1st question: its the wood splitting block, I is the hotkey.
2nd question: its a DFHACK script:
# Food and plants decay, and vanish after a few months
=begin
deterioratefood
===============
Somewhere between a "mod" and a "fps booster", with a small impact on
vanilla gameplay.
With this script running, all food and plants wear out and disappear
after several months. Barrels and stockpiles will keep them from
rotting, but it won't keep them from decaying. No more sitting on a
hundred years worth of food. No more keeping barrels of pig tails
sitting around until you decide to use them. Either use it, eat it,
or lose it. Seeds, are excluded from this, if you aren't planning on
using your pig tails, hold onto the seeds for a rainy day.
This script is...pretty far reaching. However, almost all long
running forts I've had end up sitting on thousands and thousands of
food items. Several thousand cooked meals, three thousand plump
helmets, just as many fish and meat. It gets pretty absurd. And your
FPS doesn't like it.
Usage: ``deterioratefood (start|stop)``
=end
class DeteriorateFood
def initialize
end
def process
return false unless @running
items = [df.world.items.other[:FISH],
df.world.items.other[:FISH_RAW],
df.world.items.other[:EGG],
df.world.items.other[:CHEESE],
df.world.items.other[:PLANT],
df.world.items.other[:PLANT_GROWTH],
df.world.items.other[:FOOD]]
items.each { |type|
type.each { |i|
i.wear_timer += 1
if (i.wear_timer > 24 + rand(8))
i.wear_timer = 0
i.wear += 1
end
if (i.wear > 3)
i.flags.garbage_collect = true
end
}
}
end
def start
@onupdate = df.onupdate_register('deterioratefood', 1200, 1200) { process }
@running = true
puts "Deterioration of food commencing..."
end
def stop
df.onupdate_unregister(@onupdate)
@running = false
end
def status
@running ? 'Running.' : 'Stopped.'
end
end
case $script_args[0]
when 'start'
if ($DeteriorateFood)
$DeteriorateFood.stop
end
$DeteriorateFood = DeteriorateFood.new
$DeteriorateFood.start
when 'end', 'stop'
$DeteriorateFood.stop
else
if $DeteriorateFood
puts $DeteriorateFood.status
else
puts 'Not loaded.'
end
end
at best I would say it destroys things when 3 periods of (24+rand(8)) which would be an answer of 24x3 to 32x3 = 72 to 96 .... I'm assuming that's days, as I think, @onupdate = df.onupdate_register('deterioratefood', 1200, 1200) { process } is telling it to run once every day(1200 ticks per day).... I'm not completely sure because I've not dug that far into ruby scripts or DFHack, or ticks. But 72-96 days is my bet and I'm sure someone will confirm that, or correct me if I'm off because of something I didn't understand.