Concerning Eldritch Flora (part 1) – Dev Blog 3
Greetings and welcome to the third of the weekly blog posts about the development of Fringe Planet. This week the focus has been of the fauna that the peons will discover while exploring the frozen landscape they find themselves trapped in. This actually touched on several of the different subsystems the game uses and is a part of a larger bit of work that will enable peons to cook meals from raw components as well as create clothes.
The first step was a modification to the cherry bushes. Cherry bushes haven’t technically been food from the behind the scenes point of view. A cherry bush previously was a point on the map that a peon could visit, stand next too and have their food desires met. This has been radically changed now – cherry bushes will grow cherries during the day, and these can be harvested all at once, or a peon can snack on a single one if there is no food in the inventory. Additionally, cherry bushes can be chopped down, which will drop a seed allowing the replanting of the bush in a more convenient location. A single cherry is not much of a snack, so some sensible planning of bushes and harvesting when they reach the maximum number of cherries is required.
A new addition to the game, Plyme Trees grow large fruit during the day, but at a much slower rate than cherry bushes. A single fruit is a bland but filling meal for a peon. A peon won’t be majorly happy eating Plyme fruit (unlike tasty cherries), but it will fill a peon up for a few hours. Again, this plant can be chopped down and will drop a seed, so it can be re positioned.
Blue mushrooms are an interesting alternative to fruit – a blue mushroom will only grow underground or in the shade (if there are voxels above it). When harvesting a blue mushroom the mushroom itself is destroyed and multiple “Blue Mushroom Flesh” objects are created – along with a spore which will allow the mushroom to be replanted. This flesh is still a work in progress, but can’t be eaten until it is cooked. It’s both filling and tasty so a peon is happy eating it and it generates a positive thought.
These three ingredients which are now in game are the start of a cooking sprint – allowing meals to be cooked and stored. A cooked meal will be a much more attractive option to a peon than the raw ingredients, so it will be important to get a cooking/farming workflow established relatively quickly.
The fiber plant isn’t an edible plant, however it does fulfill a specific role: it very rapidly grows fibers that can be harvested and (eventually) be used to create a basic tier of clothes. Interestingly from the system point of a view a fiber plant will generate up to 25 fibers – and once it hits this limit it enters a period of dormancy destroying all the fibers it has created. After this period it will begin to grow the fibers as before. This means a player will have to pay attention to fiber production – though there will be ways of automating this process.
Adding these plants and the various fauna systems have been great fun, and lays the ground work for a whole lot of interesting and unique fauna to be added the game. If you are interested in reading more about the plants, you could always check out :
This is the first major piece of Lore work that has been added to the blog, feedback would be greatly appreciated on it – it was great fun to write!
Thanks very much for reading this blog post and tune in next week for another exciting development blog.
There is a lot more to read about Fringe Planet… why not try: