Hey, I have an idea for a biome. It would mean adding 1 or 2 more trees, but here goes. The Bush Biome. As in, Australia. The main trees are eucalypts (In real life their timber is a bit like a mix of oak and jungle planks, so consider that for plank colour. The ground is usually either dirt (not grass) or stone. There is barely any grass. Water can spawn, where there could be little oases.

Humidity - Low
Temperature - Medium to High
Hills - Medium (A bit less than jungles)
Foilage colour - Like your Savanna (Brownish)

There might be a couple of problems though. Lack of food, firstly. Since there is a lack of grass, less animals would spawn. But, if you guys do like it, I'm sure you'll figure something out. Thanks for checking this out.

AnonTheMouse get that design doc posted to oneone-whakaaro and then we can close this.

Hmm ... a tree that drains swamps?

Lets see:

1. Disables witch spawning if you plant it between the hut and the swamp water,
2. Lowers the water level by one in the area (~5-6 blocks from tree) when it grows -- foreach such tree
3. Expose the near surface clay/sand blocks :-).
4. Hmm... dirt blocks that are in the drained swamps become extra-fertile self-hydrated farmlands, perhaps?
5. But grow another one of those trees and those hydrated fertile farm blocks become normal dirt.

Don't worry about cracked sand mechanics @AnonTheMouse leave that up to the wasteland biome. just try and distill this into a bush biome with the trees we have been talking about without any of the special draining mechanics e.t.c

I'm assuming that swamp draining would usually be involving large numbers of trees. The designs I'm working on still need a number of tweaks before I'll be ready to post even a preliminary draft, but what I'm looking at right now is an area-based effect around the trees that will produce an effect similar to cracked sand conditions, minus the spread. Possibly, eucalyptus will act as a "Wasteland precipitator", and make soil around it more prone to cracking. I'm still trying to balance out pros and cons.

FN you hit the bottom log and as long as it wasn't connected to anything 2 high it brought the whole tree down. If it was a larger tree at the base you had to eliminate all the logs around except 2 and then it would take the whole tree down. It only worked with FN and vanilla trees and I don't think he ever made it so you could add other trees.

You really need something to take down some of the trees in the mod...they are so big that you'd never get them down unless you were in creative....especially ones like the angel oak or swamp willow.

the swamp willow I designed is a lot more vanilla friendly. (and looks better. I know I'm bias :P ) but yeah. some of the massive trees take a seriously long time to get through.

I cannot get the new treecapitator -- the new coremod version -- to work in multiplayer. Reporting over at treecapitator, but giving you a heads up

I've noticed that the look of eucalyptus wood is awfully close to that of existing jungle wood. Two options:
First: I can make the trees out of jungle logs, with a different crown. Cuts down on blocks, but the wood will say "jungle".
Second: Give it a new wood, with a look that isn't strictly accurate. I'm thinking merging it with the marblewood mentioned in #103 since that also grows in Australia, so it's still native to the right region, although one is native to dry climates and the other to rainforests. This uses more blocks, but is my preferred approach if that's an acceptable level of departure.

On a side note, accuracy dictates that the oil, which will be the primary use for the trees, comes from their leaves. Doing it that way means another new block. Would it be better to cheat here as well, and use the same or a similar method to Industrialcraft treetaps instead?

Don't worry about eucalyptus. Nightshade has contributed all of the content of the Trees++ mod, so we will have eucalyptus already.

Oh, well shoot. When did that happen, because last I heard they wanted to stay seperated. On another note, does this mean that we have their tree felling? I've really been missing that.

We have discussed and decided that we will not be adapting that feature. For reasons I don't remember. Heh.

Why did we decide against it again, Scott?

@AnonTheMouse it has been only a few days.

We will not implement their lumberjack feature because Treecapitator is now fully compatible with Extrabiomes

Riiiight. That's what I thought. I just didn't want to sound stupid if it was wrong. 😕

😉

I swear I remember their method working differently than Treecapitator, though, and I really liked theirs. :(

In case it's been missed, first draft of the doc is up for review on oneone-whakaaro.

Probably won't extend the burn power of eucalyptus logs, but will investigate extraction and medical uses, though in all probability that wilbe left for another mod to conquer. l

Probably won't extend the burn power of eucalyptus logs, but will investigate extraction and medical uses, though in all probability that wilbe left for another mod to conquer.

What if they produce a "strong charcoal" (data value 2 instead of 1) that has longer burn times?

Bush biome simplified:

A dry, hilly,hot, forest of eucalyptus trees, with pockets of exposed stone, shrubs, and colourful wildflowers growing. Eucalyptus trees are quite tall with wide branches and their logs smelt things faster in a furnace due to their oil content.

The oil from those trees is not a combustable oil on the level of other fuel oils. Infact the oil is really well known for it's /slow/ burning properties.
The oil from the tree is used as a cleaning agent or insecticide infact here in nz we burn Eucalyptus oil lamps to chase off mosquitos and flies, it buns for a really long time and is super effective at driving pests away

Insect repellant huh? Perhaps eucalyptus oil could be used to craft mob-repellant torches or potions.

Ohh, for people who can't get their hands on a pair of kitties...

Seriously, I've stood still in a jungle, with raw fish, looking at ocelots moving around, and they never come to me. What am I doing wrong?

http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Ocelot That's what I followed and it worked perfectly.

On the subject of the oil. May I suggest a compatibility feature for IC2? Add a process similar to that of making bio cells, for example "Extract, Craft with Can, Compress" to make a substitute to Weed-EX (or an alternate recipe for it) out of Eucalyptus leaves. As its own item, the final product could be called BUG-Off, perhaps acting as a less effective Weed-EX that has less chance/no chance to damage crops. I admit, this isn't perfectly realistic, since IC2 only has trouble with weeds, not vermin, but an insect repellent being a general crop protector isn't much of a stretch in terms of equivalences.

A document for this biome has been created on the google drive. This will be implemented in a future release.

@AnonTheMouse all of the above :P So over all not a good tree to plant near your farm...unless you are growing cactus.

That's about the size of it. On the other hand, I can see them being used in a lot of tech and mod compatibilities, so they would likely be the Bush biome's "cash crop" in spite of their drawbacks.

Not sure how I got assigned this one. To be honest, I know less than nothing about the Australian bush country. That aside, I'll try to apply what knowledge I can, here.

Now, I'm not sure what we can do to make it have "barely any grass", since grass will pretty much spread to any dirt block within spread range. The alternative is to mimic what mushroom biomes do, and have a new type of groundcover. I'm thinking "Scrubland", a block that looks like a mix of dirt and patchy withered grass for that. Technically it would still cover the ground, but would appear to be sparse grass mixed with bare dirt, so it might be close enough, particularly if generation added small patches of regular grass, and Scrubland matched the biome colouring.

Not sure what all could be done with Eucalyptus yet, but I did read that their oil is a notable product, and that they can explode. Could be interesting to play with that a little bit. If nothing else, perhaps compatibility patches can the trees into a highly efficient source of biofuel (I think it also said Eucalyptus trees are a natural source of pesticide).

Makes me think Savanna but a more deserty (i know it's not a word) look and feel. Eucalyptus would be awesome and has tons of uses. I didn't realize it could do all this....I was just familiar with the oil which can be used in medicine. Check out the info on the Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus In particular scroll down to the cultivation and uses section. It can be used for pulpwood, honey, oil, dyes and musical instruments.

Another feature that I thought was very interesting is this "Eucalypts draw a tremendous amount of water from the soil through the process of transpiration. They have been planted (or re-planted) in some places to lower the water table and reduce soil salination. Drainage removes swamps which provide a habitat for mosquito larvae, but can also destroy ecologically productive areas. This drainage is not limited to the soil surface, because the eucalyptus roots are up to 2.5 m (8.2 ft) in length and can, depending on the location even reach the phreatic zone."

Not sure how I got assigned this one.

Just 'cause. 😄

Now, I'm not sure what we can do to make it have "barely any grass"

We can do this.

They have been planted (or re-planted) in some places to lower the water table and reduce soil salination.

This will fit in nicely with the cracked sand mechanic.

This will fit in nicely with the cracked sand mechanic.

So a highly useful tree, but you have to be careful where you plant it? Perhaps it:

• Makes it easier for cracked earth to spread?
• Interferes with plant hydration?
• Has a chance of producing dried out but non-spreading soil near it?
• Any/All of the above?

yup

Actually, the Scrubland I was thinking of would be a perfect "dried out but non-spreading soil".