[FREQ] Irrigation feature

[Syndaryl]

High Level Request

Some sort of feature to irrigate farmland in a method more æsthetically in line with Create's factory/industry feel (and slightly more space efficient).

What does this bring to Create and Create: Integrated Farming?

The little square 9x9 gardens with a water hole in them are a distinct Minecraft look, but the mechanic makes it challenging to make a realistic linear garden or industrial-sized field. The water holes are just a bit silly looking in large fields, and are places with-out crops which mildly irritates me. The water holes are also a movement hazard, and while being able to shove a waterlogged slab or lillypad in the hole makes them much safer, those are still holes in my wheat field. Finally, having pools of water lying around is asking for trouble when working with a gantry mechanism for my harvester.

In summary, my primary complaint about the existing (vanilla) system for hydrating farmland is æsthetic, but there's a few small mechanical pain points as well.

Possible Implementation Ideas

I can think of a few different ways to do this, all of which I like and would love to be able to choose from, but they overlap in mechanics to a large extent. All of these involving new blocks would be fun to have a "Smart" upgraded version that can be enabled/disabled with a redstone signal, but that functionality isn't necessary as it can be covered by controlling water flow to the entire system.

If you can think of another way to do this, that'd obviously also be cool! These are just ideas I came up with.

Spouting from an overhead Contraption

The first idea is a mobile overhead contraption using vanilla Spouts, moving back and forth and dispensing a set amount of water from from onboard fluid tanks, based on each block traversed. This is a very "Create-y" solution that feels quite vanilla, but my intuition is that it would be a minor headache from a code perspective. I have no idea how you'd determine for what length of time blocks are irrigated after being spouted on, since this doesn't use pumps.

I like this one for the Vanilla aspect.

Custom Block: Popup Sprinklers

This concept is very specific/specialized with only one valid orientation and one valid configuration, which reduces some code complexity. On the other hand it has visually more fancy bits and moving parts.

This would be either replace a fluid pipe segment (like a valve or filter) or be a separate block placed above a fluid pipe (which attaches to the fluid pipe below). These would expect to be under a transparent block, like Farmland. When given fluid pressure from below they would extend a sprinkler head up two blocks (or possibly 3 blocks, to account for modded tall crops). The sprinkler head would clip through the farmland and crop without breaking them, and for best visual effect might be through the edge/corner of the block, not the centre (so as to not appear from the middle of a crop and blatantly clip through it). It should not impede movement of entities (including players and contraptions).

Visualizations:

Once fully pressurized and completing the deployment animation, the head would emit water particles and count as a source of irrigation for a square of blocks around it. I would suggest this as configurable with a right-click-hold, the default being 9x9 to match vanilla irrigation blocks, but accepting a range from 3x3 to something like 15x15. The amount of water consumed, and therefore pumping required, would correlate with the area irrigated.

Visually, this could be a sprinkler head that emits a circular spray of particles covering the entire area at once, the kind that emits a jet of particles and spins to cover the area, or the kind that swings back and forth "scanning" the area with an arc of particles. I think these should be purely visual effects, with no mechanical effects - otherwise I think that would be terrible at irrigating 😆

Being able to choose between the different designs by wrenching would be amazing but is a sort of above-and-beyond idea and I think this mod is less focused on æsthetics?

I like this one (regardless of design) for the æsthetics in the crop field.

Custom Block: Overhead Sprinklers

A more generalized idea would be a sprinkler attachment that can go on any side of a fluid pipe, and irrigates a cube in the direction it is pointed. This would be best used on the underside of fluid pipes in most farming circumstances, but being able to point it in arbitrary directions gives it a decorative function in designing water fountains.

Similar to the above, the area to be irrigated would default to 9x9x9 (?) but the cube side length would be configurable with right-click-hold. The entire volume would be filled with some sort of particle animation. Again, like the pop-up sprinkler, the water consumption would depend on the cube size.

I like this one for the possible secondary decorative options. It's also more appropriate for greenhouses I think.

Custom Block: Hydroponics/Irrigate From Bottom

This implementation would involve no particles or moving contraptions and overall would seek to make irrigation very low profile (unless you are displaying your farming from the side ofc). Pipes could connect directly to the underside of farmland, like they do Cauldrons, or a specific Irrigation/Hydroponics block would interface between the pipe and the bottom of the farmland. They would consume a set amount of fluid every time irrigation needs to be "refreshed"? Or just per second.

If the pipes connect directly, they could irrigate only the one block their connected to (like a cauldron) or make that one block of farmland count as a water source. If a custom irrigation block is used, I would have them irrigate an area (probably 9x9 like vanilla but it really depends on how expensive they are).

I prefer a more visual approach for my own æsthetics, but I can see some people very much preferring a low-profile approach like this.

[PaperTarsier692]

Your idea for the overhead sprinklers already has an implementation in Create Slice & Dice, might be worth checking out

[Syndaryl]

Hi, yes, although I think it's downwards only?

Regardless it isn't in 1.21.1, which leaves me in the lurch. This mod is focused on farming, while Slice and Dice has a broader focus, so I figured it was worth listing.

I do use it in my 1.20.1 modpack 👍 very happily