Tree Growth

[MobY]

how to fix this? any GM command or script that do so the trees grow faster?

[(GS96) Balthazar]

Publicado originalmente por alakar <pxtzle>:

Publicado originalmente por (GS96) Balthazar:

Correct, on the FOREST...i.e. underbrush, sprout chances, etc...pls don't say hmmm, no..it's ummm yes. If a tree has a 25% chance to spawn a sprout normally it now WILL spawn one...everyday....this is the problem..it would be wildly easier to revert...as they're going to do on the MMO...in other words, the DEVS agree it's easier. If what you had said worked that way properly, they would have it as a temp patch instead, just like the temp for the racks / tubs. Screwing with the coding isn't as straight foward as it seems, everything in the buried code is tied to damn near EVERYthing else.

No, it won't spawn one every day. Did you even read where I said it should advance age by 4 days instead of 1 for existing trees?

Indeed, what I said, if you read it, is if the % to drop a sprout is normally 25% in a day, you have just multiplied that by 4, meaning it is now guaranteed to drop one...IF the % to drop is 10% a day, then it is now 40%, but either way, you have added 4X the number of sprouts to the server, sending the server alot faster to the realm of being overpopulated by trees. Trees don't just sprout junk trees.Whatever the scrpit is set to, if the original tree paaases, it can create a sprout UP to that Q, so again, it's still one F-ton easier to simply back the patch to where trees were or closer to it so folks have trees w/o resorting to altering time files, which in turn create all sorts of unexpected results. But that's fine, run that script, when it does everything that's not expected, simply wipe - folks never, ever mind that.

[O_O.BeN]

Hey guys! Let me clarify some things about forest growth process that was introduced in 1.1.5.7. Everything below has little use for players and is aimed for server admins.

Forest is now governed by much more complicated rules which are described below. If you are not interested in the innards of the algorithm, skip the first section right to the topics you guys discussed here. The first section is provided just to clarify which things do not work like before, like "sprout spawn rates" that were mentioned here.

General algorithm description

Here are the goals of the algorithm:
1. Forest should never become too big
2. Forest should be visually diverse in terms of tree types, should contain trees of various ages and qualities

There is a new server configuration file named cm_forest_maintenance.xml which configures the "optimal" overall state of the forest. Regardless of the state of the forest before 1.1.5.7, maintenance-by-maintenance the algorithm will slowly "move" forest from it's current state to the optimal state.

The most important thing about this optimal state is how much trees there should be on the server. This can be expressed in terms of "tree density" settings and basically means that "moving to optimal state" results in either increasing or decreasing the number of trees in existing forest. The optimal state is maintained once reached.

The criteria for tree death is it's age. The older the particular tree gets, the greater the chance that it will die during the next maintenance. EVERY tree will die of old age sooner or later. In contrast to this, the algorithm will create new trees only if there is a shortage of trees of a particular type compared to the "optimal" forest.

Let's say that we want to cover 10% of forest soil with pines and there are 1000 cells of forest soil on the server. This would mean that forest in the optimal state will have 100 pines. If there are, say, 150 pines on our server, excessive pines will slowly die out, whereas in case there are just 50 pines instead of 150, "missing" pines would be spawned over the course of several game days.

Once the optimal forest state is reached, there should be trees of all ages with nicely distributed wood quality values. The "factory" settings of cm_forest_maintenance.xml should give you a beautiful and diverse forest that lives, changes over time but never reaches the crazy overgrown state that was possible before.

The rules of determining WHERE to plant the new trees are complicated and I don't think that they are relevant to this discussion.

It should be noted that transition to the optimal state is likely to take a long time (something around 200 game days), but it depends on the current state of the forest.

Unchecked overgrowth of forest database table

Before 1.1.5.7 forest trees would never die on their own, so forest grew uncontrollably and the only "legit" way of reducing its' size was just cutting trees down. The workaround that many admins use (as far as we know) is applying "clearing" SQL scripts that remove trees from server database based on some criteria (e.g. remove all trees with quality < 90).

This is not needed anymore and the usage of such scripts will likely result in servers with a very small amount of trees.

Speeding growth up

Right now growth speed-up is not possible because the new forest growth algorithm does not support it. The method of changing

$CmMaintenance::forestMaintenanceDayCount

that was discussed here will do something but it is probably not what you expect. Indeed, trees would age faster, which means that they would die faster. Due to implementation details setting this parameter to, say, 2 will result in a forest that has twice smaller number of trees than the number indicated by the density settings in cm_forest_maintenance.xml. This behavior may suit your needs but this variable was not intended for such usage.

That said, seeing these discussions, we recognize that there should be a way to configure the speed of the forest growth for server admins. We plan to provide a solution that plays well with the rest of forest growth logic in future.

[Bellophoron]

@ben Just to clear things up, are these for "wild" forests or does this also count for planted forests?

[O_O.BeN]

@Yoshihito I would guess that the situation is as you describe it due to the fact that there already were not many trees before 1.1.5.7 rolled out (perhaps because a SQL script was routinely used on the server that reduced the population of the trees), which was not a problem back then, but was amplified greatly by the changes to the tree aging speeds. Is my assumption right?

If it is, this probably means that your server's forest is in transition to the optimal state I described in my previous comment. Once this optimal state is reached, there should be plenty of trees to work with (something around 50k trees on a server for unaltered cm_forest_maintenance.xml, if I remember correctly).

As I said, reaching optimal forest state may take around 200 game days, or more, depends on the initial state of the forest. As a server admin, you may choose to force this transition in one go by executing the following script on the server console:

for(%i=0;%i<200;%i++) forestMainThreadMaintenance();

The process will take a while (a couple of hours maybe, depending on the power of your machine) and during this time the server will be unresponsive, players will not be able to play. I would also advise to do a database backup just in case.

And as I mentioned before, you need to disable any forest-clearing SQL scripts that you use - they will not play well with this update most likely.

Note that all of this will just generate an expansive forest with lots of trees. The trees that players plant will still grow slower than before 1.1.5.7. This is intended though and should not lead to situations when you have trouble finding wood for buildings if forest is fully grown. As I said, we recognize that you may wish to speed up this aspect of the game on your server. The option to tweak this is planned for future patches, but again - once the forest is fully grown this should become a gameplay tweak, not a game-breaking necessity.

[O_O.BeN]

@Bellophoron The rules are exactly the same for all trees, the only difference between "wild" trees and player-planted ones is, well, the act of their creation - first ones are planted "naturally", the second - by hand.

Player intervention will inevitably "move" the forest state either towards optimal state or away from it. If left unattended, the plantations that move the forest away from the optimal state will eventually die out. For example, in a forest that is supposed to have 1000 apple trees players are free to plant additional 2000 apple trees by themselves, but the "natural" way of forest development will resist those changes and the excessive apple trees will slowly (SLOWLY) die out if players do not restore their plantations

[Davakar]

It seems by what you are describing you have created a problem where by if you have a group of players come into your server and they plant a bunch of trees they have then messed up the 'sweet spot' you guys are trying to maintain through this new code.

Where you could essentially shut down all production of trees or force all other settlements plantations growth down to an abosolute crawl until the balance has been re-established through another 200 game days...

[O_O.BeN]

Time will tell whether there are exploits like this or not, but right now it seems doubtful that players will be able to affect the balance in a significant way - it would require manually planting thousands and thousands of trees.

But more importantly - even if such a giant man-made plantation arises, the rate at which trees age (i.e. become bigger) will not change - in fact it never will, no matter what (I assume that this is what you mean by "forcing plantation growth down"?).

Nothing stops you from planting trees that you want, no matter what happens in other parts of the server, and nothing changes aging speed of those trees. In fact, the whole "sweet spot balancing" thing is there mainly to protect from forests that become so big in terms of tree numbers they cause lags (as was before, even if players planted nothing extra) and to generate forests that are visually pretty.

Also nothing stops players from manual creation of super overgrown forests, but that's players' choice and you will have to work to achieve that because the system will constantly push back.

[GIJoe597]

I also wondered about what Davakar is typing, based on what you typed O_O.BeN.

Using your example of 10% of 1000 cells with Pine. Consider this, I am in a group of 15 people, and we plant nothing but Pines, fill every cell we can, behind our walls. Does that mean someone else, elsewhere on the server, is not going to be able to grow pines if we and a few other claims can hit that 10%?

Will someone eventually just not be able to grow Pine? If yes, seems a great form of economic warfare and a conflict starter.


Imagine if this can be done with Apple or Mulberry trees also. If you can corner the server "market" on Apple trees, there go a whole bunch on animal farms. Or, Farming actually becomes important to feed animals.

[Sharana]

He already answered that in the explanation above. Players can always plant trees, but this number will decrease the natural spawned ones in order to even it out.
If this limit is reached some of the trees will slowly age and die, so that the desired number is reached UNLESS players counter that by replanting again. So such kind of economical warfare won't be possible.

[GIJoe597]

I read what he typed, but my take is different from yours. Nothing will stop a large group from simply replanting trees to always keep the number high within their walls. If the trees which die are out in the wild or other claims, the algorithm does not care, it only sees numbers, as long as the trees are on the server, it is happy.

[Sharana]

I can't see your point. The aging process will be pretty slow and will touch everyone. Group A's trees will age and die as well, so they will have to be replanted. That doesn't prevent group B to do absolutely the same.
The limit doesn't mean that the 1001th tree will just despawn. It means 1001th tree won't be spawned naturally. There is nothing preventing PLAYERS to maintain 3 000 treees with regular replants, it just won't happen naturally. And if players stop to replant (take care of the forest) the trees will just slowly die out as all trees, just no new ones will be spawned until the amount drops under the desired amount (which was 1K in the example). And that process is about 200 ingame days.

[Bellophoron]

Publicado originalmente por O_O.BeN:

@Bellophoron The rules are exactly the same for all trees, the only difference between "wild" trees and player-planted ones is, well, the act of their creation - first ones are planted "naturally", the second - by hand.

Player intervention will inevitably "move" the forest state either towards optimal state or away from it. If left unattended, the plantations that move the forest away from the optimal state will eventually die out. For example, in a forest that is supposed to have 1000 apple trees players are free to plant additional 2000 apple trees by themselves, but the "natural" way of forest development will resist those changes and the excessive apple trees will slowly (SLOWLY) die out if players do not restore their plantations

thx for the answer m8 ;)

[Iain the Hunter]

just to put my two cents in....this is WAY too slow. 2x slower would have sufficed, if devs wanted to slow down growth a bit. i get why they slowed it down, but it's bordering on ridiculous

[Salut c'est ALlan]

it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ joke, we wont spent all ur time on a game, i'ts not a simulation game, its a survival.. if they dont change this setting, i think i stop the game

[DariusXIV]

Yeah Guys don't forget it's a game... It's not a second life...
There are people who can't spent as many hours in a game. Please try to readjust it.

Thanks for the comprehension