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Challenge Farming


Aesirkin

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Dropbox

 

 

Video

Youtube

 

 

Version

IMPORTANT!  If you're using v1.0 please redownload.  v1.0 has a severe bug that causes unexpectedly long growth times.

 

Current version is 1.1

 


Purpose

So, what problem are we trying to solve?

 

Farming gets boring.

 

It's too easy to get large amounts of food with it late game, making it required, but not exciting.

 

Meanwhile, it's full of busywork (doing the same thing with no thought) and missing interesting decisions.

 

We want to make farming more challenging, preferably without just adding repetitive busywork.

 


Description

Plants will now progress through a long growing process, rewarding a large harvest at the end.  During this process various events will occur, and as a player you will need to decide whether to act (often using resources), wait it out, or harvest and move on.  Acting, and sometimes waiting, will usually increase the growth tier, or health, of that crop; while there are occasional events that can decrease the growth tier if not acted upon.

 

Plants may be harvested any time after they progress beyond the seedling stage, which will be obvious from their size.  The harvest will be commensurate with the growth tier you have raised those plants to.

 

Some actions you need to take will require special items, available from the new garden workbench.  Until you can make these items you'll be forced to simply wait.  This adds a sense of progression to farming, and gives you something to work towards.

 


Details
Spoiler warning!  Read this section only if you don't want to explore and figure it out yourself.

 

Spoiler

*** Growth Events ***
Germinating - This plant was recently planted.  It requires compost to begin growing in earnest.  However, if you wait an extremely long time, it will take root without help.

 

Growing - This plant is currently growing.  After a medium amount of time an event will occur as noted below or, if you're very lucky, it will grow to the next tier without incident.

 

Weeds Encroaching - This plant has weeds growing with it; stealing water and nutrients from its roots.  It will not continue growing without help.  You can use your hoe to remove the weeks to allow it to continue at the current tier.  Weeds have difficulty encroaching on relatively mature plants.

 

Soil Compacted - This plant will eventually move to the growth stalling status, but it will take several hours.  Use an earthworm to help aerate the soil and grow the plant by two tiers.

 

Growth Stalling - This plant will eventually grow to the next tier, but it will take several hours.  Use compost to give it a boost so it can grow two tiers immediately.

 


*** Watering *** 
Statistically speaking, when plants become dry they are more likely to recover and grow to the next growth tier than they are to wilt back a growth tier.  So waiting out dry plants is viable, but very slow.  Don't worry, you don't throw a water jar at them; you empty the water and keep the jar.

 

Dry - This plant is drying out.  After a medium time it may naturally recover and move to the next tier, but more likely will become very dry.  Use a murky water to move it to the next tier of growth.

 

Very Dry - This plant is getting dangerously dry.  After a medium time it is likely to naturally recover back to "Dry", but may begin to wilt.  Use a murky water to move it to the next tier of growth.

 

Wilting - This plant is wilting.  After a very long amount of time the plant will lose a tier of growth unless you use a murky water to move it forward instead.

 

Probability of natural recovery: Approximately 65%

Average time to natural result: Approximately 5-6 hours (varies wildly plant to plant)
Natural recovery result: Next growth tier

Failure to recover result: Previous growth tier

 


*** Fungus *** 
Mild Fungal Infection - This plant has the start of a fungal growth on it.  After a medium amount of time it may recover and continue growing, but more likely the fungus will grow worse.  Use an antifungal spray to eliminate the infection and move it to the next tier of growth instead.

 

Fungal Infection - The fungal infection has taken hold on this plant and is stopping it's growth.  After a medium amount of time the fungus will likely naturally die back to a mild level, but can become more severe.  Use an antifungal spray to eliminate the infection and move it to the next tier of growth instead.

 

Choked By Fungus - The fungal infection has spread to most of this plant's greenery!  After a very long amount of time the plant will lose a tier of growth unless you use an antifungal spray to eliminate the infection and move it to the next tier of growth instead.

 

Probability of natural recovery: Approximately 75%
Average time to natural result: Approximately 5 hours (varies wildly from plant to plant)
Natural recovery result: Same growth tier
Failure to recover result: Previous growth tier

 


*** Special Statuses *** 
These statuses tend to appear only on more mature plants, and often provide extra items or bonuses.

 

Bees Settling - Bees have built a nest on this plant.  Use a collection kit to safely collect some of their honey.  After a medium amount of time this status will disappear.

 

Moldy - Some strange mold has settled on your crop.  Harvest now to collect some along with your crop harvest.  After a medium amount of time this status will disappear.

 

Choked by Rafflesia Weeds - This growing plant is being suffocated by a variety of Rafflesia; a plant known to smell like rotting flesh.  You can wait for the Rafflesia to bloom and die off, or use a special tool to remove it now while it's at maximum scent.  Removing it will surely attract animal scavengers.

 

Vulture Nesting - A vulture has started a nest in this plant.  You can wait until the vulture and chicks leave, or you can use a special tool to remove the nest and collect the eggs.  Disturbing the nest may attract the mother, though.

 

 

Harvesting
Harvesting while the plant is still in it's small, seedling form will return only a seed.  When the plant grows in size you may harvest and receive some crops back, along with a seed and plant remains.

 

Plants move through up to 20 tiers of growth.  You will receive approximately 1 additional crop during harvesting for each tier of growth beginning with tier 4, which is when the model changes to the larger size.  Hovering over the plant will provide text giving a general idea of growth tier (see below), and the color of the text will change with every tier.  So you may see two plants in the Fruiting stage, for example, with slightly different colored text (denoting different tiers)

 

 

Growth Stages
1-3    Seedling

5-6    Young

7-9    Fruiting

10-13    Healthy

14-16    Mature

17-19    Strong

20    Prize Winning

 

 

Realism

As much as possible I've tried to make events and responses realistic.  However, deviations needed made to best accomplish the gameplay goal of the mod.  I am aware that some things don't exactly match what we would expect in real life and welcome thoughts.  But please bear in mind that gameplay takes precedence over realism in this context.

 

 

Compatibility

This mod was written to be compatible with A20.  It may or may not work with other versions.

 

This mod was designed for new games.  I do not believe this will work with existing games, but if you try it please post back and let me know!

 

This was designed as a server-side, no download mod.  This means that if you're playing a single player game or a P2P game only the host needs to have it.  If you're running a server, only the server needs to have it.  Clients do not need to download the mod.

 

Edited by Aesirkin
Added video; typos; addressed bug (see edit history)
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2 hours ago, Josie said:

This is a sweet mod. but it seems the timers on the composer don't work on the server when the window is open. I have to close the window over and over to see the timer go down.

 

This is a known issue that only occurs on dedicated servers.  I don't know how to resolve it.  If anyone does, please let me know and I'll make the updates.

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Hi Aesirkin, 

 

We run a dedicated server and had to wait 3 (real) days for the first plants to go from "growing" to a random event (dry, weeds, etc.). Is this a bug and would you know how to fix it? Aside from this issue we love your mod. Thank you for putting the time and effort in creating it. 

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8 hours ago, Josie said:

its just slow growing i thought.

According to a short discord conversation with Aesirkin the "growing" stage should only take about 50 real minutes on average. If it takes more than 10 hours it's considered a bug. 

To provide more detail...

We used fertilizer to get every plant to the growing stage. All plants are in farm blocks, and I've tried other using other tools from the garden workbench without any luck. The game is set to 120 real minutes per in-game day, and all plants are outside. The first 3 plants had events (dry, weeds) after about 3 real days. 

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3 hours ago, Baratos said:

According to a short discord conversation with Aesirkin the "growing" stage should only take about 50 real minutes on average. If it takes more than 10 hours it's considered a bug. 

To provide more detail...

We used fertilizer to get every plant to the growing stage. All plants are in farm blocks, and I've tried other using other tools from the garden workbench without any luck. The game is set to 120 real minutes per in-game day, and all plants are outside. The first 3 plants had events (dry, weeds) after about 3 real days. 

 

Hi Baratos.

 

Thanks for the additional details.  Can you tell me how many hours per day the server had users online during those 3 days?  Time only progresses while players are online.

 

I checked the code to make sure I didn't accidentally get the growth rates set wrong and don't see any obvious problems.  In testing I had all growth rates set to 2 minutes though.

 

I'll try to mess around with a test game today.  Is this a public server that I could log into and test?  If so, would you be able to give me resources to do the testing with?  Also, was this a new game that you started with this mod or did you add this mod to an existing game?  The latter may cause some issues; I'm not sure.

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7 hours ago, Baratos said:

According to a short discord conversation with Aesirkin the "growing" stage should only take about 50 real minutes on average. If it takes more than 10 hours it's considered a bug. 

To provide more detail...

We used fertilizer to get every plant to the growing stage. All plants are in farm blocks, and I've tried other using other tools from the garden workbench without any luck. The game is set to 120 real minutes per in-game day, and all plants are outside. The first 3 plants had events (dry, weeds) after about 3 real days. 

 

Alright; I've confirmed this issue.  And after some infuriating rounds of testing today I believe I've identified the problem: this is a 7DTD bug.

 

It appears that the growthRate property of any given block is ignored in favor of inheriting the growth rate of a block that it has upgraded from.  As the original "germinating" block has a growth rate of 1440, the "growing" block (and presumably all other event blocks) is then treated as though it has the same 1440 growth rate instead of the 50 that is explicitly defined in the block definition.

 

I missed this in testing due to the short time periods that I applied to all blocks.  Sorry! :(

 

Or possibly because I was testing on 20.3; maybe it worked there.

 

 

In any case, this actually breaks a very major portion of this mod!  I apologize, but it appears to be unplayable as of now.

 

The most obvious immediate solution to me is to reset all growth rates to 60, and then completely rework the blockPlaceholders file to emulate long growth with RNG-trees.  This is going to introduce randomness where I never wanted it to be, and is going to take some work.  I'll try to do this over the next few days if I can find the time...

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I actually found some time today and implemented a 'fix'.  Please redownload and insure that you have v1.1

 

If you update the files on a game that was already started with v1.0 of the mod, I believe it should work.  Though existing crops may need replanted.

 

Please let me know how the fix runs for you.

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16 hours ago, Baratos said:

Aesirkin, 

Thank you so much for looking into this and providing a fix. I'm busy with work today, but will re-upload and test the new version. I'm super excited!!! Thank you again!

 

No problem.  Thank you for reporting it and providing details!  I won't actually get to play a game with the mod for another week or two, so I'm just glad it wasn't sitting out there broken all this time.

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On 6/10/2022 at 8:41 PM, Josie said:

Its working now. I do have one qu. If its set to random can a seed randomly stay at a seed. I have some plants not going at all.

 

Yes and no.

 

I added a couple additional sections to the original post to help clarify this.  But essentially, that word you see (seedling, fruiting, etc) only gives a general idea of growth tier.  Any crop at tiers 1, 2, or 3 will be called a seedling, for example.  So it's possible for your plant to progress a tier, but still have the same text descriptor.  Your tier 2 crop may have moved to tier 3; it's still called a seedling, but it closer to moving into the "young" stage.

 

Note that the color does change slightly as the plant moves through the tiers, giving you an idea of how different crops with the same descriptor are doing in comparison to each other.

 

Here are the current growth stages:


1-3    Seedling

5-6    Young

7-9    Fruiting

10-13    Healthy

14-16    Mature

17-19    Strong

20+    Prize Winning

 

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  • 1 month later...

 

18 hours ago, LordNCR said:

Hi, Aesirkin!

I 'd like to know if there any compability with popular SMX HUI/HUD? In terms of new workstations.
Or you're gonna add it in following updates (or not)? 

P.S. You've done a great great job on this mod! 

 

I don't know for sure as I've not used nor looked at the code for SMX UI.  However, from the description it appears to make changes completely on the UI side so I don't see any reason it would have conflicts with Challenge Farming.  You'd need to test to be sure though.

 

 

13 hours ago, Arma Rex said:

Will this work with mods that restore farming prior to the farm block requirement? I'd like to have both options available.

 

Unfortunately, again, I don't know as I'm not sure how this was done.  However, if the soil fertility is high enough and the new crops created in Challenge Farming can be planted outside blocks I'd assume everything else should work.  But the only way to know would be to try a game and test.

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15 hours ago, Aesirkin said:

I don't know for sure as I've not used nor looked at the code for SMX UI.  However, from the description it appears to make changes completely on the UI side so I don't see any reason it would have conflicts with Challenge Farming.  You'd need to test to be sure though.

 

Yeah, i've recently tested mods. And many parts of UI of workstations (Composter and Garden Workbench) are not compatible with SMX. Besides, composter don't even want to craft compost, (i don't know why)

I'd be glad to see this mod compatible with SMX UI once. And if you wanted to take a look at the screenshots or any additional information to solve it, i'd be glad to help u too. 

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8 hours ago, LordNCR said:

 

Yeah, i've recently tested mods. And many parts of UI of workstations (Composter and Garden Workbench) are not compatible with SMX. Besides, composter don't even want to craft compost, (i don't know why)

I'd be glad to see this mod compatible with SMX UI once. And if you wanted to take a look at the screenshots or any additional information to solve it, i'd be glad to help u too. 

 

I'm sorry, I don't think I'll have time to work on making this compatible right now.

 

The composter has a known issue where the timer does not tick in the UI correctly in multiplayer games.  It *does* work, but the display is a little wonky.  You need to close it and reopen to see the updated time remaining.

 

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  • 1 month later...
11 hours ago, quitz said:

I love this mod but it take very long time to growth stages. i set world 1Hr = 1day i plant corn 10 day in game it go to  Fruiting stages.

can i chang time for faster in this mod ?? ;-;

 

"Fruiting" occurs at growth stage 6, so it does seem like you're moving a little slowly.  Assuming you fertilize your plants with compost upon planting, you should be able to move them to "Young" within 1.5 days.  Just 3 more growth stages will get you to "Fruiting", which can be done as quickly as 4-5 days.

 

Are you actively managing your crops?  If you don't do anything to them they will grow very slowly.  If you water them when they're dry, and apply compost and worms and fungicide when they need it, they should grow much more quickly for you.

 

Growth and events are very random, though.  I have a garden of just over 100 crops.  I often have crops hitting growth tier 20 while others are barely "Young"; and the majority are in the tier 10-12 range.  This is normal, and meant to approximate reality.  You may just have gotten unlucky with a lot of weeds.  You could change the likelihood of weeds in blockPlaceholders.xml to remediate this.

 

Also keep in mind, though, that when you harvest you get more crops than with the standard system.  The first 3 tiers give nothing, but after that you receive an additional crop per tier.  So although you harvest a lot less often, you still get a similar yield per time harvesting.  This just helps keep you from constantly needing to replace over and over.

 

But if you really want to speed things up, open blocks.xml and find every instance of PlantGrowing.GrowthRate; cut the value in half and see how that works for you.  I don't know if this will work in an existing game, though.  You'll need to test.

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  • 1 year later...

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