Seed
Seed is a light green powder that sprouts into plant wherever water reaches it.
- Movement
- Powder — falls and piles up
- Weight
- 4 / 9 (heavier sinks through lighter)
- Lifetime
- Permanent
- Glow
- None
Seed falls and heaps like other powders, only lighter: its weight is 4. Sand, salt and gunpowder push down through a layer of seed, so in a mixed pile the seeds work their way upward. Water and oil are lighter still, and seed sinks through both.
Its only reaction is with water. Each time a seed touching water is checked, there is a 6 percent chance that the seed becomes a plant cell and the water cell beside it is removed. Unlike salt, a sprouting seed uses up the water it touched; unlike ice or plant, it does not convert that water into more of itself.
The plant that appears is static. A seed that sprouts partway down while sinking through a pond leaves a plant cell suspended at that depth, and from then on plant’s own rule applies: water touching it gradually turns green. A handful of seed thrown into a lake therefore starts several growth points at different depths, and the lake fills in from all of them.
Dry seed is completely inert. Fire, lava and acid have no entries for it, which is a simplification, since real seeds burn and are damaged by acid. In the sandbox, seed scattered on a hot or acidic floor simply waits until water arrives.
Try it yourself
- Plant a lake. Flood a broad wall-sided tank and sprinkle seed across the surface. The seeds sink as they go and green specks appear at different depths; leave it running and the specks merge into one continuous mass of plant.
- A garden on a timer. Spread seed along a stone shelf and leave it dry; nothing happens. Later, pour water onto one end of the shelf. Sprouting begins only where the water reaches, so that end turns green first and the dry end waits.
- Light grains rise. Fill a narrow tube with seed and then pour salt on top. The salt settles to the bottom of the tube and the green seed is pushed up above it, the weight-4 versus weight-5 rule in action.
Reactions
Odds are per contact check: each tick, touching cells inside the same two-by-two block are checked against the reaction table, so even a small chance happens soon after contact.
When seed touches something
- Touching Water: turns into Plant, and the Water dissolves away. (slow, 6% per contact check) →
Tip
Seed separates where growth happens from when it starts: place the seed first, then send water toward it whenever you want the plants to appear.