The elusive Jungle Rubber Tree

[mynd]

I've looked all over the place for info on these trees. The general info I've found (found to be inaccurate) suggests it takes 1-6 hours and a 20 block radius around the tree to grow; this is all bullocks.

A 20 block radius helps you grow a FULL TREE, but isn't necessary for the growth as we have several players on my server growing them about 10 blocks apart. Additionally, sometimes it takes days, even with world anchors and extensive player activity around the saplings.

Theories:

We are beginning to believe that jungle rubber trees ONLY grow when another somewhere is cut down. We believe that there is some kind of limit determined by rendered jungle chunks where these trees grow naturally.

How we've reached this conclusion: Person A, B, and C have planted saplings. A got hers from the jungle after chopping down a tree and planted first, then shared with B and C that planted afterwards. Tree A grew for person A but not for persons B and C. Person A cut their tree down and person B's grew. B's was cut down and then C's. Once C was down another tree grew for B as A hadn't planted anymore.

This took place over the course of a week, timings are not precise, but there have been a lot of stories that seem to support this theory. 3 days ago or so a massive number of jungle rubber trees were taken down in a jungle biome, and a day or two later, 9 sprouted near another one of our players.

Then again, this could all be extremely coincidental. We are trying to do some controlled experiments, but it's taking a lot of time.

I beseech the community for some info and other experiences about these trees. I'm really surprised there is nothing concrete, and what info does exist, seems to be inaccurate.

Technical info: Running Tekkit for 1.2.5 with Safe Creeper plugin added and EE is disabled, server is a 20 slot with 1024mb of memory hosted by nfoservers.com.

I am talking about RedPower Jungle Rubber Trees. The giant ones:

[Hushful]

Are you meaning Redpower rubber trees or IC2 rubber trees, because I've never seen a Redpower rubber tree spawn in a jungle for as long as I've played. I'm not saying that it doesn't / can't happen, just that I personally haven't seen one.

[mynd]

RedPower trees. I will get a screenshot and edit my original post.

[V00doocat]

Are you meaning Redpower rubber trees or IC2 rubber trees, because I've never seen a Redpower rubber tree spawn in a jungle for as long as I've played. I'm not saying that it doesn't / can't happen, just that I personally haven't seen one.

Really ? Iv'e seen jungles full of red power trees. All over the place.

Never seen an IC2 rubber tree in a jungle though.

[mynd]

They aren't readily distinguishable from jungle trees unless you know what you're looking for. Once you know, you will probably see them more than you think.

[Hushful]

Really ? Iv'e seen jungles full of red power trees. All over the place.

Never seen an IC2 rubber tree in a jungle though.

As my post would suggest, "really." On the other hand have found several IC2 rubber trees in jungles. They are much easier to spot if you set the graphics to "fast" as their leaves will remain semi-opaque and the jungle leaves will be solid. It really makes them "pop."

[V00doocat]

Yep the giant ones Mynd. That's what I assumed you meant from the start. The server I play on is down at the moment but I live next to a jungle full of them.

And the land was generated that way.

Edit: in fact i have a mine that uses the trunk of one of them as an entrance.

Being 3x3 they are great to hollow out.

Think I will try your patient method of growing one. Because until now I thought you couldn't grow them.

[gavjenks]

We are beginning to believe that jungle rubber trees ONLY grow when another somewhere is cut down.

That is EXTRAORDINARILY unlikely. Eloraam would have had to go out of her way to specifically include "special" rubber log or leaf blocks, hidden within every rubber tree, with additional metadata that not other blocks have, specifically to make the game able to know when "a rubber tree was cut down." This would be hours of coding, with no apparent benefit coming from all of that effort. Why? Also, it would introduce tons of unnecessary headaches for people making plugins like WorldEdit to have to decipher and transfer that information over in save files.

However, if you well and truly believe in your heart of hearts that this is what is going on, then you can confirm 100% if it is true or not without any experimenting. Simply load up a world file with RP2 rubber trees in it with an NBT viewer/editor/java library, and look and see if rubber trees have any special metadata beyond block ID and data value. Anything that could store the game's knowledge of what counts as "a distinct rubber tree." If such data exists, then you might be right. If it doesn't (if every log and leaf of every rubber tree has the same data stored as every other log and leaf of every other tree), then you are definitely not right, because the game would have know way of knowing when/if any tree was cut down.

[mynd]

That is EXTRAORDINARILY unlikely. Eloraam would have had to go out of her way to specifically include "special" rubber log or leaf blocks, hidden within every rubber tree, with additional metadata that not other blocks have, specifically to make the game able to know when "a rubber tree was cut down." This would be hours of coding, with no apparent benefit coming from all of that effort. Why? Also, it would introduce tons of unnecessary headaches for people making plugins like WorldEdit to have to decipher and transfer that information over in save files.

However, if you well and truly believe in your heart of hearts that this is what is going on, then you can confirm 100% if it is true or not without any experimenting. Simply load up a world file with RP2 rubber trees in it with an NBT viewer/editor/java library, and look and see if rubber trees have any special metadata beyond block ID and data value. Anything that could store the game's knowledge of what counts as "a distinct rubber tree." If such data exists, then you might be right. If it doesn't (if every log and leaf of every rubber tree has the same data stored as every other log and leaf of every other tree), then you are definitely not right, because the game would have know way of knowing when/if any tree was cut down.

I don't mind if my theory is wrong, I really just want to get to the bottom of this.

Took me a week and a half to get all 4 of the ones in my yard to grow. Since they grow so slowly, everyone notices when they sprout up. That's how we started nailing down the timeline that one grew when another was chopped down. Confirmation from others on this would be very useful. I thought about de-compiling the code and looking at it...

Another thought about the way the trees are counted, maybe the data is part of the seed info. I can't begin to guess how it would tell one is cut down, but the limit itself could be determined by the seed. As a chunk is generated, the seed will always have the same number of jungle rubber trees there from game to game of the same seed.

[V00doocat]

Well even if i get one to grow the info wont be of any use as I cut one down the other day to make room for a building project.

So if mine did sprout up it would only be circumstantial information.

But I will follow this with interest as I like those trees.

However gavjenks makes a compelling case.

[mynd]

I agree. I didn't consider the code that may be involved for something like that, and I do have a limited background in programming.

These trees just grow so strangely.

[gavjenks]

What I'm saying is that you don't have to decompile any code. You can just look at the world file data that redpower stores, for your answer.

However, if you do wish to decompile the code, (or even to change and then redistribute it, though I don't know why you would want to), you can pretty much do any of that, since MCForge is under a GPL 3.0 license, which requires any mods that use it to be distributed under open source, copyleft GPL as well. The only restriction being that your new version or whatever you do with it also must be under GPL license.

In fact, Eloraam is even compelled to make her source available upon request, without out you even having to decompile it. Theoretically, at least... (assuming you can get a hold of her)

[mynd]

Would be nice to just ask her how they grow. I could live with that haha.

[V00doocat]

I know nothing about coding. And I really do mean nothing.

But could it be a limited number of trees to a certain area ? That might explain why peoples trees grew when one was cut down.

Is there some way Eloraams code could limit the number of trees in an area so in generation they don't go mad by a simple count ?

If there was an occasional sweep of the area that did a count of trees and only allowed growth if the number was less than x.

is that even possible ?

Unlikely still I agree.

Edit: or would they still need the metadata you spoke of to achieve that count ?

[mynd]

I'd say yes, but I have 4 in my area, and there are about 10 in an area about the same size as mine by another one of my players.

[BLAZE MkIV]

I have 1 growing in a swamp. There are no jungles loaded and there were no other players online when it grew.

[mynd]

I have 1 growing in a swamp. There are no jungles loaded and there were no other players online when it grew.

Is this a multiplayer server though? Have jungles been discovered? Not loaded could mean they're off chunk. Our jungles are definitely so far away they're not loaded often.

[MrKekson]

if you use bukkit++ it messes with growth, so a player need to be in a fev chunks range( default 4 if im right ) nolagg do the same thing i believe

[mynd]

Hmm, what's the conflict with bukkit? I'll keep that in mind and see if I can't get some to grow predictably. Keep the info coming guys, the more I get the better. I will look into updating the wiki too.

Thanks for your responses so far :)

[mynd]

/bump

Anymore info on these trees? Any other experiences to help nail their growth down?

[Lethosos]

It's probably not relevant nor useful, but I don't think it's a true tree for the sake of comparing it to the standard trees. Or at least that's what the treefelling plugin on my server is telling me--I need to check on an IC rubber tree to be sure.

[mynd]

Hmm. How would this theory impact it's growth? I mean you can't use bonemeal on it I know. And trees stop being "alive" when you cut their trunks; can't just artificially play IC rubber tree trunks and have resin spawn on them.

[gavjenks]

Guys... there's no good way for the game to even KNOW if its looking at a tree. It doesn't keep track of trees as units, and nobody in their right mind would ever code a plugin to do extremely complicated pattern recognition to detect "trees" in the wild. That would be ridiculously too much work.

IC2 does NOT keep track of trees as units.

IC2 does NOT care how many leaves there are above the trunks

IC2 does NOT care if you've cut the trunk or not.

Resin holes are simply data values applied to the rubber log block. They are kept track of individually by-block, and nothing aroudn the block matters. You can add them yourself with worldedit or voxelsniper by setting a new data value. And you can cut down every block of a tree except the one with resin and it will grow back with more. You can even more logs somewhere else with frame motors and they will still make resin. Put a bunch of the in the shape of a giant pumpkin, doesn't matter.

So IC2 does not find trees as units, and RP2 almost certainly does not, either. You're just imagining patterns in places they don't exist, fueled by too little data.