Like Stardew Valley, trees should drop a seed every now and then (around 2 or 3% of dropping a seed every [defined time period]), that, if on dirt (grass or podzol), sprouts into a tree. This way, it gets more realistic and forests are easier to recover. There will be, of course, a mechanism to stop the growing/spreading of seeds (the game would detect how many trees are in a radius from the seed planted - then, if there's enough space, it grows into a sapling that grows into a tree). The player would be able to pick up the seeds by breaking them.
EDIT: after reading the two first comments, the 'tree' counting should be as simple as a 'house' counting for villages: although a door and some blocks above it doesn't make a house, it counts as such. So, a tree should be simplified
By the way, someone is probably going to complain: "But some plants
don't even have seeds!" They have. Even if you can't see, they have.
I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
How does the game detect how many trees there are? A "tree" is nothing more than some blocks to the game; just as with seasons suggestions that suggest adding things like leaves falling off and regrowing they would have to be made into entities of some sort (something like a multiblock tile entity that record the positions of each leaf block). In this case I suppose that you could simply count the number of leaf/log blocks in the area but trees differ in the number that they have (a single giant jungle tree is equivalent to perhaps 10 small oak trees), and what about at the edge of a forest? They shouldn't keep spreading until the entire world is covered with trees, or spread into biomes that do not naturally have the type of tree, so the biome would also have to be checked.
I think this is too complicated and unnecessary; just as players need to breed animals if they want a sustainable supply of meat or other drops they should have to replant trees, which is not that hard at all; I always replant any trees that I cut down unless I'm clearing the area; and this is a good way to teach players about sustainability. While this is a bigger issue on multiplayer servers it is up to the server owner to enforce rules about leaving animals and trees behind so other players can have them.
Although TheMasterCaver has a point, I think one should judge a suggestion like if it was about to get added, not how hard it would be to add. There was one time in the past a few years ago were a suggestion I made was continually shot down by other people claiming it to be 'too complicated' and whatnot, but then was eventually added. For the life of me I cannot remember that suggestion that was, but still.
Anyway with the suggestion, I think it would be better if it just auto planted a sapling instead of a seed. A way it could work is that, like leaf blocks, natural log blocks would be tagged as such. (So if you break a log block then replace it, the placed log will not have the 'natural' tag) If a log block is broken and there is dirt under it, the block space will be marked for, say, one minute. Any time during this one minute if the marked space has a direct view of the sky, ignoring transparent blocks, a sapling will be planted, but only if there are less than a certain number of natural log blocks in the immediate area.
EDIT: TheMasterCaver doesn't have a point, I just managed to explain a plausible way to implement this suggestion.
Actually, TheMasterCaver does have a point, but this Section was made for people to post very primitive suggestions, not elaborated game mechanics, since many MCFORUMers aren't into the game *that* much.
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I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
this is a good way to teach players about sustainability.
Well, being Minecraft a game where trees grow instantly if placed a bone meal, where there isn't any crop fertilization and eventual death mechanic, where animals don't need to be fed, where water is infinite, I don't think we should use it to teach players about sustainability.
As for the biomes, the trees would spread up to a certain distance/block/whatever, so it wont invade other biomes. [Maybe, a center of the biome is set, and then trees would only be able to grow from a distance of this center] -> don't take the idea inside brackets as the final, because if it is too complicated it may be as well discarded.
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I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Actually, TheMasterCaver does have a point, but this Section was made for people to post very primitive suggestions, not elaborated game mechanics, since many MCFORUMers aren't into the game *that* much.
I apologize, but what? Are you saying that people shouldn't post in detail how a suggestion could be added? Because if so, that is completely ridiculous. Also "many MCFORUMers aren't into the game *that* much." , so people who make and criticize suggestions are hardly into the game?
Again I apologize as we are going a bit off topic, but you genuinely baffle me. You pretty much said to your own suggestion something like "too hard to code, suggestion is bad"
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bruh this game is like skyrim with guns but without guns
What I meant is that the first post is just a primitive idea; if it is accepted by the community (people saying support or something like that), it naturally gets more elaborated, cutting off complicated or bad parts.
many MCFORUMers aren't into the game *that* much. -> Few people know a lot about the game (read the code and understand problems, if something is possible or not, how is it going to be done, etc). So, a big part of the community doesn't have this knowledge (casual players, children, me included in the first) and cant say if something can be done. Those people will very often make good suggestions, but that cant be added because it's too complicated and they couldnt think about the difficulty to add it. We can say if it's cool or not, but we cant say if it's easy to do or not.
I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
I find the idea interesting, but not really all that necessary and sometimes even totally unwanted:
Say I want to clear out a large patch of forest biome to make a nice house surrounded by a natural garden with ample grass space. I should be able to do so without worrying about the forest growing back all by itself, all the way right up to the base of my house. Instead the forest should stay exactly at the limit I wanted.
Anyway, replanting tons of trees quite quickly is so easy.
IMHO, the real problem is half-cut trees by players that don't clean up after themselves, but for such damage we have server plugins like LogBlock. I wouldn't bother making vanilla gameplay itself try to address such problems, because the number of ways a "skipped the rules" noob can goof is not limited to damaging trees but is actually quite diversified. I'd rather we get real actual gameplay features instead.
So, interesting idea but "no support" because it would end up reducing player control over the look of the natural environment right around his builds.
I actualy like this, think of all the benifits, not the bad thins, is it really all that bad if a tree is in your garden? Just chop it down and make it so trees cant spread on flowers, and really, what if you have a beatuiful forest near your house, but you decide to turn your home into a mansion, so you chop down the whole forest, but leave 1 tree. After about a month, the forest is back! And you can repeat the procces again.
SUPPORT!
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"Move along people,nothing to see Here" Quote from a extremely suspicious person.
Thanks to all replies. After reading Ouatcheur's response, though, I think a gamerule should be added: /gamerule NaturalSpreadTrees on or off. Maybe a different type of soil instead. Maybe placing pieces of string under the leaves to simulate nets, so the seeds dont fall.
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I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
I actualy like this, think of all the benifits, not the bad thins, is it really all that bad if a tree is in your garden? Just chop it down and make it so trees cant spread on flowers, and really, what if you have a beatuiful forest near your house, but you decide to turn your home into a mansion, so you chop down the whole forest, but leave 1 tree. After about a month, the forest is back! And you can repeat the procces again.
SUPPORT!
What if I *wanted* to have only 1 tree there?
Your solution is more than annoying, as if players are going to like having to constantly have to cut down extraneous regrowing trees all the time. Think of this in the same range of annoying as "more annoying than creepers blowing up my builds", because with creeper at least by playing WELL we can avoid that "natural creeper grief" altogether.
Your other solution of putting flowers litterally everywhere is extremely restrictive on the types of stable forested-area builds that players would suddenly find themselves limited to. Maybe I want a large but very simple open pasture for my animals near my house, with some open grass space between the big pasture and my house? No "bricked floor", no "huge wall-to-fence flower bed", just a NORMAL build? Maybe I don't want to put some kind of super artificial "5 blocks wide carpet of flowers or something" on the ground all around my builds, just like MOST players would, n'est-ce-pas? Some prefer the looks of simple clean wooden fences with some open grassy space, after all. But nope, rogue trees would constantly "invade" such areas! What kind of madness is this, griefed by ... trees?
Your "maybe you cut down all the trees by mistake" excuse, ok, but so ... minor! Most forests are huge and are also quite common biomes, you can litterally travel just a little bit to get more saplings to start the replanting process, which is super EASY to do. Each tree giving SEVERAL saplings, so replanting is definitely not a problem for all of the common tree types. The world itself should not have to repair the damage of players that are purposefully playing badly.
I can't help but find this "regrowing trees approach" to look more and more like "Hey we're too lazy to even do the super easy stuff in the game, so the game should do it for us instead".
As for "realism".. If trees grow by themselves, are we going to have food in chests rot away, too, because that would be more "realistic" that way? No. Regrowing forests would be more rwalistic, yes, but worse gameplay, yes also. So in the same way, actual quality of gameplay should always trump "realism".
For most players, all your named "benefits" would turn out to be only so much vapor, TINY positive advantages in VERY specific circumstances that would only serve to compensate... for what? For pure laziness, is what. Sorry to say that, but collecting and planting tons of saplings IS easy. Meanwhile the bad stuff I noted would always be a solidly real major annoyance for most of the players that are choosing to be building near or in forest biomes.
While it could be VERY cool to watch forests "grow back naturally", in terms of actual gameplay this benefit pales in comparison with builds being limited/ruined by forests that grow back not in decades (like in real life) but over a single gaming session or two.
Think of the other players, not just yourself. I *did* think of the benefits AND the disadvantages. Turns out the balance is highly weighted on the "more problems than it's worth" side of the idea.
I edited the original post, that now says: "... every now and then (2 or 3% chance of dropping a seed every [defined period of time])". it probably makes the regrowth slower.
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I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Good idea? Maybe. But I don't think this is something I'd want. Trees are stupid easy to duplicate as is. For the record, you don't need to put 2 lines of text in a spoiler.
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The Unofficial Suggestion Guide - Everything you need to know to not make goofy mistakes in a suggestion! Honestly though, you should really go there.
The problem is the loss of player control. It doesn't matter how long it takes for a forest to spread. I pretty much ignore them unless I'm getting wood, so all of a sudden there's going to be trees in obnoxious places, and I do not enjoy cutting down trees. And what if I only want one or two trees somewhere?
I think you're on to something, maybe. But I don't think the current mechanics you're proposing are good in general.
I like the idea, I don't fancy having a tree show up on my grass roof.
Also, trees might become an "invasive species" and completely overrun biomes such as plains and savannas that aren't supposed to be densely populated due to trees "leaking" over the biome boundaries.
I Support, but only if there is a way to prevent the trees from growing out of control. Maybe a have a mechanic where a certain tree is only allowed to have a certain number of offspring, and the offspring can have even less offspring?
The problem is the loss of player control. It doesn't matter how long it takes for a forest to spread. I pretty much ignore them unless I'm getting wood, so all of a sudden there's going to be trees in obnoxious places, and I do not enjoy cutting down trees. And what if I only want one or two trees somewhere?
I think you're on to something, maybe. But I don't think the current mechanics you're proposing are good in general.
You really hit the nail on the head here. Said so much more succinctly than I did.
TLDR: Still unsupportive and I explain why, but at least I try to propose some kind solution.
Also, another negative point to consider: regrowing forests would make saplings, as items, way less important. Not completely obsolete, you'd need them to plant decorative trees in builds in specific locations, but suddenly you'd easily have way too many "next to useless" saplings, as tree farms wouldn't require replanting anymore.
Also, as long as nothing is done to "repair" half-cut trees, then this idea is next to half-useless. Obviously, regrowth should start only ONCE some wood cutting has been done. And the players that are willing to fully cut down their trees, are also the players that are willing to clean up after themselves, and thus are also the players that don't find replanting saplings to be any problem. And coding in for "tree cleanup/repair" is much more complex than merely "reforestation".
Even limiting this feature ONLY to forested biomes, any mechanic that cleans up and/or regrows forests, anywhere in forested biomes, would require one of two things:
#1- If the functionality appears from an event "originating" from the existing wood logs / trees, i.e. new trees spread from already existing trees, thus at an overal rare that depend on both number of already existing trees and the amount of free space locally around those trees, instead of just randomly popping out anywhere at a more of less constant "rate per free space" in the biome. In that case, you need a way to distinguish between naturally generated vs player placed trees. So, at minimum, 2 more block IDs would be used up for wood logs, out of a reserve or remaining block IDs of which we have so precious few left. Yes, the Anvil file format supports 4096 block IDs. But this is to support modding. The default in-game world generator and main engine data structures support only 256 block IDs.
This table shows that 235 block IDs are already all used up. This means we have only 26 remaining. That is a very precious "game code" resource, not to be spent on a whim. Increasing that limit would require a rehaul of the engine, and I remember reading somewhere that Mojang could but didn't go with it because it impacted performance too much. However they are working on removing the limit altogether so it's just a matter of time before that point becomes moot.
The 2 new block IDs would be for newly naturally generated wood logs supporting the regrowing functionality. The old block IDs wood logs would be for all player-placed logs and also for previously naturally generated logs. You can't have the opposite, otherwise previously player placed wood logs from their houses and builds would suddenly start generating new trees aka "builds that grief themselves".
Remember that the game doesn't actually "store" trees. there are no "tree" entities anywhere. Just separate individual blocks that are merely generated in the overall shape of a tree. If you added entitites to track each and every single tree, that would be adding thousands of entities. Because entities require orders of magnitude more processing than mere inert passive blocks in the 3D block matrix, you'd have mucho lag or even the server crashing anytime you're in a forested biome. Big no no.
#2- If the functionality appears "out of" the biome itself, say on a random update on a grass block, rolling a % to see if trying to place a new tree there, then we have ... lag. Random rolls on block updates are ok but not when done on super-common blocks like grass, then it becomes a very noticeable overhead. Again, are we willing to say drop from 50 FPS down to say 40 or less, just to support a minor feature?
- - -
IMHO the only good way to have this forest regrowing functionality is to go full circle the other way around:
- By default, things don't regrow. Like currently.
- But players can craft a special block that supports the functionality in a fixed-size square-shaped radius around it.
Imagine a "Druidic Totem Pole" or "Tree growth" block or whatever. It has say a storage slot, and you can put a stack of saplings it it. When redstone powered, and there is at least one sapling in it, then every random block update (thus on average every 70 seconds) the special block will try to grow a tree is say a 32 blocks square radius around it (using Y taken directly from surface ground elevation map already managed by game engine). On success, 1 sapling is spent from the internal slot.
This gives player control, while not also making saplings obsolete, nor using up precious block IDs, nor causing undue lag, nor annoying other players that don't want trees to become an invasive species around their build.
Still, even there, to me this would feel like giving forest farms too much automation, and would still use up 1 block ID on a very too-function-specific block.
For tree farm automation, a better approach that would avoid adding a too specific new block would probably be to simply allow Dispensers to try to plant a sapling right in front of them on a power-up redstone signal.
For replanting entire forests randomly, a quick "I bring a few stacks of saplings with me and play the reforesting druid" is more than sufficient right now.
OK. The problems we found here are that the idea in itself is good, but not practical. As RavbugAnimations and MrKukurykpl said, there must be a method to control the spread. Maybe, only naturally generated trees are able to spread? I think this would add too much code into the 'detecting' part (improve what I said because I have no idea on how the detecting part works). Maybe, a tree spreads, and its descendant spread way less frequently, and so on. I'm open to ideas; anyone who likes to share a way to stop the spreading, comment down here.
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I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Like Stardew Valley, trees should drop a seed every now and then (around 2 or 3% of dropping a seed every [defined time period]), that, if on dirt (grass or podzol), sprouts into a tree. This way, it gets more realistic and forests are easier to recover. There will be, of course, a mechanism to stop the growing/spreading of seeds (the game would detect how many trees are in a radius from the seed planted - then, if there's enough space, it grows into a sapling that grows into a tree). The player would be able to pick up the seeds by breaking them.
EDIT: after reading the two first comments, the 'tree' counting should be as simple as a 'house' counting for villages: although a door and some blocks above it doesn't make a house, it counts as such. So, a tree should be simplified
By the way, someone is probably going to complain: "But some plants
don't even have seeds!" They have. Even if you can't see, they have.
I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
How does the game detect how many trees there are? A "tree" is nothing more than some blocks to the game; just as with seasons suggestions that suggest adding things like leaves falling off and regrowing they would have to be made into entities of some sort (something like a multiblock tile entity that record the positions of each leaf block). In this case I suppose that you could simply count the number of leaf/log blocks in the area but trees differ in the number that they have (a single giant jungle tree is equivalent to perhaps 10 small oak trees), and what about at the edge of a forest? They shouldn't keep spreading until the entire world is covered with trees, or spread into biomes that do not naturally have the type of tree, so the biome would also have to be checked.
I think this is too complicated and unnecessary; just as players need to breed animals if they want a sustainable supply of meat or other drops they should have to replant trees, which is not that hard at all; I always replant any trees that I cut down unless I'm clearing the area; and this is a good way to teach players about sustainability. While this is a bigger issue on multiplayer servers it is up to the server owner to enforce rules about leaving animals and trees behind so other players can have them.
TheMasterCaver's First World - possibly the most caved-out world in Minecraft history - includes world download.
TheMasterCaver's World - my own version of Minecraft largely based on my views of how the game should have evolved since 1.6.4.
Why do I still play in 1.6.4?
Although TheMasterCaver has a point,I think one should judge a suggestion like if it was about to get added, not how hard it would be to add. There was one time in the past a few years ago were a suggestion I made was continually shot down by other people claiming it to be 'too complicated' and whatnot, but then was eventually added. For the life of me I cannot remember that suggestion that was, but still.Anyway with the suggestion, I think it would be better if it just auto planted a sapling instead of a seed. A way it could work is that, like leaf blocks, natural log blocks would be tagged as such. (So if you break a log block then replace it, the placed log will not have the 'natural' tag) If a log block is broken and there is dirt under it, the block space will be marked for, say, one minute. Any time during this one minute if the marked space has a direct view of the sky, ignoring transparent blocks, a sapling will be planted, but only if there are less than a certain number of natural log blocks in the immediate area.
EDIT: TheMasterCaver doesn't have a point, I just managed to explain a plausible way to implement this suggestion.
bruh this game is like skyrim with guns but without guns
Actually, TheMasterCaver does have a point, but this Section was made for people to post very primitive suggestions, not elaborated game mechanics, since many MCFORUMers aren't into the game *that* much.
I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
Well, being Minecraft a game where trees grow instantly if placed a bone meal, where there isn't any crop fertilization and eventual death mechanic, where animals don't need to be fed, where water is infinite, I don't think we should use it to teach players about sustainability.
As for the biomes, the trees would spread up to a certain distance/block/whatever, so it wont invade other biomes. [Maybe, a center of the biome is set, and then trees would only be able to grow from a distance of this center] -> don't take the idea inside brackets as the final, because if it is too complicated it may be as well discarded.
I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
I apologize, but what? Are you saying that people shouldn't post in detail how a suggestion could be added? Because if so, that is completely ridiculous. Also "many MCFORUMers aren't into the game *that* much." , so people who make and criticize suggestions are hardly into the game?
Again I apologize as we are going a bit off topic, but you genuinely baffle me. You pretty much said to your own suggestion something like "too hard to code, suggestion is bad"
bruh this game is like skyrim with guns but without guns
What I meant is that the first post is just a primitive idea; if it is accepted by the community (people saying support or something like that), it naturally gets more elaborated, cutting off complicated or bad parts.
many MCFORUMers aren't into the game *that* much. -> Few people know a lot about the game (read the code and understand problems, if something is possible or not, how is it going to be done, etc). So, a big part of the community doesn't have this knowledge (casual players, children, me included in the first) and cant say if something can be done. Those people will very often make good suggestions, but that cant be added because it's too complicated and they couldnt think about the difficulty to add it. We can say if it's cool or not, but we cant say if it's easy to do or not.
I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
I find the idea interesting, but not really all that necessary and sometimes even totally unwanted:
Say I want to clear out a large patch of forest biome to make a nice house surrounded by a natural garden with ample grass space. I should be able to do so without worrying about the forest growing back all by itself, all the way right up to the base of my house. Instead the forest should stay exactly at the limit I wanted.
Anyway, replanting tons of trees quite quickly is so easy.
IMHO, the real problem is half-cut trees by players that don't clean up after themselves, but for such damage we have server plugins like LogBlock. I wouldn't bother making vanilla gameplay itself try to address such problems, because the number of ways a "skipped the rules" noob can goof is not limited to damaging trees but is actually quite diversified. I'd rather we get real actual gameplay features instead.
So, interesting idea but "no support" because it would end up reducing player control over the look of the natural environment right around his builds.
I actualy like this, think of all the benifits, not the bad thins, is it really all that bad if a tree is in your garden? Just chop it down and make it so trees cant spread on flowers, and really, what if you have a beatuiful forest near your house, but you decide to turn your home into a mansion, so you chop down the whole forest, but leave 1 tree. After about a month, the forest is back! And you can repeat the procces again.
SUPPORT!
"Move along people,nothing to see Here" Quote from a extremely suspicious person.
Thanks to all replies. After reading Ouatcheur's response, though, I think a gamerule should be added: /gamerule NaturalSpreadTrees on or off. Maybe a different type of soil instead. Maybe placing pieces of string under the leaves to simulate nets, so the seeds dont fall.
I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
What if I *wanted* to have only 1 tree there?
Your solution is more than annoying, as if players are going to like having to constantly have to cut down extraneous regrowing trees all the time. Think of this in the same range of annoying as "more annoying than creepers blowing up my builds", because with creeper at least by playing WELL we can avoid that "natural creeper grief" altogether.
Your other solution of putting flowers litterally everywhere is extremely restrictive on the types of stable forested-area builds that players would suddenly find themselves limited to. Maybe I want a large but very simple open pasture for my animals near my house, with some open grass space between the big pasture and my house? No "bricked floor", no "huge wall-to-fence flower bed", just a NORMAL build? Maybe I don't want to put some kind of super artificial "5 blocks wide carpet of flowers or something" on the ground all around my builds, just like MOST players would, n'est-ce-pas? Some prefer the looks of simple clean wooden fences with some open grassy space, after all. But nope, rogue trees would constantly "invade" such areas! What kind of madness is this, griefed by ... trees?
Your "maybe you cut down all the trees by mistake" excuse, ok, but so ... minor! Most forests are huge and are also quite common biomes, you can litterally travel just a little bit to get more saplings to start the replanting process, which is super EASY to do. Each tree giving SEVERAL saplings, so replanting is definitely not a problem for all of the common tree types. The world itself should not have to repair the damage of players that are purposefully playing badly.
I can't help but find this "regrowing trees approach" to look more and more like "Hey we're too lazy to even do the super easy stuff in the game, so the game should do it for us instead".
As for "realism".. If trees grow by themselves, are we going to have food in chests rot away, too, because that would be more "realistic" that way? No. Regrowing forests would be more rwalistic, yes, but worse gameplay, yes also. So in the same way, actual quality of gameplay should always trump "realism".
For most players, all your named "benefits" would turn out to be only so much vapor, TINY positive advantages in VERY specific circumstances that would only serve to compensate... for what? For pure laziness, is what. Sorry to say that, but collecting and planting tons of saplings IS easy. Meanwhile the bad stuff I noted would always be a solidly real major annoyance for most of the players that are choosing to be building near or in forest biomes.
While it could be VERY cool to watch forests "grow back naturally", in terms of actual gameplay this benefit pales in comparison with builds being limited/ruined by forests that grow back not in decades (like in real life) but over a single gaming session or two.
Think of the other players, not just yourself. I *did* think of the benefits AND the disadvantages. Turns out the balance is highly weighted on the "more problems than it's worth" side of the idea.
I edited the original post, that now says: "... every now and then (2 or 3% chance of dropping a seed every [defined period of time])". it probably makes the regrowth slower.
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Good idea? Maybe. But I don't think this is something I'd want. Trees are stupid easy to duplicate as is. For the record, you don't need to put 2 lines of text in a spoiler.
The Unofficial Suggestion Guide - Everything you need to know to not make goofy mistakes in a suggestion! Honestly though, you should really go there.
The problem is the loss of player control. It doesn't matter how long it takes for a forest to spread. I pretty much ignore them unless I'm getting wood, so all of a sudden there's going to be trees in obnoxious places, and I do not enjoy cutting down trees. And what if I only want one or two trees somewhere?
I think you're on to something, maybe. But I don't think the current mechanics you're proposing are good in general.
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I like the idea, I don't fancy having a tree show up on my grass roof.
Also, trees might become an "invasive species" and completely overrun biomes such as plains and savannas that aren't supposed to be densely populated due to trees "leaking" over the biome boundaries.
I Support, but only if there is a way to prevent the trees from growing out of control. Maybe a have a mechanic where a certain tree is only allowed to have a certain number of offspring, and the offspring can have even less offspring?
You really hit the nail on the head here. Said so much more succinctly than I did.
TLDR: Still unsupportive and I explain why, but at least I try to propose some kind solution.
Also, another negative point to consider: regrowing forests would make saplings, as items, way less important. Not completely obsolete, you'd need them to plant decorative trees in builds in specific locations, but suddenly you'd easily have way too many "next to useless" saplings, as tree farms wouldn't require replanting anymore.
Also, as long as nothing is done to "repair" half-cut trees, then this idea is next to half-useless. Obviously, regrowth should start only ONCE some wood cutting has been done. And the players that are willing to fully cut down their trees, are also the players that are willing to clean up after themselves, and thus are also the players that don't find replanting saplings to be any problem. And coding in for "tree cleanup/repair" is much more complex than merely "reforestation".
Even limiting this feature ONLY to forested biomes, any mechanic that cleans up and/or regrows forests, anywhere in forested biomes, would require one of two things:
#1- If the functionality appears from an event "originating" from the existing wood logs / trees, i.e. new trees spread from already existing trees, thus at an overal rare that depend on both number of already existing trees and the amount of free space locally around those trees, instead of just randomly popping out anywhere at a more of less constant "rate per free space" in the biome. In that case, you need a way to distinguish between naturally generated vs player placed trees. So, at minimum, 2 more block IDs would be used up for wood logs, out of a reserve or remaining block IDs of which we have so precious few left. Yes, the Anvil file format supports 4096 block IDs. But this is to support modding. The default in-game world generator and main engine data structures support only 256 block IDs.
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Data_values#Block_IDs
This table shows that 235 block IDs are already all used up. This means we have only 26 remaining. That is a very precious "game code" resource, not to be spent on a whim. Increasing that limit would require a rehaul of the engine, and I remember reading somewhere that Mojang could but didn't go with it because it impacted performance too much. However they are working on removing the limit altogether so it's just a matter of time before that point becomes moot.
The 2 new block IDs would be for newly naturally generated wood logs supporting the regrowing functionality. The old block IDs wood logs would be for all player-placed logs and also for previously naturally generated logs. You can't have the opposite, otherwise previously player placed wood logs from their houses and builds would suddenly start generating new trees aka "builds that grief themselves".
Remember that the game doesn't actually "store" trees. there are no "tree" entities anywhere. Just separate individual blocks that are merely generated in the overall shape of a tree. If you added entitites to track each and every single tree, that would be adding thousands of entities. Because entities require orders of magnitude more processing than mere inert passive blocks in the 3D block matrix, you'd have mucho lag or even the server crashing anytime you're in a forested biome. Big no no.
#2- If the functionality appears "out of" the biome itself, say on a random update on a grass block, rolling a % to see if trying to place a new tree there, then we have ... lag. Random rolls on block updates are ok but not when done on super-common blocks like grass, then it becomes a very noticeable overhead. Again, are we willing to say drop from 50 FPS down to say 40 or less, just to support a minor feature?
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IMHO the only good way to have this forest regrowing functionality is to go full circle the other way around:
- By default, things don't regrow. Like currently.
- But players can craft a special block that supports the functionality in a fixed-size square-shaped radius around it.
Imagine a "Druidic Totem Pole" or "Tree growth" block or whatever. It has say a storage slot, and you can put a stack of saplings it it. When redstone powered, and there is at least one sapling in it, then every random block update (thus on average every 70 seconds) the special block will try to grow a tree is say a 32 blocks square radius around it (using Y taken directly from surface ground elevation map already managed by game engine). On success, 1 sapling is spent from the internal slot.
This gives player control, while not also making saplings obsolete, nor using up precious block IDs, nor causing undue lag, nor annoying other players that don't want trees to become an invasive species around their build.
Still, even there, to me this would feel like giving forest farms too much automation, and would still use up 1 block ID on a very too-function-specific block.
For tree farm automation, a better approach that would avoid adding a too specific new block would probably be to simply allow Dispensers to try to plant a sapling right in front of them on a power-up redstone signal.
For replanting entire forests randomly, a quick "I bring a few stacks of saplings with me and play the reforesting druid" is more than sufficient right now.
OK. The problems we found here are that the idea in itself is good, but not practical. As RavbugAnimations and MrKukurykpl said, there must be a method to control the spread. Maybe, only naturally generated trees are able to spread? I think this would add too much code into the 'detecting' part (improve what I said because I have no idea on how the detecting part works). Maybe, a tree spreads, and its descendant spread way less frequently, and so on. I'm open to ideas; anyone who likes to share a way to stop the spreading, comment down here.
I'm the 3rd generation. The first time you see this, copy as your signature and add 1 to the counter
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that bring total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."