Tone down dirt instability

[DeanF]

Once I heard about it, I was very interested in trying out dirt instability.  I hate having floating dirt blocks and large dirt overhangs everywhere.  And a lot of the dirt roofs that I see in videos would not be stable- they would need bracing nearly every other block.  But the switch seems to make dirt just as unstable as sand or gravel, which is too much.  Especially for dirt stabilized by grass or other plants.  It turns every hillside into a threat to your life.

 

So I'm not using it any more, but I would still like to have cave-ins if I dig out something unstable in a dirt mound, or try to make a dirt overhang too large.  Maybe one or two block wide tunnels could be pretty safe, but when they get wide they start getting questionable.  Same with large overhangs.

 

In short, I think that dirt instability needs to be somewhat less severe than sand and gravel instability.

[James_Walker]

Yeah, it makes sense that dirt covered with grass is kind of kept in place by the grass roots.
But there should still be a possibility of slipping on it - just not the whole hill at once.
Same with caveins and the possibility of cheesing it by just digging from above.
Maybe this will be reworked someday.

[LadyWYT]

I think there's at least one mod that does something like this. https://mods.vintagestory.at/stickydirt

I don't play with soil instability myself, but I do agree that dirt containing grass roots and other stuff should be less prone to collapse than loose dirt.

[Emeal]

I find it realistic that soil on a cliff will create a landslide if an animal step on it, but that it always happens when I am near and the world isn't settled reminds me this is a game.
and that its MY presence that causes animals to trigger landslides.

I really would like the world to feel more settled in terms of instability.

[Mac Mcleod]

3 hours ago, DeanF said:

Once I heard about it, I was very interested in trying out dirt instability.  I hate having floating dirt blocks and large dirt overhangs everywhere.  And a lot of the dirt roofs that I see in videos would not be stable- they would need bracing nearly every other block.  But the switch seems to make dirt just as unstable as sand or gravel, which is too much.  Especially for dirt stabilized by grass or other plants.  It turns every hillside into a threat to your life.

 

So I'm not using it any more, but I would still like to have cave-ins if I dig out something unstable in a dirt mound, or try to make a dirt overhang too large.  Maybe one or two block wide tunnels could be pretty safe, but when they get wide they start getting questionable.  Same with large overhangs.

 

In short, I think that dirt instability needs to be somewhat less severe than sand and gravel instability.

Yes, there should be a configurable valuable for each of three block types instead of a single boolean on/off flag.

And there should be some ongoing random checks (say 5 blocks per second) for blocks to slip in the area around the player.  I.e. pick a random loaded x,y,z location and check if it would slip.  If so, let it do so.   Five blocks per second is a *really* small value and would not impact performance (the game is doing thousands of things per second).

Right now animals cause some random slippage but the raw generation creates a LOT of terrain that's right on the edge of collapse when it should have already collapsed and created the mound of fallen dirt and gravel around the base.

While they are at it, it would be nice to stop blocks from bouncing down the road indefinately.  I've seen dirt blocks travel over 20 blocks on a road.



 

[DeanF]

Hmm.  Does merely turning the cave-in switch on solve the problem?  Is dirt less stable that rock, regarding cave-ins?

 

EDIT- No, experimentation shows that somehow dirt is the most stable ground block in the game.

Having played around with it a bit, cave-ins seem like how dirt should act, not rock.  Rock should be a bit more stable.

Edited Sunday at 08:52 PM by DeanF

[Tabbot95]

This is something that annoyed me in the other block game with it's very limited physics.

I hate the sense that my presence is causing physics to suddenly work, would prefer if there was a stage in worldgen where anything that might fall does fall (past a certain point of instability)..

 

it would be different if there were active systems of erosion, but that would require finer block-sizes.

[DeanF]

8 hours ago, Tabbot95 said:

I hate the sense that my presence is causing physics to suddenly work, would prefer if there was a stage in worldgen where anything that might fall does fall (past a certain point of instability)..

I had thought of the same thing.  But then no more floating mountains.

[Tabbot95]

2 hours ago, DeanF said:

I had thought of the same thing.  But then no more floating mountains.

no loss for me, don't care for them to begin with.

[DeanF]

16 minutes ago, Tabbot95 said:

no loss for me, don't care for them to begin with.

I don't like them in Minecraft, but they sort of add to the spookiness for Vintage Story.  They also look much better than in Minecraft, and that helps.