Plant generation

[Krice]

This happens rarely, but I got an idea. About plant generation, what would happen if plants worked like they do in real life, but in simpler way. Like you put one plant somewhere and it generates offspring etc. Speed up that and make older plants/trees disappear or change to dead trees. I think that way plants would grow where they are supposed, if you provide enough information about the type of soil. Plants could even compete with each other. Then when the generation is ready it could continue from there in real time.

[Etinarg]

I did that for a simulation game that I made long ago. It worked quite well, but eventually the world would have been overrun with plants if the players actions would not take care of clearings.

I liked the overall effect though. Made the world less static and appear more alive.

[getter77]

I did that for a simulation game that I made long ago. It worked quite well, but eventually the world would have been overrun with plants if the players actions would not take care of clearings.

I liked the overall effect though. Made the world less static and appear more alive.

I guess you'd need a seasonal change/brushfire world modifier/set of events to sidestep this problem?  That way the player need not mess with it much.

[Etinarg]

That could work. Trees grow rather slowly, and some roguelikes are meant to last only a few days in the life of a PC, so there wouldn't be much change to see. It works better with yearly growing plants and games that span several years, more the "life sim" type of games, I think.

Someone must make FarmvilleRL

[Krice]

The dungeon environment should also bring some special conditions for plant growth, because in Kaduria there is a light source type that provides artificial sunlight to plants. Everything near them grows more, and maybe darker areas could grow plants/mushroom that needs less light.

[Z]

Don't forget growing herbs in ADOM Not realistic, but fun.

[Darren Grey]

The herbs in ADOM follow the mathematical principles of Conway's 'Game of Life', with some added variables for different strengths of herb bush.  It's not amazingly complex, and herb bushes die out too easily in dungeon environments for it to be properly considered as a plant simulator, but it's a very fine example of simple plant-spreading rules being applied in a roguelike.  It's also extremely popular with the players that get to know the system.

I think the important thing would be to make the system follow simple basic rules that have interesting large-scale results.  A combination of different plants working against each other (perhaps with animals feeding on them) would be very interesting indeed.

[Krice]

(perhaps with animals feeding on them)

This leads to question of seeds getting spread by animals.. I guess it sounds bit complicated, but actually I think it would be nice way to do reproduction for some plants. I think it could be just possible to skip crapping part and plant the seed without visible piles of crap..

Anyway, I planned something already and it's somewhat easy to add that stuff, because plants are game objects in Kaduria (not just simple terrain tiles). It's just that I'm in middle of making other interesting feature so this has to wait.

Edit: well, I can actually do this at work. I took plant.cpp and plant.h files to my workplace computer and have been researching reproduction stuff. After some reading I decided to create a simplified version (because some plants have really weird ways to reproduce) with four types of reproduction: roots, seeds, berries and fruits. Seeds have two types: invisible and actual seed item created. Invisible seeds are wind pollinated or scattered to some distance while actual seeds drop down and are carried away by animals. Roots are mainly for mushroom. I guess it's more complicated than that (all that host plant stuff), but the great thing is that you can have any kind of system in a fantasy game...

However the creation is going to be simpler than that, because there are no animals around when the creation happens, so I have to emulate that somehow.