Advanced organic growth simulator port from Python

[Cervator]

Thanks to @cfkurtz we have an amazing proof of concept growth simulator to translate into Java and integrate with Terasology!

Forum thread: http://forum.terasology.org/threads/organic-growth-simulator.104/ Website readme: http://www.woodspeople.net/terasology/terasology_model_description.html GitHub project: https://github.com/cfkurtz/TerasologyTrees

Related items: #88 (Meta block for Tree), #82 (Groovy files for plant simulation), #81 (existing L-system tree refactor to use config files), #80 (multiple forest biomes)

Might later cut this one into smaller pieces, but wanted to get a long-term goal for this set up :-)

Some initial thoughts:

• Involve BlockShapes to allow sub-block granularity (complex structures in less space)
• Use the Block Dynamics system for water availability (growth could drain the water slowly, which also limits mineral uptake until refilled)
• Even includes pruning? Madness! :-)

[Cervator]

Bumping this with a sort of general update:

This is a solid project but with a lot of good material to dig into so marking it contributor friendly. @ddr2 started an initial port with commits hitting GitHub but later backed off it for now due to its heft

Incubator: https://forum.terasology.org/threads/organic-growth-simulator.104/ Initial port work: https://github.com/ddr2/Terasology/commit/868ef931a1c5b202209a41b5dfe9a2d5669fc2a4

[Cervator]

Bump for great justice (and GSOC ideas page update)! We have an intermediate growth simulator now created by @MarcinSc

https://github.com/Terasology/GrowingFlora https://github.com/Terasology/PlantPack

That one grows based on definitions for a tree type but does not take into consideration nutrition or water in the soil, let alone some of the extremely advanced features the original inspiration of this proof of concept supported.

While it remains low priority to get quite this fancy with plant life it would still be amazing to see in-game one day :-)

Another related concept is https://forum.terasology.org/threads/flower-generation.863/ which shows a sprite-based generation approach for billboard plants.

[jdrueckert]

I believe that was basically done with https://github.com/Terasology/GrowingFlora, https://github.com/Terasology/SimpleFarming and similar modules. We might want to check for remaining ideas that were not implemented yet, but these should live as feature requests in https://github.com/Terasology/GrowingFlora IMO.