PC Some Thoughts on farming system（I miss the cultivated land!）

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CKMKNB

New member
After the change of the farming system，growing plants is no longer happy, where is the fun to put seeds in a pot?

I hope they can bring back the cultivated land, they can increase the costs of it ofcourse! That I agree.

Imaging that you can build a large farmland down the hills, wouldn`t that be wonderful?

 
Unfortunately, it would require them to completely overhaul their terrain generation tech which (despite obvious historical pleasure in overhauling systems) they are unlikely to do that this point. I think there may be a mod that returns the old style farming but I'm not sure as the terrain tech tends to turn any terrain that doesn't match the overall biome into that biome's terrain which is what messes up the old style farming.

 
The old farming system relied on the old horribly optimized block based biome shading/texture system that was fully replaced with the new system. Which instead of being block based was area based and made the old way of farming impossible with out a redesign of that system. Now they could of redesigned the system to work like the old way but even then it would be poorly optimized and would have many additional issues with it caused by the major underlying system changes. Especially when it came to moving dirt into bases or onto roofs to cultivate in safety and how convoluted that was. Not to mention being still dependent other core game systems that may need to be changed in the future and force another redesign of the system.

So instead they went with a far more optimized and user friendly approach of the farm plots. Which contained the whole farming system into it's own independent system to avoid any future conflicts or issues.

 
Danidas said:
The old farming system relied on the old horribly optimized block based biome shading/texture system that was fully replaced with the new system. Which instead of being block based was area based and made the old way of farming impossible with out a redesign of that system.
Click to expand...
Wait what?

Change in texture system sounds like it is only a visual aspect, but from the mechanics it would still work?

Probably that is the reason why e.g. in Darkness Falls still is the old farming system, but you can't see what blockes are tilled, because they look like a normal dirt block?

Imho it's also is a balancing issue. I like the farm plots. But i was annoyed (and am still with Darkness Falls) by the use of the hoe. It's so f*cking slow. However of course tilling soil costs nothing (just a hoe to craft) while on the other hand each farm plot costs ressources to craft. However i guess that was another balancing decision to prevent players from being able to build really huge farms without any effort already on day 1.
Anyway needing farm plots didn't hinder me to build huge farms.

 
Liesel Weppen said:
Wait what?

Change in texture system sounds like it is only a visual aspect, but from the mechanics it would still work?

Probably that is the reason why e.g. in Darkness Falls still is the old farming system, but you can't see what blockes are tilled, because they look like a normal dirt block?
Click to expand...


That is exactly correct as instead of each terrain block having it's own texture, now they have no texture of their own and a global map wide texture is applied to them. As a result instead of needing a ton of different terrain blocks for each color/material deviation they only need a small hand full. Which greatly saves on texture/block memory at the cost of eliminating the player's ability to change the color/appearance of the terrain. 

Edit - Now as a result the only way to fully implement the old way is if the hoe deleted then replaced the terrain block with a completely new block. Which wouldn't be able to use the global terrain texture smoothing system to seamlessly blend into the terrain and result in the same gap that non terrain blocks get around them. Also considering the massive can of worms that handing the player a magic stick that can instantly delete/replace blocks would be and all the needed code overhead of wrangling those worms. It naturally makes way more sense to go with a dedicated farming block like the devs ended up doing.

 
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Why do we even need farm blocks/farm land? I mean we already plant tree saplings where ever. If it's balancing then that's more in the design of the system then the coding of the mechanic. Although I guess we wouldn't have the renewable plants anymore, but I guess that would just be replaced by planting new plants like we do with trees. Is replanting that big of an annoyance that the devs need to restrict growing plants to specific block?

 
DaChibii said:
Is replanting that big of an annoyance that the devs need to restrict growing plants to specific block?
Click to expand...
YES. To need manually craft new seeds and plant

EVERY

F*CKING
SINGLE
SAPLING
again was overally anoying. I don't miss this times a bit.

(In Darkness Falls you plant on farm land but the plants do renew automatically. If they did not, i'd have refused to take the farmer role).

 
Liesel Weppen said:
Wait what?

Change in texture system sounds like it is only a visual aspect, but from the mechanics it would still work?

Probably that is the reason why e.g. in Darkness Falls still is the old farming system, but you can't see what blockes are tilled, because they look like a normal dirt block?

Imho it's also is a balancing issue. I like the farm plots. But i was annoyed (and am still with Darkness Falls) by the use of the hoe. It's so f*cking slow. However of course tilling soil costs nothing (just a hoe to craft) while on the other hand each farm plot costs ressources to craft. However i guess that was another balancing decision to prevent players from being able to build really huge farms without any effort already on day 1.
Anyway needing farm plots didn't hinder me to build huge farms.
Click to expand...
but the one thig that bothers me,is that you can`t make a perfect connection between the farmpot and the original ground, there are always cracks!!!!

 
CKMKNB said:
but the one thig that bothers me,is that you can`t make a perfect connection between the farmpot and the original ground, there are always cracks!!!!
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That does not only apply to farm plots, that applies to every non-ground block next to ground blocks. I usally place metal sheets over those "cracks", especially if i want to cross that with vehicles.

Farm plots i use usually elevated anyway (according to their looks as a raised bed) in rows with gaps in between. Makes it also easier to harvest them, having the bad hitboxes of plants in mind. (What in opposite looks bad if you try to do this with just dirt blocks)

 
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DaChibii said:
Why do we even need farm blocks/farm land? I mean we already plant tree saplings where ever. If it's balancing then that's more in the design of the system then the coding of the mechanic. Although I guess we wouldn't have the renewable plants anymore, but I guess that would just be replaced by planting new plants like we do with trees. Is replanting that big of an annoyance that the devs need to restrict growing plants to specific block?
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We wouldn't need them if planting a seed on the ground would automatically remove as much resources as a farm plot, to keep the current balance. (Disclamier: There may be more internal reasons for the farm plot design)

Doing the two steps of hoe and plant would be difficult to implement because you can't tell apart hoed and unhoed blocks. There would have to be a sort of plant-less plant block.

 
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The old way was just tedious to fertilize the ground, as well as hard to see.

I prefer the new way. 

I can alternate blocks of farm so that the nasty plants are easier to hit and not take out a surrounding seed that then has to be replanted.

(and the checkerboard pattern looks purty)

:p

 
meganoth said:
Doing the two steps of hoe and plant would be difficult to implement because you can't tell apart hoed and unhoed blocks. There would have to be a sort of plant-less plant block.
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I don't understand what the problem is.

The terrain blocks have been changed to be textured according to their terrain. That should have reduced the amount of needed blocks. But there are still snow- and sandblocks. They also give different ressources.

And why can't you tell the difference between a natural block and a tilled block? Don't the blocks have any kind of meta data?

And what's the problem if using the hoe on a dirt block just upgrades the block to tilled soil, just like upgrading a wood frame works.

 
Liesel Weppen said:
I don't understand what the problem is.

The terrain blocks have been changed to be textured according to their terrain. That should have reduced the amount of needed blocks. But there are still snow- and sandblocks. They also give different ressources.

And why can't you tell the difference between a natural block and a tilled block? Don't the blocks have any kind of meta data?

And what's the problem if using the hoe on a dirt block just upgrades the block to tilled soil, just like upgrading a wood frame works.
Click to expand...


If you place a snow block in the forest it will look just like a forest block but would still give snow when broken and the same is true with all the other terrain blocks. As none of them have a texture linked to them in any way as that is projected onto them via the map wide master texture that cannot be changed after world generation. In other words the only way for it to work is if the block was deleted and replaced with a new block upon being hoed. Which opens up all the issues with that, as you not only need a ton of safety checks to avoid replacing the wrong block it also creates the issue of how to merge the new block's texture with blocks that don't have a texture.

Note that the new system doesn't remove all the terrain blocks but it greatly reduces the number of them and way more importantly since none of them have a texture of their own it frees up texture memory for other things.

Edit - Also note that a large amount of people would never bother to make a farm in natural terrain and instead would dig up some dirt to move it to a near by roof to setup a farm. Which with the old system looked and felt very ugly, unpolished, and very early access. Which is where the farm plots come in as they clean up the experience and make it look/feel polished.

 
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I have the mod that returns the old cultivation system, for those who are interested here it is:




 
Since the farm plot is here to stay (as a block), would it be conceivable to bring back the hoe and fertilizer, and use those as the only way to upgrade the block to a “more prosperous “ farm plot block?  Personally I would like it if the growth rate of plants were slowed down with the vanilla plot, then if you upgrade/“fertilize”the farm plot a few times it finally gets to the current growth rate.  
 

Also: a “hydroponics” farm block would be fun, maybe as the last upgrade.  Or add some “grow lights” as another variation on electricity to give the farmers something to do with electricity., boost food productivity.  I’m not sure if it works in game like this, but if the plants could not “grow” at night and only under grow lights, that would be super cool and motivation to tier into farming.

 
Danidas said:
 In other words the only way for it to work is if the block was deleted and replaced with a new block upon being hoed.
Click to expand...
This is not the only way. If you don't replace the block upon being hoed but put another block on top that represents tilled earth, you never need to touch the textured ground. I.e.:

G = ground block

_  = tilled earth block

!  = seed

Typical flat ground with ground tiles:

GGGGG 

the hoe creates a block on top like this, partly or completely hiding the ground tile:

      _

GGGGG

and that block can be replaced with a seed:

     !

GGGGG

 
meganoth said:
This is not the only way. If you don't replace the block upon being hoed but put another block on top that represents tilled earth, you never need to touch the textured ground. I.e.:
Click to expand...


Than you get plants floating in the air or need to replace the tilled land plate the hoe placed with a new plate with the plant model attached to it.

 
meganoth said:
I thought the plant already was a block above the ground. So no change.
Click to expand...
It would be like this.

G = Ground

A = Air

! = Plant

_ = Tilled soil

AAA !AAA

AAA _AAA

GGGGGGG

When now it is like that this.

F =  Farm plot

AAA!AAA

GGGFGGG

Or

AAA!AAA

AAAFAAA

GGGGGG

Plates are treated like full blocks and the game doesn't have the ability to place blocks in blocks.

♣

█

Vs

♣

_

 
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