Slow plant growth, revisiting harvest periods and year length.

[elustran 23]

First off, this is a bit of a continuation from a suggestion thread I posted a couple days ago. After talking with Crysyn, I've decided to post here.

Basically, seed growth, and similarly, the year length is far too long for the game to be playable in SSP. It's not reasonable to have to play for dozens of hours to get to a point where you can even harvest. It might be playable in SMP, but SMP is almost like an entirely different game because time passes whether you're at the computer or not. There needs to be a better balance between realism and playability, just like there mostly is with other aspects of the mod.

A couple days ago I did a test where I set the day length to 1/100 normal (causing the sky to spin at a vertigo-inducing speed) in order to pass time quickly and just left the game on in the background for a few months, partially to let time pass out of winter so growth could occur, and partially to see if growth was tied to play time or passage of in-game days. Only one plant - rice I think - had gotten close to harvestable. To test if plant growth was tied to day passage and time of year, I also tested a few days at normal time to see if growth occurred (I think in April). It did not.

So, for a typical plant with a realistic 90-day growth cycle, we would have to wait between 15 and 30 hours (depending on how much sleep happened) for a single harvest. That's just too long to be fun or perform any appreciable level of experimentation with crops. If one played only a couple of hours a week, it would take a year of real time for a year of game time to pass.

I personally think the best solution for this would be to introduce a setting in the config file to allow for a change in year length, but if that would be hard to balance for, the year length could be changed in the mod in general to say, 40 days, giving plants a 10 in-game day growth cycle. Harvest periods could also be made separate from time of year, but that reduces realism and the time of year *is* already a bit long anyway.

However, rather than treat that as a specific suggestion, I think this is an issue that simply needs to be opened up to further discussion.

[sdbaynham 57]

I think a cool solution would be to make it so that game ticks are advanced when loading up a save. That way you don't have to be running the game for seasons to pass.

[Chezzik 22]

I think a cool solution would be to make it so that game ticks are advanced when loading up a save. That way you don't have to be running the game for seasons to pass.

Essentially you are saying that the game ticks should sync with the system clock when the world is loaded.

There's got to be a mod out there that does that. A quick google search finds an a discussion about making such a mod.

[Ulfengaard 44]

I think Crysyn locked the most recent thread on this matter. However, if it is open to discussion, I would like to again voice my support for a solution to the SSP timescale problem. I think that both options are viable, though I prefer the config option. It would be frustrating to load up a save and realize that I've missed the harvest season simply because I didn't come back to the game fast enough. The config places the power in the hands of the player, and I think that's a more universal method of resolving the problem.

[uoheinrich 10]

Well why not have a 36-day (minecraft days) year each "day" represents ten days as having passed by. This could make it easier for SSP and still not make it to imbalanced in SMP. Just suggesting because I thought this mod was more about believe-ability than realism. So, this way you can have about 3 days per month and for some crops instead of 90 days we're looking at more like 9-12 day periods. Seems to me like it still doesn't break the game and that way you don't have a super long winter. (which can be bad in my experience, just saying especially for new players who start on a server in winter.... you're pretty much doomed)

[elustran 23]

I think Crysyn locked the most recent thread on this matter.

Yeah, that's why I talked to him before opening a new thread on the subject. I think there was some confusion about the topic, and to top it off someone had responded to my comment in a new thread.

So, I'm not the only one having this problem? My goal is to play this in LAN a little bit, rather than maintain a server, so the agricultural growth issue is rather important.

To be sure, I don't want to seem ungrateful - I really appreciate the direction this mod takes, and I'm thankful for the efforts of Bioxx et al, but the mod just isn't in a very playable condition at the moment, at least if farming is important to you.

[Canadiangamer 0]

I would be for this or some other solution to the plant growth time in the current version of TFC.

I know I might be a minority on this but my work takes me away from reliable internet connections and playing this mod (which I much prefer over vanilla minecraft) on a SMP server is entirely out of the question. I love the direction as you mentioned elustran that the mod is taking but I think something need to be tweaked to make the plant growth rate atleast on the SSP front more reasonable, which as it stands takes a ridiculously almost non stop play amount of time to even make agriculture worthwhile.