Diversity of small and medium plants, especially on gravel and plains

[MKMoose]

Primary motivation

The current assortment of plants is heavily lacking in the area of mosses, sedges, bushes and other small plants. Existing shrubs are implemented in a disappointing way, as they are technically trees so small that they only spawn leaves, ending up strange in appearance and obstructive during traversal.

What this causes is that in many regions of the world the trees are the only notable plants that break up the landscape, alongside perhaps patches of flowers, but those only help in grassy areas and forests. The actual ground-level foliage is extremely basic, with there just being grassy soil, gravel and sand, where in reality grasslands, steppes, tundras, deserts and similar biomes have much greater biodiversity than people tend to give them credit for.

The main goal of this suggestion is to point to the lacking biodiversity in the current state of the game and list several example species which could be added in high quantity to certain regions of the game to make them significantly more visually unique, diverse and appealing. The suggested species are generally very specific with the intent to more explicitly communicate the intended purpose, but could be broadened into more generalized genera or families or whatnot.

 

Additional possibilities

The simplest consequence is that the added plant variety would lend itself naturally to create distinct regions of more unique flora and fauna like shrublands, peatlands, arctic tundras, and many others. This is largely related to the "regions of distinct flora and fauna" category in the roadmap. Any extra variety would also be greatly beneficial for the goal of separating plant species into regions according to their real-life geographical occurence, as Tyron has expressed the intent to do so eventually.

Additionally, certain plants may be used as indicators for certain features of the world or for the presence of certain deposits. It would be quite reasonable to adjust the generation of certain plants based on rock types like limestone or based on the density of certain ores like sulfur, as well as on soil types if more ever get added. Some deposits like clay, peat, high fertility soil or surface copper could have specific indicator plants growing above or near them, to help players locate them more easily (not exclusively growing above these deposits, but often enough to be reasonably reliable). This can be greatly beneficial for the main gamplay loops, as it can get the player to pay more attention to the environment and learn about what to look for in the world, instead of simply running around and hoping for a find. It may also introduce a neat alternative to the prospecting pick when looking for certain ores. Finding desired resources using indicator plants would be more satisfying than pure chance and would naturally reward game knowledge.

 

Mosses, lichens, tiny creeping shrubs and similar

The primary in-game purpose of these low-growing plants, generally at most ~20 cm in height but may be much lower or somewhat higher, is to increase the biological variety and visual interest in areas with otherwise uninteresting or limited vegetation, like gravelly plains, tundra bogs, boreal forests and the like. The main benefit is that they can create small and medium overlapping patches of varied color, which could cover large areas and are highly effective at breaking up monotonous landscapes and flat surfaces in almost any environment. This is very important to keep landscapes visually interesting, because, as it stands currently, there is very little color variation in terms of soil and grass.

Example species include:

• any bog moss (Sphagnum) - this one can also be a diegetic tell that there's peat nearby,
• reindeer lichen (Cladonia rangiferina),
• common liverwort (Marchantia polymorpha),
• dwarf willow (Salix herbacea),
• black crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) - can also be a source of fruit,
• white clover (Trifolium repens),
• alpine fescue (Festuca brachyphylla) - technically a grass, but I'm including it here due to its intended purpose.

Left - sphagnum bog; middle - reindeer lichen and black crowberry; right - alpine fescue.

 

Grasses, sedges, rushes and similar

The purpose of grasses, sedges and rushes is primarily increasing the variety of default tall grass in expansive plateaus, plains and savannas, with the goal of introducing medium and large-scale patterns to these otherwise flat and uniform areas. All of these would likely drop dry grass or thatch, and several species may provide edible roots. Certain shorter grasses would also serve well to provide more natural grass coverage to sandy and gravelly areas.

Additionally, some species may work well as decorative grasses.

Example species include:

• alpine bluegrass (Poa alpina),
• Sandberg bluegrass (Poa secunda),
• cogongrass (Imperata cylindrica) - a great source of thatch, could be used as an indicator for clay,
• nut grass (Cyperus rotundus),
• common rush (Juncus effusus) - could be used for actual rush mats, including tatami, as well as potentially for rushlights,
• Chinese silver grass (Miscanthus sinensis),
• copper flower (Ocimum centraliafricanum) - not particularly significant, but can serve as an indicator of surface copper deposits in warm climates.

Left - common rush; middle - alpine bluegrass; right - Sandberg bluegrass.

 

Shrubs

Shrubs are mostly present roughly where they should be. We have an entire climate parameter for shrubbery, but the actual shrubs are just trees that generate so small that they don't have trunks. This is kind of appropriate, as many real shrubs are closely related to trees and can grow into trees given the right conditions, but it also causes a number of issues:

• random leaf blocks can be pretty confusing - a tree is a tree, a bush is a bush, but a leaf block is expected to be part of a larger tree,
• the shrubs tend to look pretty ugly, because they lack identifiable, distinct shapes,
• the variety of the shrubs is ultimately very poor, with just 5 species across all climates,
• all the shrubs use the leaves of some larger trees and so can't even be identified more properly without looking into their codes,
• certain shrubs (most notably dwarf birch) simply aren't remotely accurate to their real-life counterparts,
• larger shrubs impede traversal, and make for a highly unpleasant experience when riding an elk.

Some of the same issues apply to berries to some extent, but those get a pass mainly because they don't borrow leaves from larger trees, and don't impede traversal nearly as much, plus they're likely getting reworked soon.

Overall, shrubs in-game should arguably have two main subtypes that determine function, depending on size: either as greater variety or dominant plant for areas with relatively low vegetation with generally ~0.5-2 m of height, or as larger bushes with upwards of 4 m of height to constitute large, primary plants in rare shrublands, that is areas with very high shrubbery but very low forestation. The reason for this is that shrubs are limited by two different kinds of requirements for traversal:

• small shrubs should not impede movement too much, can be very dense, and should be used mostly for visual interest and in areas like tundras, deserts or mountains,
• large shrubs would have to be relatively sparse as to avoid making areas completely impassable and impossible to see through, and should only appear in relatively fertile places,
• in-between shrubs like those we have now don't fulfill either role particularly well.

Most small shrubs can easily be implemented as regular single blocks, while larger shrubs should arguably be implemented in a way similar to fruit trees, though not necessarily with the full block-by-block growth system.

Example shrub species include:

• sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) - among the most well-known shrubs in deserts, steppes and mountains,
• dwarf birch (Betula nana) - already sort of in the game, but it should only be ~1 m high,
• gray willow (Salix glauca),
• dwarf mountain pine (Pinus mugo),
• any rhododendron (Rhododendron), and potentially similar flowering shrubs - would serve well as decorative plants, including for garlands and stuff.

Left - dwarf mountain pine; middle - primarily gray willow; right - sagebrush.

Edited January 18 by MKMoose
Rephrase first section. Mention a copper indicator. Add labels to images.

[LadyWYT]

This is partly why I enjoy playing with the Flora mods and Wildcraft. There's so much more stuff to find and take advantage of. 

[Monkeylord]

YEEES YES YES YES I always play with the floral zones series of mods because vanilla flora is...lacking. The game has sooo much potential in that regard and still you mostly get grass and those horrible birch "bushes". I could suggest a ton of species that would be cool to have, but that would be besides the point. Your suggestions are really good too.

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

verall, shrubs in-game should arguably have two main subtypes that determine function, depending on size: either as greater variety or dominant plant for areas with relatively low vegetation with generally ~0.5-2 m of height, or as larger bushes with upwards of 4 m of height to constitute primary plants in rare shrublands, that is areas with very high shrubbery but very low forestation. 

I think that reworking the bushes is a must and will eventually be done. I really like how you tackle them, I would love that those horrible gravel wastes you find walking a bit south could become shrublands filled with plants like rosemary, rockroses, brooms and fuzes. And deserts should have more plant diversity too: a couple more cactus species, some mesquite trees and some thorny bushes like jujubes would make them much nicer.

And I say that sphagnum growing on top of peat is also a must

[MKMoose]

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

This is partly why I enjoy playing with the Flora mods and Wildcraft. There's so much more stuff to find and take advantage of. 

One thing that I find these mods tend to fail at is introducing a tailored set of plants with purpose in world generation. They don't seem to me like they make world generation better, just more varied with a whole bunch new plants dotting the landscape for the sake of it. Large trees, functional plants (functional for the player, not for the world generation) and colorful flowers almost always take the focus, while mosses, lichens, short grasses grasses and the like are often almost completely ignored. A lot of the plants also arguably simply stand out too much.

Among my favorites is the Floral Zones: Cosmopolitan Region one, which actually adds crowberry, reindeer lichen and a few other low-growing plants. But I'm very dissatisfied with how they spawn. A patch of a couple berries or ferns in the middle of a gray gravel surface is not that much more interesting than a block of tall grass in the middle of a gray gravel surface. Ideally, it needs a large area covered with multiple types of overlapping but not uniformly mixed patches of mosses, grasses, shrubs, lichens and so on in order to not only look good, but also look realistic. If you look at tundra, deserts and similar biomes, then you can see that even some of the most barren areas on Earth have at least a couple distinct species which cover the landscape, and almost none of them are nearly as empty as many of Vintage Story's temperate or cold gravelly and sandy areas.

In a similar vein, I would also like to emphasize the point about larger variety of grasses in plains, savannas and similar biomes. While plenty of mods add a few decorative sedges or something of the sort, almost none attempt to make them remotely competitive with the everpresent tall grass. The current tall grass is functional, but extremely simplistic, so I think it would be beneficial to mix in large areas, not just small patches, of different dominant grass species, to create more natural variety on medium and large scale, which is lacking as of now both in the vanilla game and in practically all mods.

I'll also touch on something that I didn't really mention in the original post: soil blocks are extremely samey. Forest floor provides a neat amount of variation in forests, but all other areas just have some nondescript uniformly-colored grass, or nothing at all in the case of areas covered with sand or gravel (which are largely unrealistic, by the way - gravelly and sandy soils are normal, but just gravel or sand by itself is not really a thing outside of very specific environments). Several mosses and lichens could actually be implemented as variations on soil blocks, and not as actual plants.

I don't want to say that these mods are bad or something, don't get me wrong, but I just don't feel like they actually change much of anything about how the world looks besides throwing a bunch of new plant stuff on top of the vanilla game, which in some cases can even make the world look arguably worse when there's too many small patches of completely different plants in your vision range.

And for a couple of extra examples to show what I mean, which I feel like are nowhere to be found in the current game and in mods. Notice how the lowest layers of plants, even in that rather barren-looking middle image, actually consist of many different species that each contribute to making the ground look more varied, yet without anything standing out excessively:

[EmperorPingu]

Yes. Really good stuff.

I was literally just thinking about moss the other day. Tldr: I was trying to imagine how to make a shelter in a cold craggy biome - perhaps on sub-arctic island or something, and in the absence of banana leaves or something, you'd probably have to use moss.

Yeah I want biodiversity and everything. Like there's a lot of little things I'd have changed about the game - some generation issues, realistic navigation, some lore related stuff... but on the whole I think one of the bigger components to it is being able to jump into a world and feel like it is alive. No better could something like this be achieved that by filling the world with an approriate richness of vegetation and wildlife. 

You mentioned lichens - good stuff. Can I interest ye in some slime molds? They're like sentient mushrooms.

[Monkeylord]

The root problem is the default soil: It should change depending on the rock strata below it. You will not find the same species of plants in low-pH silicon-based soil than in a high-pH limestone-based soil. It may be a pain in the ass to add, idk, but it would enhance the world's biodiversity soo much and it would make the world feel varied and alive. The game has a very high focus o geology as it is, so I think that different soil types depending on the "rock biome" or even the climate just comes naturally. And the fertility system could be kept as it is with most soils.

However that could be too much right now. We could start by replazing the standard grass with other plants in different regions. For example, in areas with low fertility soil the default grass could be replaced by clovers, in areas with medium fertility and good temperature half of the grass or more could be replaced with plantains and dandelions and in areas with very low temperatures and high precipitation mosses and lichens could take over. Of course, most of them should drop dry grass as it is a vital resource.

Tl;dr Soil diversity should be addressed and grass shouldn't be treated as the default plant to fill in the gaps.

[EmperorPingu]

4 hours ago, Monkeylord said:

The root problem

The root problem? Yes, the root problem is the soil lol. Probably a good place to start. Have some sandy soils of varying degrees. Actually that sounds fun. Just stright up more soil types.

[Monkeylord]

6 hours ago, EmperorPingu said:

Can I interest ye in some slime molds?

If leaves actually fell from trees in autum they could spawn on top of fallen leave piles! They could make nice pets if you feed them with grain

1 hour ago, EmperorPingu said:

Actually that sounds fun. Just stright up more soil

Well sjsj my proposal of course is not just "dude this game needs more soil give us 3000 soil types and the game will be better" but giving us more kinds of soil (literally sandy soil, clay-rich soil, calcisol, podsol and chernozem would be much more than enough) could provide an extra layer to biodiversity as some plants could only spawn on top of specific soil types, creating a greater variety of landscapes.

In any case, adding more small plants and bushes regardless of the soil subject is a must I think. As you said, for me one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) charms of this game is feeling that the world is alive. And damm, I'm a botannist, give me plants!

[MKMoose]

6 hours ago, EmperorPingu said:

You mentioned lichens - good stuff. Can I interest ye in some slime molds? They're like sentient mushrooms.

Slime molds are so weird. Could certainly be pretty cool to add some extra detail, though their typically tiny size makes it diffuclt to see them as a priority. They would likely work at much smaller scale, spicing up leaf litter, tree trunks or other decaying plant matter with colorful dots. Mosses and lichens can sometimes cover dozens if not hundreds of square meters or more in a neat carpet, which is why they are especially useful to add variety to regions with otherwise limited vegetation - in cold or shaded areas they can cover the ground in a similar way to how grasses often do in other regions. And there's more examples to better show what I mean.

 

6 hours ago, Monkeylord said:

The root problem is the default soil: It should change depending on the rock strata below it. You will not find the same species of plants in low-pH silicon-based soil than in a high-pH limestone-based soil. It may be a pain in the ass to add, idk, but it would enhance the world's biodiversity soo much and it would make the world feel varied and alive. The game has a very high focus o geology as it is, so I think that different soil types depending on the "rock biome" or even the climate just comes naturally. And the fertility system could be kept as it is with most soils.

I've edited the original post slightly to mention some of this from a more gameplay-focused perspective. While I don't know nearly enough about soil pH and mineral contents and whatnot to really speak about it, I do know that it has potential for gameplay benefits with indicator plants and stuff like that, which is already enough to get me on board.

 

17 minutes ago, Monkeylord said:

[...] giving us more kinds of soil (literally sandy soil, clay-rich soil, calcisol, podsol and chernozem would be much more than enough) could provide an extra layer to biodiversity as some plants could only spawn on top of specific soil types, creating a greater variety of landscapes.

I love this idea, and there's just one issue that would have to be solved. Even in the current state of the game, running around and digging up a few spots (e.g. when prospecting) can quite easily net you three or four block types including sand and gravel. I've seen people already sometimes complain that there's so many different different kinds of plants, rocks, and other stuff which largely end up as annoying clutter. Adding a couple new soil types, or even some dozen or two if you include all the combinations with different fertility levels, certainly wouldn't help it.

 

Though it might be going pretty out-there, I would personally think about separating soil and certain other blocks into a two-component system of sorts (could also be more, but I'm trying to keep everything sufficiently simple and intuitive):

• breaking any block like stone, sand, gravel, soil, forest floor and so on would drop exactly two items that the block is made of (it may be necessary to have some items appear in higher quantities for balancing, but there would generally be at most two unique components),
• the main soil components would likely include something like rocks, gravel, sand, clay, soil, forest soil and organic matter,
• optionally, more components could provide even more variety and flexibility, like silt, peat, lime, humus, perhaps some specific soil types (e.g. iron-rich soil, podzol), maybe water in some way to create mud, but those would have to be added very carefully once the baseline system is working to avoid overdoing it with the complexity,
• placing these components as a block would involve putting either of the materials on the ground (creating a roughly half-block-high pile of that material), and then using the second component on it to convert it into a full block (alternatively they could probably be combined in the crafting grid as well, but it shouldn't be the default),
• any blocks that contain at least one soil component (and optionally some that contain certain other materials, like organic matter) would be named "soil blocks" or various subtypes of it, whereas other combinations would make different materials as appropriate,
• ideally, it should be possible to make arbitrary combinations of any two components, though it may be difficult - in many cases multiple combinations would probably make the same block (and they would save what they were made of, to drop the same components if destroyed again),
• and to give a couple of simple, example combinations, though highly subject to change in various ways depending on a lot of factors:
  • sand x2 => sand,
  • soil x2 => soil (the most average soil),
  • soil + organic matter => high-fertility soil,
  • soil + clay => clay-rich soil,
  • soil + gravel => gravelly soil (lower fertility),
  • soil + rock => rocky soil (very low fertility, could appear between soil and stone layers to make for a smoother transistion),
  • forest soil + soil OR forest soil x2 => forest floor,
  • forest soil + sand => sandy forest floor (lower fertility).

One of the additional difficulties here is that a comprehensive overhaul would pull quite a number of concurrent changes with it. A bunch of potential adjustments to farming due to different soil types and potentially pH, a revision to world generation parameters for practically all plants in the game. I feel like a lot of these systems could use an overhaul eventually, but I wouldn't want to get too far ahead of the game's development either.

While this idea is not without potential flaws and isn't really usable without ironing out all the details, I think it could offer a suitable compromise between much greater soil variety and simplified item management. It may also let VS stand out with a more material-based approach (as an extension of what it already does with stone or boards, for example) in place of the block-based approach that similar games often default to.

[LadyWYT]

10 hours ago, Monkeylord said:

The root problem is the default soil: It should change depending on the rock strata below it. You will not find the same species of plants in low-pH silicon-based soil than in a high-pH limestone-based soil. It may be a pain in the ass to add, idk, but it would enhance the world's biodiversity soo much and it would make the world feel varied and alive. The game has a very high focus o geology as it is, so I think that different soil types depending on the "rock biome" or even the climate just comes naturally. And the fertility system could be kept as it is with most soils.

 

17 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

I love this idea, and there's just one issue that would have to be solved. Even in the current state of the game, running around and digging up a few spots (e.g. when prospecting) can quite easily net you three or four block types including sand and gravel. I've seen people already sometimes complain that there's so many different different kinds of plants, rocks, and other stuff which largely end up as annoying clutter. Adding a couple new soil types, or even some dozen or two if you include all the combinations with different fertility levels, certainly wouldn't help it.

I like it. I think in this case, standard dirt tiers could be what's typical, and "new" soil types be somewhere between low-medium fertility but offer much better growth bonuses to specific crops(growth speeds similar to high fertility/terra preta). Terra preta would still be the best overall option for crops in general, but that gives players some specific early advantages in farming while adding more diversity to the landscape.

Plus I would wager clay-based soils could have more clay deposits. Not that clay is terribly hard to find, but the current deposits could shrink a little and the larger deposits be found in the clay-based soil areas instead.

[MKMoose]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I like it. I think in this case, standard dirt tiers could be what's typical, and "new" soil types be somewhere between low-medium fertility but offer much better growth bonuses to specific crops(growth speeds similar to high fertility/terra preta). Terra preta would still be the best overall option for crops in general, but that gives players some specific early advantages in farming while adding more diversity to the landscape.

I'd say that, ideally, even terra preta should only be most optimal for a quite limited range of crops. It should probably be the most universal type of soil, good enough for pretty much all crops, but I think it would be a shame to introduce a bunch of new soil types only for terra preta to remove most of the reason to search for less common ones, making farming generally devolve to the same common denominator once the player invests into compost. Realistically, terra preta is apparently most suitable for cassava and fruit trees, but I'd have to look into it further to be sure and to find more details.

A pretty cool addition for farming could lie in Mollisols (the most agriculturally productive soils in the world), which would require the player to travel to steppes or prairies to obtain them but which would likely be the best soil type for most grains and legumes. There's also a bunch of options like Fluvisols (near rivers) or Andosols (volcanic ash soils), which seem like they could be most suitable for vegetables, and so many other soil types.

Of course, all that slowly and carefully, maybe starting simply with sandy and clay-rich soils. I think it would fit Vintage Story quite well to require some travelling to obtain the best, specialized soils for various crops, but there's a lot of added depth that could come from relatively simple changes as well, especially if we were to also consider pH, moisture requirements and ore deposit indicators.

 

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

Plus I would wager clay-based soils could have more clay deposits. Not that clay is terribly hard to find, but the current deposits could shrink a little and the larger deposits be found in the clay-based soil areas instead.

I think it would make sense to just have large areas of clay-rich soils which drop some clay outright as well as are more likely to house proper clay deposits. Realistically, clay can absolutely be obtained from random clay-rich soils, and while it may be lower quality if it has a lot of silt, sand and other contents, it's not too difficult to find something very much usable. This may mean a practically endless supply of clay the moment you find a decent river or some other clay-rich area, but that's also kind of the goal - it's not like we have to restrict the availability of clay as some especially valuable resource. It may also end up highly beneficial for new players to have a clearer goal like "find a river, clay will be there" instead of "find a small red patch on the side of a hill".

Same goes for peat. I think it would be perfectly fine to add larger, more biologically accurate peatlands and other wetlands, instead of just spawning these random deposits which realistically just make no sense. If nothing else, I think peat should appear more commonly but only near the sea level, though that's a bit of a separate matter.