Harvest Sprites

Not much is known about these trans-dimensional sprites. You can't see them, can't feel them, but they will happily harvest crops if you offer them some food, a little light and a Sprite Lamp to live in. The sprites don't seem to have any interest in the crops once harvested and will just drop them on the ground unless a Sprite Hoard is nearby. If you are quiet, you may hear the sprites hanging around the hoard if you take a peek inside. If you feed the sprites with high saturation food, they will harvest more crops at the same time. Also, the more health a food item provides, the longer it lasts.

Harvest Sprites is an early game mod that harvests crops in exchange for food. By default, the sprites will harvest a 9x9 area centered on the Sprite Lamp and up to 4 blocks above/below. Sprite Hoards within 5 blocks of the Sprite Lamp will collect harvested items.

Crops are automatically replanted but the seeds must be initially planted manually (or through some other planting mechanism).

Sprite Lamps emit a redstone signal proportional to the amount of food it its inventory. This can be used to automate keeping the Sprite Lamp fueled using vanilla mechanics.

Redstone automation

Note: Sorry, the sprites do not harvest trees, flowers, tall grass, nether wart, mushrooms, pumpkins, or melons (those sprites are from a different union).

Have an issue or a suggestion? Please visit the Issues page.

Version History

1.1.0 Added redstone signal support for vanilla automation

1.0.0 Initial release

Technical Details

This mod in intended to be server friendly and has some configuration features to adjust how fast it operates. The Sprite Lamp is the only block that has any automation, the hoards are just passive storage that the lamp detects. Both the Lamp and Hoard implement unsided inventories and are compatible with item transportation mods.

Configuration

The configuration parameters should be self explanatory but here are some suggestions for tuning the mod.

The 'ticks_per_cycle' parameter controls how often a harvest cycle occurs, in game ticks. This parameter probably has the most impact on server performance so be careful setting the cycle rate too low. Unless you have a need for very responsive harvesting at the cost of server performance, don't set this to anything lower than the default.

'harvest_rate' controls how many crops are harvested per cycle based on the saturation value of the food provided to the lamp. For example, using carrots in the lamp (saturation value of 0.6) and a rate setting of 5 will harvest up to 3 crops per cycle. You are better suited by decreasing how often harvest cycles occur (by raising the 'ticks_per_cycle' parameter) and increasing the number of harvested crops per cycle.

The 'harvest_range' and 'harvest_height' parameters control the harvest scan area of the Sprite Lamp. Making this range too big can have an effect on server performance, so keep it reasonable.

The 'hoard_range' and 'hoard_height' parameters likewise controls the scan area that the lamp will use to locate hoards. The number of hoards has very little impact on performance. The default range defaults to one more than the harvest range to limit how many blocks need to be scanned to locate hoards.

The rest of the configuration parameters have no effect on performance.

'food_consumption_rate' adjusts how long food lasts in the lamp in harvest cycles per health point. The more health a food item provides, the longer it lasts. Raising this value will decrease the demand on food. Setting this value to 0 will disable food consumption but a piece of food still needs to be given to the lamp to set the saturation rate (see 'harvest_rate')

'consume_only_on_harvest' sets if food is passively consumed even if there are no crops to harvest.

'suppress_seed_drops' filters what the crop drops on harvest to remove the seeds for the primary crop. If a crop drops two or more seed types, only the seed that associated with the crop is filtered. This parameter can help if there is a need to control seed availability or if you just want to get rid of excess seeds.

'randomize_hoards' will distribute crop yield to all available hoards. If this is set to 'false', hoards will be chosen in the order they are scanned and will be consistent over time. Setting to 'true' will randomize the list of hoards so the crops are not concentrated in the same hoard.

'enable_light' controls if the Sprite Lamp emits light equivalent to a torch when active.

'emit_redstone' allows the Sprite Lamp to emit a redstone signal proportional to the amount of food in its inventory slot.

Nerd Talk

Under the hood, only the Sprite Lamp has any intelligence. Breaking the lamp will maintain its inventory and current food state. The hoard is a passive storage block modeled after the vanilla Barrel and doesn't maintain its contents when broken.

The lamp scans the configured area once per harvest cycle and produces a list of harvestable blocks. This list is randomized and up to the harvest limit crops will be harvested. The lamp doesn't break the crop but it gathers the drops that would have resulted if it had been broken and resets its age back to zero. This means that there is a small chance that if the farmland under the crop becomes invalid for planting but doesn't eject the seed, the crop will continue to be harvestable. This is a conscious decision so that the lamp doesn't need to have a tool to till the ground, doesn't need a pool of seeds for planting, or worry about other blocks interfering with planting. This is a similar mechanic to mods that provide right-click harvesting. Since the lamp doesn't have the capability to plant, all crops must be planted through some other mechanism, either by the player or through other automation.

Only crops that are a sub class of CropsBlock are eligible for harvesting. This might mean that some modded crops are not compatible. The lamp uses a crop's age (via the isMaxAge() method) to determine if it is harvestable and resets it's age to 0. The drops are calculated from the loot table and one seed item is deducted from the drops to simulate replanting.

Any item that responds to isFood() is eligible to power the lamp with its health and saturation values used until it is consumed. This should allow nearly any food item, vanilla or modded, to be used in the lamp.

The hoard is not a general collector block like the Ranged Collector or Vacuum Chest. It is a passive storage block that the lamp searches for to receive harvested items instead of dropping them in the world.