River generation method

[Kaidan35]

I don't know the main reason why rivers haven't been added to world generation yet. But maybe my idea will help speed up the process.

The method consists of the following steps:

1) Generating the main continents (it may be possible to do without continents in the early stages; continents are scaled depending on the size of the world, and their number is configurable, say 6. Islands and archipelagos will also be generated in addition to them)

2) River headwater generation (these are points generated on continents and islands; you can also generate river heads from mountain lakes or link the headwater to a turbulent stream generation)

3) Determining the distance from the source to the nearest lake, sea or ocean

4) When the closest distance is determined, a river will be generated in the direction of the nearest body of water from point 3 (the direction of the flow will also be set in that direction; closer to bodies of water, it will be ordinary water, without a visible current, simply depending on the generation in the water block, there will be a directed speed that can carry entities along the riverbed; closer to the source, where the difference in height is greater, a normal flood flow from a normal water block will be generated to create a slope of the current)

 

This generation method seems to me to be the easiest one to add in the near future. Moreover, generating continents and islands becomes necessary to justify the existence of sailing ships. And the river generation method I proposed is similar to what we see in real life (relatively speaking), where a river originates from the center of a continent or island.

[August Moore]

I would also like rivers in game. I think the reason why they haven't happened yet is because it can be complex to figure out how to keep the water flowing from the source without crashing the game. It's a fairly complex issue, where does the source block start for flowing water, where does it end, how is generating the source block from another chunk going to affect gameplay. It can get pretty dicey pretty quickly. Especially in a block game where downhill rivers are easier to simulate than longer, less sloped rivers. The current flowing water mechanics are very cool as is, but it might just be an issue of complexity.