Okay, this has been going on and off in my head for a while.
Instead of having only the Dirt block, we would also have Soil and Loam blocks.
Dirt would look the same: seemingly a mix of mostly packed dirt, with bits of dirt, tiny stones, sand, and gravelly particles thrown in. Still found most places in the world. Dirt would be a good landfill material but less optimal for plants and crops.
Soil would be a much deeper shade of brown. Soil would not be everywhere, but wouldn't be all that rare either. Let's say, slightly less than 1/100 as common as Dirt, and mainly in 1-deep pockets on the surface (while Dirt is everywhere about 4 layers deep). While seemingly rare, since it is found on the surface directly, over Dirt even, if you dig only the first ground layer, then it's actually more like about 1/25 are rare as Dirt. For example, in a forest chunk you would normally have Dirt on 4 layers, thus nearly 16 stacks of Dirt overall if you shovel it all, but also with a 1 in 2 chance of a patch of Soil about 4x4 wide somewhere. Soil would be rarer in plains, way rarer in extreme hills, absent above some elevation, and about 4 times more common around rivers and in marshes and around lakes. Maybe jungles too. Soil would be the default good choice for plants and crops. This is the most "wet" of all 3 earthy blocks.
Loam would look smoother and more orange-brown. It would look a bit "drier" than Soil, but is more diversified in the variety of it's base nutriments, and more "silty". It would be the best for farm crops. Loam would occur quite rarely naturally, and in smaller patches than Soil too, maybe 1 patch of Loam containing 2-6 Loam blocks every 64 patches of Soil. Loam patches would often have mixed color flowers on nearly all of their blocks, so for you could theoretically still relatively easily spot a Loam patch.
However, Loam could also easily be deliberately crafted like this:
Yes, only 1 output block despite 3 input. Loam is rarer thay way. You'll be happier when you actually find some. Check out the chest the fence or even pressure plates, or a compass which is a small object you hold in your hands but is nearly half an iron block worth of "volume", and thus let's forget about realism in Minecraft, ok? Loam is the "super" Soil and as such would be much "cheapened" by it having a recipe that produces more than 1 Loam at a time.
Taking the speed of "current" Minecraft plant growth as the "normal" one, and assuming that this is actually the "top speed" for things to grow (because everything already grows more than fast enough in the game):
- Grass propagation: Top speed on Dirt, Soil and Loam. Grass can grow everywhere.
- Sugar Cane: Top Speed on Dirt and Sand, One Height speed on Soil and on Loam. This plant likes its ground dry and well areated, so black soil and the more silty loam give it quite a hard time.
- Trees: Half speed on Dirt and Loam, Top speed on Soil. Trees benefit somewhat from a richer ground but have a slightly harder time with a drier more "silty" ground, but given their size generally there isn't that big of a difference.
- Mushrooms: One Height speed on Dirt, One Quarter speed on Loam, Half speed on Soil, Top Speed on Mycelium. Those plants benefit from a richer, wet, ground, but nothing beats Mycelium here!
- Crops (Melons, Pumpkins, Wheat, Carrots, Potatoes): One Height Speed on Dirt, Half speed on Soil, Top Speed on Loam. The classical "best nutritious mix for best result", able to grow anywhere, but benefits the most from the presence of all nutriments together. However simple Dirt lack much in the way of the nutriments needed for Crops growth, slowing growth by a lot.
- Flowers (Rose, Dandelion): Can't grow on Dirt or Soil, One Height Speed on Loam (compared to normal farm crops).
Flowers need the most nutritious ground type possible to grow at all. On a Gargen block, they can grow, However slowly. Flowers propagate only to strictly adjacent hydrated blocks on the same level (thus, only to the 4 neighbour Garden blocks), and of course require light like most plants.
There would be 3 Grass blocks: Grassy Dirt, Grassy Soil, and Grassy Loam. The grassy topside would look the same in all 3, so you could not tell at a glance which is which.
Using a Hoe on a grassy block would turn it into the non-grassy version, and then using the Hoe a second time would make Tilled Dirt (from Dirt), Farmland (from Soil), or Garden (from Loam), respectively. All 3 would basically be variations of the currrent Farmland block but with different top textures. When not kept hydrated, these blocks eventually turn back to their "dry" version, all at the same speed. However, the more "porous" a block is, the further away it can be hydrated:
- Tilled Dirt: Hydrated up to 4 blocks away (just like current Dirt-based Farmland)
- Farmland: Hydrated only up to 3 blocks away.
- Garden: Hydrated only up to 2 blocks away.
NPC Villages Farmland plots would sometimes be of Soil instead of Dirt (10% random chance per farmland plot).
While the actual gameplay wouldn't be changed dramatically, this idea is mainly not to slow down farming. Yes it would probably mean most players first farms would probably work at "half speed" only, but the reason I use a slowdown with current speed as the maxuimu,, instead of current speed not the maximum and thus some making some other growth speed faster, is because the game is already having very fast farming anyway, and speeding it up even more would make things somewhat ridiculous, meanwhile a half speed reduction would just make farming go from "ridiculously overabundant" to "still quite more abundant enough anyway", so I thought it was better to just use the current growth speeds as the "maximum" possible to attain and make the other speeds slower.
This idea is more to add new kinds of decorative "earth" block and make farming a little bit more interesting and varied. I don't recommend having other "special effects" between the 3 earthy blocks, like for example changing the amount of crop drops, or having risks of bad crops that opup out of the ground by themselves, or whatever.
Mining a lot deep underground would give you a lot of Dirt from all of the normal deep Dirt pockets, rare bits of Soil, and never any Loam.
Instead of having only the Dirt block, we would also have Soil and Loam blocks.
Dirt would look the same: seemingly a mix of mostly packed dirt, with bits of dirt, tiny stones, sand, and gravelly particles thrown in. Still found most places in the world. Dirt would be a good landfill material but less optimal for plants and crops.
Soil would be a much deeper shade of brown. Soil would not be everywhere, but wouldn't be all that rare either. Let's say, slightly less than 1/100 as common as Dirt, and mainly in 1-deep pockets on the surface (while Dirt is everywhere about 4 layers deep). While seemingly rare, since it is found on the surface directly, over Dirt even, if you dig only the first ground layer, then it's actually more like about 1/25 are rare as Dirt. For example, in a forest chunk you would normally have Dirt on 4 layers, thus nearly 16 stacks of Dirt overall if you shovel it all, but also with a 1 in 2 chance of a patch of Soil about 4x4 wide somewhere. Soil would be rarer in plains, way rarer in extreme hills, absent above some elevation, and about 4 times more common around rivers and in marshes and around lakes. Maybe jungles too. Soil would be the default good choice for plants and crops. This is the most "wet" of all 3 earthy blocks.
Loam would look smoother and more orange-brown. It would look a bit "drier" than Soil, but is more diversified in the variety of it's base nutriments, and more "silty". It would be the best for farm crops. Loam would occur quite rarely naturally, and in smaller patches than Soil too, maybe 1 patch of Loam containing 2-6 Loam blocks every 64 patches of Soil. Loam patches would often have mixed color flowers on nearly all of their blocks, so for you could theoretically still relatively easily spot a Loam patch.
However, Loam could also easily be deliberately crafted like this:
Loam recipe (shapeless): 1 Soil + 1 Sand + 1 Clay + 1 Bonemeal = 1 Loam.
Yes, only 1 output block despite 3 input. Loam is rarer thay way. You'll be happier when you actually find some. Check out the chest the fence or even pressure plates, or a compass which is a small object you hold in your hands but is nearly half an iron block worth of "volume", and thus let's forget about realism in Minecraft, ok? Loam is the "super" Soil and as such would be much "cheapened" by it having a recipe that produces more than 1 Loam at a time.
Dirt, Soil, and Loam in the following images:
http://theplacewhere...11/09/dirt1.jpg
http://www.extendono...soil_photo1.jpg
http://www.magnusson.../soils/loam.jpg
Taking the speed of "current" Minecraft plant growth as the "normal" one, and assuming that this is actually the "top speed" for things to grow (because everything already grows more than fast enough in the game):
- Grass propagation: Top speed on Dirt, Soil and Loam. Grass can grow everywhere.
- Sugar Cane: Top Speed on Dirt and Sand, One Height speed on Soil and on Loam. This plant likes its ground dry and well areated, so black soil and the more silty loam give it quite a hard time.
- Trees: Half speed on Dirt and Loam, Top speed on Soil. Trees benefit somewhat from a richer ground but have a slightly harder time with a drier more "silty" ground, but given their size generally there isn't that big of a difference.
- Mushrooms: One Height speed on Dirt, One Quarter speed on Loam, Half speed on Soil, Top Speed on Mycelium. Those plants benefit from a richer, wet, ground, but nothing beats Mycelium here!
- Crops (Melons, Pumpkins, Wheat, Carrots, Potatoes): One Height Speed on Dirt, Half speed on Soil, Top Speed on Loam. The classical "best nutritious mix for best result", able to grow anywhere, but benefits the most from the presence of all nutriments together. However simple Dirt lack much in the way of the nutriments needed for Crops growth, slowing growth by a lot.
- Flowers (Rose, Dandelion): Can't grow on Dirt or Soil, One Height Speed on Loam (compared to normal farm crops).
Flowers need the most nutritious ground type possible to grow at all. On a Gargen block, they can grow, However slowly. Flowers propagate only to strictly adjacent hydrated blocks on the same level (thus, only to the 4 neighbour Garden blocks), and of course require light like most plants.
There would be 3 Grass blocks: Grassy Dirt, Grassy Soil, and Grassy Loam. The grassy topside would look the same in all 3, so you could not tell at a glance which is which.
Using a Hoe on a grassy block would turn it into the non-grassy version, and then using the Hoe a second time would make Tilled Dirt (from Dirt), Farmland (from Soil), or Garden (from Loam), respectively. All 3 would basically be variations of the currrent Farmland block but with different top textures. When not kept hydrated, these blocks eventually turn back to their "dry" version, all at the same speed. However, the more "porous" a block is, the further away it can be hydrated:
- Tilled Dirt: Hydrated up to 4 blocks away (just like current Dirt-based Farmland)
- Farmland: Hydrated only up to 3 blocks away.
- Garden: Hydrated only up to 2 blocks away.
NPC Villages Farmland plots would sometimes be of Soil instead of Dirt (10% random chance per farmland plot).
While the actual gameplay wouldn't be changed dramatically, this idea is mainly not to slow down farming. Yes it would probably mean most players first farms would probably work at "half speed" only, but the reason I use a slowdown with current speed as the maxuimu,, instead of current speed not the maximum and thus some making some other growth speed faster, is because the game is already having very fast farming anyway, and speeding it up even more would make things somewhat ridiculous, meanwhile a half speed reduction would just make farming go from "ridiculously overabundant" to "still quite more abundant enough anyway", so I thought it was better to just use the current growth speeds as the "maximum" possible to attain and make the other speeds slower.
This idea is more to add new kinds of decorative "earth" block and make farming a little bit more interesting and varied. I don't recommend having other "special effects" between the 3 earthy blocks, like for example changing the amount of crop drops, or having risks of bad crops that opup out of the ground by themselves, or whatever.
Mining a lot deep underground would give you a lot of Dirt from all of the normal deep Dirt pockets, rare bits of Soil, and never any Loam.
Dirt is a synonym for Soil is a very simplistic world, yes.
Just like Planks all being of the same color I guess.
Look at the images, to me Dirt is nearly as different from Soil as Gravel is to Dirt.
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Curse PremiumQuestion though, would the Clay in the Loam recipe be just a single unit of Clay, or would it be a Clay Block?