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Author Topic: Expand and standardize plant uses  (Read 908 times)

Shurhaian

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Expand and standardize plant uses
« on: December 17, 2009, 11:48:50 am »

Some things about plants can be well controlled. You can say what the name of booze is, and specify its value.

Some things are a bit iffy. You can say that a plant can be milled, and the name and value of the mill product, and whether it'd be used for milling and/or for cooking(or, if neither, purely as a trade good, presumably). But it's the same mill product for each, which is less than desirable. Also, extracts to barrel and vial are mutually exclusive.

Some things are very poorly controlled. Thread is a binary argument, and with leaves you only control the number you get. You cannot control the name, nor the price.

And some things are inconsistent. Seeds require separate tags for name and color, which none of the other plant products do.

The following may become more sensible if plants have structure in the future, and specific uses can be assigned to specific parts of the plant(do you mill the leaves, or just use them whole as an herb?), but under the current model, it's not like anyone is likely to have an insufficiency of plants, so inefficient usage isn't a terrible thing.

So.

First off, I think the token format should be standardized. The most egregious offender here is seeds. Instead of having:
  • SEEDNAME:name
  • SEED:fg:bg:br

...I think it should just be SEED:name:fg:bg:br. Similarly, THREAD and LEAVES could be put together in the same format(I wanted to name my spicy succulent's product "zinger spines", but I get "zinger spine leaves"; "fronds" are another thing the user may want, or "fiddleheads". And it's not "flax thread", it's "linen thread").

Instead of a single EXTRACT: with the various tokens to say how you get it, it could instead be EXTRACT_VIAL, EXTRACT_STILL, EXTRACT_BARREL, and plain old EXTRACT, all with the same format of the current EXTRACT token, and all with corresponding EXTRACT_XXXX_VALUE tokens with a sensible default for that method of extraction, and EXTRACT_XXXX_COOKABLE. And while we're at it, THREAD_VALUE and LEAVES_VALUE would be nice, too. And SEED_VALUE.

SEED_COOKABLE would be nice, too. I don't think people normally eat loose wheat seeds, they just use the flour; but it would also allow for seeds that are just plain inedible to be realized.

So far this has just been extension of the existing format, and I'm not going to go into great detail on the farming process when I'm sure there are many, many threads about it; but I'd like to add that having a way to make the seed not available for purchase (SEED_RARE?) could give herbalism some more use.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2009, 08:59:07 pm by Shurhaian »
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