In the standard game, giant mushroom "saplings" looks like some kind of generic leafy plant, which is hard to tell apart from oak or maple. I can't think of any good reason for this, so I took it upon myself to correct it. Here's how it looks. Download Link
I'm very into this as a mushroom tree lover. It really makes no sense that the immature forms are regular trees. Following for the finished version.
Alright. I mean it's basically done, I'm just not sure it looks as good as it could. Pixel art mushrooms aren't exactly the hardest thing to draw, especially with an example to work from, but I'm open to any feedback. Anyway I'll zip this up for release before long, whether I end up changing it much or not.
I think it looks good. My only tiny critique is that #3 looks fairly similar to the forage item, which might cause a lot of double-takes for people with forest farms where that kind of forage does appear in certain places. But I hesitate to offer that critique because I don't know how much different it could look given that... that's what a red mushroom looks like. (I did just look up young amanita mushrooms, though, and it turns out that they have really round caps at first! I had no idea.)
No that's an excellent point. I haven't tried a forest farm yet, so it didn't occur to me there could be regular red mushrooms on the same map. I've made one tweak since the screenshot, a bit of dirt around the base to make it look like they're literally popping out of the ground, so that should help a bit. Once I release this, anyone who uses the forest farm, please don't hesitate to let me know if it's actually confusing.
Released! Link added to first post. Edit: Ehh... There are two threads now, I guess I did something wrong. Was I suppose to add the mod to the existing thread somehow? Sorry, still a noob here.
OK so having played with this for a while myself now, there's one thing I'm not quite happy with. The second stage, while cool looking, doesn't really portray the game object accurately. That's the one, level with the player in the screenshot, showing the top of a mushroom pushing up out of the ground. Basically it looks too flat for how it really acts in the game. It looks like something you could walk over (you can't) and like it wouldn't be destroyed by a sword/scythe (it is). Anyone else notice this problem, or have any thoughts what I could use instead? I'm thinking maybe a smaller version of the next stage on a little spindly stalk or something.
I like the coming-out-of-the-ground aspect. Maybe if you made it more pointy? Like the mushrooms are progressing from pointy/closed to flat/open. Or put some dirt on it, like it's freshly broken through? I'm liking it, though. It's made the new arrivals much easier to find and protect.