-spread is naturally nerfed and doesn't require so much of the tweaking we have seen in the latest snapshots.
Sapling entities waiting to root might cause some lag, so we could tweak things to do one or a combination of:
- reduce sapling drops
- maintain a limit on the number of sapling entities
- reduce the amount of time a sapling takes to re-root
- introduce some chance to that a certain percentage of saplings do not re-root.
Annysia
I completely agree that sapling drop would need to be looked at. The big trees like firs and redwood can drop over a stack of saplings in 1 tree.
So say for example I cut down a large fir tree...if I didn't pick up all the saplings that dropped would they they have a chance to root? Also, would the amount of saplings dropped only affect the trees in ExtraBiomes or would it affect all? Forestry has a bio generator now...and can be powered using bio fuel which can be made from saplings...so I can see where some people would want to have a lot of saplings in order to make fuel.
Would there be an option to make the tree spread work with other mods such as the trees and bushes in LCTrees or Pam's?
Shavahi
I love the concept of a growth vs. fire dynamic. This would be particularly interesting in relation to the Nether biome(s) with all the lava & fires about.
keybounce
The idea of saplings self-planting will not cause lag issues.
If you have trees that drops tons of saplings, they will be in relatively small areas. There might be 5 saplings dropped in a single block. On rooting, only one will root, and the rest will fail.
My idea is as follows:
- After being "alive" for 3 minutes, a sapling has a change to root.
- In order to self-root, there must not be a sapling in the 4 direct neighbors on the same height. (Hills can -- diagonal is not close enough to stop a self root).
- Standard rules of light apply -- if the light level is low, and no direct sky exposure, uproot. This means that once one tree grows, all the "underbrush" will die off come nightfall.
- Interesting effect of fast time and case #3 -- nighttime you have uprooting, and daytime comes before the 5 minute despawn. So fast time biomes the saplings just don't die off :-).
For a spreading tree, things get a little different. A spreading tree can be as simple as "The sapling can root in the branches/leaves of another tree. On growth, instead of growing upwards, it grows sideways and down". Suddenly, it's just a different type of growth -- plant on a wood log or leaf block, on growth find the wood block and branch from it -- it's no more or less lag than a normal tree.
I must say I would love to see fire spread unnerfed from when it was originally nerfed back in Alpha. Only if forests could replant themselves however.
I am a brand new here and I do not know where to ask: How to plant a legend oak? We had plenty on our server, but now almost all are chopped down. Will be a sapling or anything else that could allow to plant this extraordinary tree?
@Lohakar Thanks for you interest in the mod! You would probably enjoy the robust community that centers around the thread at http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1090288- That is where questions like this would generate a hearty discussion.
🌳
To answer your question, legend oaks are rare and do not grow from saplings. We don't currently have any plans of changing this as it adds an interesting conservation aspect to the game.
How so? This has never been an issue on our server. Not sure why people would want to cut them down as they just hurt themselves by doing so.
You could argue the same for real-world over-logging. Some people just don't care about conserving finite resources. Then there's the intentional destruction from griefers to deal with too.
I guess so. I would never play on a server that had griefers and since there are so many other sources of wood it's hard for me to understand why someone would cut them down.
Well, maybe it was a case of "Gee, What happens to this tree if I use an auto-chopper?" Followed by "OMG, all that wood, where's a sapling?"
You are very lucky to play on grieferless servers. During last two months we had 1000+ new players mostly kids from 10 up to 20 on our server. Our moderators are quite busy with neverending list of modreqs about griefed houses, farms etc.
Trees (and other natural entities) cannot write modreqs. There were about ten legend oaks when our map started and now we have only 3 of them. These trees now have a personal guards.
So this is a background of my question if there are legend oaks saplins.
If saplings are not planned may be an admin command (~ create logend oak X,Z) would be great.
That would be horrible. If my options were to play on a server like that or play alone, I would choose to play alone. I also wouldn't like a server with that many people...lol. I think about 20 would be the most I would want. It's a shame your game play is being ruined.