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"Fertile Fields" lets you fertilize and plow your soil, create farmland on solid rock so you can farm in inhospitable environs or inside of mountains, and eventually even restructure your landscape.

Create raw compost with food waste at a butcher's table, then put it in a compost bin or barrel so in time it can become fertilizer. Fertilizer can be used to convert any soil to rich soil. Further improve your farm's fertility by researching tillage and plowing your soil. Or learn the fine art of terrain reclamation, and terraform your environment to your heart's content.

Yes, this mod is in some ways very derivative of Sam's "Tilled Soil." I like the idea of that mod, but dislike the fact that it lets you turn any dirt into supersoil with virtually no work or effort. Dismarzero's "Vegetable Garden" offers a more balanced method of improving soil, using fertilizer, but it's a much larger mod than I really want, and adds some things I'm not terribly fond of. And so, I ended up combining what I liked from both of them, and came up with "Fertile Fields." Originally just an "improve your farmland" mod, it's since grown into a full-fledged terraforming mod.

- Rainbeau Flambe (dburgdorf)

Steam Workshop Link (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=838221188)

Dropbox Link (https://www.dropbox.com/s/44zn9eq87mhrpmw/Rainbeau%27s%20Fertile%20Fields.zip?dl=0)

New Research and Terrain Improvement Options:

Without researching anything, "Fertile Fields" allows you to dig up piles of dirt from soil, and also to create raw compost and turn it into fertilizer. Fertilizer and dirt can be used together to upgrade gravel or marshy soil to regular soil, and fertilizer can be used by itself to upgrade regular soil to rich soil.

Researching "Tillage" opens up the ability to plow soil, which lets you increase the fertility of rich soil.

The "Terrain Reclamation" research opens up the ability to "reclaim" rocky terrain, turning it into farmable land. Essentially, you're figuring out how to effectively lay topsoil over smooth stone. Create a garden inside a mountain if you're so inclined. Topsoil can be further improved by fertilizing it, but can't be plowed.

Finally, "Terraforming" represents an understanding of advanced irrigation and drainage techniques, and opens up a wide variety of terrain-altering options. It allows you to turn marsh, mud, sand or shallow water tiles into farmable soil, or to turn fertile land into sand or marsh. It lets you create shallow water tiles from marsh, so you can create decorative (or defensive) moats. It opens up the ability to dump dirt into impassable water to create deep water, which can then be further developed into shallow water. Alternately, you can remove dirt from deep water, producing impassable water. Finally, it also allows you to break solid rock into rocky soil, which can be further improved into regular soil, letting you create mountain farms that can actually be plowed for maximum fertility.

New Terrain Types:

Plowed Soil: Plowed soil has a fertility of 180%. It can be removed with the "remove floor" command, so if you find that you've plowed in the wrong area, you're not stuck with the plow lines.

Topsoil: Topsoil is quite simply a layer of soil placed on top of smooth stone. It can be fertilized to increase its quality, but it can't be plowed, as plowing it really wouldn't accomplish much. Still, it's a lot better for your crops than solid rock! If you decide you don't like the topsoil, you can remove it and get your stone floor back.

Rocky Soil: Rocky soil is the first step in converting smooth stone into true farmland, as opposed to simply layering topsoil on top of it. It's the immediate and quite labor intensive result of breaking up a smooth stone floor. It's minimally fertile (only 30%) but it can be further refined into gravel, and then into true farmland. Rocky soil is also what's left after you dig all the good dirt out of fertile soil.

Water: There are now three types of water rather than just two: shallow, deep and impassable water. Shallow water slows movement a fair amount, deep water slows it tremendously, and impassable water, as the name suggests, can't be moved through at all.

New Items:

Raw Compost: Raw compost is made at a butcher's table with raw or rotted food. It requires both animal and vegetable matter. Essentially, it's a disgusting mix of organic waste products.

Compost Bin: You can create a compost bin with wood and raw compost. Once you've created one, it'll just sit (and stink up the place) for about 3 days, before becoming fertilizer. Yeah, I know. Composting should take weeks or even months. We must be dealing here with some sort of super high-tech space compost bins.

Compost Barrel: Compost barrels require power, but are reusable, and are also more space efficient than compost bins, converting 10 raw compost into 10 fertilizer all at once.

Fertilizer: Plant and animal waste products have been used for millennia to improve soil for farming. Fertilizer is made from raw compost in a compost bin or barrel.

Pile of Dirt: Dirt is used in a variety of terrain improvements. Dirt piles can be dug up from fertile soil, leaving less fertile terrain behind.

Crushed Rocks: You can break up stone chunks at a stonecutter's table into crushed rocks. These can be further pulverized and mixed with fertilizer to create dirt, or can be used to recreate rough stone floors from rocky dirt terrain.

Compatibility:

"Fertile Fields" adds new things, but doesn't change many existing things, so it should be compatible with pretty much any other mod except perhaps for those which also change vanilla terrain definitions or map generation. You should be able to add it to an existing saved game without trouble, but removing the mod from a game in progress will, of course, likely cause problems or even make the game unplayable.

Special note regarding "Vegetable Garden": Though I don't necessarily recommend trying to use them both of them at the same time, "Fertile Fields" (FF) and "Vegetable Garden" (VG) are technically compatible with each other. Make sure that FF appears *after* VG in your mod load order. There are, of course, a few things to be aware of if you're using the mods together. First, you won't be able to make fertilizer at a butcher's table as you normally can in VG. You can only make compost there. VG's other methods of fertilizer production, however, should be unaffected. Second, both mods add piles of dirt, but they define those items differently. So you'll actually have two types of dirt piles. One comes from VG's digging spots, and is used for VG's terrain improvements, and the other comes from FF's terrain alterations, and is used for FF's terrain improvements. Finally, FF's plowed soil will overwrite VG's tilled soil, meaning that it will have 180% fertility instead of 120%, and it can only be placed according to FF's requirements, not VG's.

Credits:

The C# code related to compost bins derives from Dismarzero's "Vegetable Garden." The C# code related to compost barrels draws from Sulusdacor's "[sd] Luciferium Production" mod, which in turn borrows heavily from the default code for fermentation barrels.

The mod utilizes Pardeike's "Harmony Patch Library." (No additional download is required, as the library is included with the mod.)

License:

If you're a modpack maker and want to include "Fertile Fields" in your pack, or if you're a modder and want to use "Fertile Fields" as the basis of a derivative mod, please feel free to do so. I ask only that you let me know about it.

If you have any (helpful) suggestions for improvement, please let me know!

Good work on diversifying the available mods, I shy away from packs and mega-system-mods so this fits my style. However, could you put up a download link independent from Steam? I'm sticking to the non-Steam version and would appreciate it :)

Quote from: Fluff_Thorrent on January 12, 2017, 05:46:55 PM
Could you put up a download link independent from Steam?

Done.

Update:

- Fertilization of gravel or marshy soil to the fertility of regular soil, and fertilization of regular soil to the fertility of rich soil, are now separate processes. So fertilizing regular soil to 140% fertility takes just one bag of fertilizer, but fertilizing gravel to that level takes two steps and two bags.

- Gravel and marshy soil can't be tilled without first being fertilized.

- Tilling no longer requires fertilizer.

Another (bugfix) update:

- Squashed a couple of bugs related to reclaimed soil.

This looks AMAZING. I've been looking for something like this for a LONG time. I used to use a mod called Soiling, but there was no cost and it seemed like a cheat. I could place any terrain anywhere I wanted. I've also used the "Tilled Soil" you mentioned, and again, it felt "cheaty". I think this will be a bit more balanced as it requires research and crafting to accomplish.

Now, I just need a mod that will let me put marsh wherever I want and I'll be set! :)

Thank you!

Thank you very much :) I just downloaded today the mentioned second mod, was quite a bit shocked how quickly you can make a 200% fert. tiles, just like that.. This still makes the original 140% spawn viable and important, this improves on it. Thanks

Quote from: MisterVertigo on January 14, 2017, 06:21:24 PMNow, I just need a mod that will let me put marsh wherever I want and I'll be set! :)

It actually wouldn't be unreasonable to allow creation of marsh once you've researched advanced terrain reclamation. It's just sort of the inverse of what the tech already allows, anyway. And while I hadn't really thought about it before, it shouldn't be difficult to implement.

I'll put it on my "to do" list. ;)

That would be awesome! Even if it's a separate mod I'd love it! I think it would work in with your theme though.

I like to put marsh in my kill boxes as it slows down the enemy movement. I'll admit I use admin mode to put them in though because there is no other way to do it right now.

Update:

- Topsoil is now removable, so you can return tiles to smooth stone if you're not using them for farming.

- Soil pits and compost bins now impede movement through their tiles.

- Tillage now requires 140% fertility. I know you there's no logical reason why non-fertilized fields can't be tilled, but for balance purposes, this limitation prevents you from being able to jump fertility from 100% to 160% in a single too-easy step.

- Advanced Terrain Reclamation now also allows the creation of marshlike muck, if you want to impede movement through certain areas.

Great mod! Finally a balanced approach to soil :)

I've three suggestions for you:

- a reusable compost pit (like a composting barrel?). Should require research, maybe steel and electricity, but is faster/more efficient (two fertilizer per compost maybe? or 2 fertilizer for 3 compost?)

- make corpses compostable. Why not use the otherwise useless biomass provided by the "friendly" tribe nearby?

- fertilized top soil - that should exist too. I would implement it with 120% fertility, it should correspond fine to other soils (outside - tilled, fertilized, normal | inside - hydrpoponics, fertilized, normal)

Quote from: Stage on January 16, 2017, 08:31:42 AMI've three suggestions for you....

Glad you like the mod!

I'm already planning to allow topsoil to be fertilized (though still not tilled). That was specifically requested by another user on Steam. :)

My original plan with the compost bins was to essentially just use the existing fermentation barrel code. Build a barrel, put compost in, later take fertilizer out. Rinse (or not), repeat. But I ran into errors I couldn't debug -- my coding expertise barely goes beyond the "cut and paste" level -- and so I ended up using a completely different method. But I may yet revisit the fermentation barrel code and see if I can figure out where I went wrong.

As to corpses, well, to be honest, I kind of assumed it was already possible to use corpses in the creation of compost. I hadn't actually tried it, but I also hadn't specifically disallowed it. There must be a default setting somewhere that I need to override. I'll look into it.

A small "fix" for the composting bin could be: make a reciepe for an empty bin, alter the reciepe for the composting bin to "empty bin + compost" and once finished let the empty bin and fertilizer drop :)

I think the "rotten" option is missing too, btw.

Otherwise great work :)
Thanks for the fast response!

Update:

- Topsoil can now be fertilized (but still can't be tilled).

(And Stage, I checked, and human meat *can* in fact be used in creation of compost, so I'm not sure why you're having trouble, unless you were trying to just compost corpses without butchering them first.) (That's not the sort of comment I normally expect to find myself typing.)

It's a nice mod. My only problem is those tiny, tiny rocks in gravel and soil that aren't seemingly part of anything, can't be destroyed via dev tool, etc still showing up in tilled soil that used to be gravel or normal soil. I don't think that's fixable though. Keep up the good work!

i would love to see some way to make rough stone you can smooth and be just like normal smooth stone

How to add Hay to butcher table recipes ?

Small update:

- Hay can now be used in the creation of compost.

Am I the only one having issues with the provided link? I refuse to use steam for Rimworld (specifically because of modding), but I'd still like this mod. Just wondering if it's an issue on my end.

Quote from: fetusthebard on January 23, 2017, 10:25:27 PM
Am I the only one having issues with the provided link?

What problem, exactly, are you having? I just double-checked, and the Dropbox link seems to be fine.

so if people want to have a farm inside a mountain then they have to give up using tilled soil, that sad.
look like i will be waiting for the tilled soil mod to be updated, at least that mod don't punish people for where they want to put their farm at

Quote from: MarineStardust on January 24, 2017, 02:52:43 PMso if people want to have a farm inside a mountain then they have to give up using tilled soil, that sad.

Yes, there's a trade-off. The fact that you can't till soil that you laid over smooth stone inside of a mountain means that you have to trade a small bit of efficiency for the significant increase in security that the mountain gives you. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Quote from: MarineStardust on January 24, 2017, 02:52:43 PMlook like i will be waiting for the tilled soil mod to be updated, at least that mod don't punish people for where they want to put their farm at

The beauty of modding is that it lets you tailor the game to be exactly what you want it to be. What you see as "punishment," others see as a nod to realism and game balance. "Tilled Soil" and "Fertile Fields" offer two different ways to accomplish similar goals. If you prefer your soil enhancements to be cost-free, then by all means, continue using "Tilled Soil." (And by the way, I don't know what you mean about waiting for it to update, as it was updated for a16 a month ago.) But other players consider "Tilled Soil" to be overpowered, and so I've offered "Fertile Fields" as an alternative.

I love this mod so much, keep it up! Question though, although this is a mod for farming would it be possible to have some terraforming too? Like turn stone to gravel then to sand or something. As well as maybe have a way to turn dirt into shallow water.

Quote from: Draegon on January 24, 2017, 07:50:36 PM
I love this mod so much, keep it up! Question though, although this is a mod for farming would it be possible to have some terraforming too? Like turn stone to gravel then to sand or something. As well as maybe have a way to turn dirt into shallow water.

I'm always subject to persuasion, but honestly, my initial gut response is that both of those options -- turning stone directly into soil (as opposed to just layering soil over it) and turning soil into actual water (as opposed to marshy terrain) -- are more extreme than I'm really comfortable adding.

It would be awesome to some more to the credits

I feel a bit unloved.

Quote from: dismar on January 25, 2017, 11:42:30 PM
It would be awesome to some more to the credits

I feel a bit unloved.

My apologies. The absence of a "Credits" note was an unintentional oversight, which has now been fixed.

Only thing I think could be improved is the production of fertilizer, maybe try to make compost bins that are reusable, like the beer kegs.

Update:

- Added compost barrels as an alternative to compost bins. They require power, but convert 10 compost at a time to fertilizer instead of just one. They're also reusable.

Bug fix:

- Shallow water tiles can now actually be reclaimed as soil (with Advanced Terrain Reclamation research). It wasn't actually working before. :(

suggestions:
- Make compost bins, when built in bulk, buildable in a square (like floors) instead of a line (like walls)
- Add ability to turn land into shallow water, swamp, sand, basically to be able to turn whatever into whatever, for aesthetic or defensive purposes.

A pretty major update:

- I eliminated terrains that were functionally identical to vanilla terrains. For example, previously, when you fertilized soil, you got "fertilized soil," which was just rich soil with a different name. Now, you get rich soil. It keeps things simpler.

- Renamed the architect tab from "fertile fields" to "terraform."

- It's now possible to create shallow water and sand tiles. It's also possible to break up smooth stone into "rocky soil," which puts you on a path to creating farmland from your stone instead of just covering it with topsoil.

- The fertility of tilled soil has been boosted from 160% to 180%.

- Compost bins can now be built in bulk over an area, not just in a line.

- Tilled soil no longer features random scattered rocks.

- It's now possible to plant agave, astragalus, grass, and both pincushion and saguaro cacti.

I have a save game that fails to load due to map errors. I had a caravan out in the world in transit, which might be it. I have a previous auto save, so it's not too bad but I thought I'd let you know. Is there anything I can post to help you figure out what's going on?

Quote from: NeonElf on February 04, 2017, 11:43:24 PM
I have a save game that fails to load due to map errors....

I tried to make sure load errors wouldn't happen; def files for the terrain types I eliminated actually still exist, but just aren't used for anything new and now have display names matching the vanilla tiles they duplicated.

In other words, I was really hoping to avoid "Your update broke my saved game" messages. :D

Unless....

S**t.

I didn't think of this before, but did you happen to have any terraforming work in progress at the moment of the save? That could explain the map error.

It's possible I might have been tilling some fields. Not sure, but I really think the caravan in transit has something to do with it since I had to go back to an auto save before the caravan formed.

Quote from: dburgdorf on January 28, 2017, 07:32:15 PM
Update:

- Added compost barrels as an alternative to compost bins. They require power, but convert 10 compost at a time to fertilizer instead of just one. They're also reusable.

I'm loving this mod. I have a brainstorming-ish suggestion, since I've been reading up on IRL composting lately: it often works best with big piles of compost, so it can heat up nicely inside, and works better if you can stir/turn it occasionally, and apparently farmers often set up one whopping big pile of compost to rot for a year, and it'll be ready for the fields the next year. Whereupon they start a second whopping huge compost pile rotting for the next year's fields, and so on.

So I guess another thing I'd like to see is a big compost bin - maybe 2x2 or 3x3 or 4x1 or something - that holds like 100+ compost, but takes a year to break down into fertilizer. Something that would produce enough fertilizer all at once to do a whole field in one go at the beginning of the planting season.

Another thing I've read is "sheet composting" - where the farmer digs a field, chucks in all sorts of compost and stirs it up, and then lets it sit and compost in place for a couple of months. Anything you try to plant in it before it's done would die off from the high levels of whatsit, but once it's done you have a fertilized field. Haven't thought much about how that might be implemented or whether it may be kind of redundant to existing functions, though.

Bugfix update:

- Revised agave to make it less of a superplant. (Growing time doubled and yield halved, giving it a yield per day now only sightly better than other plants, and it also requires more work than other plants both to sow and to harvest, though not as much work to harvest as in vanilla.)

- Hopefully fixed the issue with saves breaking after the previous update. If you actually still have any saved games that wouldn't load, try again and let me know if they work now.

Another (pretty significant) update:

- Dirt piles are now obtained by digging up soil, which converts the soil (depending upon how much dirt you get) either to gravel or to rocky soil.

- Deep water tiles can now be converted to breakwaters, using a lot of dirt and a lot of effort. Breakwater tiles can be converted to shallow water tiles, just as can marsh tiles.

- Adjusted dirt/fertilizer requirements for a few terrain alterations.

- Compost bins now have a chance to return the wood used to create them, once they're done converting compost to fertilizer.

- Renamed "advanced terrain reclamation" to "terraforming."

- Eliminated the old "infinite dirt" soil pits (but made sure this time that the change wouldn't break any saves).

- Gave up on trying to fix broken saves from last week's update. Sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

Did you add the marshy soil, the green one, with 46% movement speed - it's useful for trap placing.

QuoteIt's now possible to plant agave, astragalus, grass, and both pincushion and saguaro cacti.

Maybe separate the plants from terraforming into a separate mod.
Is it compatible with gardening (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=21841) mod now?

QuoteThe fertility of tilled soil has been boosted from 160% to 180%.

why, what's the fertility of hydroponics basin? I can't find it anywhere.

Quote from: gendalf on February 13, 2017, 10:01:10 AMDid you add the marshy soil, the green one, with 46% movement speed - it's useful for trap placing.

"Fertile Fields" allows you to create both marsh and marshy soil tiles.

QuoteMaybe separate the plants from terraforming into a separate mod. Is it compatible with gardening (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=21841) mod now?

Creating a separate mod for the plants is probably not a bad idea. As to compatibility, there shouldn't be any problems. Both mods modify grass, so whichever loads last will "win," but nothing will break, and the changes should be pretty much the same either way.

Quotewhy, what's the fertility of hydroponics basin? I can't find it anywhere.

Hydroponics basin has a fertility of 230%. I increased tilled soil fertility to 180% because the jump from 140% to 160% just didn't seem quite enough, especially since most of the other "improve your soil" mods out there allow you to get to 200% or even higher.

You should see if you can't borrow the darker rich soil texture from the "Where's the rich soil?" mod, I've merged it into my running copy of fertile fields, wasn't too hard even for dumb old me but it'd be great as a default feature.

Update time again:

- Removed plant cultivation into a separate mod, "Wild Cultivation."

- Deep water is now called impassable water, and breakwater, which is no longer impassable, is now deep water.

- It's now possible to create impassable water on the map, though I still think it's a terribly overpowered ability.

- Rocky soil is renamed rocky dirt, which better reflects the fact that it isn't really soil yet, but needs to be improved.

- Map generation has been modified so that all three water depths are generated on new maps, as is rocky dirt.

- The colors of the three water tiles have been adjusted, as has the color of rich soil, which now stands out better from regular soil.

- Dirt, compost and fertilizer now have higher (and much more reasonable) market values.

- Architect menu icons for terraforming options now explain more clearly and consistenty what they do.

- Added language localization file support.

Sadly not compatible with saves with late January version of the mod.

Quote from: gendalf on February 21, 2017, 12:24:24 PM
Sadly not compatible with saves with late January version of the mod.

Unfortunately, the Feb 4 update unintentionally broke earlier saves, and since I have a bad habit of not keeping older copies of the mod myself, I wasn't able to figure out and correct what caused the incompatibility.

That said, though, if you (or anyone else) actually still have a copy of the older version and could get it to me, I'd probably be able to track down and fix the problem.

dburgdorf, 01/29/2017 version:
filedropper.com/rainbeausfertilefields_2

Thanks, gendalf! I'll see now what I can do tonight about "unbreaking" older saves.  :)

Update:

- Finally, belatedly, fixed the broken saves from the 02/04/2017 update. Thanks to gendalf for providing me with a copy of the Jan 29 version of the mod, so I could recreate and track down the source of the trouble!

It would make sense if removing dirt to make impassible water, would actually create dirt piles, and in general the net dirt shouldn't disappear too much in the cycle of dirt

Quote from: gendalf on February 22, 2017, 01:58:26 AM
It would make sense if removing dirt to make impassible water, would actually create dirt piles, and in general the net dirt shouldn't disappear too much in the cycle of dirt

I'm not quite following you. Creating impassable water from deep water *does* produce dirt piles, just as creating deep water from impassable water requires them.

(Creating deep water from shallow water probably should, as well, but currently doesn't, to balance the fact that creating shallow water doesn't require dirt. If that's what you're referring to, it's something I'm already thinking of altering.)

On a side note, can I safely assume the latest change did in fact finally let you load your old save files?

QuoteOn a side note, can I safely assume the latest change did in fact finally let you load your old save files?

yes it did.

maybe make removing smooth stone from the ground produce stone chunks, like when mining?

I'm having a problem with references sticking around after disabling the mod. I subscribed to this one and a couple of others that made terrain buildable (Vegetable Garden & Constructable Terrain) and wanted to look at one at a time.

There's a trace like this for several terrain types:
Could not resolve cross-reference: No Verse.DesignationCategoryDef named RFF_Adds found to give to Verse.TerrainDef WaterModerate

and one like this between each of those.
Could not resolve cross-reference to Verse.ResearchProjectDef named advterrainreclamation

These are logged when the game starts, not during a load of a save. I have re-enabled the mod and restarted and the errors are still logged, even after trying different load positions.

After restarting the game (actually quitting and starting) I generated a new world and can't build some objects (ex: fishing pier) because of terrain types that can't be found:

Failed to find Verse.TerrainDef named Muck. There are 69 defs of this type loaded.

and a similar one for Shallowmoat. The only place I can find the word "muck" is in Terrain_RFF.xml, but I can't find Shallowmoat anywhere.

Should it be possible possible for a world to be generated with defs from a mod that's not loaded after a quit-and-restart?  If this is a case of the mod not unloading, do you know of a way to deal with this?

edit: I was able to restart the game with the mod enabled and not get the errors.  Now only the error for SHallowmoat happens when I try to build, which does make it seem like the world generated with terrain types from Fertile Fields even though it was disabled. Now I just need to figure out where Shallowmoat comes from.  It's not in any file in my mods or core directories.

Quote from: sdp0et on February 22, 2017, 07:46:07 PM
I'm having a problem with references sticking around after disabling the mod....

If you try to load a game that was created with the mod after you've removed the mod, you'll have problems.  If you disable the mod but don't actually restart the game, you can still have problems.

But I have no idea why you'd be getting these errors if you disabled the mod and then restarted the game before creating a new world, as at that point there shouldn't be anything referencing the "Fertile Fields"-specific terrain tiles (or architect tab).

My best guess is that you've got another mod in your list that depends on "Fertile Fields," probably either my "Fertile Fields + FishIndustry + [sd] Bridges" patch mod or "Rainbeau's Cleanup Mod," but even then, the errors as you're describing them don't seem to make much sense.

(The "Shallowmoat" tile, by the way, comes from "More Vanilla Turrets." In "Rainbeau's Cleanup Mod," I alter its definition so it matches the placeable shallow water tiles from "Fertile Fields.")

Quote from: gendalf on February 22, 2017, 02:59:32 PM
maybe make removing smooth stone from the ground produce stone chunks, like when mining?

After yesterday, when I updated everything, I *thought* I might have a chance to actually play the game a bit before I got back to working on mods. But, NO! You had to go and come up with another brilliant suggestion. :P

Seriously, though, I love the idea, and I'm already working on it. Converting stone to rocky dirt will cost a pile of dirt, but will also have a chance to provide you with a chunk of the appropriate stone type.

Another quick update:

- Rocky dirt can now be constructed on either rough or smooth stone, costs a pile of dirt, and has a chance of yielding a chunk of the appropriate stone type.

- As a side effect of the above, it's no longer possible to construct rocky dirt on floors, which never should have been possible, anyway.

- Converting deep water to shallow water now costs dirt, and converting shallow to deep produces it.

- Made some "behind the scenes" adjustments to improve backward save compatibility and to prevent further usage of old terrain defs.

Hi, just tried this puppy out, and the rough ground presents an interesting challenge. Maybe a bit over the top as far as limiting the availability of wood though.

This mod sort of works with Rikiki's Fish Industry (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=13172.msg133445#msg133445) mod, in that fishing piers can be placed on the shallow water tiles, but the fishing pier needs some clearance. Looks like about three tiles worth of shallow water.

So the problem is that world generation creates a narrow band of shallow water that doesn't provide enough room going out from shore to place a pier. Can you increase the shallow water band enough so that the Fishing Pier can be built most places?

Quote from: AngleWyrm on February 25, 2017, 09:45:40 PM
Hi, just tried this puppy out, and the rough ground presents an interesting challenge. Maybe a bit over the top as far as limiting the availability of wood though.

Rocky dirt only generates on some of the tiles that otherwise would have been gravel, so it shouldn't impact the availability of trees for wood in any way.

Quote from: AngleWyrm on February 25, 2017, 09:45:40 PMThis mod sort of works with Rikiki's Fish Industry mod....

If you look in my "other mods" thread -- the link's in my sig -- you'll find that I've already released a compatibility patch mod that allows "Fertile Fields," "FishIndustry," and "[sd] Bridges" to all play nicely together. I did that because I like having fishing piers and bridges available on my own maps. :D

Thanks man, the patch did the do  :D

Is there going to be a compatibility patch for 'Better Terrain'? blackhalo is doing some fancy work with terrain generation.

Better Terrain URL: https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=30203.0

It's probably one or the other, and my preference is for the one that adds the least burdensome hardship to game play.

The game I started today landed near a small mud-surrounded pool, but it doesn't have enough water for a fishing dock. So I'm going to do some terrain research to figure out how to drain out the muck and make a nice fishing pier.

Quote from: Rambus200 on February 28, 2017, 09:01:23 PM
Is there going to be a compatibility patch for 'Better Terrain'? blackhalo is doing some fancy work with terrain generation.

I'm not familiar with that mod, but it looks like it just modifies terrain generation. So I'd assume that if you load it after "Fertile Fields," its terrain generation changes will overwrite mine, but "Fertile Fields" will otherwise remain functional.

An actual compatibility patch -- which adds my new terrain tiles to his modified generation -- could be difficult, especially as it seems "Better Terrain" is still very much a work in progress.

I have had Tilled Soil mod for a while but always felt there wasn't enough work involved.

Just stumbled on this. Looking forward to swapping out for your mod later tonight.

Quote from: dburgdorf on March 01, 2017, 01:16:53 AM

Quote from: Rambus200 on February 28, 2017, 09:01:23 PM
Is there going to be a compatibility patch for 'Better Terrain'? blackhalo is doing some fancy work with terrain generation.

I'm not familiar with that mod, but it looks like it just modifies terrain generation. So I'd assume that if you load it after "Fertile Fields," its terrain generation changes will overwrite mine, but "Fertile Fields" will otherwise remain functional.

An actual compatibility patch -- which adds my new terrain tiles to his modified generation -- could be difficult, especially as it seems "Better Terrain" is still very much a work in progress.

I've tested it with your mod fertile field, and somehow the soil gets changed when loading better terrain last in the mod order. So therefore all your terror-forming tools like place rich soil, gravel and so on, says that either wrong soil type, or not enough fertilizer. i have attached images where this map was generated with better terrain mod last in the order, where you cannot place rich or gravel cuz of the terrain type.

Also big ups with your mod, i like it a lot. But i also like better terrain so , trying to get the best of both worlds lol.

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

Quote from: Rambus200 on March 01, 2017, 01:41:16 PMI've tested it with your mod fertile field.... So therefore all your terror-forming tools....

First, just let me say, I love "terror-forming."  I hadn't realized "Fertile Fields" was a horror-themed mod, but then again, some of the headaches it's given me have definitely been scary.  :D

On a more serious note, thanks for the information.  I'll take a closer look at "Better Terrain," probably this weekend.  It's apparently making changes to terrain types, and possibly even creating new ones.  But such changes *shouldn't* be too difficult to accommodate within "Fertile Fields," so hopefully, it won't prove too difficult to let the mods work together.

Quote from: Rambus200 on March 01, 2017, 01:41:16 PM
I've tested [Better Terrain] with your mod fertile field, and somehow the soil gets changed when loading better terrain last in the mod order.

I tried loading them both as well, when I first installed Fertile Fields mod. The result was a whole lot of rough rocky ground and very little soil. I re-rolled a few times, and posted in this thread that I thought the experience was a result of imbalance of this Fertile Fields mod.

Removing the Better Terrain mod made the large proportion of non-soil ground much more reasonable, so I can only guess that there's some incompatibility between tile types.

Two Questions

#1: I've done some terraforming research and the only option I see for converting mud is to turn it into marshy soil, but when I attempt to place the marshy soil on the mud it says "The terrain here cannot support this." Am I missing something? #2: There is a need for two resources, dirt and compost. Can someone please show me the sequence of activity they use to produce dirt and compost? (click image to zoom in/out)

(https://s6.postimg.org/wo7duilsh/mud.png)

Quote from: AngleWyrm on March 01, 2017, 04:43:41 PM#1: The only option I see for converting mud is to turn it into marshy soil, but when I attempt to place the marshy soil on the mud it says "The terrain here cannot support this."

#2: There is a need for two resources, dirt and compost. Can someone please show me the sequence of activity they use to produce dirt and compost?

As to #2, piles of dirt are obtained by digging up soil. The menu icons with shovels will allow you to do so. Fertilizer is made from compost in either a compost bin or a compost barrel, both of which you'll also find available to construct from the menu bar. Compost is made at a butcher's table.

As to #1, I can double-check when I get home from work to make sure I didn't screw something up in my last update, but I think the problem may actually be the result of a mod conflict. It looks like you've got "Vegetable Garden" installed. I don't know if VG and FF are mutually compatible, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're not, since VG also introduces terrain improvement options. But I'll check when I get home to make sure the problem isn't actually with "Fertile Fields" itself.

Quote from: AngleWyrm on March 01, 2017, 04:43:41 PMWhen I attempt to place the marshy soil on the mud it says "The terrain here cannot support this."

OK, yeah, I'm still at work, but I just downloaded VG and took a look at its XML files.  It is, in fact, the cause of the problem.

Terrain types have what are called "affordances," which define what can be put on them. By default, mud tiles have *no* affordances, meaning nothing can be built on them. "Fertile Fields" adds to mud the "undefined" affordance (and only that affordance), which the marshy soil tile looks for. Unfortunately, "Vegetable Garden" adds to mud tiles the "diggable" affordance (and only that affordance). So if you're using both mods, whichever you load last will dictate what affordance is added to mud, and only the things in *that* mod that affect mud will actually work.

EDIT: As an additional note, I suppose a compatibility patch allowing FF to be used with VG wouldn't be unreasonable. When I first created "Fertile Fields," I thought of it as an alternative to VG, which let you get more fertile soil without adding dozens of crops and food items to the game. I didn't really see the two as mods that anyone would have any reason to try to use together. But given that FF has grown into a full-fledged terraforming mod, which adds options which, so far as I'm aware, VG doesn't offer, that mindset's probably a bit dated. Yet another item for my "to do" list. ;)

To test this I unloaded the Vegetable Garden mod, started a new colony, went into god mode to get all research done and insta-build a butcher's table.

• The marshy soil was place-able on mud
• The recipe for compost appeared in the butcher's table

I can do without Vegetable Garden, but I kind of like the things it offers, such as the tailor's loom for making blended leather out of all those bits and pieces.

Test #2 Effects of Mod load order Placed Veggie Garden mod before Fertile Fields mod The recipe for compost disappeared from the butcher's table

(https://s6.postimg.org/6h66yk3ip/loadorder.png)

Feature request
Can we get a way to dig dirt out of soil? It's dirt, cheapest and most common thing on Earth Rimworld. Digging up dirt shouldn't cost research or valuable resources, just the time it takes that could have been spent doing other jobs.

Quote from: AngleWyrm on March 01, 2017, 06:12:14 PMPlaced Veggie Garden mod before Fertile Fields... recipe for compost disappeared from the butcher's table....

Can we get a way to dig dirt out of soil?

Compost recipe disappeared with FF loading after VG? That seems odd, but I'll look into it.

And, um... you *can* get dirt by digging up soil....

Quote from: dburgdorf on March 01, 2017, 09:50:39 PM
And, um... you *can* get dirt by digging up soil....

I've noticed that I lack the knowledge to play with this mod.
So I won't be able to play with this mod.

Quote from: AngleWyrm on March 05, 2017, 12:31:36 AMI've noticed that I lack the knowledge to play with this mod. So I won't be able to play with this mod.

I apologize if my response to your comment seemed belittling. My intention was a joke, not an insult, but I can see now that it might not have come across that way.

It's easy to forget sometimes that things that are obvious to me as the author of the mod aren't necessarily obvious to users.

Update:

- Fixed marshes so they can again be built on shallow water and mud.

- Made some adjustments to allow "Fertile Fields" and "Vegetable Garden" to coexist. But while they're mechanically compatible, they remain in some respects conceptually incompatible. Details are in the mod's description.

On another note, I had a chance to take a look at "Better Terrain," and while I agree it's a very impressive mod, I'm afraid that the odds of my creating a compatibility patch to allow "Fertile Fields" to work with it are slim. "Better Terrain" makes a lot of changes to terrain generation, including adding a huge variety of new terrain tile types. A compatibility patch would likely end up actually being a whole new mod, larger and more complex than "Fertile Fields" is right now.

Quote from: dburgdorf on March 05, 2017, 01:32:37 PM

Quote from: AngleWyrm on March 05, 2017, 12:31:36 AMI've noticed that I lack the knowledge to play with this mod. So I won't be able to play with this mod.

It's easy to forget sometimes that things that are obvious to me as the author of the mod aren't necessarily obvious to users.

I'm not offended, I'm pointing out that there is an unmet knowledge requirement.
A youtube video or a wiki page that shows the process of using this mod would address the learning curve.
Then you'll be able to say RTFM.

Some people find the easiest way to teach is to lead by demonstration/example, a good use of youtube.
If Wikis seem like a solution, then github has a built-in wiki feature that isn't plagued by advertizing.

Quote from: AngleWyrm on March 05, 2017, 06:39:58 PMA youtube video or a wiki page....

You seem to be assuming that the mod is much more complex than it actually is. A wiki page seems like overkill, as honestly, all the information you need is already available either in the mod's description or in the button texts on the "Terraform" tab of the Architect menu.

That said, though, the information in question isn't in a convenient "how to" form, and putting it into such a format probably isn't a bad idea.

So I've created the following overview, which I'll probably include as a text doc in future distributions of the mod. Feel free to read it over and comment on anything you think is still unclear.

And thanks for your input thus far!  ;)

==================================================

RAINBEAU'S "FERTILE FIELDS" RIMWORLD MOD - AN OVERVIEW


Welcome to "Fertile Fields"! From the very beginning of your game, this mod will allow you, with a little work, to improve your farmland's fertility. Later, after you've done the necessary research, you'll have access to extensive terraforming options which will allow you to restructure the map to create pretty much exactly the environment you desire.

Hopefully, this quick intro will help you understand exactly what the mod will let you do, and more importantly, how to actually do it!


(1) NEW TERRAIN TYPES:

You'll notice when you start a new game that the mod adds two new types of terrain that can appear on the map. The first new terrain is rocky dirt, which will sometimes appear as a "buffer" between solid stone and gravel. It's sort of an extra-rocky version of gravel, and is only minimally fertile. The second new terrain is impassable water. Deep water is now more of a medium-depth water, and like shallow water, it can be traversed by pawns, albeit very slowly. But impassable water, as the name suggests, can't be moved through.


(2) GETTING STARTED:

The first thing you need to know is that every option added by "Fertile Fields" will appear as a button in the new "Terraform" tab of the Architect menu. If you're unsure what something does, read the button's text. I've tried to make sure the information you need is always available.

The second thing you need to know is that most of the terrain alterations made possible by the mod will require dirt and/or fertilizer. So... how do you get them?

Obtaining dirt is easy, as you just dig it up from the ground. But be aware that dirt is a finite resource. To get dirt to put in one location, you have to remove it from another. If you dig up dirt from a soil tile, you'll leave behind either gravel or rocky dirt. So try not to dig anywhere that you might want to later place a farm or garden. Digging up dirt from tiles where you're about to build walls or floors, on the other hand, is a really good idea.

Obtaining fertilizer is a bit more involved. First, you have to create compost at a butcher's table. (The compost recipe is the one exception to the "everything in the mod is on the 'Terraform' tab" rule, by the way.) Any four vegetable items, meat or hay can be combined to create a pile of compost.

Compost can be converted to fertilizer in either a compost bin or a compost barrel. A compost bin is a one-use item, built with compost and wood. It will sit for three days, and then turn into a pile of fertilizer. (You might get your wood back, as well.) A compost barrel, on the other hand, is a permanent item that works similarly to a fermenting barrel. It requires power, but converts 10 compost at a time into fertilizer. It still takes three days to process each batch, though.

Once you've got some dirt and fertilizer, you'll be able to upgrade gravel or marshy soil to regular soil, or upgrade regular soil to rich soil.

The specific buttons which will appear on the "Terraform" tab at the beginning of your game are as follows. Note that some buttons have the same name, as they represent different ways of creating the same terrain tile.

+ "Compost barrel": COST: 20 steel, 10 wood, and one component.

+ "Compost bin": COST: Two wood and one pile of compost.

+ "Gravel": PLACE ON: Fertile soil. RESULT: Gravel. GAIN: One pile of dirt.

+ "Gravel": PLACE ON: Rocky dirt. RESULT: Gravel. COST: Two piles of dirt.

+ "Rich soil": PLACE ON: Soil or lichen-covered dirt. RESULT: Rich soil. COST: One pile of fertilizer.

+ "Rocky dirt": PLACE ON: Fertile soil. RESULT: Rocky dirt. GAIN: Three piles of dirt.

+ "Rocky dirt": PLACE ON: Gravel or marshy soil. RESULT: Rocky dirt. GAIN: Two piles of dirt.

+ "Soil": PLACE ON: Gravel or marshy soil. RESULT: Soil. COST: One pile of fertilizer and one pile of dirt.


(3) "TILLAGE" RESEARCH:

Researching "Tillage" opens up the ability to till soil, which lets you increase the fertility of rich soil. Tilled soil has a fertility of 180%. It can be removed with the "remove floor" command, so if you find that you've tilled in the wrong area, you're not stuck with the plow lines.

Once you've completed the research, a new button will appear on the "Terraform" tab.

+ "Tilled soil": PLACE ON: Rich soil. RESULT: Tilled soil. COST: Nothing but effort.


(4) "TERRAIN RECLAMATION" RESEARCH:

The "Terrain Reclamation" research opens up the ability to "reclaim" rocky terrain, turning it into farmable land. Essentially, you're figuring out how to effectively lay topsoil over smooth stone. Create a garden inside a mountain if you're so inclined. Topsoil can be fertilized to increase its quality, but it can't be tilled, as since it's just a layer of soil placed on top of stone, tilling it really wouldn't accomplish much. If you decide you don't like the topsoil, you can remove it and get your stone floor back.

Once you've completed the research, two new buttons will appear on the "Terraform" tab.

+ "Fertilized topsoil": PLACE ON: Topsoil. RESULT: Fertilized topsoil. COST: One pile of fertilizer.

+ "Topsoil": PLACE ON: Smooth stone. RESULT: Topsoil. COST: Two piles of dirt and one pile of fertilizer.


(5) "TERRAFORMING" RESEARCH:

"Terraforming" represents an understanding of advanced irrigation and drainage techniques, and opens up a wide variety of terrain-altering options. It allows you to turn marsh, mud, sand or shallow water tiles into farmable soil, or to turn fertile land into sand or marsh. It lets you create shallow water tiles from marsh, so you can create decorative (or defensive) moats. It opens up the ability to dump dirt into impassable water to create deep water, which can then be further developed into shallow water. Alternately, you can remove dirt from deep water, producing impassable water. Finally, it also allows you to break solid rock into rocky soil, which can be further improved into regular soil, letting you create mountain farms that can actually be tilled for maximum fertility.

As you'd expect, it adds quite a few more buttons to the "Terraform" tab.

+ "Deep water": PLACE ON: Impassable water. RESULT: Deep water. COST: Ten piles of dirt.

+ "Deep water": PLACE ON: Shallow water. RESULT: Deep water. GAIN: Five piles of dirt.

+ "Gravel": PLACE ON: Sand. RESULT: Gravel. COST: One pile of dirt and one pile of fertilizer.

+ "Impassable water": PLACE ON: Deep water. RESULT: Impassable water. GAIN: Ten piles of dirt. (NOTE: Placing impassable terrain on the map is overpowered and potentially game-breaking. Use with caution!)

+ "Marsh": PLACE ON: Fertile soil, mud or shallow water. RESULT: Marsh. COST: Nothing but effort.

+ "Marshy soil": PLACE ON: Marsh or mud. RESULT: Marshy soil. COST: One pile of dirt and one pile of fertilizer.

+ "Rocky Dirt": PLACE ON: Rough or smooth stone. RESULT: Rocky dirt. COST: One pile of dirt. GAIN: Rock chunk (sometimes).

+ "Sand": PLACE ON: Fertile soil. RESULT: Sand. COST: Nothing but effort.

+ "Shallow water" PLACE ON: Deep water. RESULT: Shallow water. COST: Five piles of dirt.

+ "Shallow water": PLACE ON: Marsh. RESULT: Shallow water. COST: Nothing but effort.

Quote from: dburgdorf on March 05, 2017, 01:50:55 PM
On another note, I had a chance to take a look at "Better Terrain," and while I agree it's a very impressive mod, I'm afraid that the odds of my creating a compatibility patch to allow "Fertile Fields" to work with it are slim. "Better Terrain" makes a lot of changes to terrain generation, including adding a huge variety of new terrain tile types. A compatibility patch would likely end up actually being a whole new mod, larger and more complex than "Fertile Fields" is right now.

That's too bad. I did think it would be complicated.  Thanks for looking into it!

Another thought is maybe creating a simplified version of your mod, which just has research for rich/tilled soil(one type of enriched soil and that's it) that requires fertilizer like how your mod is now,requiring fertilizer(without digging up dirt requirement). But maybe works for 'any' soil type that allows plants to grow? It's kind of like Sam_'s tilled soil mod but with one step further with research and fertilizer? I donno how hard that would be to code, but hopefully there is a tag identifying which soil types allow for farming to make it easy? Just an idea.

I see now that I've started playing with it a bit that digging up tiles is the only way to get piles of dirt.  Is there ever going to be another method for providing piles of dirt?  What if I wanted to remove all lakes from my map?

Quote from: Juntahmol on March 09, 2017, 03:01:37 PMIs there ever going to be another method for providing piles of dirt?

I am open to suggestions. I don't want dirt to be an infinite resource, but at the same time, I recognize that the need to remove dirt from one location before it can be used at another does make terraforming difficult on maps that don't have a lot of soil to begin with.

I could look at figuring out how to make it more readily available from traders, but I'm not sure I want to, as the idea of traders just hauling around huge stores of dirt just seems a bit silly. A second colony could be used as a source of dirt for your primary base, but that might not always be practical.

So if you have ideas, let me know.  ;)

I am thinking of ways to create soil.

For once your process of creating fertilizer is a bit off .. but I guess you know that ..or maybe you care to comment on your knowledge about gardening.

A way I could think of would be to mix different stonetypes together .. first crushing them than mixing them and then enrich them with organic material.
This seems partly unlimited, but would be dependent on the availability of the stone types.

I've gotten quite a bit of dirt from bulk traders, enough that I'm planning on turning some areas that I previously harvested dirt from back into soil once I'm done with my current terraforming project. Seems pretty unlimited, since you can call traders from friendly factions, although they won't always have dirt.

I'm not sure if this is intended balance-wise, but the possibilities this mod opens up for killboxes are amazing. I have a checkerboard of marshy soil and deep water in my killbox, with deadfall traps on the marshy soil. The difficult terrain slows down invaders, and the deep water encourages them to walk on the traps while still allowing my pawns to safely reset them. I've had huge raids that haven't gotten more than a few tiles in, and only thrumbos get anywhere near the turrets. It's evil.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 09, 2017, 04:23:03 PMFor once your process of creating fertilizer is a bit off .. but I guess you know that ..or maybe you care to comment on your knowledge about gardening.

My knowledge of gardening is largely limited to "occasionally water the plants my wife puts into dirt in pots." That said, other than the fact that composting in real life takes a lot longer than three days, I thought I had the basic idea correct. But if there's something that you think should be tweaked, please let me know.

(I thought incorrectly until last week that plowing and tilling were essentially the same thing, which is why the soil I describe as having plow lines is named "tilled soil." So, yeah, my knowledge of gardening and farming is rather limited. What can I say? I'm a city guy.)

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 09, 2017, 04:23:03 PMA way I could think of would be to mix different stonetypes together ....

Adding an ability to "craft" stone chunks into dirt piles is an interesting idea. I'll definitely give it some thought.

Quote from: PetWolverine on March 09, 2017, 05:34:11 PMI've gotten quite a bit of dirt from bulk traders....

It's good to know that that's a real possibility. I was assuming it was, but....  Well, one of the problems with having gone down the modding rabbit hole is that I spend so much of my free time working on mods that I don't really have much left to actually *play* the damned game. :D

Quote from: PetWolverine on March 09, 2017, 05:34:11 PMI'm not sure if this is intended balance-wise, but the possibilities this mod opens up for killboxes are amazing.

It's not so much "intended" as it is an inevitable side effect. I could create a mod that did nothing but add decorative balloons, and I suspect that some gamer, somewhere, would figure out a way to use them to trash raiders.  ;)

Quote from: dburgdorf on March 10, 2017, 09:44:54 AM
Well, one of the problems with having gone down the modding rabbit hole is that I spend so much of my free time working on mods that I don't really have much left to actually *play* the damned game. :D

This comes up rather a lot and I speculate its a detrimental effect that comes from long game load times creating an upper tolerance limit on the number of iterations a programmer can do. It also encourages a split between developer and player that engenders expressing animosity between sides rather than enjoyment of playing the game.

A lot of hidden costs in the convenience features that create long load times.

I have my Kids over, so I have less time at the moment, but I could write up something that I learned from my gardening times with my father .. wo is a gardener.

Update:

- Allowed for compatibility with non-vanilla stone types (when breaking up stone to create rocky dirt) from the "Minerals and Materials" and "Kura's Extra Minerals" mods.

- Added a "Getting Started" text file to the mod's "About" folder, for the benefit of those wanting a "how to" guide to using "Fertile Fields" for the first time.

Okay ..

a hopefully short writeup about soil and its composition.
[ don't believe me .. wall of text incoming .. ]

===== What is dirt, please don't hurt me, for that pun ==============================================

Good Farmland is in its broadest definition a mixture of sand, clay and humus.
Humus is soil which has a lot of rotten plant matter, between the size of tiny pebbles down to molecules, in it.
The bags of soil you can buy for potted plants are basicly this .. humus mixed with a bit of dry peat and woodchips.
The thicker the topsoil is with humus ( 5-15 cm, 2-5 inches ) the better.
Potatoes, Asperagus, .. in general everys root vegetable prefers lighter ground
with a bigger part sand and less clay,because its easier to grow downwards.
Bigger plants with multi-yeared cycles prefer a more loamy ground because it can sustain more weight and holds more water.
Peat is basically water compressed humus, not yet brown coal.

so as a general direction the progress is like this :

Big
=> rock ( cm )
=> gravel ( pebbles and sand mm )
=> sand ( still visible with human eyes until 0.02 mm )
=> silt ( 0.02mm- 0.002 mm )
=> clay ( < 0.002 mm )
=> real tiny stuff .. molecules, antman, ..

This is composed of the different rock types but contains nearly no nutrients
usable by plants.
Thats why there is the need of humus, it is the source of most nutrients and the best binding agent for them.
Marshy Soil ( Peat ) has actually the largest amount of humus of any soil types.
But else, this is where you would tack on the fertility percentage of the game
and I think Tynan got it quite right.

======Come on, lets throw shit on our ungrown food ========================================

Corrosion by Wind and Water and Planting and Harvesting Crops deprives the soil of those nutrients
Following this the fertility value should actually become worse, the longer the player uses it as farmland.
About 5%-10% per growth cycle, depending on the growing time of the crop sounds right.
Because of this Crop Cycles were one of the great agriculctural breakthroughs of the early middle ages.
Different plants need different kinds of nutrients, and some even enrich the soil.
Clover is a good example. This may even be were the superstition of the four leaved clover comes from. Finding something like this on a resting field sounds like a divine blessing ..

The other possible step is giving back nutrients by hand. Thats fertilizer and used since about 3000 B.C.

There are a lot of possible distinctions for fertilizer, I will take the two easiest ones for the game.

Organic and Mineral fertilizer.

Organic is the older form, and is exactly what it sounds like.
Organic Matter thrown on the field. From letting the stalks of the old crop rot on the field, to throwing other rotten plants, compost, meat, wood chips and fecal matter on the field.
The technical term for a compost hive should be "accelerated natural humus generator" .. the chemical processes also produce heat .. nice to know for those sitting on an ice sheet.
Also Gas for Generators and the base for Chemfuel can be produced this way.

Mineral Fertilizer is also just what it sounds like. Minerals, Salts, and all the other chemical nutrients plants need, factory produced and mixed for the exact need of the crop.
Which is also a big cause of water pollution, because its like dropping bags of fast food from a plane on a starving village.
Sure the people get to eat, but a big part will rot, eaten by something else ( other weeds ) and leave big piles of trash.
They contain mostly this chemicals : Nitrate, Potassium, Phosphor, Magnesium, Calcium and Sulfur;
The earliest forms of this where ground chalk, limestone and ash.


=========Ingame or The actual Point of all this =====================

So in game terms, your mod has the basic translations right.
I even take back my earlier complaints about turning compost into fertilizer.
But for my sake call it raw compost, because in my mind compost is always the final product.

So producing soil from rock is basically grind it down to sand, take some out, grind it more, mix the sand back in.

The best uses for the stonetypes ingame :

Granite   -> gravel, to hard for everything else, artwork, outdoor construction, very robust
Limestone -> fertilizer and concrete, construction
Marble    -> maybe fertilizer, artwork, indoor construction, weak against acid.
Slate     -> Clay, roof construction
Sandstone -> Sand, Gravel, construction

So soil could be produced from mixing sandstone with slate in some kind of rock mill.This should use quite some plaststeel, since I hear the word diamond tipped quite often in conjunction with mining, drilling tunnels and drilling for oil.

Producing Fertilizer from Limestone is quite chemically involved .. so from blocks in a drug lab, And ash .. in the crematorium on a lower setting .. I think we just found another use for raiders.

But before you throw them on your crops ..  without and even with the involvement of animals, insects and bacteria rotting bodies release some toxins.
So Sacred Ground is nothing else than a big "DO NOT FARM HERE "-sign .. and since the ground is done for anyway .. lets make it tradition.
You could also call it overly fertilized.

Finally I can't shake the feeling that the recipe for compost should be more involved. Just four organics of anything is a bit too easy.
I think it should at least be half plant matter and half animal matter.
There are some ingredients which are also organic :  wood, leather, wool, cotton and devilstrand.

And If you find a way to stop rotten stuff from disappearing and turn into a compost ingredient by itself .. that would be awesome. Except for whole bodies .. because the graveyard argument .. bones or bonemeal on the other hand ..

yeah .. about keeping it short .. I think I will stop for now.


This ends todays talk about .. stuff I learned because my Dad made me plant potatoes in our way too big garden.

(FYI: I'm going from book-research, not practical experience yet, to expand upon some of what SpaceDorf is describing.)

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 11, 2017, 06:47:18 PM
Corrosion by Wind and Water and Planting and Harvesting Crops deprives the soil of those nutrients
Following this the fertility value should actually become worse, the longer the player uses it as farmland.
About 5%-10% per growth cycle, depending on the growing time of the crop sounds right.
Because of this Crop Cycles were one of the great agriculctural breakthroughs of the early middle ages.
Different plants need different kinds of nutrients, and some even enrich the soil.
Clover is a good example. This may even be were the superstition of the four leaved clover comes from. Finding something like this on a resting field sounds like a divine blessing ..

Crop rotation to maintain fertility would be a nice addition. You'd have to add some more plants, though; vanilla doesn't have nitrogen fixers (beans/peas/clover/other legumes). Crop rotation also reduces pests - when a single plant has been planted in the same spot year after year, the bugs/bacteria that like to eat it build up a nice big population, and then you get sicker and fewer crops. Crops come in families that are eaten by the same pests - so it wouldn't be worthwhile to follow corn with rice, for example. Here's more info on that: http://extension.psu.edu/plants/gardening/fact-sheets/general-gardening/plant-rotation

You're supposed to go on a four-year cycle - it looks like maybe a corn-or-rice/potato/daylily/dandelion rotation would work with vanilla plants for pest reduction, but legumes are pretty important for fertility. Clover's pretty good for animal grazing, and dry beans keep for years; both of those would have bonus worthwhileness beyond soil maintenance.

To get the fertility back into the soil, though, I think you need to dig the remains of the clover/beanstalks/etc. back into the soil. A new gardening chore?

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 11, 2017, 06:47:18 PM
I even take back my earlier complaints about turning compost into fertilizer.
But for my sake call it raw compost, because in my mind compost is always the final product.

Could be interesting to use the two different kinds of fertilizer - raw compost -> finished compost boosts fertility long-term; chemical fertilizers boost it even more in the short-term but have long-term repercussions.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 11, 2017, 06:47:18 PM
Slate     -> Clay, roof construction
Sandstone -> Sand, Gravel, construction

Clay could also be dug up from Mud tiles, sand from Sand tiles, peat from Marsh and Marshy Soil? (I would love to see that damn marsh become good for something.)

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 11, 2017, 06:47:18 PM
But before you throw them on your crops ..  without and even with the involvement of animals, insects and bacteria rotting bodies release some toxins.
So Sacred Ground is nothing else than a big "DO NOT FARM HERE "-sign .. and since the ground is done for anyway .. lets make it tradition.
You could also call it overly fertilized.

"Hot" compost, like poo and raw compost that hasn't degraded the whole way yet, definitely needs a Do Not Farm Here sign. I've seen notes about digging it in a foot or three away from your crops, between rows, working all right. But also a lot about just preparing a bed well ahead of time - digging in the hot compost/fertilizer, waiting a few months, and voila, super soil.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 11, 2017, 06:47:18 PM
Finally I can't shake the feeling that the recipe for compost should be more involved. Just four organics of anything is a bit too easy.
I think it should at least be half plant matter and half animal matter.
There are some ingredients which are also organic :  wood, leather, wool, cotton and devilstrand.

And If you find a way to stop rotten stuff from disappearing and turn into a compost ingredient by itself .. that would be awesome. Except for whole bodies .. because the graveyard argument .. bones or bonemeal on the other hand ..

I agree that the four-count ingredients is too little, though I would argue for calling for the amount of ingredients based on Nutrition instead of Count, instead of changing up the allowed ingredients.

Straight wood/sawdust needs to be mixed with something else to make compost - it's way too high in... um... something, and sucks nitrogen right out of the soil. Devilstrand canon claims it's sturdier clothing, so it must not degrade easily, so if that goes compostable it should take longer. I think RL leather has been treated to make it degrade less easily, and in-game skips that skin->leather step. Skin ought to compost well, but leather probably not so quickly.

You could probably make a butchering recipe for corpses-only that gives up raw compost + bonemeal or something. Maybe keep the human-butchering debuff if possible.

I also wish I could set a butchering recipe for "chop all this rotten stuff up into compost forever", but vanilla doesn't have a setting for excluding fresh items. I think some mod added one somewhere, but I haven't gone hunting for it since I realized I wanted it for this purpose.

Also, for more reference: http://ccetompkins.org/gardening/composting/compost-resources

Of course I supplemented with wiki Backup and some rereading of stuff. But I admit I left out some Details which I deemed to extreme for the scope of the game.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 11, 2017, 06:47:18 PM
Corrosion by Wind and Water and Planting and Harvesting Crops deprives the soil of those nutrients
Following this the fertility value should actually become worse, the longer the player uses it as farmland.
About 5%-10% per growth cycle, depending on the growing time of the crop sounds right.

A rule of thumb that I remember from long ago is to leave 1/7 of your crop land laying fallow to regenerate nutrients.

Um, OK, well....  I guess I *did* ask for input....

I'm going to try to boil the info down to a short list of actual potential mod updates. Let me know if I'm missing anything important or if I'm just missing the point of something you said.

-- COMPOST AND FERTILIZER:

I should change the name, so that instead of making compost which then becomes fertilizer, you make RAW compost which then becomes fertilizer. That's an easy one.

(And on that note, I should probably rename "tilled soil" to "plowed soil," as well, since that's what it's actually supposed to represent.)

The raw compost recipe, instead of four organics, should require maybe two plant matter and two animal matter, with perhaps a wood/leather/wool/cotton requirement added, as well. Alternately, I could have it require a set nutrition amount rather than a set count of ingredients.

Possibly allow fertilizer to be made from limestone chunks in a drug lab?  (Technically, I suppose this would be a different type of fertilizer than the fertilizer made from raw compost, but for game purposes, I don't see a real advantage to making them different things. Also, I'm not fully sold on the idea, anyway, since it depends on having a particular stone type on the map.)

And allow cremated bodies to produce ash which would be... fertilizer? Or a raw compost or fertilizer component?

As to having rotten stuff turn into compost components instead of disappearing, I have no idea how I'd go about doing it, but I can certainly take a look at the relevant code when I have a chance.

If I added a butchering recipe to turn corpses directly into raw compost and bonemeal, what would the bonemeal be used for?

And maybe I should figure out a way to add a recipe specifically to allow a "turn rotten stuff into raw compost indefinitely" bill....

-- SOIL DEGRADATION AND CROP ROTATION:

I understand the importance of crop rotation in the real world, but I have no idea how I'd go about implementing it in game, as there's no base mechanic for "requiring" that a certain type of crop be grown in a particular field. And honestly, I don't see where the game would benefit from it, anyway, and it goes rather far beyond what I consider the mod's scope.

Allowing for soil to degrade after crops are harvested, though, could be an interesting addition. I don't think I'd want it to be an automatic thing, but perhaps I could add a percentage chance that any particular tile could drop in fertility after plants are harvested from it.

-- MAKING DIRT FROM STONE:

I should add some sort of "rock mill," which I assume would be a work table, probably made using plasteel and components, which would allow stone chunks to be broken down into dirt. I recognize that stone types are not all the same, but from a gameplay perspective, I'm not sure that I'd want to limit what sort of stone can be used, since no map is going to have every type.

Digging up peat from marshes is an interesting idea, and peat could be utilized in the soil-making process. But, again, it would depend on having access to a tile type which won't be on every map, and I would prefer to avoid such dependencies.

For soil degradation, maybe it would make sense for plowed soil to revert to rich soil after harvest? Besides realism, it speaks to balance, since you'd have to keep paying in labor for the OP productivity of plowed soil. But I think growers should do this job rather than builders, if possible. Of course, animals eating the raw plants would count as a harvest. Maybe large animals should trample plowed soil just by walking on it, too.

Then if there's also a chance for rich soil to degrade to normal soil, this would ideally be applied after the reversion of plowed to rich, otherwise if you keep plowing you never have to refertilize.

Yeah fertilizers only matter when there is soil degredation.
So you need to rebuild the better soil.

Bonemeal would also be a compost component, or chemical component for Calcium extraction. The thing with bones is, that they need a long time to rot otherwise.

The other stuff requirement is more an addition to the possibel options you have for compost.
While Tammabanana had it right, that cured leather and woven cloth is not that good as compost component.

The thing with marshy soil is that it may just give more dirt because of the quality of the soil itself. And I don't know what it leaves now, but it should leave shallow or deep water behind.

Update (including some, but not nearly all of the items recently discussed here):

- Compost has been renamed raw compost, and now requires both animal and vegetable matter for its creation. Required quantities are higher than before, equivalent to the amount used to make one and a half meals, and are now based on nutrition value rather than simple item count.

- Rottable organic material now eventually becomes "rotted meat" or "rotted mush" instead of just disappearing. Rotted material can be used in the creation of raw compost.

- Added a secondary raw compost recipe which uses only rotted material, for those who want to be able to set up a "forever" compost creation bill at the butcher's table that won't use up their supplies of actual food.

- Compost barrels can no longer be built until electricity has been researched, since they require power.

- Tilled soil has been renamed plowed soil. (The name of the tillage research hasn't been changed, though, as "tillage" is a general term which can refer to many sorts of soil agitation.)

- Both topsoil and fertilized topsoil, when removed with the "remove floor" command, now leave behind dirt, so you no longer lose the dirt originally used to lay the topsoil just because you choose to fertilize it. But neither leaves behind fertilizer that could be reused.

Just in time for my new Playthrough. :)

Thank you very much.

Quote from: dburgdorf on January 12, 2017, 05:24:55 PM
Without researching anything, "Fertile Fields" allows you to dig up piles of dirt from soil, and also to create raw compost and turn it into fertilizer.
...
Pile of Dirt: Dirt is used in a variety of terrain improvements. Dirt piles can be dug up from fertile soil, leaving less fertile terrain behind.

Is Pile of Dirt a finite resource limited by the amount of fertile soil on the starting map, or an infinite resource that can be dug up in trade for work?

It looks like it takes dirt to make rich soil to make fertile soil to then get dirt. Is that a zero-sum, or does all that research and processing produce more dirt?

Pile of Dirt is a semi-restricted resource.
But even on a desert map, I found enough to get a decent farm zone up.

The research allows you to dig up dirt from different sources
( swamp, water .. )
And turn more ground tiles into fertile soil.

On a tile base it is a near zero sum game. ( turning stone and sand will cost you more, than you get back )

@dburgdorf - I noticed a "bug" the turning soil into sand gives no dirt back ..
I don't know if this intended.

Quote from: AngleWyrm on March 20, 2017, 04:26:09 AMIs Pile of Dirt a finite resource...?

As SpaceDorf already noted, dirt is a "semi-finite" resource. You can get it by digging up a variety of different terrain types, but as a general rule, you only get as much as it would take to put back the tile type you dug up. So within the confines of a single map, dirt movement is (approximately) a zero-sum game. But you can also buy dirt from traders, and of course there are ways to access secondary maps from which you could dig up additional dirt, so with a little work, it's not really a finite resource.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 20, 2017, 08:59:21 AMI noticed a "bug" the turning soil into sand gives no dirt back .. I don't know if this intended.

As I recall - I'm at work right now ;) - converting sand to soil requires fertilizer (and, conceptually, water) but not dirt, which is why you don't get dirt back when you convert the other way. So it's not a "bug," though it may not be the most logical conversion. Making dirt part of the transition in both directions wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

(But I have an image in my head now of some poor pawn out in the wild with a hand sifter, diligently working to remove all the larger "dirt" chunks from several square feet of land, in order to leave behind just sand.)  :D

Could be .. it was in the previous version of the Mod, so maybe you changed the recipe ..

Quote from: SpaceDorf on March 20, 2017, 10:46:28 AMCould be .. it was in the previous version of the Mod, so maybe you changed the recipe ..

I just went back and checked the "intro guide" I posted a few pages back on this thread, and sure enough, converting sand to gravel - which is the only thing you can do with sand - does actually cost dirt, so converting soil to sand probably should give some dirt back.

(What, you expect me to actually *remember* everything I've done in this mod? I need cheat sheets, too!)  :D

Actually, since sand -> gravel requires a pile of dirt, and gravel -> soil requires a pile of dirt, if I want to stick with the zero-sum concept, soil -> sand should probably give you TWO piles of dirt.

Is the latest update safe for existing saves that have the old version? I didn't think to check for mod updates before starting a new colony yesterday, and already tilled some soil. (Or did I plow it?)

Quote from: PetWolverine on March 20, 2017, 06:48:51 PMIs the latest update safe for existing saves that have the old version?

You shouldn't have any problems. With the notorious exception of the Jan 29 update, I try to make sure I don't break saves with new versions. ;)

Started using this a couple weeks. Just wanted to say thank you. i feel like I am actually working to get better fields now instead of just having them handed to me with my old mod.

@dburgdorf

Any chance you're going to put your mods on github? I'd like to suggest some compatibility changes and don't want to detour a lot of your code for that, instead I'd rather send a PR which would make the compatibility easier.

Thanks!

What am I supposed to do with wet soil? I figured out the rest of the mod and it's great, but I'm not sure how you are supposed to process wet soil.

Quote from: t3ff13 on April 12, 2017, 03:02:10 PMWhat am I supposed to do with wet soil?

I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're referring to, as there's no "wet soil" in the mod.

That's my point. Some areas you can't transition to fertile fields.

Quote from: t3ff13 on April 12, 2017, 08:32:32 PMThat's my point. Some areas you can't transition to fertile fields.

Some terrain conversions require multiple steps; some of those steps require research. But there isn't any type of terrain (well, except for ice, which the mod doesn't do anything with) that can't be converted to something else. If you can be more specific with your question, I could be more specific with my answer.

All the essential info about using the mod is in the "how to get started" document in the mod's "About" folder, by the way, if you haven't already read through it.

Quote from: t3ff13 on April 12, 2017, 03:02:10 PM
What am I supposed to do with wet soil? I figured out the rest of the mod and it's great, but I'm not sure how you are supposed to process wet soil.

You could also research the Moisture Pump. Vanilla Rimworld offers it's own way to terraform .. in just a few seasons you go from wet soil to good soil :)

Yeah, this is what I did prior to installing this mod, but moisture pumps are so achingly slow. I liked that with the mod I could get rid of shallow water, just wished it also had a soil pathway for wet soil.

Quote from: t3ff13 on April 14, 2017, 03:24:39 PMI liked that with the mod I could get rid of shallow water, just wished it also had a soil pathway for wet soil.

As I said before, there isn't any type of vanilla terrain (except for ice) that can't be modified, so whatever it is that you're referring to as "wet soil" *can* be altered, unless it's a non-vanilla terrain added by another mod.

If by "wet soil" you actually mean marshy soil, then you can either dig dirt from it and leave behind rocky dirt, or add dirt and fertilizer to it, producing soil. Neither of those actions require any special research.

If by "wet soil" you actually mean mud, then you can convert it either into marsh or into marshy soil, once you've researched "Terraforming."

If by "wet soil" you actually mean marsh, then you can convert it either into marshy soil or into shallow water, again after researching "Terraforming."

On my screen it is literally "Wet Soil," I am not certain how it came about. It may have been due to me deconstructing my moisture pumps. I know the mod can transform Marsh, Marshy Soil, etc.

Quote from: t3ff13 on April 14, 2017, 06:17:35 PMOn my screen it is literally "Wet Soil," I am not certain how it came about. It may have been due to me deconstructing my moisture pumps.

I can't find any reference to "wet soil" in the game's code, XML files, or language files, so I haven't a clue where that would even be coming from. But, yeah, if you're talking about something literally called "wet soil," and not just using the term generically as I originally assumed you were, then the mod's not going to let you modify it.

@dburgdorf

I found an interesting issue with turning stone floors into soil.

I can't place rocky dirt on tiles I mined out, because it is called rough-hewn stonetype and not rough stonetype.
I know I could smooth the rock first, all I want to know is this intended behavior or
an oversight ?

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 15, 2017, 09:03:14 AMI can't place rocky dirt on tiles I mined out, because it is called rough-hewn stonetype and not rough stonetype.

No, that's not intentional. Someone on Steam spotted the same issue earlier this week. I'll try and get it fixed over the weekend.

Thanks 😊

Hello there!
I like the idea of this mod very much, seems to be more in depth than vegetable garden, but because i am already using the later i don't dare to install your mod, simply to avoid any trouble (i am worried about the description in the OP on the matter xD).

I was always thinking on the possibility of having to keep fertilizing your fields for them to keep having the growth rate boost. If they could have to have some sort of maintenance to keep their properties, similar to reality. Some sort of soil degradation the more crops you harvest from them that needs to be restored by pouring fertilizer on them.
How hard would it be to do that?

Quote from: faltonico on April 15, 2017, 05:56:57 PMI like the idea of this mod very much, seems to be more in depth than vegetable garden, but because i am already using the later i don't dare to install your mod, simply to avoid any trouble (i am worried about the description in the OP on the matter xD).

Yeah, it's both good and bad when two mods have so much conceptual overlap. Options are always good, but if you want both the terraforming that "Fertile Fields" offers *and* the food options that "Vegetable Garden" offers, well, you're kind of stuck. Yes, they'll technically work together, but as they do similar things in rather different ways, they don't mesh as well as a user might like. ;)

Quote from: faltonico on April 15, 2017, 05:56:57 PMSome sort of soil degradation the more crops you harvest from them that needs to be restored by pouring fertilizer on them.

This is something that's been discussed already, and is on my "to do" list. I just have to get around to figuring out how I want to implement it.  ;)

UPDATE:

- Rough-hewn stone can now be converted to rocky soil without needing to be smoothed first.

- Stone chunks can now be broken up at a stonecutter's table into crushed rocks, which can be used to create piles of dirt or to recreate rough stone floor from rocky dirt.

- Yes, rocky dirt can now be converted back into rough stone flooring. (Don't ask how. Maybe you're gluing all the stones back together?)

- Converting soil to sand now yields two piles of dirt.

- Soil has been recolored slightly to better differentiate it from gravel and also to make the difference between regular and rich soil not quite so glaring.

- The recipe to make compost solely from rotted matter no longer cares what sort of rotted material you're using. (The regular compost recipe still requires both meat and vegetable matter.)

- I've added recipes allowing you to make five compost at the same time, to speed up bulk compost creation.

- Fresh and salt water are now defined separately. This is a completely invisible change if you're using "Fertile Fields" by itself, but will allow other mods that care about water types to know whether a water tile should be treated as ocean (salt) or lake (fresh) water.

May I ask what was the solution with the rough-hewn floor ?

Out of interest I looked through your xml and vanilla after I found the issue but
found nothing.

Also Thank you for forseeing some of the other requests I allready thought of  ;D

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 17, 2017, 07:57:08 AMMay I ask what was the solution with the rough-hewn floor ?

I just had to fix an oversight in the coding. In the previous version, the code allowed placement of rocky dirt only if the existing terrain's defName was "xxx_Smooth" or "xxx_Rough," where "xxx" was the name of a stone type. It was unnecessarily clumsy, since it ran through the entire list of stone types, and it also disallowed "xxx_RoughHewn," which I hadn't noticed was a separate terrain. In the update, the code simply checks to see if the terrain's defName includes "_Smooth" or "_Rough," and if it does, allows creation of rocky dirt.

So its also a performance Boost :) Awesome. And of course I could not find some errors in your code.

============EDIT ===================

And I just remembered the visual suggestion for your Terraform menu I had recently.

With the Shovel you allready show that terrain gets changed into something less fertile.
If you could show the terrain which gets changed into which by changing the look of the Button, it would be easier to know which one to apply.

==================EDIT II =========================

I created a mockup and attached it to the post.
I changed rock and rocky dirt to what I think would be helpful.

Sadly that is all my paint skills allowed me to create :)

[attachment deleted by admin due to age]

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 17, 2017, 09:29:10 AMWith the Shovel you allready show that terrain gets changed into something less fertile.

Well, technically, the shovel's supposed to show which options give you dirt, but it amounts to the same thing. ;)

The only problem I can think of with your suggestion is that it doesn't easily allow for the cases where a particular terrain can be made from several different terrain types. For example, one of the "soil" icons is attached to an upgrade which can be used to turn either marshy soil or gravel into standard soil. The "before and after" imagery would be difficult to implement when there are multiple "before" options. :D

Then I have another wish.

Why can't I terraform when other buildings or blueprints allready exist ?
Normal Floor can do that ..

And because you asked for it :

The transformation List with more than one possible base:


Rocky Dirt <- ( Rough or Smooth ) Stone

Rocky Dirt <- Gravel or Marshy Soil

Rocky Dirt <- Fertile Soil ( allready means Soil, Lichen Covered and Rich Soil )
Gravel, Sand .. are the same.

The only difficult one I see is Marsh <- from Fertile Soil, Mud or Shallow Water

I'm reviewing the terrain transformations currently possible.

==========

List #1: If you have the terrain on the left, you can turn it into any of the terrains on the right:

Deep Water -> Impassable Water, Shallow Water

Fertilized Topsoil -> Smooth Stone (via "remove floor")

Gravel -> Rocky Dirt, Soil

Impassable Water -> Deep Water

Lichen-Covered Dirt -> Gravel, Marsh, Rich Soil, Rocky Dirt, Sand

Marsh -> Marshy Soil, Shallow Water

Marshy Soil -> Rocky Dirt, Soil

Mud -> Marsh, Marshy Soil

Plowed Soil -> Rich Soil (via "remove floor")

Rich Soil -> Gravel, Marsh, Plowed Soil, Rocky Dirt, Sand

Rocky Dirt -> Gravel, Rough Stone

Rough Stone -> Rocky Dirt, Smooth Stone (via "smooth floor")

Sand -> Gravel

Shallow Water -> Deep Water, Marsh

Smooth Stone -> Rocky Dirt, Topsoil

Soil -> Gravel, Marsh, Rich Soil, Rocky Dirt, Sand

Topsoil -> Fertilized Topsoil, Smooth Stone (via "remove floor")

==========

List #2: If you want the terrain on the left, you can create it from any of the terrains on the right:

Deep Water <- Impassable Water, Shallow Water

Fertilized Topsoil <- Topsoil

Gravel <- Lichen-Covered Dirt, Rich Soil, Rocky Dirt, Sand, Soil

Impassable Water <- Deep Water

Marsh <- Lichen-Covered Dirt, Mud, Rich Soil, Shallow Water, Soil

Marshy Soil <- Marsh, Mud

Plowed Soil <- Rich Soil

Rich Soil <- Lichen-Covered Dirt, Plowed Soil (via "remove floor") Soil

Rocky Dirt <- Gravel, Lichen-Covered Dirt, Marshy Soil, Rich Soil, Rough Stone, Smooth Stone, Soil

Rough Stone <- Rocky Dirt

Sand <- Lichen-Covered Dirt, Rich Soil, Soil

Shallow Water<- Deep Water, Marsh

Smooth Stone <- Fertilized Topsoil (via "remove floor"), Topsoil (via "remove floor"), Rough Stone (via "smooth floor")

Soil <- Gravel, Marshy Soil

Topsoil <- Smooth Stone

==========

A few things have sort of called themselves to my attention.

First, it's impossible to create either lichen-covered dirt or mud. I don't really think either of those are big deals, though. Lichen-covered dirt is functionally identical to regular soil, and mud.... Well, I can't really see any advantage to being able to create mud tiles.

Many of the transformations aren't directly reciprocal, and that's by design. But a few that aren't, probably should be. Marsh can be converted to marshy soil, but marshy soil can't be made into marsh. Similarly, sand can be made into gravel, but gravel can't be converted to sand. Those are both options I probably ought to add.

On another note, I recently noticed that since I'd only really thought of sand in the context of deserts, I never added a way to convert sand directly to shallow water, or vice versa, which would be really handy if you want to modify beaches. So I may add those conversions, though I might limit the sand to water conversion so that it's only possible if the sand tile is already adjacent to water tiles.

Any thoughts regarding these or other terraforming options that you'd like to see added?

Water to wine and flying Pigs or Monkeys come to mind :)

But that is not Terraforming per se .. I am pondering the list and think I will build a tree from it ..

And I just wondered .. how do you decide which rough rock is placed on rocky dirt ?

====== EDIT ======

Yeah .. the Tree grew into some kind of weird mutant monster bush ..
But I found no transformation that made sense anymore.

I was thinking that removing Topsoil should leave behind Rough Stone instead of Smooth Stone again but I am not really convinced of that thought.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 19, 2017, 02:19:02 PMAnd I just wondered .. how do you decide which rough rock is placed on rocky dirt ?

I've been wondering if/when someone would get around to asking that.  :D

I was hoping to be able to just reference the tile's base stone type from the original map grid, but unfortunately, it seems that that info's not stored after map generation is complete. (And to be fair, within the context of the vanilla game, there's no reason why it *should* be stored.)

What I ended up doing is pretty simple. When you convert a rocky dirt tile to rough stone, the code checks to see if there's already stone nearby (within a 3-tile radius). If there's stone of only one type in close proximity, that stone type is used. If multiple stone types are equally close, one of those types is chosen randomly. If *no* stone tiles are close, a stone type is randomly selected from the full list of stone types used on the map.

So the end result is that while what you end up with won't necessarily match the originally-generated map grid, it'll still be something reasonable.

Sounds good to me :)
And more work than I would have expected.

So if I don't get the stone I want .. rinse and repeat :)

And more Reasonable than having different types of crushed rock.
and the map grid is changed anyway beyond recognition by what your mod does

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 19, 2017, 03:28:36 PMSo if I don't get the stone I want .. rinse and repeat :)

Yeah, technically, the system could be exploited to generate chunks of "rare" stone types. But I can't really see how it'd be worth the effort.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 19, 2017, 03:28:36 PMAnd more Reasonable than having different types of crushed rock.

Crushed rocks were actually tossed into the update toward the very end. I'd realized that I'd inadvertently set up an "infinite supply" of stone chunks, since turning rough stone to rocky dirt could yield chunks, but turning rocky dirt into rough stone as I originally coded it, had no cost. But stone chunks can't be used as building components, and in any event, I didn't want to deal with the nightmare that would have resulted had I tried to figure out a way to require the "right" type of stone chunk to convert a tile to rough stone. But then I remembered that I had talked about adding a way to convert stone chunks to dirt, anyway, and using an intermediate step in that process as a "roundabout" way of requiring stone chunks to make rough stone just seemed like an easy solution.

UPDATE:

- The mod now uses the Harmony library instead of detouring core methods. Partly. I haven't yet figured out how to handle rotting items without an actual code detour. And map generation methods are still replaced, though technically it's not via detours, since XML files were just changed to point to different methods.

I noticed that there is no way in your mod to create the "marsh" soil type.
Which blocks the creation of more water tiles.

Is this on purpose to nerf the impassable water ?

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 25, 2017, 05:07:00 PMI noticed that there is no way in your mod to create the "marsh" soil type.

Marsh tiles can be created on lichen-covered dirt, mud, rich soil, shallow water, or soil tiles.

Are you sure you don't have anything in your mod list after "Fertile Fields" that's rewriting the marsh definition?

My fault .. I take everything back I have said ..

you are right, I looked at the mock-up picture I created .. marsh is right next to marshy soil ..

It seems the terraforming of the "bridges"- mod I only installed recently is not playing nice with yours.

Haven't Researched all of those options yet so maybe it will come back

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 25, 2017, 06:52:19 PMIt seems the terraforming of the "bridges"- mod I only installed recently is not playing nice with yours.

If you're referring to "[sd] Bridges," then I'd suggest you also install "FishIndustry" as well as my patch mod that's specifically designed to allow the two of them to work together nicely with "Fertile Fields."  :D

Thats the one .. I forgot about your patch.
I installed it right away. I also had the bridges and prepare for fishing patch in the wrong order ..

To make it easier for n00bs like me, why don't you add the link to the patch to your Main Post of Fertile Fields .. the compability section is allready there  :P

Now I have all your mods installed, except fewer ruins .. because why would I remove signs of live from the map .. and free ressources  ::)

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 26, 2017, 07:03:27 AMThats the one .. I forgot about your patch. I installed it right away. I also had the bridges and prepare for fishing patch in the wrong order ..

If you're using my patch for the three mods, then you don't need "Prepare for Fishing."  ;)

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 26, 2017, 07:03:27 AMTo make it easier for n00bs like me, why don't you add the link to the patch to your Main Post of Fertile Fields .. the compability section is allready there  :P

If you're a n00b, I'm... um... something I'm definitely not.  :)

Fair point, though.

Quote from: SpaceDorf on April 26, 2017, 07:03:27 AMNow I have all your mods installed, except fewer ruins .. because why would I remove signs of live from the map .. and free ressources  ::)

I just find it odd that a rimworld that's supposed to be barely populated has abandoned buildings literally *everywhere*.  :P

Yeah .. thats why n00b is an insult and newbie is not :)

And I prefer the backstory part of Rimworld where there once was a civilisation that may or may not have tried out nuclear warfare. So lots of weird and ruins around.

I'm toying with an idea for changing the menu structure, but... I'm not sure if it's a good idea or a bad one. So I'd like feedback.

The current terrain-based menu structure is intuitive, in that it's easy to see, "if you want terrain X, hit the appropriate button." But there are a lot of buttons, including in most cases multiple buttons for each terrain type depending upon what terrain you're starting with, so the menu just seems crowded and overwhelming.

(Adopting SpaceDorf's "before & after" menu icons idea, which I will definitely do if I keep the current menu structure, will help some, but the menu still remains, in my view, too large and not entirely aesthetically pleasing.)

I'm contemplating switching to an action-based menu. This would be a menu with buttons to "add dirt," "remove dirt," "add fertilizer," and the like. On the plus side, it'd be a much less overwhelming set of buttons, making the menu smaller and neater. On the minus side, while it presumably wouldn't be hard to figure out what would happen in most cases (adding fertilizer to soil would produce rich soil, adding dirt to gravel would produce soil, etc.), it wouldn't be as obviously intuitive as the current system.

So.... Thoughts? Is it an idea worth pursuing, or would it be an unwelcome change that I'd be better off forgetting about?

Small bug I noticed. I was having power issues so I turned off my 2 powered compost barrels. However they continued to work. even with the electric bolt icon on them that shows they are off. I have left them off for over a year. I have gotten SEVERAL batches of fertilizer.

That said... something I love about your mod. My game has about 2 years on it. I have had 2 compost barrels the entire time (I could make more for speed but choose not too). I bought 700ish raw compost from a trader.

In those 2 years I have made 4 sunlamps worth of cave green houses in a very cold environment where outside growing isn't an option. 3 1/2 those are also fertilized. I have about half my last sunlamp to go. Starting to mine out a 5th now. This mod vs "Fertile Fields" in the past I just "did" it. Not thought, no prep no nothing. These 4 fields have been work. I feel like I accomplished something. Staying just ahead of my population's needs.

Quote from: GlitchKs on May 01, 2017, 01:56:37 PMSmall bug I noticed. I was having power issues so I turned off my 2 powered compost barrels. However they continued to work.

Yeah, that's already been noticed by others, and is on my "to do" list to track down.

Quote from: GlitchKs on May 01, 2017, 01:56:37 PMThese 4 fields have been work. I feel like I accomplished something.

I appreciate the positive feedback. ;)

Quote from: dburgdorf on May 02, 2017, 09:25:54 PM
I appreciate the positive feedback. ;)

I also really enjoy the ability of your terraforming processes. However, I didn't enjoy all the conflicts with Vegetable Garden, and mucking about with multiple "soils". So I made a combined mod for A16. Not sure if I should keep it to steam or also upload it here on Ludeon though. Let me know what you think.

Release: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=920629802

~Zhivago

Quote from: Dr_Zhivago on May 06, 2017, 07:03:45 PMSo I made a combined mod for A16.

And just in time for everything to be switching over to A17.  :D

Joking aside, though, I have no objection to you uploading the mod here. Given how insanely popular Vegetable Garden is, I'm sure you'll find at least a few people interested in it. ;)

Just so you're aware, the mod "Fertile Fields" is incompatible with the mod "Where's the gravel?". I believe this mod is only on Steam. The mod changes the texture of gravel to be a different color.

If your mod is loaded above "Where's the gravel?" the option to terraform sand->gravel does not appear.

If your mod is loaded below "Where's the gravel?" the option to terraform is available, but the texture is unchanged.

Just thought I'd give you a heads-up incase anyone else has the issue. I resolved the issue by changing the texture your mod uses, for my own personal copy.

Quote from: Dr_Zhivago on May 08, 2017, 12:05:07 PMJust so you're aware, the mod "Fertile Fields" is incompatible with the mod "Where's the gravel?".

That shouldn't be an issue, since "Fertile Fields" already changes the gravel texture to make it a bit more distinct....

But it won't matter for long, anyway. The in-progress rewrite of "Fertile Fields" for a17 should be much more compatible with other mods that make graphical or other minor changes to terrain tiles.

Quote from: dburgdorf on May 08, 2017, 12:15:49 PM
That shouldn't be an issue, since "Fertile Fields" already changes the gravel texture to make it a bit more distinct....

Awesome! Keep up the wonderful work! Really enjoy using your mods, and they're coded in an easy-to-read manner as well.

Quote from: Dr_Zhivago on May 06, 2017, 07:03:45 PM

Quote from: dburgdorf on May 02, 2017, 09:25:54 PM
I appreciate the positive feedback. ;)

I also really enjoy the ability of your terraforming processes. However, I didn't enjoy all the conflicts with Vegetable Garden, and mucking about with multiple "soils". So I made a combined mod for A16. Not sure if I should keep it to steam or also upload it here on Ludeon though. Let me know what you think.

Release: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=920629802

~Zhivago

Could you post it here if you already got permission from the creator of vegetable garden aswell? My steam has been being fuzzy with me recently, gonna have to get new internet, but ye know, Dont wanna wait for that before my next rimworld game, and this sounds like a amazing idea :P.

Quote from: rudew on May 20, 2017, 03:18:33 AM
Could you post it here if you already got permission from the creator of vegetable garden aswell?

Dismar (VG creator) never responded to me... I guess I'll just put it up on the releases thread and if it upsets him I can just take it down. I'll set it up now.

Quote from: dburgdorf on April 26, 2017, 02:32:48 PM
So.... Thoughts? Is it an idea worth pursuing, or would it be an unwelcome change that I'd be better off forgetting about?

I think thats a great idea!

I actually came here to post that I'm wondering if there's a way to stop caravans from carrying crushed rocks and dirt. Its not a gameplay issue its just a little immersion breaking.

Liking the mod so far!

I believe it needs a check to see if the meats it replaces actually have a Map, because it keeps tossing errors about RottenMush created with no map.

Another thing, is there a reason why RottedMeat and RottenMush lack compRottable? I added the following to RottedMeat and RottedMush and it works beautifuly. It can get filtered by Allow Rotten and looks alright! Consider adding it please.

      <comps>
        <li Class="CompProperties_Rottable">
          <daysToRotStart>0</daysToRotStart>
          <rotDestroys>false</rotDestroys>
        </li>
      </comps>

The recipes that have (rotted) seem to clutter the recipe list unnecessarily... using the recipe filters is enough to get the same result with only one more click.

Quote from: notfood on June 02, 2017, 03:02:36 AMI believe it needs a check to see if the meats it replaces actually have a Map, because it keeps tossing errors about RottenMush created with no map.

Easy enough to look into. Thanks!

Quote from: notfood on June 02, 2017, 03:02:36 AMAnother thing, is there a reason why RottedMeat and RottenMush lack compRottable? I added the following to RottedMeat and RottedMush and it works beautifuly. It can get filtered by Allow Rotten and looks alright! Consider adding it please.

I'd just never really thought about it beyond, "It's already rotted, so why would I need to set it to be rottable?" The filtering option never occurred to me. ;)

I've been playing with this for a couple of days now, and I really love the terraforming! It actually feels pretty well balanced and not too "cheaty". It takes some labor to get the dirt and move it around to do what you want. Thank you!

I have a question though about fertilizer, and maybe it's been addressed earlier in the thread but I'll admit I didn't read all the way through it. I'm trying to make compost. I don't want to use fresh meat as every drop of that I get goes towards feeding my colonists. Where does rotten meat come from? Do I literally kill an animal, butcher it, and then let the fresh meat go bad by not freezing it? Does that become rotted meat? I had a couple of dead animals on my map, but there wasn't a way to specify to haul the rotted corpses to a different stockpile than the fresh corpses (like the stuff I'm hunting for food). I did manage to get a couple of animals I killed in the stockpile and they went bad, but I wasn't able to specify a butcher table to make rotten meat out of it.

At this point I'm thinking about hunting some of the smaller animals that I don't normally eat (rabbits, squirrels, rats, etc) and butchering them and using their fresh meat for the recipe. Is this how you intended it to work? Or is there another way to get rotten meat and/or compost that I'm not getting?

Thank you, and I hope the above makes sense. Thank you!

Quote from: MisterVertigo on June 11, 2017, 07:45:57 PM
Where does rotten meat come from? Do I literally kill an animal, butcher it, and then let the fresh meat go bad by not freezing it? Does that become rotted meat?

Yes.

Quote from: MisterVertigo on June 11, 2017, 07:45:57 PMAt this point I'm thinking about hunting some of the smaller animals that I don't normally eat (rabbits, squirrels, rats, etc) and butchering them and using their fresh meat for the recipe. Is this how you intended it to work?

That works as well.

Any sort of meat (and any sort of vegetable matter) can be used to create compost. And any meat or vegetable matter that sits out long enough will become rotten meat or rotten mush, at the point at which in vanilla RimWorld it would simply disappear. And any sort of rotten material can also be used to create compost.

You could always use raider-meat.

Accept the debuff for butchering once and you get tons of rotten meat.

Quote from: dburgdorf on June 12, 2017, 01:26:43 AM
Any sort of meat (and any sort of vegetable matter) can be used to create compost. And any meat or vegetable matter that sits out long enough will become rotten meat or rotten mush, at the point at which in vanilla RimWorld it would simply disappear. And any sort of rotten material can also be used to create compost.

This is what got me; I didn't realize that once it went bad this mod would keep it around, and that is what was used. I kept playing last night and I got a heat wave that caused some of the meals and stuff in my food freezer to go bad and that is when I figured it out.

Along the same lines as SpaceDorf, I also discovered the new bill on the Crematorium that allowed compost be made by burning up bodies. That was a GREAT boost to my fertilizer supply.

Thank you both!

Is this the mod where the fertilizer machine comes from? If so, how does it actually work? there's something with the hopper not wanting to connect to the machine itself and a lot of seemingly very complicated actions you can toggle in the bottom.. If it isn't your creation, might you know who made the mod?

Please note that this thread (as indicated in its subject line) is for the obsolete a16 version of my mod. The current version has its own thread.

But to address your question, no, the "fertilizer machine" doesn't come from "Fertile Fields." It is added to the game by "Vegetable Garden."