Biota
Biota is a work-in-progress aiming to make the Minecraft plant life less static. Ground will have nutrients that plants need to grow and live. The aim is to make this as close to reality as possible. Of course it should stay fun too, so things will be simplified.
Nutrients & Light
Nutrients are essential for plants. Over-farming on the same ground will make your plant grow more slowly and eventually die. Plants will change color when a certain nutrient is missing. This can give you an idea on what your plants need to grow. Of course plants will not only need nutrients to grow, but also to stay alive. When an ecosystem is stable bacteria will decompose all dead plants (and animals) and give back the nutrients to the ground, so new plants can grow.
But not only nutrients are needed for plants to stay alive. Light is also an essential resource for plants. Plants get their energy from light and to little light means no plants. This will also be like this is with Biota.
Spread & Die
When plant have more than enough nutrients and light to grow, they will also start to spread. When your ground is fertile enough one seed might be enough to fill a whole farm. But when a plant spreads too fast it might start competing with other plants, causing them to not grow or even die. Survival of the Fittest.
You as a player can also have an impact on the world around you. What happens when you walk on the same patch of grass over and over? Yes, it gets worn and dies. This also happens with Biota.
Compatibility & Future
I added an easy way for users to add the changes needed to make them work with Biota to other mods that add plants. This is quite prone to breaking, but when used properly the changes of Biota should work on all plants.
There's a lot more to do and make. I'm not finished, currently there are not enough ways players can interact with the plants life. It's not fun yet. When the 'close to reality' part of Biota is done, I'll probably make a separate module where this plant system is used in a magical way.
Source & Helping
Biota is opensource and can be found on GitHub. You can follow development there and help if you'd like to. I'll probably need some testers soon, as this mod will need to be configured exactly right to be fun. Almost everything is configurable with config files.
To cotact me you can join the Esper.net IRC channel #Biota or send me a message on twitter: @Dynious. You can also follow me there to keep updated with development of my mods and other random stuff I do.
The Biota Team
