I'm finishing up the next version of the Mesozoic Dwarves mod, and was getting a "crash on embark" bug that I finally narrowed down to the lowly Quarry Bush.
I made the following observations during testing, the results of which may be interesting/useful to the modding community, unless someone else has already come across this issue. Each test was done on a newly generated world:
- Quarry Bush excluded entirely; embark crashes.
- Quarry Bush included; no crashes.
- I removed all of the growing seasons from Quarry Bush; no crashes.
With all growing seasons removed:
- I reduced the number of [LEAVES] harvested from Quarry Bush to just 1; no crashes.
- I removed [LEAVES] from Quarry Bush entirely; crashes.
- I removed [LEAVES] and added a [DRINK] to Quarry Bush; crashes.
- I reintroduced [LEAVES:1], removed [DRINK], and replaced [BIOME:SUBTERRANEAN_WATER] with [BIOME:ANY_LAND]; no crashes.
- I added [GOOD]; crashes (even in a "Good" biome).
- I removed [GOOD] and replaced [BIOME:ANY_LAND] with [BIOME:ANY_FOREST]; no crashes (even embarking on non-forest biomes).
- I replaced [BIOME:ANY_FOREST] with [BIOME:GLACIER]; no crashes.
- I removed all biome tags entirely, including [WET] and [DRY]; no crashes.
- With all biome tags (and season tags) removed, I also removed all seed tags; no crashes.
- Just to confirm, I additionally removed [LEAVES]; crashes.
- I added [LEAVES:0]; no crashes.
After doing these tests, I found a statement by Toady saying that the [LEAVES:6] for Quarry Bush actually refers to the ASCII tile, meaning that the Wiki is wrong.
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=10541.0 I also found a thread about an old (and apparently fixed) problem with Quarry Bush, which may or may not be related to this issue.
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=1325.0 In addition, note that Quarry Bush is the only vanilla plant that produces [LEAVES]. I had modded in an aboveground plant that produces [LEAVES], but it was [EVIL].
CONCLUSION: The game requires that there be some [LEAVES] producing plant in the raws, even if it grows nowhere naturally, has no growing seasons, and has no seeds to grow it from even if there were a valid growing season. This imaginary plant that grows nowhere can't be limited to GOOD or EVIL biomes, however.
Why? I still have no idea.
Additional Potential Testing: Would a [LEAVES] plant with no biomes, seeds, or growing season still prevent crashes on season changes?
If you're doing further testing, keep in mind that these crashes don't happen at every embark attempt. Sometimes five or more embarks would be successful before I got a crash. I usually attempted 7-8 embarks before concluding that the change didn't cause crashes. The crashes occurred when pressing "e" from the site-finder screen, when moving to the "Play now!' etc screen, not the embark-from-preparation screen (didn't test these).
PS: Mesozoic Dwarves 1.0 will be available in a couple of days.