Deconstructing a Seasonal Tree Controller

[oathbound_hunter 12]

As promised, this is an update regarding my experimenting with deconstructing and decentralizing a seasonal tree controller that got started over in my original thread, Help with Everseasonal Flora. As the problem that I was looking into grew to not be within the scope of EF, I felt it was more prudent to create a new thread dedicated to it.

As I said in the other thread, this grew from a desire to produce an evergreen version of the Cascadia Tree Controller by Blunder. Theirs has easily been my favorite tree controller for awhile now but I've always had an issue with the hitching that it and other seasonal tree controllers cause on the seasonal tick. It was only relatively recently that I worked out how to use Reader, so it's possible that this work's already been done and documented, but I'm posting it here for my own sanity when I inevitably forget about what I did down the line.

Long story short of it, I believe I've worked out a way to seemingly brute force seasonal flora to either not change at all or to make their changeovers far less prevalent using the FloraParameters. Setting parameter 1 to its maximum (10,000,000) would theoretically, assuming that the documentation in the How to make/edit a tree controller tutorial is accurate and denotes the seasonal tick rate in half-days, lengthen the seasonal tick rate to roughly 5 million in-game days, or roughly 13,700 in game years.

I'm not going to complain about one stutter every 13,700 years, assuming that's what this will actually do. I don't think I've ever kept a given city tile going that long. The problem was that only setting parameter 1 to 10 million introduced a yearly stutter of the same severity as the seasonal tick. Figuring that it had to do with parameter 6 (set at 363 in Cascadia) I also set it to 10 million and the stuttering just... stopped. No monthly stutter, no seasonal stutter, no yearly stutter.

My hypothesis is that parameter 6 is a second timer, this one measured in full days, though I'm unsure what it might be timing. Maybe the moisture simulation? 

Regardless, I think I've managed to deconstruct a seasonal tree controller such that you could swap between them using SC4PAC (or through manual swapping) at will without the hitching that naturally comes with seasonal tree controllers. Now granted, I've not had the chance to test this as a long-term solution so I have absolutely no idea how a long-running game might fare. The usual warnings for running tree controllers still apply. But running the game for five in game years saw neither stutter nor tree changeover. If others that are eminently more qualified than me wish to test the controllers out, I can provide the files. I'm just not sure if I should given it's someone else's mod that I'm mucking with. I'd also welcome any thoughts on how to actually turn off the seasonal system, because swapping RKT4s to RKT1s and designating the model you want for the TC (Fall, Winter, or Summer) doesn't seem to do it on its own.

[CorinaMarie 29,859]

3 hours ago, oathbound_hunter said:

If others that are eminently more qualified than me wish to test the controllers out, I can provide the files. I'm just not sure if I should given it's someone else's mod that I'm mucking with.

There's always been a fine line between sharing files for a collaboration among a handful of peeps and posting files for general sharing. We've allowed the former many times. As staff I've even had peeps attach a zip file in a forum post where I've said I'll edit their post and remove it as soon as I download. (Like when we are both active so it'd only be there for a couple of minutes.)

Since you aren't staff (with the option to edit someone else's post), just have peeps request your files and then you send them a Private Message (PM) with the files attached.  

I'd be willing to take a peek myself if it's a complete plugins set where I didn't have to do any extra work to test.

[oathbound_hunter 12]

2 hours ago, CorinaMarie said:

There's always been a fine line between sharing files for a collaboration among a handful of peeps and posting files for general sharing. We've allowed the former many times. As staff I've even had peeps attach a zip file in a forum post where I've said I'll edit their post and remove it as soon as I download. (Like when we are both active so it'd only be there for a couple of minutes.)

Since you aren't staff (with the option to edit someone else's post), just have peeps request your files and then you send them a Private Message (PM) with the files attached.

I'd be willing to take a peek myself if it's a complete plugins set where I didn't have to do any extra work to test.

I'll shoot it to you via PM in that case, just to be safe. To keep sizes down I'll only send the TCs; I'd recommend just downloading standard Cascadia using SC4PAC for the dependencies as these deconstructed TCs use the same ones as it.