Farming and Plants

[Mickey Kudlo]

I like the idea of the better quality the dirt, the more yeild and faster growth you can get from plants. You'll be able to increase the dirt quality with fertilizer, I guess made from other plants, plant left overs, manure, magic, etc.

Also, trying to figure out how to get water involved. Maybe "dry" plants grow slower. If you keep them watered they grow faster. Or they don't grow at all without water but then wild plants would never grow... unless we had rain, ah, that might do it. So farmers would need a well or water source, fill a bucket and "use underneath" or something. The bucket would need to last 10-20 uses or something, oh a quality use.

I tried rain in V1 but it flooded everything, craziness. If I had puddle items then it could work then the puddles slowly sink into ground water. Then plants could pull from ground water. Using water bucket on plant or ground would create a puddle that would feed ground water that plants would draw from. So it would equate. Then stream could form from the ground water too.

[Zachariel]

I'm assuming V1 rain flooded, because you made rain event directly create water over tiles?

I suggest to implement tile variables named "GroundHumidity", "AirHumidity", "GroundTemperature",
"AirTemperature", "Evaporation" and minimum and maximum saturation constants of these for
different ground types (GrndHumSatMax, AirTempSatMin, etc...)

When the rain event is called, the server should (pseudo)randomly choose the duration, area coverage
and thickness of rain.
Duration determines the time the rain lasts and the ground tiles can soak up water.
Area coverage determines the land area the rain event is taking place over and thickness determines
how much water is dropped in one timeframe (this should have visual indications)

When it starts to rain, server begins to increase the ground humidity variables of affected tiles.
Then, as determined by ground tile constants Min and Max, the tile begins to "soak up" rainfall, meaning
the GroundHumidity variable is decreased. At the same time, the ground tile local saturation variable
begins to increase. When the local saturation or the GroundHumidity variable reaches the constant
GrndHumSatMax as determined by the ground type (dirt, pavement, sand, etc.), the tile is fully
saturated and a small puddle forms.
Then, when rainfall continues, the local sat. var continues to increase. When it reaches, say, 120%,
a medium sized puddle forms. Large puddle at 140% and full flood at 160%.

All at the same time, the Evaporation strength is determined by temperature, land slope and adjacent
tile saturations. If there is tile A with 80% saturation and next to it is tile B with 20% sat., then after
some time X, both of their saturation as by entropy law ends up 50%. Actually, it will probably be less
than that, because temperature affects air evaporation and land slope causes runoff.

All this together creates a really dynamic world and should prevent flat-out flooding, if evaporation
factors are implemented properly, while still allowing temporary flooding over flat or basin areas
and allowing players to steer water flow.

[Greatest]

I can see this being abused...as far as fertilizer, why not use compost instead?  compost fits the game better than fertilizer, and you can make it by combining dirt with different stuff, ie: use dirt on animal guts/cut fish/fat/meat/garbage.  better compost from some items than others so they'll improve soil faster(garbage compost improves 1-5 while leg of cow compost would give you 15-20?).  the dirt quality shouldn't matter in compost because then it would go crazy.

as far as watering plants, I have 4 questions.
any chance for irrigation? 
would plants grow like weeds in a river?(raft farming)
would there be a way to see how much water a spot of land has?
could you kill plants by overwatering?

if you say no to any of those I'm against plants needing to be watered

[Mongo]

Just gonna throw my 2c in here, I loved v1/v2 farming .. it felt like it actually took work to accomplish.

Minecraft had an interesting 'saturation' mechanic where the closer dirt was to a water source, the more saturated the soil would be and the easier it was to grow plants.

One nice thing about plants in v1/v2 was it was more of a 'set it and forget it' method. If I need to stay logged in 24/7 at my farm to make sure my plants get enough water (but not too much), that's not fun.

I like the idea of watered plants growing faster and dry plants growing slower (or not at all), but I don't think plants should be so fragile that they die off quickly if not constantly watched.

[Mickey Kudlo]

I can see this being abused...as far as fertilizer, why not use compost instead?  compost fits the game better than fertilizer, and you can make it by combining dirt with different stuff, ie: use dirt on animal guts/cut fish/fat/meat/garbage.  better compost from some items than others so they'll improve soil faster(garbage compost improves 1-5 while leg of cow compost would give you 15-20?).  the dirt quality shouldn't matter in compost because then it would go crazy.

as far as watering plants, I have 4 questions.
any chance for irrigation? 
would plants grow like weeds in a river?(raft farming)
would there be a way to see how much water a spot of land has?
could you kill plants by overwatering?

if you say no to any of those I'm against plants needing to be watered

- irragation is doable, digging trenches and drawing water from a man made spring/well
- i think only a few "water" plants like reeds, seaweed, kelp, rice, would grow in water
- perhaps the color of the ground would indicate water content, like mud is darker than dry ground
- I don't think overwatering is a problem else everything would die since ground water at one level

Just gonna throw my 2c in here, I loved v1/v2 farming .. it felt like it actually took work to accomplish.

Minecraft had an interesting 'saturation' mechanic where the closer dirt was to a water source, the more saturated the soil would be and the easier it was to grow plants.

One nice thing about plants in v1/v2 was it was more of a 'set it and forget it' method. If I need to stay logged in 24/7 at my farm to make sure my plants get enough water (but not too much), that's not fun.

I like the idea of watered plants growing faster and dry plants growing slower (or not at all), but I don't think plants should be so fragile that they die off quickly if not constantly watched.

It would still be "set and forget" but if you wanted them to grow faster, then watering is needed OR if the ground is drier than dry, desert area, then plants would need close attention unless they desert plants, like cactus, joshua, etc.

[Mickey Kudlo]

@Zack: Too much data and processing and balancing. Best to keep it simple.

- clouds form over large water/oceans, no evaporation (tried this before and it was hard to balance), clouds would be 20x20 and move from plot to plot, could do smoother i suppose, the cloud has a set amount of water to drop
- directional wind pushes cloud along as it drops water/rain
- water can form puddle items, smaller then larger, also puddles sink into ground getting smaller. Water could just go straight into the ground and you never see it in case creating all those water puddles is too costly/laggy
- higher elevation could stop/slow down clouds
- plants draw water right from ground water

Also, ground water could flood mines

[Zachariel]

Flooded mine tunnels is an awesome idea!

[Greatest]

Also, ground water could flood mines

oh hell no!

floods that drown miners, floods that make you have to swim to an exit, or floods just having it so there is water there?  as a morlock(always found it best to live underground so that I have full surface for farming) I can just see logging in on a floating bed...

[Falcon]

Maybe this could be avoided by using surfaces?

[Novibear]

I like the mine flooding ideas how long would it last though.

[Greatest]

looks like we lost this category...I still want answers about the floods, and Faran brought up something I like in another category so I'm bringing it here:

Okay. So approah a plant, and you use your farmers scapel or whatever on it.  It brings up a window, with specific items depending on the plant.  Bulbs or roots or stems or flowers or flower petals or spores or whatever.  This way we keep the same plants we already have, and those plant's graphics, but still have much more to work with on the alchemy and magic reagent end.

any chance we could get stuff like this?  I could see using some tools to take a branch from a tree(handles from branches instead of needing a full tree would be nice), to pull the petals/stamen from a flower(new alchemy usages maybe?), and I had a few other things come to mind but they got a little weird when I thought through for usages...

[Tokoshoran]

Okay, so, if mines flood, can we make pits underground to catch the water? Would it automatically drain to even lower mine levels (The lower down you are, the  more it floods)? Would bridges still work underground?

I personally don't think bridges should work underground. If an entire tunnel is flooded, how do you get up out of it?

If clouds can be blocked, then can heightened plots block them too (Check out the layers thread, wherever it is)? Could surfaced ground block out water to a degree depending on the type? I would imagine a concrete floor would be good to block it out, making a mine below it (As long as it's got stone walls around it) safe.
Edit: The concrete would effectively form a dam, especially if it's got the cloud-blockers above.

[Mickey Kudlo]

looks like we lost this category...I still want answers about the floods, and Faran brought up something I like in another category so I'm bringing it here:

Okay. So approah a plant, and you use your farmers scapel or whatever on it.  It brings up a window, with specific items depending on the plant.  Bulbs or roots or stems or flowers or flower petals or spores or whatever.  This way we keep the same plants we already have, and those plant's graphics, but still have much more to work with on the alchemy and magic reagent end.

any chance we could get stuff like this?  I could see using some tools to take a branch from a tree(handles from branches instead of needing a full tree would be nice), to pull the petals/stamen from a flower(new alchemy usages maybe?), and I had a few other things come to mind but they got a little weird when I thought through for usages...

The problem is all the different images required to show the plant/tree in all those different states. But if we just made it a quality/hitpoint thing then it could work.

As long as the water flooding source stopped then he water could sink down and away. Else it remains flooded until source empty or plugged up or whatever.

[Greatest]

The problem is all the different images required to show the plant/tree in all those different states. But if we just made it a quality/hitpoint thing then it could work.

As long as the water flooding source stopped then he water could sink down and away. Else it remains flooded until source empty or plugged up or whatever.

would you really need more images for taking a leaf/branch from a tree?  I was thinking along the lines of when you milk a sheep or take wool from a cow, 'player is not ready to have this done' type thing if it can't be done...or use not defined if its something that can't be done at all.  could also reduce harvests for normal plants if part of them have been picked/plucked/hacked off.

as far as flooding mines, I still want answers to the following:

floods that drown miners, floods that make you have to swim to an exit, or floods just having it so there is water there?

if you can drown while mining thats even worse than your unearthed graves and gravynn 'clones'(they only clone fighters, if you're a trader they get 50 melee attack and defense while yours is set at 10, and since theres 5 of them theres no way to kill them).  in pretty much all mmorpgs fighters get more xp than traders because of risk involved, if you add even more stuff to kill traders then we're getting a raw deal...

[Tokoshoran]

Could we get a weather-warning, perhaps? Like if there's a raincloud approaching the plot, we'll know to be prepared to get out fast, or if the upper layers are starting to absorb water in, form puddles to warn us that it's about to flood.