Dead spot testing failure
January 9, 2012 at 6:34 PM | Posted in AC:WW journal | 21 CommentsTags: Dafdilly
In late December of this past year I began to test for “dead spots” in my town — spots where trees should grow if they meet all the rules for tree growth (not being too close to anything else, not too many trees in the acre, etc.), but trees will never grow there simply because it’s a designated dead spot so that neighbors will have room to walk around without bumping into tons of trees. I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time, it would be amazing to know all the dead spots in my town so that I could plan the best possible spread of trees.
First I marked spots red that seemed unlikely locations for trees to grow and impractical places to have trees anyway. Then I marked green spots where I would plant trees for each day to test for dead spots. The green spots for one day turn to brown the next; once I finish the dead spot testing for each day I mark the found dead spots red and leave the spots brown where trees grow. But there aren’t any dead spots recorded in the following maps because of a problem I ran into with the gridded map I was using to plan my trees (more on that later).
Day 1 |
Day 2 |
Day 3 |
Day 4 |
Day 5 |
Day 6 |
Day 7 |
Day 8 |
Day 9 |
Day 10 |
Day 11 |
Day 12 |
Day 13 |
Day 14 |
Day 15 |
Day 16 |
Day 17 |
Day 18 |
Day 19 |
Day 20 |
If I had completed the testing, day 21’s map would have a complete recording (in red squares) of all the dead spots in my town. But I never got that far because I ran into a problem with my gridded map. >_< First of all, you can create these gridded maps using Sarouk’s town map generator, an extremely useful tool. But when I was counting spaces I found a mistake in the upper righthand corner acre of my town, which is identified as acre 15-M1 on the site:
And this is what it should look like, with the bottom house shifted one space down:
This messed up my dead spot testing because it’s like a domino effect: the places I planned to plant trees on day 1 affect where I plant trees on day 2 and so on.
I’ve had problems with this acre before; when I first made a gridded map for my town I accidentally selected a similar acre, 14-M1. 😛
I didn’t want to start dead spot testing again until I was absolutely sure that my map had no more mistakes, so I worked on creating my own gridded map:
Which is exactly the same as my previous map with the mistake in upper righthand corner acre fixed — go figure. 😛
Edit: At second glance, the gate pavement in my self-made map is a bit different, so I found another small mistake.
But at least I’m confident there are no more mistakes in my gridded map, so I won’t run into problems with any future projects. Plus my self-made gridded map is a .png image, which is useful for quickly filling in spaces with color-coded squares.
I know this isn’t my usual sort of post, but I just wanted to explain why I didn’t complete dead spot testing even though I mentioned I was in the middle of it in my last post. 🙂 Instead of resuming dead spot testing I’m going to prepare my town for a Wifi party I plan to have on my birthday.
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Waw! Love your new background it’s of the… I don’t know how to say the name in english but in spanish it’s: “Aurora boreal”, how it’s in english? 🙂 And the winter theme well I don’t know how to say 😆 sorry xP
Btw this post is interesting I don’t understand a lot about Ac original maps but the web you say it’s very good I gonna try to do my map xD And like I say I don’t understand a lot about maps in AC but the first red maps are very strange 😛
Comment by emmafv17— January 10, 2012 #
Thanks! It’s called the aurora borealis in English as well. In AC:CF it can be seen in the winter sky at night, which is where the background is from.
I’m sorry the post was confusing for you, I tried as best I could to explain what all the maps meant and what I was trying to do with each one. By the way, these are AC:WW maps, there are no maps like this for the original Animal Crossing unfortunately (I wish there were). If you’re ever unsure which game I’m posting on, you can look at the category right under the post title, which will either be “AC:WW Journal,” “AC:CF Journal” or “AC:GC Journal.”
You can make your own map here by selecting the acres in your town. 🙂
Comment by Amy— January 10, 2012 #
Oh thanks!! 🙂
Comment by emmafv17— January 10, 2012 #
Your backround is sooo beautiful! 😀
It´s an intresting post you have made.
I´ll soon post about my bithday! 😀
Comment by Usaagi— January 10, 2012 #
Thanks Usagi, I hope you had a great birthday! 😀
Comment by Amy— January 10, 2012 #
I have so many questions about dead spot testing I don’t where to start xP I guess for now… Did you feel there any any maximum number of trees you could plant per day? And if a square is good, and all conditions are met, does it let you plant there 100% of the time, from your very first try? (I always thought dead spots were dead, but live spots were dead when thry felt like it 😛 Obviously it’s likely that’s because one way or another I’d forgotten to meet one of the other conditions.)
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Is it just me or are there no lone red spots on those maps, even though the grid messed you up?
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Nice job mapping your whole town! And I wish the map generator looked that nice -_- Good luck when you come back to testing (again :P)
Comment by Teru— January 10, 2012 #
I don’t think there is a maximum number of trees you can plant per day as long as you are following the rules for tree growth (maximum of 24 trees in an acre and 6 trees in a quarter-acre). For example, I planted a lot of trees on day 1 — probably more than was wise for dead spot testing — but the planting followed those maximum rules for acres and quarter-acres and almost all of the trees grew. But I’ve heard of people planting many, many saplings (like every two spaces), hoping that the game will choose ~24 (or whatever) of the saplings in each acre to grow into trees, but instead almost none of them grew. And yeah, I think if all conditions are met, a good square will produce tree growth 100% of the time.
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I didn’t include any results because of how little I got, so I just put up the planning maps. That’s why there aren’t any dead spots recorded. Sorry for the confusion, I realize now that the way I wrote the second paragraph in this post was extremely misleading. 😮 (this part: “…once I finished the dead spot testing for each day I’d mark the found dead spots red and leave the spots brown where trees grew.” should be future tense or something. :P)
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Here’s the only results I have, it’s not even all of day 1’s trees. The green squares are trees I planned to plant but didn’t because I ran into the problem with the upper righthand acre, the brown squares are for trees that grew (green is a more logical color for this, but I was already using green to plan where to plant trees), and red squares are the dead spots/places where trees didn’t grow.
Comment by Amy— January 10, 2012 #
Ahh ok, you found quite a few on your first day then.
Hmm, so with what you said about people filling their acres with saplings, does that mean that if you cross the limit in an acre in one day, hardly any that you planted will grow, not even the accepted 6 per quarter-acre (because each sapling is subject to the already-too-many-trees rule, all at the same time and because of each other)? Haha, I’m definitely thinking too much.
Comment by Teru— January 10, 2012 #
“If you cross the limit in one session of planting saplings”, I should say.
Comment by Teru— January 10, 2012 #
I’ve never actually planted that many saplings myself, but I’ve read the problem at least a few times and I’d like to try it sometime. But it sounds like the game refuses to arbitrarily pick 24 trees to grow out of all those saplings. It reminds me of how saplings count as trees for perfect town status, so maybe they also count as trees for these acre and quarter-acre tree growth rules and as a result prevent the majority of the trees from growing. But why would just a few trees grow rather than none at all? It’s pretty confusing. >_<
Comment by Amy— January 10, 2012 #
Do you now when kammile gonna come back? I miss her posts! 😕
I thoght do you like write stories? You can do like me if you want, invent stories xD Well if you don’t like it’s okay 😆 🙂 The second story it’s already published.
PD: Do you like dogs? I have a friend and she has a blog about dog’s in spanish, she it’s called Marta, and this si her blog: perrosconsuficha.wordpress.com, she likes acww but she can’t find her acww game for DS, well I think you can be friends xD
Comment by emmafv17— January 13, 2012 #
I don’t think Kammile has ever left, per se, she’s still been responding to comments and such. But it looks like she has a new post now 🙂
No, I don’t particularly like writing stories. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to writing and it really stresses me out; plus, I don’t think I’m very good at it and would never post any fiction writing/poetry/whatever on the internet. >_>
You know, I do follow your blog’s RSS feed, which refreshes everyday, so I always know very soon after you make a new post. I’ve been too busy with school — just started a new, more difficult semester in college — to read it so far. I’ll go read it now. 🙂
Sorry, I’m more of a cat person. I grew up with cats, so I’m not used to dogs. I have two cats snuggling with me as I type this. 😛
Comment by Amy— January 13, 2012 #
That’s so cute! I love cats, and dogs, I actually have a dog with me right now 😛
Great post Amy! You must have worked a lot on these gridded maps. It seems like you put a lot of effort on this! I wouldn’t be able to do this, I’m too impatient and I get stressed out, a bit like what happens to you writing stories 🙂
Comment by jemmaa— January 14, 2012 #
Yeah, I don’t like to say that I dislike dogs because I’m sure I would love them if I grew up with one. But since I didn’t, I’m not used to the way they jump on you and stuff, haha.
Thanks! I did work hard on planning all this, and it didn’t even pay off because of the mistake in my gridded map messing everything up. >_< But now it's fixed and I have more experience and knowledge for when I start dead spot testing again.
Comment by Amy— January 14, 2012 #
Yeah I prefer cats too but Marta it’s my friend so I visit her blog, actually my favourite dog it’s called husky xD 🙂
Comment by emmafv17— January 15, 2012 #
Hey Amy! I just recently payed off the last mortgage on my mansion and I feel so happy! I have a question though. Is it normal for 10-20 jacob ladder’s to grow in my town everyday if I don’t have a perfect town? Jacob ladder’s just keep on popping up for no entire reason.
Comment by kinelle— January 14, 2012 #
Congratulations! 😀 I think jacob’s ladders are only supposed to grow when you have a perfect town, and even if you have a perfect town, there’s only supposed to be one popping up each day. So I don’t think that’s normal, but it’s nice. xP
Comment by Amy— January 14, 2012 #
Wait.. What is your time thing? Because I am confused at what is your time umm…. something…. Wait… if you don’t know what I mean, it’s about your time at where you live and I really want to visit your town cuz i have never wifi-ed b4.
Comment by kinelle— January 14, 2012 #
Sorry for my bad english.. I am confused at your standard time and I live in CA so I cannot tell the difference
Comment by kinelle— January 14, 2012 #
My time zone is North American Eastern Standard Time, same as New York. Here’s the site I’ve been linking to, it’s on my Dafdilly page as well:
http://www.timeanddate.com/library/abbreviations/timezones/na/est.html
Comment by Amy— January 14, 2012 #
Ohhh…. ok.. So you are like 3 hours earlier than me… aww… I wish I could make it to ur party. I still have to set my Wi-Fi into WEP or something like that and I could never possibly wake up that early. >n<
Comment by kinelle— January 15, 2012 #