Stroam
It was originally intended to be a character class then eventually subclass, but I guess it makes sense as a race too.
Glad you enjoy it, I have plans to (eventually in the long future) completely overhaul the mod and its gameplay.

Make it so that normal players can get up to 50% plantlevel through gameplay, and phototrophes start with +50% but are limited to how much they can eat.
So normal players can get up to 50% level and have no restrictions, while using the class allows you to get up to 100% but you have to play differently.
Also I have to completely overhaul how stats are applied to the player to be client-sided to fix annoying desync issues and massive amounts of lag.
Most importantly move everything out of commands because it's a really clunky system that players shouldn't be expected to have to interact with.

I love it. A new race! We need more of these.

Now compatible with the latest version, and fixed a few small annoying bugs.

Good news, I finally got the sunshine bar working. Adds a new light meter near the food bar which tells you how exposed you are.
I yoinked a lot of the GUI code from Oxygen Not Included and have thus added that developer to the list of contributors.

Should I hide the exposure bar if the player lacks the ability to perform photosynthesis? It might be useful.

Last update I switched to a nonlinear system. Well turns out I forgot to apply it to block/entity light.
This mean that lower levels of block light were too strong and higher levels of block light were too weak.
Now it uses the approperate %light = %light^2 curve

Rebranded Amored Skin to Thick-Skinned
Rebranded Sugar Rush to Solar-Powered
Rebranded Heavy Skin to Relaxed

Just a tweak to the balancing:
Light level clamps at 100%. Any light level over this is no longer useful.
Halved both the speed upsides and downsides as both were frustrating.
(Wearing plate armor made you near-immobile and walking at night was a slog)
(Wearing nothing made you overshoot where you wanted to be and caused a lot of rubberbanding)

Balancing is now at a point where I can comfortably call it 'vanilla-compatible'

Cancelling the weather system, since the weather code is a huge mess and as it turns out, weather doesn't actually affect light level.
Not released yet, but I did some work internally to allow for clothing to block partially or negatively to make room for a future update.

Now with seasons and bed support.
Sleep in the sun, I strongly suggest it.
Movespeed can now be seen in your character menu
Sugar Rush now also affects digspeed on top of movespeed
Sugar produced by photosynthesis now gives Fruit Nutrition

Sounds like cool ideas but all of it is out of my abilities.
The mod's designed to be built on and I was kinda hoping that people would build addons, so if you wanna try and figure it out you have my blessing.
I know that adding new items (such as the bark armor) can be accomplished with JSON and textures, so it's worth looking into if you're up for it.
If you add a bunch of plant-based armors I can impliment them to add "exposure" to the player. Mod cross-compatiliby is really easy. Yelb

I would also strongly suggest you join the discord (on the fourm thread) to have more complete conversations on various topics in the future.

Plantlevel is a nice addition, even if still only a "tag", yet. I’d love any kind of Growth, indeed, and more plant related stuff. What about Bark types instead of clothes or armor ? You could be more or less heavy, more or less burnable, more or less flexible (jump and run), and if you wear bark, you don’t have the malus from common human armors ? What about special skills, doable ? Like, poison spit or spear, thorns to retaliate when attacked, ivy or liana to capture a target, stun it maybe or make it stop moving for a while ? What about fire fear ? You can carry a torch, but you get some kind of Fear debuff, or if you carry it too long you may burn ? And maybe you burn from a longer distance, like 2 tiles away from a true fire (maybe not forge etc or it will become tedious...) ?

Next update is going to have the coveted "plantlevel" system.
It defaults to 50%, but you can set it higher or lower based on your preferences using the /plantlevel command
Setting it to 100% will double the upsides AND downsides while setting it to 25% will do the opposite.
The only exception to this is Sterile Gut which will always be in play as long as the player is Phototrophic.
So if you wanna do a challange run you can set your plant level to 0% while keeping the phototropic tag on.
Or if you wanna roleplay as a true plant you can set your level to 100% and disallow yourself from eating.

There is no reason why you can't set the value over 100 or under 0%, though who knows what would happen if you go below 0%.

I'm also going to include an anti-abuse feature called Photosynthetic Exhaustion, which is a real thing plants have to deal with where if you get too much light (and not enough darkness) efficiency drops to zero. It should never impact normal legitimate players but those who use excessive artificial lighting might find themselves having to put up with it. 18 hours on, 6 hours off just like the real thing. This turned out to be a lot harder than I expected because of how beds are implimented. It's going to get its own update, probably.

And done, check it out. Yelb

I was actually thinking of adding a progression system instead of just being a binary, though haven't figured out how to do TreeAttributes yet.
Right now it stores your player's Phototropic state as a single bit with the value [1] but I wanted to make it a precentage you can level up/down. Some day.
At the current moment, the player is assumed to be at a 50% so feel free to eat as you need to, especially to get nutrition.
Great feedback, the thing i'm struggling the most on right now is balance. I recently implimented a huge buff and a huge nerf and i'm not sure if I went too far with it.
Keep in mind that since you take half damage from enemy attacks, that means you effectively have a double health bar since it stacks with armor.

As for the mod being simple... that's because it's actually just a few lines of code!! Every time I add a new feature I have to figure it out by scratch, usually alone.
That's combined with lack of motivation means that new features just don't really come in all that fast. (massive understatment) Not that I can't do it, just that it's hard.

I do have a lot of ambitions on things I want to do, so over time when I find the inspiration to do so, i'll be sure to add the features you've suggested.
Considered adding the ability to eat fertilizers in order to gain nutrition stats, but figured that might be a little too overpowered so it's been on the shelf.

Your playtesting is extremely appreciated, thank you so much Yelb

After about 20 hours in 1.17pre5, i like this mod, but i also don’t like it. There should b a way IMO to "grow", similar to when you eat regular food, to get better stats and all. At first it’s easier and convenient not to eat, but later going underground and exploring high danger places, i feel i lack "something". Also i’m in a region with lot of rain and clouds, so the sun is scarce, and i actually like it. Maybe make some new food with fertilizer, insects, water... Or just up/down the stats day by day based on season ? Like a little weaker in winter, a little srtonger in spring etc ? Anything but "something" to get some depth, as the food in this game is quite fun and "usefull". Anyway, i’m keeping the mod active, but i’d love to see it extended, the idea is really reat.

Yelb
This brings me joy. Please let me know feedback and if you enjoyed playing it.

I have added two new traits to the 'class'. One upside, one downside. Download the latest update to check them out.

I love the idea of this mod ! Thanks fhor doing it. I will run it when game update is stable.

The preview version of Vintage Story has teased Oxygen mechanics, and you KNOW this mod is going to play around with that.
In preperation for this update, I have increased the regeneration rate to 1 per second down from 10 seconds.
Also fixed the weird issue it was having running on Version 1.16.5 (stable)
Next update will allow you to restore your breath using photosynthesis: Your oxygen will restore as long as your Calorie generation is higher than your Calorie usage.
EDIT:
After a bunch of bumbling around, I have finally managed to figure it out. All those on 1.17.0-pre4 can download the latest version to try it out.

DArkHekRoMaNT
Actually that was the original plan... but
The class system is hot trash and miserable to work within.
Any attempts to impliment it have been permenentaly cancelled.
What ideas I did have made it into this, or are planned for the future.

The mod works by giving your player the phototrophic tag. The value dosen't matter, as long as it's not null.
It checks if you have the tag, and if you do, it runs the calculations. If you don't it will just skip over you completely.
Knowing this, you can impliment your own class if you can figure out how to give them that tag on character creation.

I'll give you a hint; it's way harder than is even remotely reasonable and may actually be impossible. Save your time.
But if you can figure it out, awesome. Feel more than free to make your own mod and have this one as a dependancy.

The mod is still subject to change/improvement as the game's API opens up, and as I figure out how to do things.

I think that was the original goal? DArkHekRoMaNT

Have you thought about adding instead of a command - a separate plant class (possibly optional)? :)

Thanks for the feedback, Theisgood.
Don't worry too much about it, just go outside and watch your hunger bar restore.
You'll get a general feel of how much light you're getting by how fast you move.
If you're too slow or hungry, take some clothing/armor off and get some sunshine.

Such a cool mod idea.

Its intimidating to me but I think if I just try it I can make it work.

Once again this is super unique and different.