Suggestion: A mod that allows forests to grow themselves (forest floor tiles "taking over" regular soil blocks and spreading)

[tibbers]

What do ya'll think?

[V1ncent]

I guess that is possible, but, as you've not mentioned in your thread, why do you want the low-fertility forest floor to expand?

[Maelstrom]

Forests would become the creeping death.  With forests come wolves and bears and downgrading higher fertility soils into low fertility soil (and not just lowER, I really mean LOW here).  On multi-player servers that could be a huge problem.

[LadyWYT]

As a mod, sure, why not. As an addition to the base game? No, that's a bad idea, both for the reason that @Maelstrom pointed out, and the performance hit such a thing would introduce. If I'm recalling correctly, there was an old version of the Wildcraft mod that did similar, in that it let forests spread by creating new saplings, or something to that effect. However, unless you had a really powerful machine to play on, it would tank your game's performance due to the amount of processing power needed to simulate that kind of thing.

[Thorfinn]

I think that was Wild Farming. Spear and Fang released an updated version. 

[Zippy Wonderdust]

I've been contemplating a mod, provisionally titled Zippy's Old Growth, that tracks all player-planted trees and, using a randomized timer, "upgrades" them to a larger, old growth version -- probably after, say, 2 or three in-game years.  The end effect would be that, if you plant a tree and leave it long enough you'll get a really big one.  I figure it would be nice for in-game landscaping without having to pop into creative.

I don't want to reinvent the wheel though.  Do you folks know of any mods that already do something like this?  I've had a look through the modDB but I can't see anything.

[Maelstrom]

I don't recall hearing of any mods that did such a thing.  I would LOVE that kind of mod!  It would also encourage long play worlds, even in single player.

[Dilan Rona]

Would love that mechanic of forests spreading as well. In terms of making it a mod, you can call it "The Lorax". That plants tree seeds after a min or 2 with the seed sitting on the ground.

[LadyWYT]

On 5/16/2025 at 12:10 PM, Zippy Wonderdust said:

I've been contemplating a mod, provisionally titled Zippy's Old Growth, that tracks all player-planted trees and, using a randomized timer, "upgrades" them to a larger, old growth version -- probably after, say, 2 or three in-game years.  The end effect would be that, if you plant a tree and leave it long enough you'll get a really big one.  I figure it would be nice for in-game landscaping without having to pop into creative.

I don't want to reinvent the wheel though.  Do you folks know of any mods that already do something like this?  I've had a look through the modDB but I can't see anything.

I've not heard of one that does this, but it would be a great mod to have. Seems like it might be a bit easier to manage regarding processing power as well.

[Thorfinn]

On 5/16/2025 at 12:10 PM, Zippy Wonderdust said:

I don't want to reinvent the wheel though.  Do you folks know of any mods that already do something like this?

I'm unaware of any, either.

I would not want all the trees to become giants, though. Maybe fertilizing the ground under the seed/sapling? Some of each of the fertilizers blended into tree fertilizer? You put conscious effort into the ones you want to become giant, but it's too ingredient-heavy for a grove.

 

[Zippy Wonderdust]

36 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

 Maybe fertilizing the ground under the seed/sapling? Some of each of the fertilizers blended into tree fertilizer? You put conscious effort into the ones you want to become giant, but it's too ingredient-heavy for a grove.

I was originally thinking of making it a simple crap-shoot where some trees simply never become old growth no matter how long you wait, but maybe that chance could be influenced by things the player does, such as your fertilizer idea, and possibly by how closely the temperature and humidity of the location suits the tree species in question... 

Edited May 17, 2025 by Zippy Wonderdust
remove extra words

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Maybe fertilizing the ground under the seed/sapling? Some of each of the fertilizers blended into tree fertilizer? You put conscious effort into the ones you want to become giant, but it's too ingredient-heavy for a grove.

Blend a temporal gear or two into some terra preta, wait a couple of years, and there you go. Expensive, but a plausible explanation of how you could suddenly have these ancient trees springing up after only a couple years' growth. It also allows for the possibility of growing a proper forest of them too...provided there is space for them to fully mature and the player is ambitious enough to acquire enough resources to spur that growth.

4 hours ago, Zippy Wonderdust said:

I was originally thinking of making it a simple crap-shoot where some trees simply never become old growth no matter how long you wait, but maybe that chance could be influenced by things the player does, such as your fertilizer idea, and possibly by how closely the temperature and humidity of the location suits the tree species in question... 

I suppose it could be just a very small chance that a planted tree can grow into a huge old tree; that way it's still limited to trees that the player specifically plants(though old growth can still spawn naturally, as it already does). I also like the idea of requiring the environment to be properly suited for the tree species in question to thrive, and not just good enough to reach maturity. That way you can't just go grab a bunch of tropical seeds and start your own jungle in the colder regions of the world.

Of course, while we're on the subject, I suppose if the devs were inclined to overall the trees entirely and make them more similar to the fruit trees we have/that tree mod from TOBG, something like this would be the time to do it. At that point it's probably just a matter of waiting for the tree to get that old, which I would still expect to take at least a few in-game years.

[LoveWyrm]

I can see some ways to make it happen, like the world generator creating forests with a maximum area that their respective state machine/logic system grows from a smaller initial region until it reaches the maximum.

That way you could have that cake and kind of eat it too. The snag I see is the timescale for that, and if that timescale really matters.

If it's too slow, then it's pointless, at least for wood farming cause if normal saplings grow faster than the forest spreads, then why wait for the forest, plus, the world can be set to really big sizes and finding trees is almost always easy.

So maybe it would be okay for smaller 'challenge' maps...but still, why not just plant saplings?

If it grows too fast, then it might become an annoyance, a la project zomboid with its extremely prolific trees.

 

But perhaps you want this for the 'soul factor' but then I wonder what the main attraction of forests are, other than the horsetails, and I'd guess, animals. So maybe animals should just get some new and cool behavior (like herd migrations that you can lead into trap fences/pits) or grazing changes...going from low to high and vice versa to eat the shrubs.

 

Or if you just want a 'land plague' then its' probably easier to decouple that from a whole 'biome' and just make the soil sick in areas, and have it spread, to a point.