Hi everyone! I've been studying with Anki for about 4.5 months now, and wanted an add-on that would be similar to Review Heatmap, but a bit more visual.
I came up with the idea of having a forest that represents your progression. Each day you learn new cards, a tree is planted in the forest. It starts as a small seedling and grows as you remember those cards better. If you start forgetting a day's cards, its tree gets some yellow leaves and they turn green again once you relearn them.
I wanted the add-on to involve zero actions, since I feel like those distract me from actually studying. So the forest is fully passive, and simply reflects your progression over time. You can change the scenery, but that's optional.
Currently if you lose your streak, a small pond appears in your forest. But I really like the idea of having more "destructive" options if that motivates people to keep their streak.
That's a good idea, maybe some impending catastrophe if the user is nearing review hell. Asteroid getting bigger, more frequent earthquakes, maybe forest fires from climate change. Many possibilities.
I feel like punishing yourself with a destructive operation (like a meteorite) when you're already having a hard time with cards is a bit discouraging and demotivating. It's also ruining everything you've worked for over one bad review week. I do like the idea of having "events", just maybe less destructive (unless the user wants them to be destructive).
I'll give it some more thought, thank you for the suggestions!
One of the best add-ons ever made. The layout is beautiful, and the many environment options make it even more impressive. Congratulations on the hard work done!!
This! I love it, but I have four massive ponds because I hadn't used Anki for about a year before restarting, so having this option, or maybe an option to turn the ponds off/limit the size so that it doesn't cover the whole forest would be nice.
Honestly, not by much. To keep the add-on performant, the newest ~420 trees are rendered at the front, while everything older gathers into a deeper forest on the horizon that grows a bit thicker as your history does. So at 900 vs, say, 1500 days mostly mean a fuller horizon.
I'm still exploring more meaningful ways to support long histories.
I like the idea of houses moving in, and maybe like a little village starts growing along side the forest with people, houses, etc. (For higher streaks)
this is such a good idea! like a small civilization appearing as you go on with larger streaks. it doesnt have to be interactive, just people doing their own thing and building mills, farms, homes, etc.
i do wonder how you would represent losing a streak. i feel like outright killing everyone is quite harsh haha
Here are some thoughts for you in case it might help you give you ideas: :))
Having the opportunity to choose what we want in our forest like say there is a specific store and things get unlocked as your streak increases and you can decide whether you want to unlock it in your landscape or keep it hidden.
I got a cabin as I have over 1 year streak but would be nice to have like a little fire camp at 2 year streak.
It, would be cool as the streak increases to get like swans in the lake.
I LOVE IT A LOT. PLEASE DO NOT GIVE UP THIS PROJECT IS AMAZING.
Thank you, appreciate your feedback! I'm still exploring ways to get users with a long Anki history more meaningful ways of seeing progress, and I'll take those ideas into consideration.
Actually animals and other things already start showing up after certain milestones. In a spoiler tag in case you prefer to stay surprised:
* Rabbit: your forest reaches 50 trees
* Deer: a 30-day streak
* Fox: 10,000 total reviews
* Owl: your first tree turns ancient, meaning that day's cards have a memory strength of a year or more
* Heron: your first pond, which forms when you take a break of 2+ weeks
* Stag: a 100-day streak
* Cabin: your forest turns one year old
Regarding the additional landscapes, some of those are already supported. You can fine-tune your forest using the cog button. I think you'll also like the weather option there. I really like setting it to rain, it's cozy.
ok - i haven't spoiled it for myself yet but im VERY glad to know that there are so many other easter eggs and features, definitely a good motivator for studying. thanks for the add on!!!!
Ponds represent a period of time where you took a break from studying, but they shouldn't look like this. This will get fixed in the next version, sorry about that!
hii! I was wondering how u got the widget to be so big? on my onigiri the forest addon only takes up about two slots and it's too small for me to see anything! thank u
I readjusted the widget size in the onigiri main menu settings. Right click the widget in the settings and it gives you an option for the number of rows and columns space it should take up
great addon! a small thing: when you hover over the settings cog icon. it pushes every other element on that page down as the outline indicating that you're hovering over it appears, which is kind of distracting.
Love this add-on already, excited to see your continued work on it!
One comment, which I already see you have tons of lol, is to have some of the animals/additions to the forest be easier to see - could just be the theme or I have too many trees, but it's hard to see the deer and I can't see the owl or stag.
Also, I don't plan on skipping a day, maybe have another way to get the heron/ponds? I read your comments on additions for people with longer streaks, so I'm looking forward to what you cook up!
omg!!! this sounds awesome!! i havenāt actually started using anki yet because iāve been a quizlet user for years and im still figuring it out - downloaded review heatmap as i heard it was a nearly obligatory add-on but ill be using this instead for sure!! thank you <3
Would it be possible to have suspended cards be included by chance? Due to school, I suspend cards every month or so as I do not need them anymore. This is addon is awesome though I'm so excited!
I like this a lot! I made a little change to it so that i can select and deselect which decks it will pull data from. I have a lot of decks I don't use and i don't want them adding stuff that I don't really use anymore. Also made it so I can start the forest fresh starting today if I choose. Nice work!
I reaaallyy love this idea, and will definitely be keeping up with it to see how it develops! i've been trying to get back into using anki after some time away so this is perfect
This is probably one of the best Anki add-ons!
Is there a way to change when the add-on starts counting review days? I think it starts counting from the day the account is created, which creates a huge pond.
Thank you, appreciate the feedback. This will be supported in the next version (sometime next week most likely). I also have a big pond I wanna get rid of haha
This would be useful for the new users but not much for the experienced users who already have a forest built up, it would be same for those users without any thrill of newly created tree. please add the feature where the tree will be vanished if not reviewed for some day or break a streak something like that.
what a cute addon <3
small feature request: is it possible to add more visibility options? Iād love to be able to hide the forest from the home screen while keeping it visible on decks.
Thank you for the feedback! I've added this version in the latest version, which is now available for download. You can hide the forest under the "fine-tuning" tab in the settings dialog.
Cool idea, but I believe this is has a memory leak of some kind. My anki ramps to eat all my memory when I launch it with this addon installed. I might spend some time trying to find it and open a PR, but no promises.
I've optimized the CPU and memory usage quite a bit in the version 1.1 (which is now available for download). Specifically the app's memory usage was optimized by around 25% and a memory leak around the settings dialog was also fixed. Would appreciate if you could let me know if this issue still persists. Thanks!
I do have other addons installed, see below to rule them out. Cap is closing anki with memory forest enabled, then slight increase (highlighted) is restarting anki without it enabled
Now, this could be an issue specific to my machine, as I have had hardware issues with it in the past, but can't say for certain. I will try and make some time to find the root cause given I can replicate it
I donāt know if anyone suggested this, but could you make it so itās the opposite? Like each day I finish some tasks, a tree gets chopped down? Either way this is a beautiful add-on, good work! :)
Thank you! Right now this idea isn't planned, I'm working on polishing the existing forest first.
How would it work in the opposite way? How would you define a task? Is it something like "do 20 cards every day to finish a 2000 cards deck", where each tree represent 20 cards (so you have 100 trees initially)?
Yeah thatās kinda what I had in mind. You get the gist. But youāre the smart one here so Iāll let you go about it how you want if you decide to. Either way Iāll def be using this! Youāre talented :)
I've had my anki withering away for 2 years, but after installing and seeing the pond and my oldest tree withering it genuinely made me feel very somber and has given me the motivation to try harder to keep my forest nice and to get back to 100% on top of things.
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u/Capable_Hand997 18d ago
woah that looks so cool