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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

[Dirst]

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.

You can allow fairly generic ingredients in your reaction and use a reaction-trigger from DFHack to arbitrate what actually gets produced.  Not sure about DFHacking fluids into containers, though.

[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.

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.

Cheers for the offer, but I've just finished. Took less time than I expected, but then I'd saved all my sources just in case.

One question arising from adding more biomes is how to deal with plants that will grow in other places, but only during completely different seasons. White millet for example wants a little rain, but mostly dry, and is usually planted in temperate climates in the spring; It can also be grown in the sub-tropics during winter or summer if dry enough.

Willows are also interesting. They don't have a specific species name listed except for the wood density (salix nigra). They appear by water features anywhere that supports trees. I suspect they represent willows more generally rather than a specific species as you do find willow varieties all over the world.

[Button]

Yeah, I was thinking about plants growing/fruiting in other seasons in other places the other day. It'd be pretty easy for trees - create a new tree, with all its materials referencing the materials from the original plant, and just configure its GROWTH_PRINTs differently. You'd have multiple seed entries for each in the stockpile & kitchen screens, but it shouldn't be a big deal.

The problem comes with planting. I'd essentially have to split plantables into multiple identical species, because there's no way to make a single kind of seed generate different plants depending on the environment. I guess there could be a reaction to convert the seeds of one plant into the seeds of another, so you could turn the winter peas you imported from the tropical elves into summer peas, plantable in your temperate zone. But you couldn't run that on repeat, because you'd end up just converting a single pea from summer to winter to summer to winter to summer to winter. Yeah, you could manage that with stockpile links, but that requires players to know which of their seeds can be converted to something plantable in their current biome.

Could set up a DFHack script to take care of it automatically, I guess.

[Dirst]

Yeah, I was thinking about plants growing/fruiting in other seasons in other places the other day. It'd be pretty easy for trees - create a new tree, with all its materials referencing the materials from the original plant, and just configure its GROWTH_PRINTs differently. You'd have multiple seed entries for each in the stockpile & kitchen screens, but it shouldn't be a big deal.

The problem comes with planting. I'd essentially have to split plantables into multiple identical species, because there's no way to make a single kind of seed generate different plants depending on the environment. I guess there could be a reaction to convert the seeds of one plant into the seeds of another, so you could turn the winter peas you imported from the tropical elves into summer peas, plantable in your temperate zone. But you couldn't run that on repeat, because you'd end up just converting a single pea from summer to winter to summer to winter to summer to winter. Yeah, you could manage that with stockpile links, but that requires players to know which of their seeds can be converted to something plantable in their current biome.

Could set up a DFHack script to take care of it automatically, I guess.

DFHacking one kind of seed into another should be relatively straightforward... what could be complicated would be (1) dealing with multiple biomes in an embark and (2) informing the player that the subtropical autumn/winter peas for sale in the caravan can be used as temperate summer peas.  It'd probably show up in available reactions, but that interface is a bit dense and out-of-the-way.  If you intend to use the extended item viewscreen, the information could be put there.  Or you can convert the caravan's seeds when they enter the map, and let them weep about how useless their unsold seeds are when they leave.

[Thuellai]

As regarding the quirk that disables the import of certain materials - have you considered giving entities the new reactions you created?  That should allow them to produce those things again, so that they can then bring them to your fortress.

[Button]

As regarding the quirk that disables the import of certain materials - have you considered giving entities the new reactions you created?  That should allow them to produce those things again, so that they can then bring them to your fortress.

...

Excuse me, I think I need to find a bigger hand with which to facepalm myself.

I can't believe I missed that. And for so long.

[Button]

The growth seasons update research stage is nearing completion! There are only 25 plants to go - half of R, half of S, a couple Ts, and lonely Z Zoysia. (Cotton and the letter M aren't in the table yet, but are written down elsewhere - I just need to import them.) If you want to contribute to the research effort, it's your last chance!

I've also started doing some play testing of new concepts, and wanted to share my findings.

• Grasses and growths on grasses won't be picked in fort mode. Most grasses' usable growths will therefore be adventure mode only, though for particularly important grasses (cloudberry, knotgrass, cattail) I'm considering making two versions - a shrub and a grass - so that we aren't deprived of all their uses.
• Trees and shrubs which are mountain-only do grow, but only sparingly. You find them around the edge of the biome.
• Shrubs for which a mountain biome is allowed will grow properly in farms on top of a mountain.
• No data on whether saplings & shrubs will eventually start popping up on the mountains, but I doubt it.
• The embark screen shows each mountain's theoretical vegetation level rather than its actual vegetation level - for example, claims of mountains with thick vegetation are common. This makes the site finder's vegetation controls unreliable.

I still need to test bark & decortication before I get started in earnest on implementing all this crap .

[Kazymir]

I can't wait for the next release.

[Button]

I can't wait for the next release.

Aww, thanks At this rate I'm projecting sometime in August.


The results of the drug poll, for my future reference:

Drugs which are legal in the US and have temporary effects, like caffeine- 32 (22.4%) [actually 74.4%]
Drugs which are illegal in the US and have temporary effects, like marijuana- 31 (21.7%) [actually 72.1%]
Toxins which cause temporary effects when ingested in excessive amounts, like ginkgotoxin- 27 (18.9%) [actually 62.8%]
Toxins which cause permanent effects when ingested in excessive amounts, like cassava- 26 (18.2%) [actually 60.5%]
Toxins which affect the plant processor, like cashew shell oil- 24 (16.8%) [actually 55.8%]
None of the above - that's too far from vanilla!- 3 (2.1%) [actually 7.0%]
Total Members Voted: 43

I suspect some folks didn't realize they were allowed to vote for more than one option, as of the 40 people who want syndromes in their plants, only 32 included caffeine on their ballots, when I thought it would be pretty universally chosen. Though maybe ya'll just want their dwarves to suffer...

I've put up a new poll, related to what I'm working on now. As I add new plant products, it raises the question of what to do with those plant products. Some of them are straightforward - eat fruit, refine sorghum to sugar, mill alder bark to dye - some plants' real-life uses are in applications that are currently abstracted out in vanilla Dwarf Fortress.

Most obviously there's the use of powdered bark (tanbark) as a required element of tanning. On the one hand, it's a use for the bark of trees which don't have dyes made out of them, based on a real-life application of the plant product. Yay! On the other hand, it introduces a new complication to an industry which is, in vanilla DF, completely unrelated to plants and so arguably shouldn't be overhauled by a plants mod.

There are also new plant-based oils and waxes, which in vanilla are used for soap and crafts respectively. They're not valuable products on their own, and there's no real incentive for a player to pursue them. But their most valuable real-life uses, as waterproofing/sealing agents for wooden items, would complicate the vital early-game brewing industry, particularly on embarks with aquifers. Do we add a use for oils and waxes, or keep the early game straightforward?

[Vattic]

Toady at least planned to make tanning more complicated, not that this means it should be. I guess the issue with a mod that expands plants realistically is that they are and always have been used in many industries currently untouched; Expanding the role of plants in this way would tempt me, perhaps foolishly, to expand the same industries more generally, but to what level of detail? I always pretended the dwarves secretly used their urine for tanning.

Weird, I read that article yesterday in preparation for the dye stuff I'm doing, since salt seems to be used in conjuction with alum sometimes when you use it as a mordant, and also when you use alum + salt to taw leather, which I'm thinking of throwing in as an alternative to using bark for tanning (once tree processing can produce bark).  I guess alum comes from heat-treating/washing alunite, though I read things about romans supposedly using volcanic vents at the mining site and so on...  perhaps the kiln is in order for dwarves.  Alum can also be used as a styptic to stop minor bleeding, though I doubt that'll be much use since it seems to be mainly for things like shaving cuts.<P>Of course, salt is more important as a preservative...  but that means making the food in your stockpile rot too?  I wonder if that's too harsh.<P>Also -- was wool-wax (wool-grease/lanolin) actually used for anything back in the day (as an emollient/ointment)?  I couldn't find anything that wasn't PR crap from cosmetic companies.  The reason I'm curious is because wool, as a common precursor to yarn, needs to be washed first (often with soap, which could be used for this) or the dye won't take to the material, and the wool-wax/lanolin/wtvr is a byproduct of that which is now used in cosmetics/ointments.<p>[ October 07, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]

(Found when looking to see if anyone else had posted about adding more realistic dyes, mordant being the key word.)

Would forcing the player to use waterproofed wooden items cause issues with any bought at embark or from traders?

[scamtank]

I'd bet. We've never seen even a single porcelain object on embark screens or on a caravan's back, so we can only assume that whatever glazable they would stock will never have that either.

[Button]

Yeah, I thought about mordants, but decided that that's a little more than I want to do right now. I have visions of replacing the dyer's shop with separate little 1-tile workshops made with cauldrons; but the fact is that requiring mordants would be adding new uses to metals & salts, not to plants.

I'd bet. We've never seen even a single porcelain object on embark screens or on a caravan's back, so we can only assume that whatever glazable they would stock will never have that either.

I suspect, but have not tested, that the absorption of the material is only checked at the time of the reaction, and so traders' barrels would be unaffected until you tried to reuse them.

[Button]

I've adjusted the poll to add oiled leather. Re-voting should be allowed; let me know if you can't.

[Button]

I'm re-adjusting the poll to remove oiling leather. When I started researching it I learned that the grand majority of plant-based oils are inappropriate for leather, so it's not really relevant to this mod.

[Dirst]

I'm re-adjusting the poll to remove oiling leather. When I started researching it I learned that the grand majority of plant-based oils are inappropriate for leather, so it's not really relevant to this mod.

I like how I can vote for "Require wooden pots & barrels to be treated with a sealant before holding liquids", "Require tanbark to make leather", and "None of the above"

By the way I don't think wooden barrels use a glaze-like sealant; my understanding is that they are carefully shaped then treated with fire to create a resin/sealant from the wood itself.  If a separate glaze was used, then no one would care that such-and-such wine was aged in a barrel made from hundred-year-old oaks.  Of course, radish wine could be aged in anything and still be awful.