WIP: Natural Diversity

[Bartender]

Personally I'm not very skilled at designing buildings (Those with a good eye may spot that my Thatcher's Shed is in fact an adaptation of the Apiary example), but if anyone wants to do a companion mod with thatched roofs they have my blessings .

In other news, v1.0 of Natural Diversity is now available for download!
You can find it here: http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=269

The promised Light version (which only offers visual updates of the natural resources), is availabe too: http://worldofbanished.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=270

[QueryEverything]

Thank you for the upate @Bartender
Is it at all possible to get an alternate link please?  Possibly dropbox or google drive, I have very patchy internet where I am currently and have odd time outs.  Took me hours to get the original. 

I will persevere if you can not.  Thank you

[Bartender]

Ofcourse! Here it is: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-ZePVZCUPiueHdPcnRHbGtQQzA

I also had some problems during the uploading, so I guess it's not just your connection .

[QueryEverything]

Thank you @Bartender I have it now, worked instantly!! 

[brads3]

thank you for the new link and all the fixes.this looks great. 1 of the things i like is it opens up the maps. instead of having all forests, we now have meadows mixed in.how does this compare to firewood as to burning?? is it 1 thatch=1 firewood log??? if so i would recommend a bundler shed to change it to 10 thatch =1 log.also,do you have plans to build a storage shed for the thatch?? it won't burn well if we leave it in the piles and it gets wet or damp even.

[Bartender]

At the moment 1 thatch is as potent as 1 firewood indeed. While testing this seemed like an ok balance, but I will definitely keep monitoring it. As I want to make a more elaborate an realistic production chain for the thatch anyway, I think there is a high chance for this to change in some way in the future. Thanks for your suggestions!

[Bartender]

I am overjoyed with all the positive attention that this mod received after I released version 1.0. While the suggestions for improvements are rolling in (which I am very glad to receive too!), it is time to seriously start thinking about what the next update is going to bring. Ofcourse there will be optimizations, fixes and updates of what is already there, but the most exciting part would be the new content!

Therefore, I present the first sneak peek for v1.1: the Berry Bush.



Some of you may have wondered why the berry bush is the only plant resource that did not receive an upgrade yet in v1.0. The reason for this is that I was unsure of how to approach this in the most realistic way. Aside from visuals, there are two issues that bother me in the original berry bush.

1. Berries can be harvested year round, while the bushes should not have fruits in winter.
2. When villagers harvest the berries, they cut down the whole bush.

Now the first problem could be resolved by making the berry bush die in cold weather, but this would not be realistic either, as berry bushes are perennials and live several years. The second problem is one that is hardcoded into the game; resources simply get destroyed the moment they get harvested. A few days ago I finally found the perfect solution to both problems, partly inspired by how DarkBibou handled the wild fruit trees in his Tree of Life mod.

In summer, this new Berry Bush will drop berries on the ground, which can be harvested by the gatherer. In winter, The Bush will lose its leaves, and will not drop any berries. The bush itself can be harvested too, but will only give firewood.

[tanypredator]

Looks very good. Only I'm afraid that foresters will cut them down.

[Bartender]

They won't , at least not as part of their normal gathering (sometimes foresters cut something down if it's blocking them). I made a separate template for the bushes, so they are not treated as trees by the game. I will probably make a new menu button for cutting down bushes.

[brads3]

i agree with TANY. have a debate with myself here.do we want to cut them when we clear an area or do we want to leave them and have bushes in our towns to eat from?yet at the same time we don't want to clear each bush manually.that could be debated a lot i guess.if you can make coded "trees" give berries then i would suggest adding apples and maybe pears to the gatherer as well.then towns can have berry bushes and apple trees around our houses that someone actually will pick from. that is more realistic. could the bushes drop firewood pieces in the winter?
   did you decide which berries you are making?? are you making straw,rasp,blue,black berries or just a berry? can all of them be coded to use as a blueberry ? such as some of the ales are made from blueberry but the building to us shows "berry".
    if it is easier for you,make this a separate mod to add to the other instead of an upgrade.
   

[Necora]

@Bartender if you want any of my trees and resources just ask I'm not saying they are any good, but might save you some time. I've got apple trees, apples on the ground, and a new apple raw material mesh than the vanilla one. I've also got blueberries and cranberries which are a different style to yours but might make for diversity. I was going for low bush wild types for mine but something isn't sitting right with them, I think I need to make better textures.

[Tom Sawyer]

New berry bushes would be great @Bartender. The vanilla one is not perfect and has a strange animation. I have never seen a blueberry bush moving back and forth in the wind. The new bush in the picture looks promising. For my taste they are a still too big. I think they should have the height of your other plants. At least blueberries.

For your light version I suggest to not add new resources like this or that new berry. Better to stay with blueberries or only "virtual species" of berries. In the nordic mod I would rename blueberries in just berries then. It would be consistent to mushrooms, roots and herbs.

Your idea of making them perennial is interesting. It bothers me too that they are totally harvested and vanish in winter. But it's a good way for gameplay and balancing and just more abstract. So not really a bad solution. I just suggest to care about to not run into another unrealistic workaround by solving the first problem. I mean, to gather berries dropped down and laying some meters away from the bush is strange too. And also to get firewood from thin blueberry bushes is not realistic. Just a few thoughts to this nice mod.

[ancientmuse]

Personally speaking, I think all of the different varieties of wild foods should all stay the same function as the vanilla wild foods.

I really don't see any need to overcomplicate things with individual buttons to gather different things, individual gather buildings, etc.  It would start to get to be too much.

You should just be able to use your labourers (busy labourers mod) to gather "wild foods" or "herbs"... or use your gatherer's hut to do the same thing without having to specify this or that. 

All the different mushroom varieties, onion varieties, berry varieties, any herb varieties, etc etc should all just simply function as "wild foods" or "herbs" for your gatherers/labourers to collect, just like the vanilla ones do.  It's only when they put them into storage that you can see all the different types of berries that you've collected without having to tell your workers to collect each one seperately... that could get a bit frustrating as the different variety types get to become more and more should Bartender decide to continue adding different types of wild foods to his mod.

Keeping things simple and straight forward usually works best for these types of mods.


Just my $.02 worth.

[tanypredator]

I just want to agree with several things.

"can all of them be coded to use as a blueberry ? such as some of the ales are made from blueberry but the building to us shows "berry"" - I too think that the result of gathering should be just 'berries'. I see the problem with it if you want to add red berries (and I think all player want that too ), but that can be solved by making red-and-blue berry mix as a rawmaterial model.

"For my taste they are a still too big. I think they should have the height of your other plants. At least blueberries." - agree. Blueberry isn't a tree, it is a small plant. Raspberry may be of a bush size and rowan may be a tree size - that latter I wanted to make, but delayed...

"I just suggest to care about to not run into another unrealistic workaround by solving the first problem. I mean, to gather berries dropped down and laying some meters away from the bush is strange too. And also to get firewood from thin blueberry bushes is not realistic. " - I suggest to leave them naturalresourse. Not very realistic to see them cut down, but easier to work around. Although for bigger bushes (such as rowan) your idea might be more suitable. Maybe there can be 1) usual small berries as naturalresourses and 2) berry trees as trees spawning berries on the ground. Maybe also apples if you like the idea. Maybe blooming appletrees 

[brads3]

can we get a clarification on what a blue berry is??? i see some mention a small plant. here we call huckleberries blue berries. they do grow on a bush similar to the pic. rasberry grows on thorny shrubs about the height of the reeds. strawberries grow close to the ground. we do have a black berry similar to rasberry but black. and what grandma called black caps which are smaller in size than a blackberry are sweeter.they are shaped like the tip of a finger. not trying to confuse anyone or cause a debate. was thinking that in different parts of the world things have different names.
  i'll try to explain my post earlier as well.  what we see on screen as to red or blue or black berries in texture and what it is named when it goes to storage and what the game thinks it is as to use in the coding ,i think can at times be different. so while we see red or black or blue berries being gathered,they can all be called berry when stored. yet some buildings use blueberry only,so the hope was  for all the berries to be able to be used as blueberry so those buildings will still function. there is a tavern that makes ale and it says it takes berry but it never uses any except bluebery.hope that helps.
  as to the size of the bush,that might depend on how it ends up being coded and how players use them. reason i mentioned apples or pears was we could set a gatherer in our towns. houses could have bushes and a tree or 2 in their yards that produce fruit. to me that is historically correct. i know many of the old small family farms have 1 or 2 apple trees in the front yard.generally people tried to live near their food sources.we had berry shrubs on the edge of our lawn when i was growing up. i don't envy BARTENDER at all on figuring it all out.