How exactly does melon/pumpkin growth work?
Often, when people discuss automatic melon/pumpkin farm designs on reddit or similar places, a question pops up:
Does pushing a block into the air block the melon/pumpkin will grow into reset the growth timer?
If the answer to this is yes, a badly set up timer can severely limit the production rate of your melon/pumpkin farm by resetting the growth all the time.
From a code perspective, this would mean that the game is looking at the air blocks surrounding a stem continuously, updating a growth timer somewhere when a random tick update hits the stem (or the air block?), which I guess is possible. It could also imagine it to pick a direction first and only check that block, but I don't know, which brings me to the question:
How exactly does melon/pumpkin growth work? What are the specific steps the game code runs, and how does it interact with the world? An answer based on decompiled code would be ideal, but extensive testing might also reveal the game's logic.
Pictures about "How exactly does melon/pumpkin growth work?"
How do melon and pumpkin farms work?
In terms of farms, the automatic melon and pumpkin farm is a simple contraption. Seeds will grow in front of an observer. When melons and pumpkins are fully grown, a piston will push them down into a hopper, which will empty into a chest.How do you make pumpkins and melons grow faster in Minecraft?
By placing water up to 3 blocks away from your farmland, all the farmland around it (up to 3 blocks) will be hydrated, which turns it into a darker brown colour. Any crops on hydrated farmland will grow faster. Unlike wheat, melons and pumpkins don't grow on the block you planted it.How long does it take for melon and pumpkin to grow in Minecraft?
Melons take 10 to 30 minutes to grow, which is equal to 0.5 or 1.5 of a Daylight cycle. Once a stem has produced a melon, that stem does not produce any further melons until the existing melon is harvested.Do melons and pumpkins grow the same?
Watermelons and pumpkins belong to the plant family Cucurbitaceae, a group of plants commonly referred to as cucurbits. Since they share similar cultural requirements, cucurbits will grow harmoniously in the same bed if provided with plenty of sunshine, supplemental nutrients and water.[Full] Pumpkin growth time-lapse: from the seed to the mature fruit in 108 days and nights
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: Karolina Grabowska, Alfo Medeiros, Gustavo Fring, Pixabay