Tree stumps

[jacob4408 8]

A common feature of many period woodcuts/drawings/paintings of new settlements are structures surrounded by acres of tree stumps. Settlers needed the nearby wood to build but left the time consuming and labor intensive stump removal until much later when survival was easier.

 

In my game, I emulate this by leaving the bottom blocks of trees when I chop them and either not replanting or replanting farther from home.  Would anyone else have interest in a difficult to chop/dig stump being left behind anytime you chop down a tree?

[Euphoric 48]

It would be cool if roots were added too. Making it harder or slower to dig under trees. 

[dutchraptor 20]

An important point to bring up is that a lot of the time, nice looking areas are sparse and you have to cut a few trees to cut a good place going. Would we want to remove that and make it harder to find the best spot?

 

I think it would be cool, and if the time is found it's a worthwhile addition.

[TheCocoaMan 6]

I've been thinking of this myself. Really cool

[kaldskryke 27]

Would stumps be a new block type, or just logs that happen to be adjacent to dirt. If the latter, how would the game differentiate between Log blocks that are stumps and the log blocks you place on dirt by hand?

[jacob4408 8]

There are several different ways this could be implemented but I suppose it would all hinge on which is the easiest to code...

 

• when a sapling grows, have the first log above ground be a new block more resistant to chopping.
• on sapling growth create first log block underground and any log surrounded by dirt is more resistant to chopping (dig it out first or chop away)
• when a tree is chopped down, first log above ground isn't affected until all those above it are gone (would require 2 choppings instead of 1 and 2nd would only get you 1 log)

I'm sure there are other ways but this is what I came up with off the top of my head.

 

@Kittychanley - can you move this to the Suggestion forum or do I need to manually create another post there?

Edited 11 Jun 2014 by Kittychanley
Moved to Suggestion Forum. :)

[AllenWL 186]

How about when you break the bottom block of a tree, it leaves behind a 'stump' basically a half-slab of a log that is much harder to remove.

It it could have 'roots' under the stump, we could make it so that to remove the 'stump' you need to dig down, remove the roots, then break the stump

[Aaronpie 4]

this sounds kind of cool, but this would still get in the way of building in general, and double the time it takes to clear and area, as well as add time to tree farming. I think that this would add to much time to tree farming/construction/ environment manipulation, as well as extra coding, with little to know point other than it being more realistic or cool.

[PhineasWynd 41]

this sounds kind of cool, but this would still get in the way of building in general, and double the time it takes to clear and area, as well as add time to tree farming. I think that this would add to much time to tree farming/construction/ environment manipulation, as well as extra coding, with little to know point other than it being more realistic or cool.

 

The point is to make it challenging. 'Survival' isn't fun when you make it easy. That said, It shouldn't be so difficult to clear a forest that it isn't worth doing. A balance needs to be met

[Forgelander 4]

I've been think of this idea myself for awhile, so this can be a nice add on.

[Omicron 62]

The point is to make it challenging. 'Survival' isn't fun when you make it easy. That said, It shouldn't be so difficult to clear a forest that it isn't worth doing. A balance needs to be met

 

Sorry, but I disagree - making an already tedious process more tedious does not make the game more difficult, it just makes it more tedious. There is zero difficulty involved in woodchopping. None. Nada.

 

Game systems in TFC that add difficulty are, for example, smithing and prospecting. Those require player skill, in that you need to react to the feedback the game gives you and make choices on how to proceed. Felling a tree, however, has no player skill component. In fact, if it wasn't for the terrain, you could place something heavy on the W key and the right left mouse button, go AFK, and come back to a full inventory of wood (provided the axe didn't break yet).

 

Making the game force you to spend twice as long to remove a tree completely doesn't change that fact. It just makes players more likely to desire a bogus way for AFK farming like that because doing it actively becomes a disgusting chore. Especially since even now, farming wood and sticks is quite possibly already the thing that takes up the largest percentage of a typical player's ingame activity.

[PhineasWynd 41]

~snip~

 

Hm.. I think my opinion may have been changed. When you put it in terms of player skill, it is true that wood chopping does not require any. 

[Miner239 47]

Would stumps be a new block type, or just logs that happen to be adjacent to dirt. If the latter, how would the game differentiate between Log blocks that are stumps and the log blocks you place on dirt by hand?

Tree logs and placed logs are already different. That's why trees instantly drop the whole tree logs while your house doesn't.About stumps, you might want to split logs to planks on a woodsplitting block. The earliest block the player are able to get is the stump. Split logs to 0-2 planks by clicking on the center of the placed log with an axe. Provides player with a slow way to get planks early. The less centered the click is, the less the player gets. The log won't be a cubic log, it's a cylindrical(but still blocky) log. The center will not be at exact (8,8) of the texture, it depends on the model of the log and the position of it on the stump.It needs skill, no?

[jacob4408 8]

Sorry, but I disagree - making an already tedious process more tedious does not make the game more difficult, it just makes it more tedious. There is zero difficulty involved in woodchopping. None. Nada.

 

Game systems in TFC that add difficulty are, for example, smithing and prospecting. Those require player skill, in that you need to react to the feedback the game gives you and make choices on how to proceed. Felling a tree, however, has no player skill component. In fact, if it wasn't for the terrain, you could place something heavy on the W key and the right left mouse button, go AFK, and come back to a full inventory of wood (provided the axe didn't break yet).

 

Making the game force you to spend twice as long to remove a tree completely doesn't change that fact. It just makes players more likely to desire a bogus way for AFK farming like that because doing it actively becomes a disgusting chore. Especially since even now, farming wood and sticks is quite possibly already the thing that takes up the largest percentage of a typical player's ingame activity.

 

 

Harvesting crops doesn't take skill, planting seeds doesn't take skill, animal husbandry doesn't take skill, digging a charcoal pit doesn't take skill, a pit kiln doesn't take skill....the list of necessary activities in TFC that require no player skill is quite a long one so I don't know that is a valid argument against

 

And if a players wants a simple AFK way to farm resources then TFC probably isn't for them. Nothing would force you to remove stumps if you didn't want to.  You could follow the historical models of leaving them there or waiting until you had TNT and blast the stumps.

[AllenWL 186]

Or you could simply wait for better axes to remove the stumps faster.

And so far, I never had to make a home by removing trees until later in the game(but by then, I pretty much copped down all the trees anyways.), and there are still plenty of areas without trees you can build on, so I don't think having stumps would be that much of a problem

[Omicron 62]

Harvesting crops doesn't take skill, planting seeds doesn't take skill, animal husbandry doesn't take skill, digging a charcoal pit doesn't take skill, a pit kiln doesn't take skill....the list of necessary activities in TFC that require no player skill is quite a long one so I don't know that is a valid argument against

 

I wasn't making an argument against having a game system that is not skill based - and some of your examples could be argued anyway, considering the reliability with which "my charcoal pit won't work" threads keep popping up on the forums over time, for instance

 

I was making an argument against the argument that making you spend extra time to remove the tree stump would somehow make gathering wood more difficult, as several posts in this thread claim (and in fact cite as the reason we need to have this feature). This is clearly not the case. Woodchopping would still be a fully straightforward, pres butan receiv log affair even with the tree leaving a stump. All it adds to the game is a higher time requirement to clear building space.

 

A certain level of abstraction is necessary to make a game; it's part of the nature of the videogame medium. Compared to digging a cubic meter of dirt or stone with a shovel or pickaxe, for instance, woodchopping requires a ridiculous amount of time already even with the proper tool equipped. This is, as we all know, a balancing factor for needing to only chop a single block to bring down the entire tree, as opposed to having to chop every individual block. The act of chopping that single wood block is an abstraction of the concept of felling a tree. It can be seen as a stand-in for the entire process of splitting the trunk, watching it fall, clearing off all the branches, clearing off all the foliage of the branches, cutting the branches into usable pieces, cutting the main trunk into usable pieces, and clearing away the stump.

[Aaronpie 4]

The point is to make it challenging. 'Survival' isn't fun when you make it easy. That said, It shouldn't be so difficult to clear a forest that it isn't worth doing. A balance needs to be met

This does not add a challenge, powerful bears, monsters, and making recourses harder to get make things more challenging, this is just annoying.

 

Edit: I am a lover of challenge to

[Juan Vino 8]

I have to agree with Omicron. Even though this is realistic, it does not add a challenge, just makes building more annoying, and the landscape uglier. When you mentioned that there are plenty of things in TFC that don't require skill, they don't but the same way digging a charcoal pit doesn't require skill, will you make it harder, and more tedious than it is to fill that 125mt³ double cutting a tree doesn't seem  exactly profitable, or skill demanding.

[PhineasWynd 41]

This does not add a challenge, powerful bears, monsters, and making recourses harder to get make things more challenging, this is just annoying.

 

Edit: I am a lover of challenge to

 

You seem to have ignored my later post that said:

 

Hm.. I think my opinion may have been changed. When you put it in terms of player skill, it is true that wood chopping does not require any. 

 

If there was some human skill required to remove the log, like controlling a horse that is roped to the stump to pull it out of the ground, that would be good. But that requires adding the stump pulling mechanic, making horses more challenging to control, and maybe some other things.

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

Harvesting crops doesn't take skill, planting seeds doesn't take skill, animal husbandry doesn't take skill, digging a charcoal pit doesn't take skill, a pit kiln doesn't take skill....the list of necessary activities in TFC that require no player skill is quite a long one so I don't know that is a valid argument against

 

Well while that's true... it's also a bad thing. MORE things should require player skill. At least the profession-based ones

[Tsuarok 47]

Maybe just add root systems.

 

I know when I add custom trees via world painter I always add them with a fairly extensive root system.  While the stump left is flush with the ground, removing everything is something of a chore.