Version 2.2 of both flowers includes the ecological controls I’ve been talking about in my last few posts.

The flowers grow and multiply wherever there is soil, but growth rate is based on availability of light, moisture, and nutrients. If none are available, they will still grow, just more slowly. They will use up some moisture and nutrients as they grow, assuming there are some to use, and will return some when they die.

The starflowers’ lifespans are about two game days (approximately 40 minutes), and the bleubells’ about half that, during the spring and summer months. They’ll become a bit shorter in the autumn and winter, and the plants will eventually die out for a while during the winter, since seeds won’t sprout during that season. They’ll hang around and remain dormant, though, waiting for spring, so your flowers will return then, unless greedy norns eat up all the seeds in the meantime! In order to compensate for this somewhat, the plants will produce more seeds during the autumn and winter months, to give themselves a better chance of repopulating come springtime. If you want plants all winter, you can inject some more; they’ll have shorter lifespans, but since they’re injected as plantlings rather than seeds, they will still go ahead and grow.

A new feature, requested by Ylukylun, is that you can shift-click on an individual plant to make it non-pickupable, so your norns can’t mess up your planting arrangements. The plant will also become non-pickupable by the hand, since that seemed like the simplest way to show its status. Shift-clicking again will toggle it back to normal.

Plants go into a sort of stasis when picked up, but start growing again once they’re dropped, unless they’re dropped in an area without soil. In that case, they will begin to die, but if you move them back to soil quickly enough, they should revive.

Version 2.3 Updates

I can’t seem to stop tweaking these flowers…I really need to find a stopping place soon, and work on something else for a while! There were still some things bugging me, though, and I think I’ve got most of those worked out. Here are the new changes/features in the 2.3 versions:

Instead of injecting as plants into the norn terrarium, you now get a packet of seeds. Clicking on the packet dispenses a seed. The packets are color-coded, so you can tell whether it’s growing season or not. Green means the seeds will sprout. Yellow means growing season just ended; you may still have some plants for a while, but seeds won’t sprout, although you can still dispense them in preparation for the next growing season. Red means it’s no longer growing season. Seeds won’t sprout, and if any plants are still hanging on, they won’t be around for much longer.

If you don’t want to have growing seasons, and just prefer to have plants year-round, you can shift-click on the seed packet. That will turn it blue, and your plants will no longer be affected by the seasons. You can shift-click again if you change your mind.

Shift-clicking a plant locks it in place, as in v2.2. The plants are not as prolific as they were previously; they’ll naturally only produce one or two seeds just before they die. However, once they’re full-grown, if pushed by a norn or clicked by the hand, they’ll pop out a seed, so if you’re in a hurry for more plants you can propogate them quickly that way.

The last changes are that the bleubell has some new poses, and seeds produced by flowers will produce flowers the same color as the parent plant. So if you want a monochromatic patch of flowers, you can now make that happen.

Download Starflower_v2.3

Download Bleubell_v2.3

Bleubells

Like the StarFlower, the Bleubell (spelled with “EU” instead of “UE”) is a descendant of an original C3 flower, the bluebell. The C3 bluebells grew only in the norn terrarium, and rather sparsely. They are such delicate little flowers, it seemed a shame not to have them more widespread.

These new bleubells have edible seeds, are pushable and pickupable, and interact with the ecology of your Creatures world. Since they are coded very similarly to the starflower, I won’t go into excruciating detail here.

I also tweaked the sprites a tiny bit, because I was in an obsessively detail-oriented mood that day.

I’d love some feedback on both the bleubells and the starflowers. Tell me what you think in general, but particularly I’d like input on growing cycles and interaction with the environment. Do you think they live too long? Not long enough? Should they be seasonal, or year-round? Any other ideas? Let me know!

Download Bleubell_v2.0

StarFlowers

This is the next generation of starflower, a descendent of the original C3 “pinky flower.” The first iteration of starflower gave it a growing cycle and edible seeds, along with some new color variations, and made it pushable and carryable. (For those who like nitty-gritty details, norns get a good plant stim when they push it, and played with toy when they pick it up.)

Norn carrying a starflower

Version 2.0 includes some ecological controls. The flowers will grow and multiply wherever there is soil, but growth rate is based on availability of light, moisture, and nutrients. If none are available, they will still grow, but just verrrrry sloooooowly.

The plants will use up some moisture and nutrients as they grow, assuming there are some to use, and will return some when they die.

Seeds will remain dormant if conditions are too crowded, but can be transplanted to other locations, and will sprout if placed on soil.

Minor update: v2.1 corrects the PRAY code so a more informative sprite is displayed in the comms room injector when the agent is selected.

NOTE: This version is now obsolete. See this post for the latest update to StarFlower.