World of Banished

(https://i.imgur.com/o3nzKpx.jpg)

Texture sizes quadrupled — 1K trees and 2K grass and 4K spoons — and so is the amount of green. I might not be able to make it into a proper mod as I used a few textures from Skyrim & its mods for my blends so it's not all open source, but I thought the results were interesting — vanilla trees aren't all that bad if given more pixel space.

I like it. Wish I could have it.  :P

@Voeille  this looks very nice. Hope it works out.

I can always redo the bits that use textures I couldn't share — it's still work in progress anyway.

I tried a slghtly different take on the pines, made them a bit more sparse for hopefully a more natural look.

(https://i.imgur.com/jcmLwPM.jpg)

I also improved the grass blend for a busy and detailed look up close, but hopefully without obvious tiling hen zoomed out.

(All images are 4k, worth zooming in for a more detailed view.)

(https://i.imgur.com/YtufXHu.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/bhKkBng.jpg)

It looks great! I can't see any obvious tiling at all on the ground textures, and the detail is very good.

that looks great and is very natural looking   :)

Thanks! I now also retextured rocks and iron and changed the material they use to let them be covered by snow — it always felt a bit weird that they didn't.

(https://i.imgur.com/xNjbqTI.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/Hbkke4E.jpg)

I think I can release this mod separately once finished (just the ground textures & rocks) and redo the pines and leafless branches later to replace some of the source textures to something with open permissions or just sit and make my own (all my content for games I mod is always open to be improved upon by others and/or for usage elsewhere — it just benefits everyone in the end).

This keeps getting better and better. Do plan on this being an overlay or a replacer? Great work

The only way for it to be an overlay would be to blend the new textures with original ones (the cliff does that but it's not just a plain 50% opacity blend, the original texture was edited and mixed into the new one to add detail), as the game can only load one texture for one thing, not multiple with varied opacities — the only exception is the snow and burned textures on objects and buildings as that goes on top of the normal one.
The other option (instead of replacer) would be to add it as a choice at the start (for example Lush Mountains and Lush Valleys), but that would make it incompatible with any other mod that changes those (for example CC or RKEC). Keeping it just as a simple texture replacer is the most compatible and flexible way, as you can switch it on/off as you like even in an existing save.

Fantastic, thanks for the response @Voeille

Quote from: Kristahfer on June 11, 2022, 05:46:32 PM
Fantastic, thanks for the response @Voeille

we need a way to break the setup start conditions into pieces so we can control each piece. not a modder so have no idea if it is possable. so far nobody can do it fully. it would have to separate the start conditions so the game could pick up the stone texture in 1 place, trees another, and terrain and then the animals. so far not possable. if you affect any of the start conditions, you override all.

i am not sure it is even fixable at this point if we did find a way to break the conditions apart separately.all mods to this point aren't going to be rewritten to accomadate a fix. many modders have moved on by now. maybe someday a modder will figure a way to solve it so we can alter more from the start settings without losing other things added.

there are few exceptions to that rule. again, i'm not a modder so do not know how things are coded to pull it off. you can affect/ override some graphic details such as trees , texture, animal skins, grass, and stone textures. they are dependant on how lines are in the coding and what lines are not. if a mod does not set a requirement specifically, then the next mod can add to the settings.


i'll give you some examples to clarify. you can load the RKEC or most any  main mod. these do not change the stone texture,no lines in them for that. by using TOM's north mod, you could alter the stone texture, since he did change it in his mod. the game will load the starts of the RKEC above and then change the stone texture when it ereads that coding after the RKEC. if you used the North above the RKEC, then all other start setting will have been changed before the RKEC is loaded.

this is limited however. you can not add the RKEC below other start affecting mods and add the wild animals. even thou the deer are vanilla, the game locks the coding so it won't read/load them from the RKEC.  it may seem weird to us players, but there are things we can change and lots that we can not. you can alter the texture without affecting terrain and you can add to some parts such as gathering plants. 

and that is on a vanilla start with medium start settings. if the main mod loads the start settings such as a marsh, or CC's different tree starts, or some of KIDD's special starts,  then it cancels the other orders and loads all from that start.

that all being said, there is a mod that does similar to this 1. TOM's NORDIC LANDSCAPE mod does alter many things. it also alters the climate thou which affects food production. the ground is brighter since TOM does away with the dirt texture from the terrains.if my memory is right, been a while since i used it, TOM left much open in the coding so you can load it above and get the wild animals of the RKEC and add a tree mod as well. a fair climate with the Nordic Landscape mod is harsher than a fair vanilla start. it plays between a vanilla fair and vanilla harsh on a mild setting. more like spring temperatures all summer long. lot less food production and food rots faster in fall as well.

I agree it would be nice to have starting conditions from multiple mods, and various terrain generation modifications working for all starts. For example, I have a mod called Beautiful World which adds mountain trees and old growth forests among other things. It has a version compatible with (an old version of) CC, however the old growth forests only appear on vanilla starts.

In Skyrim if you have mods that edit the same thing you can make patches, which are extra mod files that bridge changes from conflicting mods. Sometimes you've got to pick one (for example they change the price of something, so you can either have one value or the other), but if for example they add different items to the same list, you can make a patch that makes sure items from both mods are added instead of one overwriting the other. You can also make mods that don't edit the same resources at all work together, for example if one mod does something with vanilla spells and you have a separate mod that adds new spells, you can make a patch that will apply similar changes/additions to your new spells mod. Similar functionality in Banished would be extremely useful.

The ground replacement is pretty much ready and should be released hopefully soon. The pasture and cemetery share the same texture, orchard is very similar (has slightly less grounds and a fe fallen branches — however those are very small as otherwise they stood out as massive compared to the bannies and buildings).

(https://i.imgur.com/gfAEyTM.jpg)

It look amazing!

Beautiful, @Voeille! I love your Lush and Green mod, and this looks like it'll be even better!

Will it be done and ready soon? I can hardly wait to use it!

;D

I'm glad you like it! It's now available here:

http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=654

I will also upload it to Nexus Mods and Steam Workshop later. Available now: Steam Workshop (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2823252062) | Nexus Mods (https://www.nexusmods.com/banished/mods/113)

Original lush & green is usable, but I did intend this version to be its successor, as it's very similar, but provides more detail and higher resolution textures. I anted to try 4K, however it appears to be too much to build the mod file — and 2K is enough anyway, for the zoom level available in the game.

Hi again Voeille,

Would you mind renaming the RKEC version so we can load both into the WinData folder? This way when using ModMan we can choose which version needs to load based on whether or not we are also using RKEC for a current game.

@MarkAnthony
Does renaming the .pkm file not work? I did a quick test and it worked for me, I could switch between the two even mid-game.

Okay, I'll try renaming it.

A month or so back I asked if we could rename .pkms to our liking but someone said that doing so can break the mod. If you say renaming it will work, that's what I will do. Thank you.

I think this depends what the mod does. Mine is just a simple replacer for vanilla textures and it doesn't add anything new. I tried renaming CC, for example, and while the menu music was working, none of its buildings appeared. So my guess would be that name doesn't matter if a mod only uses vanilla .rsc files, but if it adds anything new, then it can't be renamed. But again, this just a guess based on what I saw in the game and there might be more to it.

On a side note, thanks for mentioning ModMan, I searched for it and downloaded it and now I'm not going back to the in-game mod menu, spending ages moving mods using the little arrows is extremely tedious, but with this I can order mods very easily and switch them on/off as needed (example load order (https://i.imgur.com/9YxyMw6.png)). I was rather disappointed when I found out that MO2 (a mod manager I use for Skyrim) doesn't support Banished, and while ModMan doesn't let you store mods outside of the game folder like MO2, it's not really a problem for Banished as the mods are packaged files and they don't create such a mess like loose file mods for Skyrim can do if you have many. I remember I had to spend around a month finding what belongs to which mod when I was switching from manually handling mods to MO2, but it was definitely worth it and made everything tidier and easier. But I digress.

WAIT!  Voeille!

Your screenshot of your ModMan shows "separators" between mods! I've been wanting that function ever since I started using ModMan. How did you do that?

If I were to guess, you just took any .PKM file and just renamed it....making numerous "dummy" pkms, am I right? I don't know why I never thought of that before.

You're awesome! Thanks.

EDIT: I just tried that and it worked! I never thought to do that before. I am very happy now thanks again to you.

is that your actual mod order? override mods load after the main start mods? i'd be surprised that would work. i am curious cause it looks backwards.

Out of curiosity, what mod manager are you using? I've seen people talk about them here, but never a link to one.

http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?topic=2602.msg54035#msg54035

try there

Hmmm, attachment not found. Guess it got eaten by the last forums hiccup.

try now-http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=656

Thank you!

@MarkAnthony
Glad I could help! It is exactly as you say, just dummy files. I created empty 0KB text files and changed the file extension to .pkm so they show up in ModMan (in the game too), and I can move them around. I always liked the separators in MO2 so having at least a workaround for that in ModMan is handy and makes the list more readable — just need to make sure to not accidentally enable them as they aren't mods and it should be all good.

@brads3
It is my actual load order and, while certainly not an ideal one, it does work. I can explain why I ordered some mods in that way. I wanted the New Flora flax to work with CC and other mods that use flax, so flax patch is at the top to make sure all mods that use CC flax also work with New Flora. Mods after that either override vanilla but conflict with others so I wanted them to take precedence, or override mod items as well so I placed them at the top. Improved mine is required by some DS mods, so I load it before those. I wanted DS Jetty & Bridge, Lumber Mill and Oil Mill above other mods that use lumber, glass and roof tiles because I prefer DS stockpile models for those. I then also put other DS mods there for consistency, in which case it also made sense to put standalone mods by other authors there, in no particular order. The overhaul overrides section specifically overrides CC or RKEC, but they don't need to be above other mods (for the RKEC version of the load order, I would move the RKEC version of my grass replacement there, and disable standalone RK mods as they are included in RKEC). Now, you might notice that Busy Laborers is there instead of in the old mods section. This is because it's required if I want labourers to be able to collect ancient roots and mushrooms from the Beautiful World mod. Beautiful Worlds takes precendece over RKEC and CC because it is the only mod that adds mountain trees, and I cannot stand barren mountains. However, I will be switching it on/off — if I want to play with a flat map, then I don't have mountains so I can disable Beautiful World and get RKEC animals. The next section of mods either depends on CC or RKEC, or needs to be overwriten by them. For example, Kid's Fairy Tale is there instead of near his other mods because it adds starting conditions, which make it incompatible with other mods that do that. I wanted the buildings, so I put it there to keep starting conditions from CC or RKEC and still enjoy the assets. The old version section contains mods made for Banished < 1.0.7, which etiher doesn't matter because the mod doesn't use flags / its reources are overwritten by mods above, or is a storage/market building that I want on purpose not to store new flag items. The overrides below that don't show any conflicts in the game, so can sit there. The content section is similar, but those mods add new things instead of overwriting vanilla stuff. As I said above, this is certainly not a perfect order (I had one item with no name in the town hall stats when I was testing newly added mods with debug, and DS Village kitchen has two of its recipes nameless, however they look like the omelette from DS Jetty kitchen), but it works fine, doesn't crash and buildings that use certain resources work fine as most of them are shared and it doesn't really matter which mod they come from.

What I would want to do is create a patch that merges all the starting conditions and resources, so for example I could have mountain trees and RKEC animals on the same map, but I don't have the necessary files. In Skyrim such patches are easy to make (there are even programs that do it automatically, but you should look over the result manually anyway to make sure it's exactly as you want). This example (https://i.imgur.com/2ClBTHc.png) shows 3 plugins that modify a list of gems (the rightmost one is what the game loads), first is just the base game plugin. Second mod adds its own list named CCO Jewels there. Third mod adds black pearl. You can see the second mod being in the red, because its change is overritten by the third mod, and the result is just like in Banished with starting conditions — I would only see black pearl from the third mod but not CCO Jewels from the second mod, because that change was overwritten. But now in this example (https://i.imgur.com/dZslYMp.png) there's a fourth mod coming into rescue creating a patch that makes sure both CCO Jewels from the second mod and black pearl from the third mod are loaded in the game. If we had such system in Banished, that would make everything so much easier and more compatible. But at the very least we can switch mods around so we can play with different items in different towns so it's not all bad! And we can make patches like this, but in a less convenient way and only if we have the source files.

And of course I got carried away with the details — congratulations if you managed to read the whole essay.

it is extnsive.LOL. well worded too. as you have found, there is so much give and take with the orders.

i put mods above that alter start settings, such as the pine mod, age mods, mine safety addons,etc.  then do groups of modder mods below whatever the main mod is. has taken years to put together. several  mods are moved above the RK due to conflicts. even the modder groups have certain mods to the top of them to deal with icon issues on my tool bars.

there is so much give and take. give up X to get Y to work if this way, but opposite or cause other conflicts if backwards. we all have our specific wants or goals. i did recently this year alter the fodder grass. wanted the Nat Div to work with RED's animals.  best i got was to use a KID's mod to alter the grass and rid the flowers.  they are collected as thatch.

with the mod manager we can keep copies of orders that do work. if we make mistakes, it is easy to figure out why and correct them. that thing saves HOURS of work down to seconds.

Okay @Voeille ,

Since you showed me about finally being able to make category separators; and you showed me yours - here's mine. These are all the mods I have entered into my spreadsheet so far which I will eventually publish for everyone to use if they wish to do so.

Since I loaded each of these mods one at a time only by themselves, I was able to properly break down their contents and these are the categories that came out of it all. The many categories are listed below:

Categories:
UI
Utility
Patches
Map Alterations:
  Adds Animals (only)
  Biome
  Climates
  Terrain
  Terrain Textures
  Terrain & Climate
  Terrain, Climate, & Map Sizes
  Terrain, Climate, & Starting Conditions
  Terrain & Starting Conditions
  Trees
Starting Conditions (only)
Bannie Overrides:
  Aging
  Clothing
  Education
  Laborers
  Nomads
Music
Weather
Tweaks:
  Crops
  Fishing
  Hunting
  Mines
  Orchards
  Pastures
  Resources
  Traders
  Woodcutter
Misc. Fixes
Mods for Housing, Production, Services, Storage:
  Themed Mod: Starting Conditions
  Themed Mod: Climate & Starting Conditions
  Themed Mod: Terrain, Climate & Starting Conditions
  Themed Mod: Terrain & Starting Conditions
  Housing
  Housing, Production
  Housing, Production, Services
  Housing, Production, Services, Storage
  Housing, Production, Storage
  Housing, Services
  Housing, Services, Storage
  Housing, Storage
  Production
  Production, Services, Storage
  Production, Storage
  Services
  Storage
Transport:
  Bridges
  Canals
  Docks & Jetties
  Roads
  Tunnels
Deco

As far as ModMan goes, these mods are actually listed in what I feel are their rightful place (mod order). So no matter which mods I select for use, I do not have to concern myself with changing their order. For me, so far, everything works without issue in this order. So I just select which ones I want to use and I am good to go as listed.

Obviously, I am not going to select multiple mods that change terrains or start conditions etc... I just pick one from each of those "special" categories.

Whoopsie, forgot the screenshot!  ;)


(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/13991_22_06_22_2_56_40.png) (http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/13991_22_06_22_2_56_40.png)


Click the image to enlarge it... of course :P

Oh and, FYI: The mods I have check marked that you see in the screenshot, this is my ModMan profile called "All Mods Base". What that means is, these are the mods that are used in every single game I play (my base mods I will always start with and then build upon by adding more); so I load this profile first, then add the additional mods I want to use for my next game and after selecting those I re-save according to the game name and date.

I should also say that everything from the UI category to the Misc. Fixes category are the "behind the scenes" type of mods. The stuff after the Misc. Fixes category are what actually get built in game and have toolbar buttons to use and find them in. At the moment I only have Kid's mods listed in my spreadsheet, no one else's.

can 1 of you load that newer version of mod manager to the downlad section? others might like to have it. is the site back to functioning normal again? or should we be concerned and try to move mod collections somewhere as a backup??

ModMan v0.6 (https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgT9cRpLq8CSg_EZXxvsHzQmWKXetw?e=zcsWGl)


https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgT9cRpLq8CSg_EZXxvsHzQmWKXetw?e=zcsWGl

Wow I had no idea ModMan could do this! You guys are amazing. :)

Does any of you know where ModMan originally comes from? It would be good to link to the original source, or if not available, to at least give the author credit for their hard work on it.

@MarkAnthony
I like your mod order, it looks neat and well organised. It is a good idea to have a few mods that always stay and activate others depending on the game, but that's not something I can manage to do — I just want it all available at once! I normally wouldn't even switch RKEC on/off but keep it always on (yes, with CC and all the other mods still active), however I like vanilla stone houses (there's just a certain charm to them, especially with my darkening material) and RKEC replaces them. I'm not good at planning so I just want as much available at once so it's not a problem to build other things than what I initially thought about if I change my mind.
What do the mods in your patches section do exactly? I know FlaxPatch and NewPineFlora, and NorthInedibleGrain has a very informative name so I can guess, but I'm unsure about the others, perhaps some of them could be useful in my load order as well.

Check the pinned link under General Discussion. JM made the ModMan.

Yes, @JM  made that awesome ModMan program and he still lurks here too. In fact he's read this thread a couple of times the last couple of nights (I caught him via "Who's Online") rofl  :P  I was hoping he'd reply even but he hasn't.

A long while back I thought he said he might do an update and I thought I gave him a few ideas, but nothing came of it. I just hope one day he adds new features. I would like to see separators added via the program, so we don't have to use dummy files. I would also like to be able to highlight mods via text colors like green, red, orange, and blue, maybe yellow as well with a "bold" text ability too. I would also like to see a count of mods activated next to total amount of mods in the WinData folder like 68/455.

Perhaps, depending on difficulty wherever we put in a separator we can also toggle it so that everything under that section (category) can be collapsed/expanded as needed so when we have 400-500+ mods listed we can toggle/collapse sections we don't need to see and it will shorten the amount of mods displayed in the window so that we don't have to scroll horizontally if you get what I mean.

About the Patches category I have:

FeatherPatch - By Tom Sawyer
   To reduce the feather output and to make them salable in the North.

MarketPatch - By Tom Sawyer
   NOT included in North v6.2. NEEDED to fix Salt & Trade Post issue.

NorthInedibleGrain - By Tom Sawyer,
   Here is the patch for those who like to play in the North with inedible grain for optimizing food production. It turns wheat, rye and flour inedible and can be added to a running game. A side effect is that markets tend to hoard these resources since people don't pick it up for food anymore. The granary still works with them. Again this is if you prefer inedible grain for optimized milling and baking in the North.

PatchDSTownhouses002 - By Discrepancy
   Patch to fix issue with Lime and the Raw Materials flagged limit not being delivered to trading post.

PurchasePatch - By Tom Sawyer
   To fix the trading bug of disappearing resources in vanilla games.

RKECTownHall - By RedKetchup
   Fixes the RKEC Town Hall so that it doesn't crash when building it; it also fixes the crash for the Trade Post as well.

RKGardenWallsUtilityPatch - By Kid
   I never did write down the description for this so I forgot what it does; you'd have to go look it up or ask Red. He may remember what it was for, or someone else might.

RKGardenWallUtilityPatch

"Updates fertilizers to flag Custom4. Changes made to greenhouses and stables"

I am the culprit :) I wrote that it is RK's mod. It will be used only with his mod.

So @Voeille , since we are in your thread about your Lush&GreenHD mod I have a request for you and it would mean a great deal to me if you would consider it.

@TomSawyer has a perfect grid mod called NorthGrid. I'll take a screenshot of it in a second before I finish this post. Anyhow, his grid is awesome and I use it in as many games as I can. But there is one side-effect and that is that he tied it to his Nordic Terrain. So, it cannot be used with any other mod that alters the terrain, like your Lush&GreenHD for example.

As I said, I absolutely love @kid1293 's TreeReplacer mod; well... now I also absolutely love your Lush&GreenHD too and I want to use your mod as often as possible but I also really like Tom's grid mod and well... my request is can you please make a second version that has a grid added to it like Tom's?  And of course, the version you have for RKEC would also need a grid too if you didn't mind.

I appreciate any consideration you would give towards this. I thank you in advance as well for your time and effort.

(http://worldofbanished.com/gallery/13991_23_06_22_3_35_40.png)

This screenshot is with two mods loaded: Tom's NorthGrid and Kid's TreeReplacer.

Thank you @kid1293 and sorry I was incorrect about who the author of it was.

Glad to see you, hope you are doing well.  :)

@kid1293
Do you mean the topic near the top of general discussion with the big bold letters saying mod manager? I was actually reading some threads in general discussion recently and of course I didn't notice the most obvious one. Classic. Anyway, thanks for letting me know!

@MarkAnthony
I could add a grid if that's useful, that shouldn't take too long. It would only be one version of the mod (compatible with RKEC), as only the grass, dirt and snow textures would need a grid (unless you'd like it on others too? mountains, orchards, crops, cemeteries/pastures), so I'd only include those. With that, you would still have the regular version enabled, and load the grid on top. It's worth noting that putting grid on snow will also place it on buildings in winter as they share the texture with ground (I haven't changed this, I just repalced the texture). Any particular colour? I'd probably go with black/dark grey, because dark theme is the best theme you can keep the same colour for both grass and snow.

I agree with your suggestions for features, those could come in handy. MO2 has some of those and they do help when there are a lot of mods. A notes feature could be useful too, so when there's something specific about the mod you can write it down not to forget later (which I don't use often enough and then do forget). Some examples: 1 (https://i.imgur.com/wuLg8lh.png), 2 (https://i.imgur.com/9uR4ruG.png), 3 (https://i.imgur.com/tJLsWkO.png), 4 (https://i.imgur.com/4tq95Vj.png).

By the way, you have the windows start menu in the centre! When I installed windows 11 on my work laptop, that was one of the first things I changed, after ages of having it on the left it just didn't feel right to me (I also do that when installing windows 11 on other work machines so people aren't confused).

@Voeille
As far as how the grid works /shrug; however @Tom Sawyer and @RedKetchup  did theirs is fine by me. It's early here and I just woke up, so I haven't put on my brain yet lol, I'll get back to you on that after work. I'll take some screenshots using Debug to clear the ground and see where it is that they have the grid appear. I don't think they have it on mountains since you cannot build on it. I also thought it showed in the snow too, but I don't recall. Anyways, I'll check later when I get home from work.

I was fine with that light yellow that Tom used. Again, I don't recall if Red's was darker yellow or not, but I liked Tom's for sure. Discrepancy used black/dark grey for his negative radius color. It was okay but (again) I don't recall how easy it was to see on the ground through forests or with snow. /shrug

This is the second time now in this thread that you mentioned a "dark theme"; I also saw in your ModMan screenshot that you had a dark version of your Lush&GreenHD.  Can you share?! LOL Tell me about it too?

There is already a notes feature included. Just double-click any of the .pkms  :)  And voila, Voeille!  :P 

EDIT: About the notes feature: The notes are persistent which is good. What I mean by this is if you add a mod to your WinData folder and write a note for a mod the note is saved. If one day you remove the mod you of course no longer see it in ModMan, but if you re-add that mod at a later date the note is still there and will reappear as long as the .pkm filename is the same.

I enjoy Windows 11 and yes, I left that all in the center. Reason being is I mostly have all windows, browser, etc. centered so therefore my mouse cursor is too so...dropping the mouse straight down the center and the stuff is right there! Besides... out with the old, and in with the new! I like that it's different; it's the first time it's been moved by Microsoft and I grew tired of it always being on the left side.

EDIT AGAIN: Two things: I don't know if Tom or Red purposely made their grid not appear on mountains or water etc. I think the reason the grid doesn't appear in those areas is because they have it set at 0 ground level or something?

You said, "With that, you would still have the regular version enabled, and load the grid on top." -- So are you implying you were going to make a separate grid mod instead of including it within the actual Lush&GreenHD? I ask because, I play just as many games without RKEC (more actually) so if I only had one choice as to which version you put the grid in, then I'd prefer it to be the regular version without the RKEC fix.

bah the game dont interact with a special grid, the grid is painted on the grass bitmap direct with photoshop. the reason mountains doesnt have grids, because it has not been draw on the mountain bitmap image. but you can still find some "grass bitmap" on top of mountains.

@MarkAnthony
Just like RedKetchup said, the grid works by literally drawing the grid on your terrain textures, there's no way with the current modkit to have a separate terrain-conforming overlay on the whole map that just goes on top of it, as far as I know. So for the grid mod, I would put the grid on the grass and snow textures, but if it's useful, I could add it to others. The only texture that conflicts with RKEC is cemeteries/pastures (same for both), I wouldn't include it in the grid version of the mod, so there's automatically no conflict. So in the game, you would have the grid version that replaces grass, dirt and snow textures with ones that have grid drawn on them, and have the regular mod below (if you only loaded the grid one, you would have the other textures such as crop fields vanilla, as the grid wouldn't include those).

Lush & green HD replaces dirt texture with light green grass (same as my original lush & green from years ago). This is how it looks in the mod folder. (https://i.imgur.com/oZaMptt.png) Now, you might wonder why as it doesn't seem to make sense at the first glance. However, if you look at this screenshot (https://i.imgur.com/kb5FQaJ.jpg), you might notice that the vanilla terrain has dirt patches with low opacity spread over the grass, and my terrain has ligher green patches spread over the main medium green grass. If I used the exact same texture for grass and dirt (which is a common practice for replacers to get rid of dirt), it wouldn't have those nice different colour patches and would look more repetitive. The side effect is having light green terrain underwater (you might notice on the shoreline), while it would be much better darker. The dark version you can see on my mod list replaces dirt with dark green instead of light green, but it needs more work to adjust the colours better. I think the patches work better when the dirt texture is lighter than the base grass, but as I mentioned, shorelines would look better if the dirt texture is dark green grass, so I wanted to have a version that does that.

Another 'dark' thing I have (TestMat on my modlist) is the result of me experimenting with materials (editing various values I saw there) and see what happens, and this gif (https://i.imgur.com/cgHJXHX.gif) shows what it does — I edited one line of code (literally) and it multiplies the original texture by its ambient occlusion(if a mesh has an AO map, no effect otherwise as multiplying by white is multiplying by 1), and additionally multiplies the texture by grey colour, which makes it darker overall (that has an effect on everything). The effect is equivalent to placing the AO map and a grey square on the texture and using the 'multiply' blending mode in programs such as Photoshop. The shader just does this globally for everything that uses the Opaque material and its variants so no texture editing is needed. I did this because it always felt to me that buildings were a tad too bright with my grass replacement (it is much darker than vanilla), but of course this is just subjective, I'd wager most people do actually prefer the original bright look of buildings.

And thanks for the info about double-clicking a mod and adding notes, that's useful to know.

in your experimenting with splitting the mod coding, how far can it be broken apart?  without altering the trees on a map, can a mod lessen the # of trees spawned?

the original Nat Div mod had more meadows  and they were larger than the RKEC. there were still forests but also more open space amongst them.   i've been able to tweak much of the start with various mods but can't get the open look.

i have the Pine mod for trees and gathering. am using some of KID's mods to tweak the RK fodder grass. flowers are collected as thatch and houses can use it for fuel. and am using a Lite version of the RKEC. i even found using a KID mod makes the roaming bison look more wild than the domesticated. 

In the NaturalResourceTree.rsc file there's this block:


NaturalResourceDescription naturalresource
{
ComponentDescription _rawMaterial = "Template\RawMaterialWood.rsc";

// placement
float _noisePersistance = 1.0;
float _noiseOctaves = 4.0;
float _noiseScale = 30.0;
float _noiseCutoff = 0.35;
float _spawnChance = 0.4;

bool _groupModels = true;
float _groupPersistance = 1.0;
float _groupOctaves = 1.0;
float _groupScale = 5.0;
float _groupCutOff = 0.5;
int _groupRandom = 5;

float _minHeight = 0.0f;
float _maxHeight = 1.0f;
float _maxAngle = 0.75f;

bool _animated = true;
Time _preAnimateTime = 6.0;
Time _postAnimateTime = 3.0;
ToolType _toolType = Axe;

float _positionTolerance = 0.4;
}


Some of the variables include 'noise', as the game uses Perlin noise to place trees, to ensure trees are placed in groups (e.g. a group of oaks and then a group of pines next to it, as opposed to an even number of them in a single group). Unfortunately foresters don't place trees like that and it's always a mixed group, which looks a bit less natural. Examples of Perlin noise:

(https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*IKWYcJmsxKgLgJItPAvgXQ.png)
Source (https://medium.com/100-days-of-algorithms/day-88-perlin-noise-96d23158a44c)

Tweaking the numbers in the variables above would affect how the trees are spawned during map generation. You can experiment and see what you get with different numbers.

The same file also has this block:


GrowthDescription growth
{
// maximum growth before death, -1 for ever living
float _maxGrowth = 5.0;

// growth +- some amount
float _maxGrowthTolerance = 1.0;

// length of growth period to maturity
float _growthInMonths = 40;

// temperature dependant growth
bool _temperatureDependent = false;
float _growthTemp = 0.0;
float _growthTempRange = 0.0;

// re-seeding.
bool _autoSeed = true;
int _seedChance = 12;
int _seedDistance = 8;
int _seedTimeMonths = 3;
float _growthForSeeding = 0.9;

// max neighbors when reseeding
int _maxNeighbors = 1;
int _maxNeighborsSelf = 0;

float _minScale = 0.2f;
}


Those are vanilla values for tree lifetime and reseeding, and as far as I know they eventually cause the trees to die off. Various mods change the numbers to prevent that, I have one as well with rather aggressive values, however I have seen that even with it disabled the forests spread at a steady pace with other mods I have installed.

It is worth noting that the seed chance is actually higher the lower the number is. So setting it to 4 for example would make the trees reseed 3 times as fast as with original 12. The grass from RKEC has rather a high value as it doesn't take long for the natural grass to die off and you need the fodder farmers building to keep it going. Flowers on the other hand reseed rather fast and survive on their own. If you have multiple resseding plants, such as trees, grass and flowers, it might be hard to balance the numbers just right to prevent either of them from dying off or overtaking the others.


As for splitting the mod coding, the examples I pasted above can help to show how it works. You can see that I pasted the 'naturalresource' block and the 'growth' block from the NaturalResourceTree.rsc file. If one mod only edits the 'growth' block and another mod only edits the 'naturalresource' block, they won't conflict and you will get changes from both, despite both making changes to NaturalResourceTree.rsc. However, if they both edited the same block, for example 'growth', you will only get the changes from the mod loaded first. While compiling the mod that edits vanilla files, it will automatically detect which block you edited and only include that. You can also specify that manually in your Package.rsc file, for example you can write that you want to include "Template/NaturalResourceTree.rsc:growth" as opposed to "Template/NaturalResourceTree.rsc". If you're only editing one block, you can also remove other blocks from the .rsc file included in your mod folder in the modkit as your mod doesn't try to use them. If you're editing a block of a mod-added file, you always need to manually specify which block you want to include, as the compiler only knows vanilla and cannot tell what you edited compared to the original mod. This allows you to edit things from mods you don't have the source for — you can check what file names and blocks the mod includes using the in-game mod menu, and then include those in your mod, as long as the given block doesn't refer to resources you don't have.

For an instance, let's say there's a mod X that adds a few buildings and one of them is a storage building. You open the in-game mod menu to see details, and you see that there's a file listed called Templates/ModXStorage.rsc, and there's a block ModXStorage.rsc:build that specifies building requirements. You would like to change them to be 20 work and 20 wood. In your mod folder in the modkit you would create a file Templates/ModXStorage.rsc, and the file would only need to include this:


BuildDescription build
{
int _workRequired = 20;

BuildRequirement _buildRequirement
[
{
ComponentDescription _rawMaterial = "Template/RawMaterialWood.rsc";
int _count =  20;
}
]
}


It only refers to vanilla wood, which means you don't need to include any extra files. If you wanted to use lumber instead of wood, you would need all necessary lumber files as that's not included in the vanilla game.

In your references in Package.rsc you would have "Template/ModXStorage.rsc:build" in the reference list. Once compiled, you would want your mod higher in the load order than mod X, as it normally works with overwrites.

that is interesting. so we do have ability to affect parts of things individually withouty offsetting everything. like the growth rate of trees but not the textures. you are correct bout the RK fodder dying off after a few years. KID fixed that issue in a few mods. i do think RED fixed the trees dying off issue. can't remember the #'s thou.

balance is unique. my current order does yield more textiles and less food than before. it also depends on which forester is working an area.  each map is diverse that way. planted forests do act different than the start.

i'm not a modder and don't have the mod kit. i can only do what the great modders allow me to. i understand the trees will fill in the grass areas over time, but i don't think it will be very fast. especially since the fodder does spawn itself.  way back in time i saw a post that stated the various trees spawn different foods. oaks spawned something and birch trees something else. not sure if any are aware of that. i never could find the post again. in vanilla, there was an over abundance of roots and onions.

what controls how many or how close the groups of trees are? have you seen pics of the original Nat Div? the meadows were larger and more of them than the RKEC.

The tree groups would be affected by those numbers:


bool _groupModels = true;
float _groupPersistance = 1.0;
float _groupOctaves = 1.0;
float _groupScale = 5.0;
float _groupCutOff = 0.5;
int _groupRandom = 5;


But I don't know without testing how each of those numbers would affect the trees exactly.

What spawns is defined in the 'spawn' block in NaturalResourceTree.rsc and it doesn't matter what tree it is. Whether it is an oak or a birch is purely visual. This is where the tree models are defined:


ModelDescription model
{
MeshGroup _meshes
[
{
AnimationGroup _animations = "Models\NaturalResource\Tree\TreeAnims.rsc";
GraphicsMesh _mesh
[
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\PineTreeMesh01.rsc"
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\PineTreeMesh02.rsc"
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\PineTreeMesh03.rsc"
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\PineTreeMesh04.rsc"
]
}
{
AnimationGroup _animations = "Models\NaturalResource\Tree\TreeAnims.rsc";
GraphicsMesh _mesh
[
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\BirchTreeMesh01.rsc"
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\BirchTreeMesh02.rsc"
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\BirchTreeMesh03.rsc"
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\BirchTreeMesh04.rsc"
]
}
{
AnimationGroup _animations = "Models\NaturalResource\Tree\TreeAnims.rsc";
GraphicsMesh _mesh
[
"Models\NaturalResource\Tree\OakTreeMesh.rsc"
]
}
]
int _displayIndex = 0;
int _subIndex = 0;
bool _randomIndex = false;
}


You can add more model references there if you have source files for trees from mods, and they will work the same as vanilla trees, just look different. Interestingly, the closer the model is to the top of that list (in the vanilla list above, pine is at the top), the more and larger groups of it appear on the map. It doesn't seem to affect foresters and they plant everything equally.

This is what defines the plants that spawn under trees:


SpawnDescription spawn
{
Spawn _spawn
[
{
ComponentDescription _naturalResource = "Template\NaturalResourceHerb.rsc";
float _minSpawnAge = 1.1;
float _maxSpawnAge = 100.0;
}
{
ComponentDescription _naturalResource = "Template\NaturalResourceOnion.rsc";
float _minSpawnAge = 0.1;
float _maxSpawnAge = 100.0;
}
{
ComponentDescription _naturalResource = "Template\NaturalResourceBlueberry.rsc";
float _minSpawnAge = 0.1;
float _maxSpawnAge = 100.0;
}
{
ComponentDescription _naturalResource = "Template\NaturalResourceMushroom.rsc";
float _minSpawnAge = 0.1;
float _maxSpawnAge = 100.0;
}
{
ComponentDescription _naturalResource = "Template\NaturalResourceRoot.rsc";
float _minSpawnAge = 0.1;
float _maxSpawnAge = 100.0;
}
]
}


You can see that herbs need older trees than food to spawn. It is also likely that this list works the same as the model list and things closer to the top are more common, as I do seem to have more onion in my towns than the other forest food.

Even if you don't consider yourself as modder, I think having a modkit working is a good idea. You can learn a lot how things work by tweaking numbers and checking the effect in the game, and you can achieve impactful effects with just that. An ageing mod for example is just changing a few numbers and nothing else, but it has a big effect on the gameplay. Banished modkit doesn't provide anything to do any programming outside shaders anyway, the .rsc files are just variables and references, but you cannot add any custom logic. A scripting interface would be nice though, even if it had just as fragile engine as Skyrim's Papyrus.

Hi Voeille

I just want to say that your trees in your first pictures look stunning (I'm obsessed with trees right now^^). I'm not sure if you already said it, if so I apologize, but do you intend to make a texture replacer just for those? A tree is just a tree but a forest can give an entire different vibe.