Growing plants ....

metouto

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Is growing plants a coding thing ..... blender thing or can we do it with blocks .... or does it take all those :whistle:

The reason I ask this is that I would to make a block of surge cane or some other thing that can be grown :unsure:

maybe we are not even to that part yet in development ??? :coffee:
 

Cervator

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I think growing block-based plants is very close, somebody could throw a module together fairly easily to back a basic growth system. We have an existing block-based example: cotton. There are 6 different sizes of those plants and you could have a System that triggers every 10 minutes or so to look for existing cotton plants in the world and "upgrade" them to the next size up block :)

If you want to make some fancy plants that have multiple stages of growth in the form of several separate billboard blocks - go for it! Cotton makes a good example
 

Cervator

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Look under Terasology\src\main\resources\assets\blocks\flora :)

And blockTiles, of course. Six cotton plants in differing life stages. We could make other plants like that too.

Current limitation is a single block per plant. I think we could support billboard plants multiple blocks tall but it would take just a bit of code to do that properly, like how right now if you break a block under a plant the plant also goes poof, we'd need to add code so if a 2 block tall billboard plant has its bottom chopped you'd have the whole thing pop.
 

metouto

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Look under Terasology\src\main\resources\assets\blocks\flora :)

And blockTiles, of course. Six cotton plants in differing life stages. We could make other plants like that too.
There must be a lot of thing hidden in intellj that I never took the time to look at :speechless: thanks for the directions Cervator :thumbsup: I will do my plant life stages to match cotton.


One more question do you want to stay in the "6" different life stages ???:coffee:
 

Cervator

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Not really. 6 was just the number picked by eleazzaar when he made the cotton plant. No special magic favoring 6, can be more or less :)
 

metouto

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I guess I also need to ask this question ... if I do this will I be stepping on eleazzaar's toes :) I don't want to make anyone mad at me and he did start this with cotton :cautious:
 

Cervator

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Of course not. Everybody is welcome to make more plants :)
 

metouto

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Good and thank you;)

I went on Google and found 2 main divisions of crops (1) Major crops (2) Wild relatives :cool:
I will turn my focus on these 2 divisions and see what I can come up with :coffee:
 

metouto

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Here are my offerings for the cycle of corn ...

Corn1.pngCorn1

Corn2.pngCorn2

Corn3.pngCorn3


Corn3.pngCorn4


Corn5.pngCorn5


Corn6.pngCorn6


Corn7.pngCorn7

I have not put them into intellj to see that they look like but the blocks look good to me :whistle: but I just might be a bit partial :love: so that is why I give them to your eyes to scan;) .... give me the good/bad/and ugly about what you think because I have many more to make :coffee:
 

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metouto

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Here are my offerings for the cycle of SugarCane ...:coffee:

SugarCane1.pngSugarCane1

SugarCane2.pngSugarCane2

SugarCane3.png SugarCane3

SugarCane4.pngSugarCane4

SugarCane5.pngSugarCane5

SugarCane6.pngSugarCane6
 

Cervator

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Both of those sets look awesome, at least in their flat shape here :)

Fully mature sugar cane loses all leaves/flowers and is just a striped stick like bamboo? I wonder if we might need to take a little artistic liberty there as a straight green line (with a few stripes) might not look right in-game. Hard to say without actually checking it out as a block tho! Maybe just one or two tiny leaves somewhere akin to reeds in MC?

Those might stick out less as there are several reeds, but they also only grow up rather than change maturity - but I like the maturity phases you put together for a single plant better anyway :)
 

metouto

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If I remember correctly they don't lose all there leaves o_O ... the harvesters cut them off while cutting the cane.

I was thinking that that last one could be a harvested sugar cane .... bit now that I think about it again .... you may not want it done like that ... instead you would have a lot of the canes in a group but laying down on the ground :whistle:

But if you only have a problem with the last sugar cane let me do this .... I will put them into intellj this weekend and post a picture here and then we can have a better look at how they will be in the game. Then we can make any adjustments to the sets. :coffee:
 

Cervator

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Excellent - and okay, that makes more sense now!
 

metouto

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something is not right ....:(

130105004953084.png


there are three plants the first 2 are Corn1 & Corn2 and the last one is eleazzaar's cotton1 . As you can tell my plants are on the faces of the block but eleazzaar's plant is the block :cry: The one question now it did eleazzaar make his cotton plant with bender ???


But I thought that I had made a flower or two and they came out alright:barefoot:

I guess I need to think this over a little more :cautious:
 

Cervator

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It looks like your plant isn't defined as a plant - that's all. Look at the cotton JSON file and be sure you've got your new JSON file looking the same. What turns it into a billboard plant rather than a normal block is this little bit:

"basedOn" : "engine:plant"

Going to bed now but we can look at it more tomorrow if you haven't spotted it by then :)
 

metouto

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What turns it into a billboard plant rather than a normal block is this little bit: "basedOn" : "engine:plant"....
No wonder most people here are ;) YOUNGER;) than me ... you have to start young to put ALL those things you have to REMEMBER into your brains :notworthy: .... anyway you were right Cervator it was the "basedOn" : "engine:plant" that I had missed :speechless:


Well, after changing everything again it all works fine if you like what it came out to be ...

130105204408487.png corn plant cycle




130105205125333.png Sugar Cane plant cycle



The out come is way different than I thought it would be and I am not sure I like it at all:barefoot: and if you compare my sugar cane to mc's mine end up being sick looking (IMHO).

Does MC do theirs in bendler ??? Well, I set look at my creations and await your comments :coffee:
 

Cervator

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I like them :D

MC plants are simpler (not at all using Blender) and end up spanning multiple blocks tall, which gives more space for detail without looking "cramped". We hit some of those challenges earlier when looking at the highly detailed plants from the generator woodspeople made, which are hard to fit into the world using single 16x16 textures.

In theory you could make an actual plant model in Blender and then cram more fine details in it, but that's a whole other story

If you want to reduce the "sick" look to the plants you might want to try reducing the shades of green and yellow you use. Fewer simpler pixels may look healthier.

Edit: Oh, also, consider the bigger picture. How does an entire field of mature corn look like from a distance? I imagine that would look like a golden sea of deliciousness :D
 

metouto

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Thanks Cervator :) I will try the "field of mature corn" idea

BTW sorry I left you hanging in chat last night ... the power went off here and returned to late to get back on to chat :whistle:
 

Skaldarnar

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The corn looks alright as it is. :)
The sugar canes are kind of blury, don't know why.... but I think we need multi-block plants for those... like used for cactus/cacti/cactuses (whatever, chose one :D) As the sugar canes can become up to 6 meters, we may want to use 3 - 5 blocks for it? Then these leafs on top can be just one single block....
 
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