Dirt with grass should not fall

[Wahazar]

Currently, physics setting is either very easy (only gravel and sand fall down) or very hard and annoying (gravel, sand and dirt fall sideways).

Dirt falling sideways causes frequent avalanches, caused by players and other entities, it is not only annoying, but also may cause lags on servers. As an result, this option is rarely used.

There are some mods trying to settle down this problem, but are not satisfactory.

I have 2 propositions to change falling dirt behavior:

1. make sand and gravel fall sideways, but dirt fall only vertically.

2. make sand, gravel and dirt sideways, but dirt with grass on top doesn't fall.

 

[Wahazar]

I analyzed json code and found, that fallSidewaysChance for sand is  0.75, while unspecified for soil (assume 1 as default) - it does make sense, soil should have much less chance for falling sideways, especially forest floor.

[Steel General]

I would like materials to have Angles of Repose, where the chance of falling increases to certainty with unsupported stack height. Grass on top of the stack or a tree adjacent to it ought to reduce the chance sufficiently that small overhangs can develop, but that's a much harder problem to solve than my fist sentence was

I wouldn't mind seeing this extended to packed dirt, cob, and cobblestone - all of those should stack very well but overhang poorly. At this point, though, we're edging into the cave-in system... and these systems should probably be merged, eventually.

Of course, I'd really like to see all the sediments shovel and lay like coal to make a smooth, smooth world.

[Thorfinn]

16 hours ago, Wahazar said:

I analyzed json code and found, that fallSidewaysChance for sand is  0.75, while unspecified for soil (assume 1 as default) - it does make sense, soil should have much less chance for falling sideways, especially forest floor.

Be sure to check the patches directory. The way the game options work is it creates an on-the-fly patch mod. Select gravity for soil, start a game and look at fallingblocks.json

Edited May 17, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Wahazar]

4 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Be sure to check the patches directory. The way the game options work is it creates an on-the-fly patch mod. Select gravity for soil, start a game and look at fallingblocks.json

That's a thing I do not understand - if I would like, for example, add sideway probability to the soil, should I patch soil.json or rather file in patch directory?

[Thorfinn]

I've never checked, but I'd assume the patch directory loads before mods, or there would be a much greater chance of breaking things, so a regular old mod would probably overwrite whatever settings the game launcher set.

The patch directory is whatever changes you made in the game settings, so don't change that. It will get overwritten when you next load a world. Use it as a guide to help figure out what needs to change in (IIRC) soil.json and forestfloor.json.

 

[Wahazar]

I don't understand one thing: fallingblocks.json add UnstableFalling behavior when blockGravity is sandgravelsoil - but such behavior is already defined for sand and gravel, why it is added and why not replaced?