Topic: Tree farming questions (and a few facts) (Read 4669 times)

slay_mithos · « **on:** August 22, 2014, 08:26:44 am »

Hello,

I tried posting this question before on the "human" thread, but it got burried without an answer, and my fort died soon afterward.

So, basically, if you buy/find logs, you can process them to gain specific items along with seeds.
"wood" can be processed early (wood splitting block and sawmill) into smooth wood for small chance of seeds.
All the farmed trees ("XXX sapling", also called "XXX_small" in the raws) can be changed to logs in the sawmill, also nets seeds.

For the rarer trees, you need a more specialized building (Exotic wood worker for the humans).
It refines the logs into their special product (ironwood > iron bar, featherwood > feathers), and nets a few seeds in the process.

The humans have access to a shop that sells all the special logs, so no matter your embark, you have access to all the wood types (yes, even third cavern, good and evil ones), if you have the money for it.

My problem is that processing featherwood did give me seeds (feather acorns), but I can't seem to be able to plant them.
It is definitely not related to a biome (I am in a "good" biome only embark), and even spawning the product (create-items plant feather_small) didn't get them to appear on my farms as an option.

The reason I spawned the fully grown plant is because there is a bug where you can't plant things that you don't have a fully grown specimen first in vanilla, (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=4549 ) so I wanted to be sure.

So, my question is:
What do I need to do in order to be able to farm "new" wood/plants?

Meph · « **Reply #1 on:** August 22, 2014, 08:31:35 am »

I am not sure myself. I hoped to fix this with a dfhack script later on, but I dont know why some plants wont be accepted by farmplots.

slay_mithos · « **Reply #2 on:** August 22, 2014, 08:44:30 am »

Before I go out of my way and get crystal trees and whatever, is it all non standard tree/plant types that are affected?

Meph · « **Reply #3 on:** August 22, 2014, 09:11:53 am »

It appears somewhat random.

slay_mithos · « **Reply #4 on:** August 22, 2014, 06:15:41 pm »

As a warning, what comes next could be totally stupid, as I am no pro with raws.

So, after trying out everything I could think about, even building a new farm, completely above ground (I usually channel 1 level for my farms, to prevents all the small odd squares), and various other similar operations (underground farm, spawning actual seeds directly...), I decided to resort to raw checking.

Not being used to how raws work (I can guess a bit, but that's about it), I still noticed a few differences between woods that do work and feather wood.

To start us off, the raws for the rough wood:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The steel oak is pretty similar, with a few extra entries about material (value, colour...)

Now, onto the featherwood, that I can't make work on any test (even other worlds):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

For better comparison, open 2 note pads (or your prefered raw text editor).
First is the [GOOD] tag, presumably to restrict to good biomes?
The growth duration/seasons are not placed at the same place (should not matter, but I'm checking every difference)

So unless the growth duration is place-sensitive (would make absolutely no sense in this case), the only thing that "might" pose problem would be the 'good'.

I removed it, generated a world, embarked as dwarves with all required to make the sawmill, built farm, built sawmill, spawned feather_small (create-items plant feather_small), processed one, checked the plot, and it was possible to plant them.

Now, on to the weirder part.
I go to the raws, in search of other [GOOD], and I find that sunberry has the tag too, but was able to plant it without issue (it even appears in the default above ground list without access to either plant or seed).
Still having the game openned, I spawn sun berries, make wine to get seeds, and they plant just fine in a neutral biome (not GOOD).

So the GOOD tag doesn't prevent from planting, but removing it seems to have enabled me to plant them when I get them (might still need to spawn a fully grown specimen, couldn't figure out how to spawn the seed).
Note the "seems to have", because it might not be related (somehow, no idea why).

To further my theory that the biome related tags are messing the farm thing, I spawned glass_thorn_small, glumprong_small and nether_creeper as plants, transformed them to get seeds, and sure enough, none of them appear in farm plot (above or underground).

Now, the only thing that could prove this theory wrong would be to be able to plant them without removing the tag, which I could not achieve with the same method and the tag being there.

EDIT: Actually, scratch that whole theory.

It appears that removing the GOOD tag made it available at embark, so my test is not conclusive.

Now, the question remains:
Did anyone manage to "unlock" ANY plant/tree in the farms?

LMeire · « **Reply #5 on:** August 22, 2014, 06:46:21 pm »

I unlock new crops every time I crack open the caverns for the first time and harvest some of the resulting shrubs. (Usually stone flowers, since those are available in the first cavern but aren't usually on any embark lists.) I've also had situations where the only crop I knew how to grow on tundra maps were kobold bulbs, but a quick Gather Plants job over the whole map usually unlocks bloodberries, orcish pears, boreal tubers, and the like.

slay_mithos · « **Reply #6 on:** August 22, 2014, 07:02:51 pm »

ok, so cavern plants not unlocking from my test might come from my testing method (not breaching caverns, not collecting plants).

Still doesn't answer on how to do that with trees (at least the 'good' and the 'evil' ones.

LMeire, can I ask you if you unlocked any underground tree that way too?

Because if that's the case, it would mean that you 'only' have to breach the correct caverns and gather things to be able to plant it.
Won't solve the 'good' and 'evil' trees though, which is a bit sad, because my whole fortress was planned to use tree farming, including featherwood for its light weight (I'm in a 'good' biome, but very sparse trees).

I guess I just have to abandon that idea for now, because if the only way to "unlock" is to gather rom shrubs (waiting on the answer for underground trees to confirm), then there is no actual way to unlock the trees, as shrubs for them won't spawn.

Might be possible to make a quick script to force a matured shrub, I'll look into that.

palu · « **Reply #7 on:** August 23, 2014, 07:54:39 pm »

You need an adult plant too.

slay_mithos · « **Reply #8 on:** August 23, 2014, 08:37:35 pm »

Yeah, I thought you only needed a seed, then found the bug repport, so I spawned in an "adult" plant (feather sapling, or feather_small in the raws)

So unless I can be proven wrong, you need:
A shrub
Harvest it for an "adult" plant
Process it for seeds, to be able to plant.

For most plants, it's usually no big deal, unless they don't grow in your biome, but the trees don't appear as shrubs, meaning that unless you unlock them an other way, it is impossible to ever plant them.

Which is why I'm trying to figure out how to make a shrub spawn via a lua script (or ruby, or C++ if I understand how), but my best source of information so far is a c++ script for a later dfHack version.

Specifically, the "plants" plugin, around line 217.
Unfortunately, the "createplant" seems to have been added in R5 (dfhack for 40.X states "still working" for it).

Anyway, I'm trying to get it to work, but in the mean time, I really need a feedback on if someone managed to unlock any new "tree" in the farms, as it could change the whole approach.

LMeire · « **Reply #9 on:** October 17, 2014, 05:34:55 pm »

It took me forever due to a lot of bad luck with early invasions and school, but I can finally confirm that getting spores/acorns through the sawmill reactions do not unlock the trees for farming like gathering from caverns does for plants- even after breaking open the caverns and chopping the wood already there. As for a remedy, I would suggest making the sapling plants as gatherable from their respective biomes/cavern layers, that should unlock the crops properly and let the gathered acorns/spores from logging actually have a use.

slay_mithos · « **Reply #10 on:** October 18, 2014, 04:36:01 am »

There could also be a way to "spawn" the sapling via a command, to be able to properly harvest it, but it seems to be beyond me to script that.

The other possibility is to remove a few tags from the saplings to make them appear by default on the farms, but it also allows them on the embark, so not great.

I guess your idea of a rare bush that's actually the sapling could work easier.

arbarbonif · « **Reply #11 on:** October 20, 2014, 04:23:54 pm »

You can harvest feather tree "bushes". There is a feather_small plant that you can harvest (likewise for steeloak and ironbark) if you have them in your embark. There usually aren't very many, but I would check with prospect and see if any show. You can then use getplants to mark them for harvest and probably unlock them for planting.

slay_mithos · « **Reply #12 on:** October 20, 2014, 07:13:03 pm »

I don't remember them showing on my "prospect all", but it's definitely worth running it.

So I ran it in my current world, and sure enough, the plants part includes these:

Code: [Select]

       CRYSTAL_TREE_SMALL :       266 Z:  52..56
        GLASS_THORN_SMALL :       252 Z:  52..56
           STEELOAK_SMALL :        16 Z: 141..142
           IRONWOOD_SMALL :        13 Z: 142
               TREE_SMALL :        10 Z: 142
            FEATHER_SMALL :         9 Z: 142
        SHADE_THORN_SMALL :         7 Z:  43..47
         NETHER_CAP_SMALL :         4 Z:  44..45
          FUNGIWOOD_SMALL :         1 Z:  76

Some of these are in very small quantities, but they seem to be there.
Why didn't I even think about double checking.

Now, I'll need to find and harvest those bushes, but that'll be tomorrow, or later, because it's already 2AM and I need to wake up tomorrow morning.

News:

Author Topic: Tree farming questions (and a few facts) (Read 4669 times)

slay_mithos

Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

Meph

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

slay_mithos

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

Meph

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

slay_mithos

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

LMeire

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

slay_mithos

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

palu

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

slay_mithos

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

LMeire

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

slay_mithos

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

arbarbonif

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)

slay_mithos

Re: Tree farming questions (and a few facts)