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[Mount]

As evidenced by my supremely low post count, I'm a forum Migrant, so apologies if I'm duplicating a post.  I did a quick search and found nothing, at least.

I was inspired by another post, and was wondering if it would be possible to mod up a new above-ground shrub:  Kudzu.

I'm not at my Fortress computer at the moment so I can't check the files, but I'm thinking that kudzu would have an insanely fast growth rate, be above-ground only, and have essentially no economic value at all.  Possibly it could be counted as a tree that produces no lumber, so it would also interfere with caravans and migrants.  I'm envisioning a constant battle where Plant Gatherers (or woodcutters, if it's treeform..) have to spend every waking moment uprooting the stuff, to prevent it from utterly overwhelming the entire surface.   

Of course, the usual dwarfen solution applies:  kill it with fire...

[woose1]

Unfourtunately, you can't kill trees with FIYA although that would be preety neat.

[Mount]

yeah, not in this version of the game anyway.  I believe I remember reading that it's a forthcoming fix. 

I know that boulders will impede wagons, so I'm hoping there's a flag somewhere that will allow me to set a shrub as an impassable barrier.  It would be acceptable to have the shrub block only wagon traffic, but ideally I'd like it to block foot traffic as well -- how awesome/embarrassing would it be to be unable to leave your fortress because you've been sieged by A PLANT?

[i2amroy]

At the moment you could set it to be a tree in order to block wagons, but then you couldn't have it grow that fast and it would produce wood. If you set it as a shrub, however, then you can have it grow fast and it won't produce wood, but it will not block movement. At the moment you have to choose one of the two. I guess that you could have two varieties of kudzu, one that is a plant and one that is a tree, but hardcodedness currently interferes with your mighty vision.

[Mount]

BLAST YOU, CODE! 

Now my dream of an invading army of Kudzu Monkies is crushed.

[Blakmane]

a fast growing plant will however compete with trees, eventually taking over the whole map if trees are cut down but they are not controlled. This can happen already over many years if you cut down many trees without plant gathering.

[Mount]

This is perfect.  Actual kudzu will choke out trees, and drag down power lines. 

[Shoku]

are we able to give any shrubs/trees abilities/properties beyond the normal scope of the plants?

[Mount]

I poked around a little bit, but I'm still too noobish.  I've found files for the various plants, but I believe that they're "material" files which wouldn't be the growing plant, instead it would be the part that your dorfs are hauling to the stockpile. 

I haven't found anything that would allow me to make plants do anything cool weird, like.. grow super-fast, or cause slashing damage to units walking through it (sawgrass, anyone?), or attack victims with whipvines/poison/thorns. 

Edit:  Also, I recently had the misfortune of stirring up a pot of fire imps.  After the world finished burning down, the trees had not burned (as expected) but as far as I can tell, all the bushes were still there too..  apparently only the "grass" vegetation will burn. 

[i2amroy]

There are a few tags in the plant files that are thought to have some effect upon wild ones as well. These tags consist of the all of the season tags, such as [SUMMER] and [AUTUMN]. The [GROWDUR:?] tag is also believed to have an effect upon plants. [CLUSTERSIZE:?] is thought to be possible the amount gathered via herbalism, and the [FREQUENCY:?] tag is thought to be the percentage chance of gathering plants from wild plants via herbalism.

[Katsuun]

That makes me think... the Growdur tag chages the duration of growth. 300, I believe is a standard season. Now lower that and.... oh and make sure, that you make the plant all but useless (inedible, no thread, no extract). Then that would be the ultimate plant.

[i2amroy]

Actually, 1008 is a standard season.

[Mount]

Apparently I've just not been looking at the correct file?

[Blakmane]

Apparently I've just not been looking at the correct file?

matgloss_plant.txt?

I can't see where else you would be looking 

[Mount]

I did say I was a noob... 

I note that there's a request for cave kudzu-mold in the Underground Diversity thread, so I guess the easiest thing to do is just be patient, and mod that to be aboveground later.