Forest building optimization

[lament bloom]

Hi! Maybe this is kind of a problem that I created myself, but I really like building forests as to have my Springfield and adjacent towns make more sense, feel more cohesive.

Thing is, that to achieve that I've placed tree by tree (or those in groups of 3) and built enormous forests, but I'm starting to believe that it may have impacted the performance on my device because I may have gone a bit too far... I'll attach pics as to give examples.

I was wondering if a patch of trees could be made as a single sprite? (like it was a mountain) That would reduce the amount of sprites in place (I believe), improve performance and save time when building large green areas.

Thank you for your time.

[steady steeple]

This is an interesting suggestion

[echo silo]

This has already been suggested here:
https://discord.com/channels/1339280887912726678/1400229418403627078
But I do agree that this would be awesome and very useful.
There are groups of trees you can buy in game if you have unlocked the new frontier land that can help with creating forests. But something bigger would be better.

[daring marlin]

Bumping this to also say that I would like it for regular bunches of trees too

Though it may also require autumn and winter textures too

[lament bloom]

I know how to use Photoshop, I'd be able to create custom sprites with the different trees. I guess having different versions for each seasons must be a bit tricky for programming reasons.

I'd love to make like forests with multiple normal trees, maple trees, etc., having a single sprite cover a large patch of land would be a godsend.

[tiny osprey]

I like the idea, but I feel like it should be able to be rotated, just because of your place them next to each other you’ll be able to spot repetition much easier than if you placed one, then placed and rotated one next to it, so it looks different (idk how to explain it)

[lament bloom]

Nono, I understand. Hmmm... It could be quite a lot of work making "rotatable" sprites for a large forest patch but if given the opportunity I could try using a grid as a guide in Photoshop and having the green squares at the base of the trees, so I could just change places and rotate or flip the trees to give them 4 directions, but maybe that's too big of a scope. I'd like to try helping make a functioning forest item and expand from there, but you are right about repetition being a possible issue.

[steady steeple]

You can rotate a lot of items at the same time ingame. So you could maybe make a big patch of trees (so it fits within the select tool) and use that?

Not necessarily as close together as the images above, just a smidge more spread out so you see the other stuff included in the tree items (bushes etc)

[daring marlin]

why not keep it simple and mirror it + make multiple variations of the sprite?

like the bunches of fur trees ?

[tiny osprey]

Or make it like the crowds or krustyland parking lots, where it changes when you tap it

[daring marlin]

this is a much better suggestion

[steady steeple]

Probably a lot harder to implement/make though

But i agree

[tiny osprey]

I mean, maybe they can just take the same size grid but put different trees in different places in the grid and do like three variants

[lament bloom]

I do believe just making it work would be an accomplishment in and of itself, rotations should be a plus, like a feature to be added later after possible issues can be ironed out

Keeping it simple is the way

[daring marlin]

yes

[lament bloom]

I'll have to start making some mock-ups in order to have an idea of how it could be implemented, IF, of course, it's accepted to be implemented in the game

[tiny osprey]

It’s only because it might be obvious to see when the trees repeat

And it would maybe look nicer if it looked blended

But on its own would look good too!