Water spreading like in the other block game

[JAGIELSKI]

The current water physics aren't that good and water spreads in unrealistic ways (as anyone who tried to dig in/around a lake or even a puddle can attest to). Why not ape the other block game's water mechanics until we can figure out something that's actually better? Because the other game's water mechanics are vastly better IMO and I'd say they're more realistic.

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, JAGIELSKI said:

Why not ape the other block game's water mechanics until we can figure out something that's actually better? Because the other game's water mechanics are vastly better IMO and I'd say they're more realistic.

I'd argue the opposite--the water physics in the other block game are very much NOT more realistic, nor are they much better than Vintage Story's. In Minecraft it's much easier to fill large areas with water, and you can avoid all fall damage by simply landing in a centimeter's worth of water(that you can also place yourself via a bucket if timed correctly).

In contrast, Vintage Story doesn't let you get away with those sorts of antics(mostly), and while it takes a bit more effort to fill in a large area with water, I can't really think of that many times that I've wanted/needed to do such.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

From the VS Team here: LINK

On 3/14/2020 at 10:36 PM, redram said:

A pretty good general guideline is that if minecraft has a thing, then you don't need to suggest it.   We know about minecraft.  We know what they have in it.  We either already plan to have the feature in question in Vintage Story eventually, or we will not have it because it does not mesh with the devs' vision for Vintage Story.  Or it might be a technical nightmare (looking at you ships) with relatively low reward.

I'm sorry but suggesting something from "the other block game" is just low-effort.

[Thorfinn]

16 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

and you can avoid all fall damage by simply landing in a centimeter's worth of water

Don't know if it's been patched out, but 3 or 4 versions ago, you could negate fall damage by landing on spikes. This is the real he-man game. "We don't dive off cliffs into water. We dive onto friggin' spikes, you pansy."

[LadyWYT]

33 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Don't know if it's been patched out, but 3 or 4 versions ago, you could negate fall damage by landing on spikes.

Well now I have to go test it to see if it works. I know there's a bug where as long as you don't touch any movement keys while falling, you won't take any fall damage. Not sure if that one's been fixed yet or not, but I've been avoiding using it so I don't get in the habit and go splat when it does get fixed.

[Maelstrom]

There's also no damage if you fall onto a ladder.  I use that to drop safely from my mountaintop forgeworks.  I think even the bighorn sheep are envious of how quickly I descend that mountain.

[Killian Hart]

I was surprised when water didn't spread into adjacent blocks from natural source blocks. If that was the only thing changed, I'd love it. Diverting water from rivers to create irrigation channels has been done since the time of times of the ancient Egyptians. 

[yolistenupheresthestory]

I only just recently started playing, and the beautiful water surfaces reacting to the strength of the wind had me fooled into thinking there would be some sort of proper water physics until I actually dug out an irrigation channel from a nearby pond and was disappointed when removing the separation-block not only didn't partially drain the pond but also didn't fill the channel up at all past a couple of blocks getting a Minecraft-style "flow" on them. I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement without totally frying most host systems trying to run the game, but I'd love to see a water system more akin to Dwarf Fortress than Minecraft.

I'd also love to see stormy waves and strong currents including riptides forming on very large bodies of water (primarily oceans), but that's something I won't even hope for lol

[Thorfinn]

I liked for the waves and currents, @yolistenupheresthestory. The waves is relatively easy, so long as you have the graphics card for it. The circulation is not. We understand circulation models so poorly that we have, well, stealing from Ike, the climate change-government complex.

Water models I'm not coming up with anything I like. I think at core I don't like source blocks at all. I'd like something more like Terraria, where there is a fixed quantity of water in a given body, so the surface level drops a little with every canal you dig, but that would be absolutely horrendous in terms of syncing large bodies of water. 

I definitely do not want griefer-city that infinite sources make of a game.

[EDIT]

Just think of all the waterfalls you see. With an infinite source model, eventually we would have Waterworld, up to the start of the highest waterfall. It's the same problem as leveling out large bodies of water, but now it would be over the entire 1e7 x 1e7 world.

Edited February 4, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I'd like something more like Terraria, where there is a fixed quantity of water in a given body, so the surface level drops a little with every canal you dig, but that would be absolutely horrendous in terms of syncing large bodies of water. 

What's the feasibility of perhaps adding in special bodies of water that have variable levels? Like puddles after a big rain, that evaporate in a few hours, or perhaps temporary watering holes forming in deserts and savannahs after it rains, that dry up after a few days? That way you could keep the simplified water physics that we have already, but still have some more interesting water features to find and interact with, without cooking your PC(hopefully).

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

What's the feasibility of perhaps adding in special bodies of water that have variable levels? Like puddles after a big rain, that evaporate in a few hours, or perhaps temporary watering holes forming in deserts and savannahs after it rains, that dry up after a few days? That way you could keep the simplified water physics that we have already, but still have some more interesting water features to find and interact with, without cooking your PC(hopefully).

there was a mod for the other block game that did that and it was pretty heavy on the resources and didn't always work.

[Thorfinn]

I can't think of a way in a world that has source blocks, sorry. Well, not that don't have the issues I'd prefer to avoid.

One with several discrete water levels (like Dwarf Fortress' 8 or whatever chiseling is capable of, 16? Or is it 8, like partial sand blocks?) could be iterated fairly quickly, but only if you weren't doing something like draining an ocean into a rift valley or some massive open pit mine you created. The other question is whether adding solid blocks to a lake displaces water such that the adjacent water levels all rise. Possibly replacing the air block above a full water block with a partial water block.

[Thorfinn]

I have no idea what the other game does, so for what it's worth -- What if source blocks replicated only horizontally (on the same y level) AND there are no non-solid, non-source blocks one y-level lower within 3 in any direction?

You could build a canal and it would fill. You could remove an accidental block in a lake and it would refill. But, if you could not fill a valley with water from an upland lake. If you had an Archimedes screw, you could build a lock system or even aqueducts, though your fountains would behave the same way current water flows.

I'm sure there's got to be something wrong with this. Have at it.

Edited February 5, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Zero_]

On 2/4/2025 at 9:55 AM, Thorfinn said:

I'd like something more like Terraria, where there is a fixed quantity of water in a given body, so the surface level drops a little with every canal you dig, but that would be absolutely horrendous in terms of syncing large bodies of water. 

"Something more like Terraria" You mean the real world. Lol

[JosephSchmo]

On 1/29/2025 at 3:47 PM, traugdor said:

From the VS Team here: LINK

I'm sorry but suggesting something from "the other block game" is just low-effort.

Canals are unbuildable. Irrigation is more of a headache than it even is in real life. It is near-impossible to feasibly build a stable canal. If "more realistic" was actually the goal instead of cope for bad water physics, then the water would fill in naturally.