Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Larainan]

After a flight around the server today my whole server is almost nothing but pine and birch

[Girdian]

I have experimented a bit. I have increased the densities and I have also increased the percentages of trees in each biome. I have also increased the deathage to 1400 and have increased the agedeathborder to 700. I have also speed up three growth to 8 in order to get the new trees to grow faster. This has helped very minutely so far. It has been 3 days now, with 8 in game days in one RL day, and there has only been a few trees growing in areas that were empty. This is barely a difference than it was before and I have also had players going around planting trees around the map. Nothing is seeming to fix it.

I could easily see increasing the densities and deathage helping significantly if it is a new map. If I would've increased my deathage right off the bat then many of the trees wouldn't have died in the first place. I am now in a fight to get trees back to 60% of the map.

I am becoming disappointed in the devs with this issue. Several people have spoke up about it on several different forums and all we have gotten in response is "Please submit a report here:" and nothing else. I have submitted a report via three different routes and have received absolutely no feedback on the issue whatsoever. I have provided an complete backup of my database in my report so it should be obvious this is an issue. This issue is not only occurring on my server but on several others as anyone could see by the comments under this post. I'm not certain whether this is an issue of people planting trees or not. I do not believe it is as most of the trees on the map are pines and spruces. I see only a select few tree farms and they are no where close to the size they used to be before the new algorithm was implemented. I know my guildmate who is doing forestry planted hundreds of pines around my claim and yet most of the map is still pines. We only have 5 oaks on my claim and yet you can't find any without searching for hours. This is a critical issue that needs to be addressed as it is killing servers and making players not want to play the game. Also, as I have stated earlier, there is word this is happening in the MMO also which will seriously kill the MMO if it is not corrected.

I have been playing LIF since before horses and claims and such. I have been hosting successful servers for 2 years. I have over 2500 hours logged into this game and am a dedicated player, but when a serious issue like this is dealt with my simple copy + paste of "report this issue here" I become quite aggravated, especially since that is the ONLY comment from any dev on ALL of the posts regarding this issue. If you (the devs) do not believe what we are saying, go hop on any server that has more than 10 players on it and has been up for more than 2 weeks and you will see what we are talking about.

[Larainan]

Yeah I started a thread in steam over the very same issue and while Alakar did give me a response it is not going to put the trees back on my server now that they are dead. here is a link to the thread. http://steamcommunity.com/app/290080/di ... 531001798/

Alakar graciously gives me tree script and says to keep this equal to 1 or less but I see nothing in the text that will restore my lost trees at all and sure I can play with the densities but what will that do to my server over the long haul and what if I imbalance it as I dont have access to the original from the first install script and some of us can't just delete the dso files if we are on rented servers that dont give you access. Now that players have been building I certainly am not going to wipe.

I HATE WIPES. I go out of my way to avoid them and have stopped modifying my files for just that very reason.

I guess the only other option is to trust the players and do gm for a day runs to replant the server. Now if only they would fix gm mode so we stop taking fall damage coming out of flight and stop dropping into the ocean or all over the map when we try and come out of flight it might make it easier for my players to carry thousands of trees to replant the server without the animations and need for shovels.

[Larainan]

Since I am the only gm on my server I guess i'll put this out there. If other server owners would be willing to trust me as gm on their server I will gladly pop over to yours and help you replant areas in exchange for the same help. You can reach me on steam at

http://steamcommunity.com/id/QueenAlera/

[Girdian]

So, after a few days now. I have started to see some tree growth in the areas that were deforested. Thanks to players going around planting trees and GMs doing the same it has slightly sped up the process. We are seeing natural spawned trees starting to pop up again.

In terms of being scared of messing something up, my suggestion would be to make a copy of your forestmaintence.xml before you make any of the changes and store it on your computer somewhere. That way, if you wish to revert to the original file, you have the ability to. I would then go in and increase you deathage and agedeathborder to what would seem like ridiculously high numbers. I don't believe it would be necessary to change the densities but I also don't think it would hurt to do it anyways as I think the densities are off anyways. It will take a while, probably a couple weeks, to get it back to anywhere close to what you will want.

I think that the fix for this would be to simply raise the deathage and deathborder right off the bat when starting the new map. Otherwise, doing so after the trees have disappeared will just take a while to restore itself. I'm not certain it will be the same but it appears to be growing back on my server.

[Larainan]

Yes but will it last? When Alakar responded to my post in the link i shared here on page one he had me editing the xml and a cs file from my client and before moving it over to the server deleting the corresponding dso file. He made no mention of just editing the xml file and the files he had me editing have no match other than the dso on the server hence getting it from the client side. So the Question is will the xml be enough to stop the sudden death in 244 days or will the xml keep it at bay?

[Larainan]

here is the whole message

Actually it does fulfil its goals because according to cm_forest_maintenance.xml the south and west should only have forests covering 3.2%, 13%, 20%, 13% of the total top forestsoil terrains. And the North and East has 25.5%, 26.5%, 26%, 26%, and 20%. So we can see that their new vision for the forest with the new trees, etc. is on YO to have the West and South mostly barren with a few big trees (sort of like how it is on the MMO with the savannahs).

These values can of course be changed by modifying the density values for each terrain region.

Ex: 442
<terrain id="442"> <!-- ДУБОВАЯ РОЩА С ВЯЗОМ И ШЕЛКОМ -->
<BiomesCount>6</BiomesCount>
<MaxBiomeDensity>0.5</MaxBiomeDensity>
<AgeDeathBorder>220</AgeDeathBorder>
<MaxAge>330</MaxAge>
<Substance name="forestsoil">
<tree density="0.009" mean="0.4" maxBiomeOvergrowth="0.05">oak elm</tree>
<tree density="0.002" mean="0.4" maxBiomeOvergrowth="0">apple</tree>
<tree density="0.012" mean="0.4" maxBiomeOvergrowth="0.5">mulberry</tree>
<!--summ 0.032-->
</Substance>
</terrain>

To set it so that trees don't start dying at age 220 change the value to something higher. To change it so trees don't die for sure change the value of MaxAge from 330 to something higher like 1330. And to make it so that you get more trees in the region you can change the densities of each tree to a higher value (just keep the total value of all densities under or equal to 1).

Also you can change the settings of tree aging in art/forest/cmForestData.cs (client has CS file server has DSO file so if you change remember to delete DSO file on server when you upload the modified one from client. You just need to change the values for the varied positions here:

// cmForestAddTreeType(type, youngTime, matureTime, mediumScale, majorScale, matureScale, isHardwood)
cmForestAddTreeType(%Apple, 40, 50, 1, 1, 1, 0); // apple
cmForestAddTreeType(%Birch, 20, 50, 1, 1, 1, 1); // birch
cmForestAddTreeType(%Elm, 40, 80, 1, 1, 1, 1); // elm
cmForestAddTreeType(%Spruce, 20, 40, 1, 1, 1, 0); // spruce
cmForestAddTreeType(%Pine, 30, 50, 1, 1, 1, 0); // pine
cmForestAddTreeType(%Maple, 30, 48, 1, 1, 1, 1); // maple
cmForestAddTreeType(%Mulberry, 30, 60, 1, 1, 1, 0); // mulberry
cmForestAddTreeType(%Oak, 50, 90, 1, 1, 1, 1); // oak
cmForestAddTreeType(%Willow, 30, 60, 1, 1, 1, 1); // willow
cmForestAddTreeType(%Hazel, 25, 50, 1, 1, 1, 1); //hazel
cmForestAddTreeType(%Juniper, 50, 100, 1, 1, 1, 0); //juniper
cmForestAddTreeType(%Spinny, 55, 110, 1, 1, 1, 0); //spinny

[This set of values is already modified for ~half time to grow]

-Alakar

[Nyuton]

You know, you don't necessarily have to wait for several in-game days to have your forest maintenance. If you have access to server console, you can enter

Code: Select all

forestStretchedMaintenance();

to trigger it manually over and over again.

[Larainan]

You know, you don't necessarily have to wait for several in-game days to have your forest maintenance. If you have access to server console, you can enter

Code: Select all

forestStretchedMaintenance();

to trigger it manually over and over again.

Ok Nyuton maybe you can answer a few questions since the devs don't seem to want to. Alakar gave me instructions to edit and delete the dso file in art.

I have done what he instructed and heres what im seeing on my server. trees that look like sprouts are major trees not only the ones i planted before making the changes to the xml but all those after as well.
the tree behind the box http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... 8CFAB1B5A/

Trees are aging and not actually growing.

so if I change my art forestry dso rates back in the file that alakar recommended and use the console command with the edited xml files only. Will it make my trees grow right? and how often will that run ? Im terrified to change anything else now. I just finally started getting players back on my server and I dont want to wipe.

[Larainan]

Ok so my next set of questions revolve around these statements.

"Actually it does fulfil its goals because according to cm_forest_maintenance.xml the south and west should only have forests covering 3.2%, 13%, 20%, 13% of the total top forestsoil terrains. And the North and East has 25.5%, 26.5%, 26%, 26%, and 20%. So we can see that their new vision for the forest with the new trees, etc. is on YO to have the West and South mostly barren with a few big trees (sort of like how it is on the MMO with the savannahs). "

At server creation Alakar in another post told me that the trees in the south and west were old forest growth and that at the 220 day mark the trees would die to the biome densities listed above.

So is there a way to put my densities back to the original setting with the old growth back on the server before the 220 day death schedule as it was on server creation and actually have the server put the trees back into their now empty map positions without having to physically replant each map position by hand and without a wipe.

has anyone tried to write a script that can be run in a query that will auto fill the map positions that are empty with new trees after a density change? And is it even possible?

[Dansk_viking]

I asked a while ago whether it was possible to slow the tree aging down. I'm running a semi-realistic server with 24-hour cycle, and to be honest, tree growth needs to be reduced for a more realistic feeling.

So, I asked a while ago whether it was possible to use the code to get a slower growth/death time by setting it to ex: <TreeAgingSpeed>0.5</TreeAgingSpeed> or even less. But I never got an answer.

Now, suddenly all my old oak trees disappeared, and I suspect it's this new algorithm. I'ts really immersion-breaking for me (especially since my village is named Oakengrove, and now all but two trees in the grove are mysteriously gone - when oaks would outlast several life times in reality).

[Nyuton]

I have done what he instructed and heres what im seeing on my server. trees that look like sprouts are major trees not only the ones i planted before making the changes to the xml but all those after as well.
the tree behind the box http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.c ... 8CFAB1B5A/

Trees are aging and not actually growing.

I'm not aware what kind of mod Alakar gave you or what it's supposed to do. But if that mod was created before the new forest algorithm came out, chances are that it's no longer compatible. What you describe happens if there is an inconsistency between your forest and forest_patch database tables in terms of tree age.

Will it make my trees grow right? and how often will that run ?

It does the same as the game does every midnight and it runs and often as you enter the command. Usually takes 20-40 seconds or so. Then you can repeat. I would recommend doing that when there is nobody on your server, so you can easily track the console messages and see when it says something like 'forest maintenance finished' ...


@Dansk_viking you can't set TreeAgingSpeed below 1 but you can increase maximum tree age and death border up to sky high values, which will accomplish kind of what you're looking to do.

[Dansk_viking]

@Dansk_viking you can't set TreeAgingSpeed below 1 but you can increase maximum tree age and death border up to sky high values, which will accomplish kind of what you're looking to do.

Thank you! At least that should take care of the dying trees, but it may result in a pretty cluttered forest if growth itself isn't checked.

Do you have any idea how high it can be set (in the thousands or more)? It says "note that the number of deaths is capped by ChangeLimit setting", I'm not sure what that means, and I can't find anything about the "ChangeLimit setting".


EDIT: I now set:
<AgeDeathBorder>2200</AgeDeathBorder>
...
<MaxAge>9999</MaxAge>

This should virtually remove the upper limit (forced death) for trees, while still having a chance that very old trees (ten times as old as before) die.

I wonder if the MaxAge can simply be disabled, but this works for now hopefully.

I even managed to roll back the forest to my latest backup so my oak trees have returned (with HeidiSQL, replacing the data in forest and forest_patch, and manually setting the ForestVersion in terrain_blocks).

[Larainan]

I'm not aware what kind of mod Alakar gave you or what it's supposed to do. But if that mod was created before the new forest algorithm came out, chances are that it's no longer compatible. What you describe happens if there is an inconsistency between your forest and forest_patch database tables in terms of tree age.

Will it make my trees grow right? and how often will that run ?

It does the same as the game does every midnight and it runs and often as you enter the command. Usually takes 20-40 seconds or so. Then you can repeat. I would recommend doing that when there is nobody on your server, so you can easily track the console messages and see when it says something like 'forest maintenance finished' ...


Thanks For the reply. the files Alakar had me change are the new files . He had me pull a forest file from the art/forest folder on my client and edit it for tree age and replace the same forest file in the art/forest folder on the server that has a dso extension with the cs one from my computer. I figured out that the file in the art folder is created on character creation so its not modified by the server after making this change. New players will get the new settings and see the tree changes but players that had the client side file before the change didnt get an updated one so I had to have them add a copy of the one I replaced on the server to their client side folder for forest in the art folder. Now they see trees right.

Now on to the next battle my server is never empty LOL i'll try running this command from the console before starting my server in firedaemon so nobody can connect until after it updates.

[Cosimo]

So we upped to 3 our <TreeAgingSpeed>3</TreeAgingSpeed> but we found now after 1 month of running that new players cannot find high quality trees (oaks seem to have died off).

As usual the question came, wipe or fix it.

I had a stab and found out that there needs to be a way to "change" trees to repopulate the server.... currently we have an invasion of pines and undergrowth.

Code: Select all

select count(*) from forest_patch where TreeHEalth = 2 and TREETYPE = 7

on a 2 week old DB: 2353
on a 1 month old DB: 1072

so basically the great oaks are halved!

I changes the TREETYPE of a few but my question is, is there a script to reseed the trees?

[Girdian]

I have been talking with Tolik in regards to the report I made about this issue. They are attempting to reproduce the issues they saw on my DB in their own DB by setting the day lengths to a couple minutes and upping the tree growth to 5 like I had it. They will then wait as the months go by and observe how the trees act. If no trees are disappearing that way, they will then plant 100 or more oak trees and see if the trees begin to disappear then. So this means they are looking into the issue.

In terms of a fix, the best I have been able to find is to significantly increase the agedeathborder and maxage. Mine are now set to 1700 and 2400. I have also played around with the percentages for densities. I have upped the max density for every region and have upped the densities of various trees and lowered that of spinny and hazel. In an attempt to restore the trees around the map, I have sped up the growth speed after making the changes I listed above. I also ran the old tree script at 30q in an attempt to get rid of a large portion of the underbrush and clear up forest cells.

In terms of a script to repopulate the server, I have not found anything for it yet.

[Tufed]

I saw this problem on my dedicated server. I had a game day time = 1 real hour. I still have oak trees in the forest with only qualities < 10. I can assume that there is a limit on the quality of new trees in the forest. I addressed this issue to the developers two months ago and did not get an understanding. I solved this problem by increasing the life time of trees and giving the players 100% quality seeds to plant. I can not say exactly where, but I'm configuring the game's config file to increase the lifetime of the trees.

[ThrainnLodur]

Hello there.
First i have to apologize for my english. Ist not my native language.

The issues with tree aging, dying and leaving a wasteland behind is nothing new to me.

we are running the lif-rungholt.de Isla Nebula Server and had some Problems with it too.

From a mathematically Point of view, we tried to solve the Problem.

first of all we were wondering about aging Speed.

as we have a 5 hour day cicle and wanted Players to be able to plant, lumber and use their trees in a way they were used to, we set aging Speed to 4.
This means: every day cicle a tree ages 4 growing periods as we knew it in the older versions.

the two death borders are pretty simple Things.

the first one means: earlyest Moment a tree dyes after he has been planted. We set that Value to 2200.
10 times the value, the Developers intended.
The second one means: latest possible death border. = Hit that Border and you are dead u puny git of a tree.
We set that Value to 3300.
10 times... you know what i want to say.

by aging 4 periods per game day you may divide the number of in game days we set the border to get the following:

2200 earliest divided by 4 = 550 day cicles. multiplied with daytimelength (5 in our case) you get 2750 Hours. Divided by 24 = 114,58 Days in real life. Minimum lifespan.

3300 latest death border divided by 4 = 825 day cicles. multiplied with daytimelength (again 5 ) you get 4125 hours. Divided by 24 = 171,87 Days in Real life. largest lifespan.

If you have another daycicle simply divide the real life days in this example by 5 and multiply by the daytimelength you have on your Server to know how Long will they last.

For example : 3 hours ingame days
114,58/5*3=68,748 Real life days. Minimum
171,87/5*3=103,12 Real life days. Maximum

The Trees will die within that range.

the next step for understanding ist the Kind of trees per sector.

oak Elm mulberry maple Hazel spinny birch willow spruce juniper

these 10 treetypes are the Kinds of trees you have availible.
now you just have to think about: "Where do i want those trees to be on my sectors?"

if you decide to have all 10 types in one sector, you have to add them in the forest.maintenance.

Then you have to think about the numer of forests you want in that sector. That is stated in the Biomes. if you want 10 forests Change that value to 10 for the selected sector.

Then you have to think about the density. Density states the percentile number of total forestsoil tiles occupied in that sector.
If you want 10 % of all tiles with a single Kind of tree set the value to density="0.1" decimal System as 1 is statet as 100%.


example:
<terrain id="445"> <!-- ШИРОКОЛИСТВЕННЫЙ ЛЕС -->
<BiomesCount>9</BiomesCount>
<MaxBiomeDensity>0.7</MaxBiomeDensity>
<AgeDeathBorder>2200</AgeDeathBorder>
<MaxAge>3300</MaxAge>
<Substance name="forestsoil">
<tree density="0.075" mean="0.4" maxBiomeOvergrowth="0.25">elm oak apple maple</tree>
<tree density="0.145" mean="0.4" maxBiomeOvergrowth="0">hazel</tree>
<tree density="0.155" mean="0.4" maxBiomeOvergrowth="0">spinny</tree>
<!--summ 0.375-->
</Substance>
</terrain>

37,5% of the forest soil tiles will be Forest.
Still a acceptable forest.

hope this will be helpfull.

oh... an a Little advice...

SAVE you forest.maintenance.
AND: insert it after EVERY FUCKING PATCH... we just forgot it once... now our Server is wiped off trees too, because we forgot to insert it after updating the Server to the latest Version. so really really really: instert this file as you want it to be again and again after every patch you bring to your Server.

[Deus-X-Incognita]

It just isn't working.

Even if we use the command

Code: Select all

forestStretchedMaintenance();

several times, there are just a few more trees (around 25), nothing worth mentioning - and especially nothing that would repopulate the world within 200 ingame days.
We used the command around 4-8 times, so that would mean, even if it was only 4 times, that we would have 200/4 = 50 ... 50*25 = 1250 new trees in 200 days. Yep, that will really populate our barren wasteland.
Especially since trees die in that time too.

There are so much questions regarding this, so i will start:

1. Somewhen there was mentioned that wheather influences tree growth. Which wheater, how does it work?
2. Our forest maintenance was cleared of one tree type - it still was planted with above command (forestStretchedMaintenance();). Why does it plant trees that it shouldn't?
3. How can we see the current state of the maintenance? If it works,
   when it was run, etc.
4. How can we easily see what the server planted in one maintenance?
5. How can we watch what decisions the server makes regarding the planting? Somewhere along this decisions the script makes an error,
   but how can we find it? Maybe it was programmed so it tests only the grwoth of one tree per tree type? Could be that.
6. All in all, the forest maintenace is definitly malfunctioning. And it seems it does this on many servers - if not all. Its only that the work of players that plant trees is covering the failure of the script up.
7. Which data exactly do you need to find the errors? How shall we send it to you? A database dump isn't exactly that easy to send. Where to?

Just so many questions, and ones we shouldn't have, the tree system should work and plant. Not deforest the world.

[DarkArchaon]

Any update to this, the tree are growing very slow.....

[SnowSharky]

Couple mistakes I see here:

1. Using a 4 digit value (anything over 999) for <MaxAge> and <AgeDeathBorder> will cause problems (less trees planted), values over roughly 1500 will cause no new trees to be planted, eventually leading to 0 trees on the server.

2. Instead of "forestStretchedMaintenance();" try using "forestMainThreadMaintenance();" to advance the forest.

Edit: Also worth noting that Nyuton has some tools to reforest your servers and get them setup correctly over at his site: https://terratool.nyuton.net/index.php