[DD] Water

[m4rek]

After a discussion I had with Hyronymus, we decided this warranted further dicussion and required input from other people.

Water: I believe it should not be a terrain but be "inflictable" on other terrains. Therefore, if you remove the water (for whatever reason), you have all the terrain as it was (or almost, but thats a minor detail) before any water was added (ie, before a dam was built).

OR

Water is a terrain type and therefore when an area is flooded, it is erased and if the water should be removed for whatever reason, a new landscape is generated for the reclaimed area.

Question1: Should water be a terrain type (as defined above) or "inflictable" onto other terrain (as defined above)?

Question2: If "inflictable", how will the terrain be dealt with during and after immersion (or submersion)? (ie, should it remain exactly the same or changed slightly)



Hyronymus, feel free to change anything here if I misinterpreted any part of our conversation or assumed what wasn't said.

[Dave]

Answer to qu1 - No. Absolutely not.

If you're going to have that you need to seperate two types of water. Remember Earth has land sticking out of water, not water on land (not in a sensible sense anyway). I guess canals and other man made water objects are "built on land", so there needs to be something to do things like that.

Qu2 - How it should be dealt with...

Well I think it land should rise out of the water (like in TTD). Obviously the beach is *sort of* flat down to the sea but it's generally more of a slope/gradient to the point where water level is *above* the land level.

[m4rek]

in answer to that,

1, what then, do you propose is on the bottom of the ocean? water?

2, i didnt make this clear, ill edit my post and you can try again

[Lilman424]

1. I think that water SHOULD be an inflictable terrain (in the same sort as concrete, snow, etc), with every piece of terrain under a certain height automatically "inflicted" with it.

2. There should be two types of terrain, those that stay the same after being having water removed (For example, bedrock, dirt, sand) and others that change (woodlands => grass, etc)

[m4rek]

with every piece of terrain under a certain height automatically "inflicted" with it.

i have to disagree here... although i need to speak to hyronymus about this...
i suggest that when creating a map (not sure how to do this using random maps), the land is created in its entirety, and you take the bucket of water tool, and pour water into an area. you decide how high the water goes and you can change it while previewing the map. you also have a tool that creates an area where water is generated and runs downhill (ie, marshland that supplies rivers)

and then you have aquifers. water doesnt automatically appear if you lower land below sea level. it appears if you lower it into a water basin (aquifer), this can be above or below sea level. although near the sea, it would be at sea level and would cover a large area adjacent to the sea.



anyway, the benefits of having water as "inflictable":

• water depth to control ship movement (you cant have a giant container ship going up a small stream)
  perhaps some submarines (more discussion on this later)
  land below sea level
  tunnels under seabed
  tunnels on sea bed
  tunnels suspended from sea bed
  tunnels below sea level (on land)
  perhaps some more that i just cant think of

to the best of my knowledge, these are impossible when using water as a terrain type

[eis_os]

I really would like a complete water simulation, however thats really a question if the dev team can handle that. I remember Earth2150 should allow to flood, but they had to many problems.

With a full simulation, canals would be quite easy to build, you dig a hole in the landscape and simple flood it.

##_##

However it would be a pain aswell to write the guard code so players don't start flooding each other when it's so easy...

[Hyronymus]

I think this topic is of interest for the current discussion of water.

[m4rek]

so can we all agree that water is inflictable? yes? no? yes? yes, good

now to address the issue of flooding large areas of land, ill post my ideas on that later cos im on borrowed time ATM...