It appears that something Mojang did in 1.2.5 broke giant mushroom growth, so that they need shade to grow. This is an extremely dumb idea (even dumber than them nerfing fire spread). Worse, this was an intentional "fixing" of a "bug," so they're definitely not going to fix it themselves. Is it possible at all for plugins to fix it, or is this one of the things that plugins cannot fix?
It is possible and really not even all that hard to do, but finding someone to make it and keep it updated would be rather difficult I would assume.
Mushrooms grown on Mycelium don't require shade, so what you could do (and what I did on my server) is make a crafting recipe for mycelium. I'm not using giant mushrooms for any in-game benefit (no alchemy, etc.), so a cheap recipe like this isn't an issue. If you want them to be more expensive, maybe eight mushrooms with a dirt in the middle (or eight mushrooms with a grass in the middle, requiring killing a grass-carrying enderman, silk touch tools, or a grass recipe) would be more to your liking.
I test-drove a number of the recipe plugins, and I settled on http://dev.bukkit.org/server-mods/recipemanager/. It's the easiest to configure, most versatile, and looks to have the most active development.
Alright, I guess that's close enough to a solution, but it would be really nice to see a plugin fixing this Mojang error created, if it's possible for plugins to fix these kinds of things. As well as fixing the fire spread.
I can't get recipemanager to work. I've placed the jar in my plugins folder, but the folder for the config file isn't generating, even after I restarted the server twice. Any ideas?
Dunno . . . it was plug and play for me. Are there errors in the console? It may be that you have it built for the wrong bukkit build? @Garret: It's a bit smoother with Spout, because there's an interface-update lag with RecipeManager when you craft stacks of things, but recipes are mediated by the server, so it does work, and nicely! I use seeds in mossy recipes, since lots of us like building with it, too. Also, re: "Mojang error", not really an error, since it was done on purpose, but a philosophical difference between you and Notch. ;-) Personally, I agree that mushrooms are more realistic this way (you could just build an overhang to grow them under, then tear it down), though I do like the ability to easily grow shrooms anywhere. I'm just waiting for custom brewing stand recipes: right now you can only do crafting and smelting recipes without Spout. EDIT by Moderator: merged posts, please use the edit button instead of double posting.