agriculture: possible adjustments & suggestions to consider.

[deus_hominem 12]

well then to start off i apologize in advance for the way i type things up, also for the way i structure my words, sentences, paragraphs, and mannerisms.

now then i have a habit or rather obsession with sub-aquatic and/or subterranean building. and i do not mean in the fashion of incessantly building mines, mine-shafts, or living quarters. instead i love to build monstrous or try to build giant underwater or underground structures, or complexes with a multitude of self sustaining facilities. one of them, as you have surmised already, being that of farming in this particular play style. normally in vanilla, or nearly any other game re-defining mod this is usually no issue at all. hell it's down right easy and some times required for attractive mass quantity gathering of a resource such as wheat. this however is not my aim really.

now i've noticed that with the current system it seems that plant life such as tomatoes always check for three things. nutrition, amount of moisture, proper light level, and an open block to the sky above. this last one in particular bothers me quite hellishly so. you see with the way i play, as well as a bit of others yet to join or already in TFC, seem to have a problem with. some of us do not like to have structures jetting up from the sea floor to obstruct what looks like a rather lovely view of the ocean above them. now honestly i've gotten over that little pet peeve and have replaced it with one that seems to be focused solely at agriculture in this mod.

for the longest time we could not understand why we could not farm underwater, we had light, we had nutrition, and of course water saturation. but still nothing would even try to plant, no temp. sprite, nothing. so on a hunch thinking of my triple smoke stack idea for each of my spaced out forges. i made a large hole in the ceiling of the mini farm, or necessity garden as i call it. and behold now plants will grow! so i tried to branch further and further out from the center of the air tube and found it had a devilishly limited range. this enrages me because i dont want to have a separate ground level farm.

now digressing from the text laid out image of my home colony i and others are forming in an unnamed server, for reasons personal. i present the "tweaks to the agriculture system as it sits as of build 72."

i think instead of searching for the fore mentioned conditions the plants seem to carry now, they should instead search for simply the minimum light leveling, height requirements, as well as just vacant static "air" about them. be it above them alone, or to the sides, though i think just above would be only necessary if one would want to plant a possible mass amount for a village of some form. now keeping in mind of how most plants work by the simple idea of their inhaling in what we exhale and they exhale what we inhale, roughly of course. that it seems like the really shouldnt need more than one or two vents per such and such block size around the crop. thus allowing the protrusions or mining necessary to be minimal. or instead of being connected to ground level they could have a duct system in effect through out the compound in a 1x1 minimum sized area. perfect for smart movers, or just the realist.

now with this seemingly simple adaptation to the already great agriculture system we have in TFC now, think this would be an awesome trade off. it would allow people similar to me to at least build something awesome, and from a role-play stand point, which i happen to adore, it would allow for a more tightly knit township. we already have a niche for prospectors, forge masters, miners, traders (suggestions about crafted commissary later after i research on possible older threads of such.), meal makers, etc, etc. it would give the farmer in this "atlantis" based idea a bit more to play with in the idea of "hey we can make a sort of real land mammal atmosphere generator, and have it make sense within the game!"

honestly...that's all i really have. other than how it is now i love the mod, nearly every single aspect of it. i just wish agriculture, or rather the focus of farmed goods have a little more focus paid towards it. i dont want it unbalanced, such as a mass production and autonomous farming system, but a field one could make looking up to the sky from the bottom of the ocean while players enjoy themselves in a garden, a farm, an atrium, or other such divine things as that. i hope this isnt too terribly dragged out, nor do i hope that this is an under thought idea. i know there wasnt a whole lot to it suggestion. but really i dont expect this more or less selfish sounding suggestion to be a game breaker. if i have to give up my notions of farming, i guess i'll have to just shut up and deal with what i would call a gaudy* above water farm. ( * meaning of course that i have not found a way that looks aesthetically pleasing to MY eye.)

please post here as you like, and be honest, but uhh.... kind too.... please?

[Biodigious 211]

Holy shit! A hard to read wall of text. Hard to read because of how you 'structure [your] words, sentences, paragraphs, and mannerisms.' Learn what capitalization is, it would make this a helluva lot easier.

So, photosynthesis, ever wondered what photo- meant in that word? The plants you want to change require it, and they aren't going to grow very well in torchlight. All you'll be able to grow are mushrooms and organisms that chemosynthesize around Bioxx's possible 'seismically active zones'.

Atlantis? That example doesn't support your suggestion. Atlantis was an above-ground city with above-ground farms.

[deus_hominem 12]

Holy shit! A hard to read wall of text. Hard to read because of how you 'structure [your] words, sentences, paragraphs, and mannerisms.' Learn what capitalization is, it would make this a helluva lot easier.

So, photosynthesis, ever wondered what photo- meant in that word? The plants you want to change require it, and they aren't going to grow very well in torchlight. All you'll be able to grow are mushrooms and organisms that chemosynthesize around Bioxx's possible 'seismically active zones'.

Atlantis? That example doesn't support your suggestion. Atlantis was an above-ground city with above-ground farms.

to the beginning of your statement, i had an intro made just for you, go re-read it and learn that i will not change my typing style for anyone. including someone that complains outright in the beginning of their post. at least i didnt leave it into a complete wall of text, but rather what i'm sure are pseudo paragraphs.

second, ever hear of green houses? they are covered from the sun, and where i'm growing the plants has a glass ceiling, so it is getting sunlight. so i'm sure the photosynthesis part isnt that big of a deal, especially if one could say that an alternative light could offer enough nutrition from it's light to support this. such as glowstone. if it were to become available.

lastly, it was also known as the city that sunk. an adaptation of this idea was once widely known from the disney movie atlantis. the city was effectively underwater, really underground, but that is a two stage set up there i suppose. as it rose above ground, then water. so really yes atlantis can be very, very relevant towards my end goal description.

[Hyena Grin 92]

Heh. Make redstone torches give off UV light and allow farming underground.

[deus_hominem 12]

Heh. Make redstone torches give off UV light and allow farming underground.

HAHA! holy crap that's bloody brilliant! now that is a damn fine suggestion! ^.^

[Just_Another_Guy_:) 1,066]

Due to the lighting engine restrictions in MC, i don't know if you can have two different kinds of light with different effects... ._.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Someone summarize this suggestion for me.

[Hyena Grin 92]

Due to the lighting engine restrictions in MC, i don't know if you can have two different kinds of light with different effects... ._.

It's not really an effect of the light, that was more just a context rationale. It would just make it so that any tilled soil tile would make two different checks: one for access to the sky (as it does now), and one for a redstone torch nearby. Maybe within six tiles. Could make for some nice little circular farm plots with a redstone torch on a post in the middle.

[redundantusage 330]

Dunk:

TLDR: Make underground or under-ocean farming possible either by removing the need for a line of sight to the sky, or make tubes that lead to the sky provide a wider range of growable area underground.

Personally, I still think an underground farming system of fungus and molds would be nice, but I'm also a dwarf at heart.

[deus_hominem 12]

Dunk:

TLDR: Make underground or under-ocean farming possible either by removing the need for a line of sight to the sky, or make tubes that lead to the sky provide a wider range of growable area underground.

Personally, I still think an underground farming system of fungus and molds would be nice, but I'm also a dwarf at heart.

if fungus got to be more and more diverse, and sustainable in nature towards our steve bodies. then i would completely agree with you dwarf brother.

but some times you need some grain for those famous draeven ales right? i know some grain and mixtures of corn spirits would be nice too. (completely off topic in a way i guess huh?) but there's a reason to also think of the relevance of other things than fungus.

[deus_hominem 12]

Due to the lighting engine restrictions in MC, i don't know if you can have two different kinds of light with different effects... ._.

It's not really an effect of the light, that was more just a context rationale. It would just make it so that any tilled soil tile would make two different checks: one for access to the sky (as it does now), and one for a redstone torch nearby. Maybe within six tiles. Could make for some nice little circular farm plots with a redstone torch on a post in the middle.

first quote: it's possible i've seen torches completely fend off mobs before in a mod, but i dunno if it was a light effect or something of an AOE aura type thing. but it's similar in basic idea towards what the second quote is offering up.

and bravo grin i love your idea a lot also!

[barkingnoise 19]

second, ever hear of green houses? they are covered from the sun, and where i'm growing the plants has a glass ceiling, so it is getting sunlight. so i'm sure the photosynthesis part isnt that big of a deal, especially if one could say that an alternative light could offer enough nutrition from it's light to support this. such as glowstone. if it were to become available.

Photosynthesis IS a big of a deal. With basically all of the plants in TFC there is no way to simply "skip" sunlight, apart from an alternative light source of course (something which I don't support in TFC personally).

However, I think a better idea would be to create a new range of plants and vegetables that doesn't require sunlight, like Dwarf Fortress has.

Make them up basically, or go for various fungi and molds (that can't ideally be grown in sunlight, forcing you to choose between the two ranges of 'crop')

[deus_hominem 12]

Photosynthesis IS a big of a deal. With basically all of the plants in TFC there is no way to simply "skip" sunlight, apart from an alternative light source of course (something which I don't support in TFC personally).

However, I think a better idea would be to create a new range of plants and vegetables that doesn't require sunlight, like Dwarf Fortress has.

Make them up basically, or go for various fungi and molds (that can't ideally be grown in sunlight, forcing you to choose between the two ranges of 'crop')

you didnt uhh really read that did you? i wasnt disregarding photosynthesis, but saying that the non-direct link to the sun wouldnt make the synthesis not work correctly. =.= and if you get to read some of this forum's posts. then you can see amazing ideas which i have agreed to are indeed here.

next, that would be nice, but personally i would rather have a wider variety of trees to grow, or even the ability to make an underwater atrium, but because of the system as it is now then i cant do that very well now can i? i feel this is a system issue, that needs to be further looked at, instead of being shunned away and substituted for another possibly half-assed thought on system that would only add more useless code, when a perfectly good one already exists. plus it might only need some minor tweaking, it sounds like the checks are simple enough to adjust, rather than trying to introduce a completely new system into the code from nothing.

i digress, the idea of an entirely new vegetation for caves would be cool in all, but it seems useless at this current point. this is all my opinion.

[barkingnoise 19]

I'm sorry if I misunderstood what you said about sunlight. I didn't really understand what you were suggesting when you mentioned greenhouses, since those plants do receive sunlight.

Does plants and trees in TFC not work if there is glass between the plant and the sun? If they don't, then that is the source of my misunderstanding, as I assumed that they do.

[deus_hominem 12]

I'm sorry if I misunderstood what you said about sunlight. I didn't really understand what you were suggesting when you mentioned greenhouses, since those plants do receive sunlight.

Does plants and trees in TFC not work if there is glass between the plant and the sun? If they don't, then that is the source of my misunderstanding, as I assumed that they do.

is all good dood, not really angry. well not any more i guess. sorry for blowing up. and as far as i have tested i think it makes a check for direct line of sight for the sky. and i will do some more, in the case it's just like a beacon. the beam cannot traverse through water, but it may through any other glass block. so there is a chance i just need to make my "green house" sit just at water height to make it work. i'll get back to this later after i have tested this.

[dockwithme 76]

Pretty sure redstone is going away, so any underground light sources using this won't be applicable.

From what I know (and that's not much) all plants need sunlight to grow. There are a few parasitic plants that don't have chlorophyll, and therefore need to suck nutrients out of host plants. But for this you would need sunlight for the host plants to survive. So, eh.

I guess this would be the correct spot for fungi! This includes yeasts(beer!) and mushrooms. They don't require sunlight, rather decaying junk in the ground. It would be cool to see something like this be developed in the game. Though is it necessary? If the devs can implement this without having to add in too much code (make sure planted in dirt and simply look for low light levels) it would be great. But to have to overhaul the game more to add a small diversity of something they have already spent a lot of time overhauling seems misplaced when they have SO many more important things on their plates.

I hope it didn't seem like I bashed this idea too much at the end there, because I think added this would be super cool. I just wouldn't expect it (and would rather not see it) until much later down the line.

[deus_hominem 12]

Pretty sure redstone is going away, so any underground light sources using this won't be applicable.

From what I know (and that's not much) all plants need sunlight to grow. There are a few parasitic plants that don't have chlorophyll, and therefore need to suck nutrients out of host plants. But for this you would need sunlight for the host plants to survive. So, eh.

I guess this would be the correct spot for fungi! This includes yeasts(beer!) and mushrooms. They don't require sunlight, rather decaying junk in the ground. It would be cool to see something like this be developed in the game. Though is it necessary? If the devs can implement this without having to add in too much code (make sure planted in dirt and simply look for low light levels) it would be great. But to have to overhaul the game more to add a small diversity of something they have already spent a lot of time overhauling seems misplaced when they have SO many more important things on their plates.

I hope it didn't seem like I bashed this idea too much at the end there, because I think added this would be super cool. I just wouldn't expect it (and would rather not see it) until much later down the line.

why the hell would the kill an intricate part of minecraft? that seems ill-logical. i mean they added in "cinnabar" or how ever they spell it, just to make it work. really if they wanted to kill redstone why not just morph it into a wire form, rather than destroy it. to me it's stupid to kill off one facet of a game that is really loved by a lot of people.

i mean fungi is cool in all, but i personally dont see why it would be hard to modify a check for the plant growth, and allow for more beautiful things to be made. but i guess i'm just stuck on this. whatever, the least i can hope for is the ability to add plug-in mods to this mod. or adjustment bits to augment how the mod already mods minecraft. like bits and pieces similar to red power and all it's variants.

sorry if i seem stupid, but i guess it deosnt help that i almost always build down under the water and love to bring nature into that hostile form of living for the sake of pretty.

[transcengopher 349]

I'm late for the party, so will be going down-top in answers.

• It's not hard to modify plant growing conditions, it's just not believable that wheat can grow in torchlight, and we don't have chemical elements that are giving off required spectra and intensity in Minecraft. Say, we don't have the technology. Without proper light plant cannot sustain reactions that involved in building its body out of atmospheric CO₂, so means plant will develop (somewhat), but won't grow.

• Cinnabar is added as a place holder, so is cryolite. Both materials offer low to none signal conductivity, according to wikipedia and how our computer work. Eventually redstone might be replaced by different signal system developed by bioxx. But it might not be, we will need to wait.

• Redsone torch can't give off UV, as it is a high-energy component. And UV is bordered with violet, as you can clearly tell, whereas redstone giving off low energy red and infra-red lights. But most plants don't process UV, so this part is actually pretty pointless.

• Greenhouses built to provide warmth. Some plants need warmth, some plants don't. Cereals require wind to reproduce, so this types of plants won't be harvestable in greenhouse. Tomatoes and some others, on the other hand are self-fertilizing plants, but are very light- and humidity-sensitive (like light, like soil humidity, don't like air humidity), which lead back to the fact that technologically in TFC we don't have sufficient light sources other than Sun. As well as underwater greenhouse will require to be warmed in some respect, and fires aren't the best answer, so we haven't got the technology in yet another aspect. Humidity is left behind, obviously.

But I dig greenhouse idea if plants were to die in cold (which they seems to do) and encasing them in greenhouse might provide means to safely grow them in early spring and late autumn.

[dockwithme 76]

why the hell would the kill an intricate part of minecraft? that seems ill-logical. i mean they added in "cinnabar" or how ever they spell it, just to make it work. really if they wanted to kill redstone why not just morph it into a wire form, rather than destroy it. to me it's stupid to kill off one facet of a game that is really loved by a lot of people.

i mean fungi is cool in all, but i personally dont see why it would be hard to modify a check for the plant growth, and allow for more beautiful things to be made. but i guess i'm just stuck on this. whatever, the least i can hope for is the ability to add plug-in mods to this mod. or adjustment bits to augment how the mod already mods minecraft. like bits and pieces similar to red power and all it's variants.

sorry if i seem stupid, but i guess it deosnt help that i almost always build down under the water and love to bring nature into that hostile form of living for the sake of pretty.

I like the idea of having underwater plant life, and I'm sure it's something Dunk has thought about. If it's just to look pretty, I'm sure there will be updates for that area of marine life.

Since TFC is compatible with forge, I would hope to see some cool plugins/mods come through that can add to TFC specifically where it is lacking at the current time. Even if it is something put together to show a proof of concept for an idea that has been suggested, it would not only be cool but help to further development. I wouldn't want people to blatantly take ideas from this mod and use them for themselves, but I've even thought of diving in and trying out some small aspects of peoples suggestions to see if i can make them work.

Oh, and as for redstone, I remember Dunk saying something along the lines of 'Redstone is sh*t!' or something (he tends to talk that way!) and in place of it, develop some sort of water/steam powered mechanics that better suit the believability and time period of this mod.

I'm also not sure if you can grow plants underneath of glass (i.e. greenhouse) and if that's part of your suggestion that's a great idea too.

I'm late for the party, so will be going down-top in answers.

• It's not hard to modify plant growing conditions, it's just not believable that wheat can grow in torchlight, and we don't have chemical elements that are giving off required spectra and intensity in Minecraft. Say, we don't have the technology. Without proper light plant cannot sustain reactions that involved in building its body out of atmospheric CO₂, so means plant will develop (somewhat), but won't grow.

• Cinnabar is added as a place holder, so is cryolite. Both materials offer low to none signal conductivity, according to wikipedia and how our computer work. Eventually redstone might be replaced by different signal system developed by bioxx. But it might not be, we will need to wait.

• Redsone torch can't give off UV, as it is a high-energy component. And UV is bordered with violet, as you can clearly tell, whereas redstone giving off low energy red and infra-red lights. But most plants don't process UV, so this part is actually pretty pointless.

• Greenhouses built to provide warmth. Some plants need warmth, some plants don't. Cereals require wind to reproduce, so this types of plants won't be harvestable in greenhouse. Tomatoes and some others, on the other hand are self-fertilized plants, but are very light- and humidity-sensitive (like light, like soil humidity, don't like air humidity), which lead back to the fact that technologically in TFC we don't have sufficient light sources other than Sun. As well as underwater greenhouse will require to be warmed in some respect, and fires aren't the best answer, so we haven't got the technology in yet another aspect. Humidity is left behind, obliously.

But I dig greenhouse idea if plants were to die in cold (which they seems to do) and encasing them in greenhouse might provided means to safely grow them in early spring and late autumn.

I would think if we could grow anything underground it would have to be some sort of fungus being that they are the only things that can grow without sunlight. Introduce a temperature and humidity check to see if there are the right circumstances for them to grow. When you kill pigs/cows/chickens, you not only get the leather/meat, you also get a single item of 'remains.' If you grind it up you can use it as a sort of fertilizer for your underground fungus growth.

The only other way I can see growing plants underground is if light definitely passes through glass. Then you could make a long channel to the surface and cover it with glass so that your plants still receive sunlight. (That's how we do it in Dwarf Fortress!!)

[transcengopher 349]

Introduce a temperature and humidity check to see if there are the right circumstances for them to grow.

That is actually kind of bad from performance standpoint. I have posted some thoughts on temperature thread about the fact that in minecraft it is difficult code-wise to tell if the space is enclosed or not, and both temperature and humidity checks should work off of that in my dream world. Also, doors and whatnot.

Unless greenhouse is some sort of defined block built structure like bloomery, which is kind of the easiest to go by.

[dockwithme 76]

That is actually kind of bad from performance standpoint. I have posted some thoughts on temperature thread about the fact that in minecraft it is difficult code-wise to tell if the space is enclosed or not, and both temperature and humidity checks should work off of that in my dream world. Also, doors and whatnot.

Unless greenhouse is some sort of defined block built structure like bloomery, which is kind of the easiest to go by.

Yea telling if a space is enclosed or not would definitely be tricky. But if the bloomery block can detect if it is enclosed with blocks of the right type, maybe a greenhouse block (A special type of door?) could detect if it was enclosed in glass blocks...

But to check whether a block has the right humidity to grow fungus shouldn't be that difficult, right? What does TFC track? I know temperature. It tracks water saturation in the soil (for plant growth). So why can't we do a relatively simplified approximation of humidity levels? Maybe only certain climates can grow fungus. Give each climate a predefined pressure value. Make sure the area has low enough light. Make sure the soil has some sort of nutrients for fungal growth. IDK, someone do all this figuring out for me...

[transcengopher 349]

Water saturation isn't tracked though. It was at some point, and then bioxx decided it will do better with good old "has water block nearby" approach done in vanilla.

However, doesn't EVT somewhat perpesenting humidity in area? This can be it, somewhat intercoursed with rainfall value and the fact that minecraft knows when next rain will be, we can add yet another value that represents air humidity. When it rains, it becomes ==rainfall, higher EVT means it will go down slower, maybe taking into account overarching rule of e^-t-dependance, and even make it so air humidity will start to increase back at couple of days before the rain. Still doesn't help much with the greenhouses nor underwater farming.

Although I understand that part with air humidity==rainfall doesn't make a lot of sense, but I will need to think about it, and I don't really want to think right now.

[dockwithme 76]

However, doesn't EVT somewhat perpesenting humidity in area? This can be it, somewhat intercoursed with rainfall value and the fact that minecraft knows when next rain will be, we can add yet another value that represents air humidity. When it rains, it becomes ==rainfall, higher EVT means it will go down slower, maybe taking into account overarching rule of e^-t-dependance, and even make it so air humidity will start to increase back at couple of days before the rain. Still doesn't help much with the greenhouses nor underwater farming.

Although I understand that part with air humidity==rainfall doesn't make a lot of sense, but I will need to think about it, and I don't really want to think right now.

Yea this is making me a confused dwarf.

[Hyena Grin 92]

• Redsone torch can't give off UV, as it is a high-energy component. And UV is bordered with violet, as you can clearly tell, whereas redstone giving off low energy red and infra-red lights. But most plants don't process UV, so this part is actually pretty pointless.

It was a very off the cuff suggestion. Though it's fascinating that you could say that plants don't use UV (which is true), and that redstone doesn't give off UV (which is reasonable), and then say that it's pointless. Since redstone is more likely to give off light in the infra-red spectrum (as you said), and weak visible light, which is what plants use. So in attempting to defeat the suggestion you actually confirmed the suggestion as perfectly plausible, then proceeded to dismiss it anyway. ;P

I still like the redstone torch idea.

If Bioxx doesn't can redstone as a resource, I think it'd make a good solution in lieu of very complex solutions to a mechanic that people seem to hardly use already. I think farming could use a lot of love before we start looking at complex mechanics like greenhouses. Redstone torches are a really, really simple solution and self-balancing. Farming is already very unrewarding in my experience, I can't see myself going through the trouble of large production scenarios just to grow some food in an unusual location.

S'just me though.

[dockwithme 76]

Yes, you don't HAVE to farm, but it makes the game feel more complete when you do.

I like farming how it is so far. I can set up some rows of soil in a lake, plant some crops, label them with signs (so I know what they are/what nutrient they are taking up), then go off and work on other projects. When I come back, I'll just replant the same crops in different rows that have the specified nutrient on high level. It's been relatively rewarding for me. Though I did feel quite overwhelmed farming, mining, building, and smithing all on my own...

Fungi (mushrooms really) I think is an interesting crop that adds an extra layer to farming for people who want exotic things. I don't think it introduces too much in terms of mechanics; we'll just use whatever data the game is already processing (temperature and climate variables) to figure out if fungi can sprout. But again, who knows.