[Mod] Renew [2020-03-31][renew]

[AlexYst]

This mod adds renewal mechanics for normally-non-renewable items in from Minetest Game. Currently, it adds ways of renewing anything not renewable in Minetest Game 5.1.1.

Clay:

Clay can be crafted from sand, dirt, a bucket of water, and two iron lumps in any configuration in the crafting grid. Your bucket will be returned to you empty.

Compost:

Nine of any type of leaves, including a mix of types, can be crafted into a dirt node. Originally, this created a compost node that would slowly become a dirt node, but the mechanic has now been simplified and compost nodes removed from the mod.

Coral:

Orange and brown coral have a chance to spawn in ocean water between y values of one and negative nine. It'll occur more often if there are live orange or brown coral nearby, but even then, coral generation is slow. Coral skeletons, if they have ocean water above them, have a chance to turn into cyan, green, or pink coral.

Dry dirt:

If dry grass is left on top of regular dirt that doesn't have a topper (such as grass, snow, coniferous litter, et cetera), it'll eventually dry out the dirt.

Ice:

Without this mod, when snow gets flooded, it melts and disappears. With this mod, it instead freezes the water into ice.

Insects:

Butterflies and fireflies now spread slowly.

Kelp:

Kelp will spread slowly across the seafloor, converting nearby sand nodes into kelp nodes. Currently, this isn't capped, so seaweed can become incredibly dense. I might change that in a later version if someone doesn't like the dense kelp.

Lava:

Lava renews like water. Place two lava nodes in a line with a gap between them at the same elevation or two lava nodes touching corner to corner at the same elevation and more lava will spawn between them.

Lava cooling:

If a lava source is cooled near water, it'll become obsidian. If flowing lava is cooled near water, it'll become stone or a mineral. Minerals will not generate from cooled lava at inappropriate elevations, so for deeper minerals, you have to cool the lava at deeper elevations. If a lava source or flowing lava is cooled without water nearby, which can be done with snow blocks and ice for example, the lava will become desert stone. Like minerals, desert stone won't generate at inappropriate elevations, so if you cool it too low, it'll turn into stone or a mineral.

Marram grass:

Marram grass propagates across sand. Like kelp, it'll grow very densely-packed if left too long. Again, if anyone minds this, I'll likely limit its growth.

Permafrost:

Permafrost can be crafted from dirt and ice. Put dirt in all four corners and ice on all four sides. In the centre, put either dirt, cobble, or mossy cobble, depending on which type of permafrost you want.

Sand:

Sledgehammers can be crafted with the pick recipe, but with the middle head material item replaced with a stick. Hitting (digging) stone with a sledgehammer turns it into sandstone. Hitting desert stone or coral skeletons turns them into desert sand or silver sand. Hitting stone turns it into gravel.

Waterlily:

Waterlilies will spread across the water provided there's dirt under the water and the water is only a single node deep. Unlike kelp and marram grass, waterlilies won't grow at maximum density.

Code license: GNU LGPL 2.1+
Resource license: CC BY-SA 3.0
Mod dependencies: default and flowers, both from Minetest Game

Download: <https://notabug.org/y.st./renew/archive/master.zip>
Repository: <https://notabug.org/y.st./renew>

[TechNolaByte]

I like this
would be great for really large/old servers that have few resources left

[AlexYst]

It's my hope that this mod will prevent such dried-up worlds from coming to exist to begin with, but rejuvenating an old with this mod should be possible as well. The main issue is lava and obsidian. If the lava has already been consumed, there's no way to get it back. And the obsidian ores won't generate in older map chunks if the mod is added later in the world's lifetime.

I've now fixed the sand and desert stone renewal mechanics; see above. With that done, the grinder has been removed from the mod. I've saved a copy of the code for it though, so if there's any demand for the grinder, I'll release it as a separate mod. For now though, I'll wait because of another project I'm working on.