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Require wooden pots & barrels to be treated with a sealant before holding liquids

14 (40%)

Require tanbark to make leather

11 (31.4%)

None of the above

10 (28.6%)

Total Members Voted: 29

[Baffler]

I'd be interested in the merge. I jury rig it onto the modest mod myself when a new version of either one comes out already, to be honest, merging them will save me some work.

[Button]

OK, it looks like Plant Fixes will probably be becoming a Modest Module. Eventually.

And by "eventually," I mean "in a few months at the earliest." I want to have all the new growths settled before I release it as a Modest Module, primarily because I'll have to do it in a way that supports multiple tilesets, and plant graphics are a bear.* I want to have growths finalized before I get started with that, because otherwise it will become a neverending morass.

So, two things:

Does anyone have any problems/issues with the current Plant Fixes, before I let it go to seed**?

And second, please feel free to help me with my growths research, by adding information to my table of plants. I'm almost done with the A's, Armok help me.

* Assigning tiles & colors to plants has to be done by hand, on a tileset-by-tileset basis, due to the way that the PLANT_GROWTH token mixes purely graphic information with gameplay information; and that requires a fair familiarity with each tileset, both in map form and how the foreground & background colors look in the context of the game.

** I swear that pun was an accident.

[Vattic]

And second, please feel free to help me with my growths research, by adding information to my table of plants. I'm almost done with the A's, Armok help me.

A few times now I've sat and started on this and been surprised at how vague the online sources can be.

[Button]

I saw you did some work on the W's the other day, Vattic - thanks!

[Vattic]

No problem, I'd like to see this working too. Have added some more data since then. Really wish there was a way to link growths so flowers turn into fruit and similar. Similarly have appearance time and harvest time be separately definable; I've been unsure how to represent this on your wiki page (alternates between the disappearance/appearance columns with explanations in brackets).

It's also worth noting that a number of the plants on there are domestic variants and shouldn't appear as natives and some we don't even know where they would have originally been found. Teff (Eragrostis tef) for example is thought to be domesticated Eragrostis pilosa and does not shed it's seed like the wild version does. In situations like this I've been basing their climate on the wild version rather than including all the climates humans have figured out they'll grow in.

I wonder if Toady will eventually simulate plant needs more realistically with soil/temp/water requirements. Either that or separating the biome tokens so that you can have a plant appear in the wild in some biomes, but also be cultivated in others. Then certain crops may spread to other places that could realistically grow them.

An interesting quote from Toady on plants:

Are we going to see plant genetics and cultivar breeding in future?

I tried to take them all out from the list we have, so there'd be room for that to go its own way if we ever get there.

[Button]

Really wish there was a way to link growths so flowers turn into fruit and similar.

I've got a thread in the Suggestions Forum to this effect. Not sure if more people +1ing the thread actually has any effect on Toady's priority list, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt .

In situations like this I've been basing their climate on the wild version rather than including all the climates humans have figured out they'll grow in.

I think it's OK to include climates where the plant can grow wild, even if that's not where it originated.

I wonder if Toady will eventually simulate plant needs more realistically with soil/temp/water requirements. Either that or separating the biome tokens so that you can have a plant appear in the wild in some biomes, but also be cultivated in others. Then certain crops may spread to other places that could realistically grow them.

Amen.

An interesting quote from Toady on plants:

Are we going to see plant genetics and cultivar breeding in future?

I tried to take them all out from the list we have, so there'd be room for that to go its own way if we ever get there.

Nice! I was wondering why we only had one Brassica.


I've been thinking about the fictional above-ground plants - particularly those which aren't connected to any particular biome. I'm trying to decide on the place of the fictional plants in the context of the corrected real-life plants; particularly, the fact that they're available year-round sort of undermines the added realism of temperate climates lacking wild food during the winter. I'm going to put up a new poll for how y'all think we should deal with this.

[Vattic]

I've got a thread in the Suggestions Forum to this effect. Not sure if more people +1ing the thread actually has any effect on Toady's priority list, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt .

I may have more to add besides just a thumbs up. Will have to collect my thoughts on the topic and see.

I think it's OK to include climates where the plant can grow wild, even if that's not where it originated.

The only problem with this is that it's feasible for many plants to grow in temperate biomes. It could dilute the regional variation considerably (something I think Toady is trying to avoid given the biomes he gave watermelons for example). Some leeway could be given safely and has to be in some cases as the wild plant isn't known and modern distribution seems to be entirely human lead.

I've been thinking about the fictional above-ground plants - particularly those which aren't connected to any particular biome. I'm trying to decide on the place of the fictional plants in the context of the corrected real-life plants; particularly, the fact that they're available year-round sort of undermines the added realism of temperate climates lacking wild food during the winter. I'm going to put up a new poll for how y'all think we should deal with this.

From what I gather Toady currently plants to remove the fictional plants and procedurally generate new ones per world. I voted for restricting their seasons for now.

[Button]

The only problem with this is that it's feasible for many plants to grow in temperate biomes. It could dilute the regional variation considerably (something I think Toady is trying to avoid given the biomes he gave watermelons for example). Some leeway could be given safely and has to be in some cases as the wild plant isn't known and modern distribution seems to be entirely human lead.

Yeah, "temperate" covers way too broad a spectrum of climates, and should probably be used as sparingly as we can. I was thinking more about something like blood amaranth, which got its start in humid Central America but then traded north & became an extremely important crop to the Hopi, and happily grows wild in the desert to this day. Depending on what else is available in deserts, it might or might not be a good idea to make them available. Cassava is another good example.


By the way, does anyone know off the top of their head if it's actually possible for trees or shrubs to grow on mountains, if modded to do so? Cedar trees apparently only grow on mountains irl, which could be a problem if trees can't even spawn on mountains.

[Baffler]

I'm pretty sure they're always barren like they are now. Grass doesn't even grow back after it gets eaten by grazers or something on a lot of mountain biomes.

[LMeire]

Finally something to fix my various woes with vanilla farming! It was easily my favorite part of the release but all the broken/missing features felt like a tease.

If you're taking suggestions for the missing/incomplete features, a good use for papyrus might be paper-crafts. There's admittedly no evidence that the Egyptian plant was ever used for anything but writing, but the Chinese had been using rice-based paper for art for about as long as they'd had it. In terms of DF, you could probably get away with calling it a "cloth" made at the screwpress.

[Button]

Finally something to fix my various woes with vanilla farming! It was easily my favorite part of the release but all the broken/missing features felt like a tease.

If you're taking suggestions for the missing/incomplete features, a good use for papyrus might be paper-crafts. There's admittedly no evidence that the Egyptian plant was ever used for anything but writing, but the Chinese had been using rice-based paper for art for about as long as they'd had it. In terms of DF, you could probably get away with calling it a "cloth" made at the screwpress.

I haven't gotten to papyrus in my Giant Table of So Many Plants yet - I just finished the H's today. But, it's my understanding that papyrus isn't so much like paper as it is like basket material - that the papyrus was the writing surface, but for flexibility/hanging-together it was backed with actual cloth. So I'm not sure it would be appropriate for actual paper-making.

That does make me wonder about maybe introducing a couple different kinds of baskets, which could function as bags and large pots, and be made out of a custom material I'd give to woody plants and a few kinds of wood. It does seem odd not having any applications for papyrus or bamboo when they're such useful plants IRL.


It looks like almost no one wants the fictional plants completely removed, but there's about 2/3 support for restricting them to fewer biomes. Everyone wants to keep the good/evil/savage plants, as well as valley herb and kobold bulb; it's the boring food, drink & textile plants that are under consideration for restriction.

I'm just writing this down so I can put up a new poll .


Like I said, I just finished up the H section of my plant info table, which happens to include Hemp. That got me thinking about plant-based syndromes. I've put up another poll to collect your thoughts on this.

Something that's unfortunate about the reaction system is that, as far as I can tell, there's no way to change the outcomes of reactions based on the skill of the dwarf performing them. A legendary miller would be just as likely to screw up detoxifying cassava root as a dabbler, and when a toxin causes permanent motor nerve damage as cassava's does, it might not be fun to have that hanging over your head. On the other hand, though, it could take a lot of applications to stack up to the point of damage, so it wouldn't necessarily be a big problem unless cassava was a staple of the fortress's diet, or a vital dwarf happened to have a preference for the taste of the stuff. And that could be a kind of Fun in its own right.

As for US legality, I don't have a problem with dwarves using things that are illegal - it's not like it's illegal in the game world! - but I do feel a little uneasy about the idea. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with modding in illegal substances, since AFAIK Toady has never included them in the game. But then, it could be Fun to watch a warrior run into battle stoned off his gourd on Hemp Bud Biscuits. So idk.

[Vattic]

Fair enough. I'll go through all the plants I've already done and expand the biomes where appropriate. I planned to do this sooner, but time has been limited.

As for US legality, I don't have a problem with dwarves using things that are illegal - it's not like it's illegal in the game world! - but I do feel a little uneasy about the idea. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with modding in illegal substances, since AFAIK Toady has never included them in the game. But then, it could be Fun to watch a warrior run into battle stoned off his gourd on Hemp Bud Biscuits. So idk.

I'm not sure he's said much either. I did a cursory search of the DFTalk transcripts and the forum and the closest I could find:

Toady: Yeah we can add more poison effects. I'm sure people will look forward to having positive and negative effects in syndromes added.
Capntastic: Can you not even just mix them? So like 'yeah you broke out in hives but you can run really fast'.
Toady: 'You see visions ...' It'd be interesting to improve on the whole ... I don't know if it was originally Nethack or one of the other games that had that whole hallucinatory effect when you eat certain things, it changed your entire screen into gobbledegook and you'd use the look command and they'd all be nonsense. It would be interesting to take that mechanism half way and just create more persistent but fake illusions, so there could be a person that you're talking to who isn't there, who then just turns into a snake and slithers away, and you're like 'what's going on here?' and it would all be fake, because you're just kind of stoned. But when we get magic in the game, artifacts or whatever, I don't know, it's one of those things where you want to do it sooner rather than later but later is the default setting right now for that. But it any case when things like that can actually happen to you then you wouldn't know. And it would be good to be confused, it would be good to have a game when you're confused about reality, because then that makes magic seem more real. Eating the mushrooms, we could start that. I remember when we were kids Zach and I had a D&D adventure where he had a thing all planned out, just some standard thing with some goblins or whatever - I'm not really sure though because we never got to see the actual plan he had made - because in the beginning of the thing where I was out in the woods in something, I just decided to eat a mushroom, and he took advantage of that, and just made the game get more and more strange as we went along, and totally tossed his script and was just messing with me the whole time and didn't tell me why until the end. So hopefully we can do the same thing. Make it all come apart at the seams, but not in a completely random way but just sometimes you're seeing things or understanding them in a different way, and hopefully you'll have a parchment so that you can write down your experiences and become famous.

So we'll likely see some things cause drug like effects (hopefully even forgotten beasts), but beyond booze and some kind of pipe smoking (from the old dev pages) who knows. Would like to see period appropriate ones added as they have been a reasonably important part of our history. Would add flavour at least.

[Button]

Fair enough. I'll go through all the plants I've already done and expand the biomes where appropriate. I planned to do this sooner, but time has been limited.

If you start to get frustrated/demoralized for having to redo your old work, you can mark the entries that need biome updates with an asterisk or something and I'll get to them eventually.

[drgnlord]

Made a minor update today. Multi-grain brewing wasn't working out, as the dwarves would mix seeds from different plant types in the same reaction. So, I reduced the brew grain reaction to only require 1 seed and produce 5 alcohol, and reduced the output of threshing accordingly.

I was wondering about this but would it make brews with blended seeds that act as if each ingredient is present or just whichever the first was? Cause in real brewing you use multiple grains all the time, and fruit and honey; can really add anything you want to a degree.

[Button]

Made a minor update today. Multi-grain brewing wasn't working out, as the dwarves would mix seeds from different plant types in the same reaction. So, I reduced the brew grain reaction to only require 1 seed and produce 5 alcohol, and reduced the output of threshing accordingly.

I was wondering about this but would it make brews with blended seeds that act as if each ingredient is present or just whichever the first was? Cause in real brewing you use multiple grains all the time, and fruit and honey; can really add anything you want to a degree.

Unfortunately the current reaction framework doesn't support that. I'd have to make separate reactions for each possible combination.

However, one of my mod ideas - which is not so much on a back burner as still in the refrigerator - is a hard brewing mod, which would include drinks made of multiple ingredients. Realistically, though, I'm not going to get to that during 2015.