u/Seven-D

Some progress on Eco Machina since the last write-up.

Vines and mushrooms now adapt to the new branch geometry. Vines conform to the actual branch angles, and mushrooms lie flush against the tapering trunk - rather than snapping into place on invisible cube faces as they did before.

Modded trees function without mod-specific configuration. Tested with BDtree and Floral Zones (Central Australia, Mediterranean, New Zealand) - the HSV bark coloring automatically adopts the bark colors of the modified species, so the new foliage connectors match. If you have a tree-adding mod that isn’t working, please share the mod ID and a screenshot.

I also put up a small browser visualizer that decomposes a tree into chains live - switch between Vanilla, Long-Path, and HPD: https://factorial-seven.com/eco-machina-visualizer/eco-machina-visualizer.html
This lets you test it yourself and get a sense of how the mod works.

The first official release is getting closer.
If anyone would like to help test the latest test build, which was released today, you can find it here along with a more detailed description of the changes and in-depth behind-the-scenes blog posts.

Thank you for all your support and encouragement.
I really appreciate it and am very pleased with how far the mod has come as a result. I’m really looking forward to the release and can’t wait to hear your feedback.

Hey everyone,

sorry for the long radio silence - my day-job's been pulling me in hard. The company's going through a rough patch and I've had to put in extra hours to help keep it afloat, so the mod took a back seat for a few weeks. Slowly back on it, heading for the next test build.

Two bigger pieces are in (the comparison shots are labelled 1.1 / 1.2 / 1.3):

1. New branch hierarchy ("HPD" - Heavy Path Decomposition)
Old logic picked the trunk by "which neighbor is closest" and broke down on bigger trees - branches looked like a porcupine. Image 1.1 shows that old hierarchy already with an early foliage connector test on top. The new system walks the whole tree once, finds the path that carries the most wood behind it, and uses that as the trunk. I also doubled the taper resolution while I was at it - branches now thin out across 16 thickness steps instead of 8, for noticeably more natural-looking growth.

2. Foliage connectors, completely rebuilt
The connectors (small, thin wood bridges between wood and leaves) were a stack of patches with constant edge cases. Now: six simple rules, each leaf block picks its best wood neighbor, gets exactly one connector. They also pick up the bark color of the host tree, so wood-to-crown reads as one piece. Image 1.2 is the final version on the new hierarchy - the tree finally feels alive instead of bristly. (Bonus: that leafless 1.2 shot is basically a sneak peek of how winter trees might look later.)

A Behind-the-Scenes write-up with the gory details (HPD internals, foliage-centric claiming, why the old approach kept fighting itself) is on the way.
If deep-dives are your thing:
I post the full devlogs over here.

Next test version is in the oven.
Thanks for sticking around.