Thoughts on Oceans, Seas, Rivers, and Waterways

[Stroam]

Hello all,

There's just been such great content on Discord about this subject that I had to make a forum post to try and preserve that discussion. The question is how to make bodies of water interesting enough to add into the game? Some of that is how many minutes/size would be too long for crossing a body of water? What are some ways to make crossing a body of water more interesting that doesn't get old?

[Samuel Kloss]

Hey we were talking about it yesterday in #general. I'm a big fan of Oceans overall but more in a way like we "Could" have continents. There is no reason to cross a ocean if it just loops the whole generation around again. So if you find a new continent with possibly a new climate it would be super rewarding. In my opinion, oceans shouldn't be crossed without a vehicle and should lead to straight death. 

 

I would say 5 mins of straight running should be a reasonable size (default) should be customizable. As on the Roadmap and possible often said the best way to cross an ocean would be Multi-Block Boats feels the most immersive. Monster/animals and special weather should be a must have for oceans. Small Island which can appear from 1 side to the other are also super important. Everyone wants his secret "Tortuga Bay". 

There is a bunch of Lovecraftian Seamonsters which can be quite interessting. 

[Brady_The]

• Wild life (classic dolphins, sharks, whales (maybe a bit too ambitious))
• remains of wild life (classic whale skeleton, for example)
• scuba/diving gear
• corals, reefs, clams (pearls)
• Underwater ruins (after the apocalypse)
• Underwater ruins (before the apocalypse - better preserved, chance of "ancient" loot, etc)
• fun, engaging travel means (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Succession_of_forms_in_the_development_of_the_Austronesian_boat.png)

 

2 hours ago, Samuel Kloss said:

Lovecraftian Seamonsters

Great idea!

For some reasons I initially only focused on oceans and completely forgot the rest. I don't have much to say to the other water bodies, but having rivers of different sizes and depths would be nice (fords/natural crossings could be an interesting Point of Interest), currents would be absolutely fantastic.

Edited July 20, 2021 by Brady_The

[Luminus]

So first of all, it needs to be said that "fun" is a different measure for everyone. This game so far strives to be fun for a wide variety of audiences, and Oceans in no way should take away from that.....it should only add possibilities and interest. My perspective comes from playing a lot of TFC and TFC+ mods for minecraft, and I think those guys nailed the size and scope of the ocean pretty well.

Overall, what I would like to see are oceans that are significant barriers for travel, but are not too daunting. Even a new character should be able cross them with a few in game days of preparation (perhaps to flee a bad seed rather than restarting the world). Ideal size to me would be somewhere between 20-40 RL minutes to cross, and perhaps some wind/sailing mechanics or currents could be added to spice up the travel. Ideally, it shouldn't be too boring to cross, but should be epic enough to feel like an adventure and require some preparation. Building a bridge should be out of the question.

With large oceans, you have the possibility for islands/archipelagos of various sizes, and you have new terrains you can introduce (salt marshes, river deltas, sand/gravel beaches, imposing fjords, volcanic islands, etc.) This will only serve to enhance the beauty and variety of the game as it stands now. Oceans also make great natural borders for different rock strata, different foliage, crops and wildlife, etc so there will be a strong incentive to explore. The ocean itself could play host to a number of different and interesting things to explore and collect for survival. Plus, the addition of salt water can allow for salt production without finding Halite. Salt water could even provide an initial product for the beginning distillation setup.

I love the idea of underwater ruins, boat wreckage, and sea creatures! anything to create more variety in our explorations!

Ocean travel shouldn't be gated behind metal, instead maybe have several tiers of boats that improve (T1 boats could be logs and maybe pitch, T2 could use planks and bronze and linen but be faster and maybe have item storage, etc). perhaps the more advanced ships would need to be constructed on a dry dock near the ocean and pushed in.

[Erik]

I think rivers and oceans could add huge gameplay as well as aesthetic benefits to the game, when combined with reworked world gen and water mechanics. Rivers are imo the best examples of this, since they could offer the most in terms of gameplay:

• Generally better soil quality and more frequent clay near rivers
• Farmland near rivers will be moisturized, only river water should moisturize farmland
• Waterwheels powered by rivers enable more constant mechanical energy
• Small canals (8 blocks max length) build from rivers enable watering even bigger areas
• Canals or aqueducts powered using mechanical energy enabling even better farming or even transport of floating items

Rivers could work without oceans, but then they would be limited to being flat like in Minecraft. Realistic rivers flowing downhill require terrain generation on a larger scale to be able to be implemented. River generation needs to be done in separate larger areas, where a river from one area can never interact with one from another area. The best way to do this would be by dividing the world into continents. Each continent would be surrounded by water, the ocean, seamlessly dividing the continents from one another. The ocean wouldn't be very wide, as the continents form a grid, so traveling from one continent to another shouldn't take very long, I think something like one to two kilometers of oceans between continents would fit the best. Here is a quick blender visualization of a few heightmaps I generated that demonstrates the general layout of continents (imagine the most left column was also offset):

A benefit with this layout is that on each continent only has six neighbors instead of eight, meaning that when creating a new world, only seven instead of nine continent maps need to be generated and only three instead of five when entering a new continent. The continents are basically just heightmaps, where each pixel represents a chunk column. These values would not just have an effect on the generated terrain, they would offset the whole chunk column vertically. This allows far greater scale, greater heights and deeper depths, while not having to raise the world height or change the chunk or world generation system entirely. The ocean level would stay static and not be offset with the chunk columns, meaning that this system automatically creates oceans, when the heightmap is low enough to submerge the terrain.  Rivers will be generated with the continent, meaning they will realistically flow downwards, towards the edge of the continent and therefore into the ocean. I'm currently experimenting a bit on implementing river based terrain generation to work for generating such heightmaps.

Generating those continents with rivers doesn't need to be done often, but will probably take a few seconds, so there needs to be a bit of a compromise when it comes to their size. I think 512 by 512 pixel representing 512 by 512 chunks would be a good size, meaning the continents are a bit bigger than 16 times 16 kilometers. This means, traveling south the player needs to cross an ocean to get to the tropics, but as oceans between continents shouldn't be wider than two kilometers, it wouldn't take long with a boat, maybe 10 minutes. 1024 by 1024 chunks would also be an option, offering roughly 32 by 32 kilometer continents, making crossing the ocean almost match crossing the equator, but coming at the cost of requiring at least four times as much computation and therefore time.

Other than continents using vertical chunk column offset giving more scale to the terrain and creating oceans, there are also several benefits to them:

• Oceans allowing for saltwater, salt harvesting, islands, beaches, marine life
• Continents having distinct flora and fauna (maybe even people/cultures) mimicking real life
• Temperature and rainfall changes taking advantage of the bigger scale, no more sudden shifts by a few blocks high hills
• More realistic rainfall and temperature distribution, depending on the heightmap
• Landform appearance dependent on chunk column offset, allowing for highlands landforms, ocean landforms, etc.
• Every continent connected by the same ocean, making travel by ship really useful
• Small inland oceans dynamically appearing, being natural barriers for traveling
• Enabling realistic rivers, always flowing downhill into an ocean and complex features of them, like river deltas

[EnigmaticWonder]

I definitely think oceans need to big enough that simply swimming across isn't an option. There should be a bit of fear and trepidation in considering a crossing but with the proper prep, manageable. So introduction of boats would be a must, along with storage transportation options. Tying in the new wind mechanic with sailboats could be fun. As for Ocean content, can imagine discovering a massive tower but only the top bit is sticking up out, a remnant of the past containing loot, lore, and some new aquatic horrors. Have old style brass diving equipment that can be used for exploration. Oceans being what they are, and with the Lovecraft influences in the game, you can really play around with large enemies, maybe restricting them to the deep oceans.

[Arun]

I agree with what others have suggested. 

Other than that the ocean should absolutely have its own monsters. Rather than having the ocean floor be relatively high like in minecraft there should be great depths with monstrosities and treasures of its own. I imagine depths so deep and dark that you have to craft high end equipment to even see there. I definitely think there should be a nice side to the ocean too, like islands and wildlife but also abominations and lovecraftian horror.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Arun

[Fredrik Blomquist]

I like the idea of oceans and continents, but i would prefer if the continents had different size, some much larger than others, and some areas only archipelagos and other again only ocean with the occasional small island.

[RobinHood]

Maybe some people would miss huge land mass. My thoughts, like in the good old "CIV Games" or in "Alpha Centauri" - we should have 3 minimum different map settings, two more mapgens

1) classic-mapsetting, lot of land, some seas, we have allready a single-continent, in civ they call it as pangea
 

2) continents - much more water maybe 50-70% of the map
 

3) archipelago - 80-90% huge water surface, one single ocean, but wait, maybe too hard ....???!!

maybe archipelago  too hard, you will maybe start far away from a nice island with food  and other recources etc .... hmmm .. maybe pangea & continents good enough.

 

 

Edited June 10, 2022 by RobinHood

[l33tmaan]

Yes, and we also need sentient fungus that wants to kill us. That'd be a good setting.

[Garjouan]

Here is the thing.

Oceans are boring. What's IN them might be interesting, but that's probably end game content.

Subnautica managed to make them interesting by having you dive into them and them being pretty and full of fish. In VS, without a lot of stuff to add, they'd be nothing else but bigger lakes, which at the moment mostly serve as a big road bump.

Crossing an ocean might be interesting, but only if there are things to do at the time. Raft makes it interesting because you have to collect debris and fend of sharks. If all you do in VS is to drive into one direction for four to six IG days, so for several hours in RL without anything happening, then people won't cross them.

And with "something happening" I mean more than "there is a storm and some waves" (although you could at least make that interesting) or "You get attacked by the Kraken and eaten". And so far, I can't see how that could be done, without implementing a ship simulator to give you a mobile base or so. Even in Multiplayer, where you can interact with people.

Also the cost-reward-balance for building a boat or ship should be positive, if I spend a huge amount of time and resources to built an ocean going ship without anything cool to be discovered on the other side (except more land), then it's not going to be worth it.

 

Instead, I'd focus on lakes, rivers and coasts. Make them interesting. Have rivers be a source of resources like fish and such - from fishing or building those V shaped fish traps from - stones, be a source of energy and irrigation and most importantly: make them an easy way to travel (at least in one direction). Let them form waterfalls and canyons in mountains, swamps and meadows in flats and give them unique sound bits (water animals, bird voices etc.). Same for lakes and shores. I was lucky in my last seed and basically found fjordlands at a lake. Have giant "white cliffs of Dover" and palm lines tropical beaches.

[Davis]

On 6/10/2022 at 11:42 AM, Garjouan said:

Here is the thing.

Oceans are boring. What's IN them might be interesting, but that's probably end game content.

Subnautica managed to make them interesting by having you dive into them and them being pretty and full of fish. In VS, without a lot of stuff to add, they'd be nothing else but bigger lakes, which at the moment mostly serve as a big road bump.

Crossing an ocean might be interesting, but only if there are things to do at the time. Raft makes it interesting because you have to collect debris and fend of sharks. If all you do in VS is to drive into one direction for four to six IG days, so for several hours in RL without anything happening, then people won't cross them.

And with "something happening" I mean more than "there is a storm and some waves" (although you could at least make that interesting) or "You get attacked by the Kraken and eaten". And so far, I can't see how that could be done, without implementing a ship simulator to give you a mobile base or so. Even in Multiplayer, where you can interact with people.

Also the cost-reward-balance for building a boat or ship should be positive, if I spend a huge amount of time and resources to built an ocean going ship without anything cool to be discovered on the other side (except more land), then it's not going to be worth it.

 

Instead, I'd focus on lakes, rivers and coasts. Make them interesting. Have rivers be a source of resources like fish and such - from fishing or building those V shaped fish traps from - stones, be a source of energy and irrigation and most importantly: make them an easy way to travel (at least in one direction). Let them form waterfalls and canyons in mountains, swamps and meadows in flats and give them unique sound bits (water animals, bird voices etc.). Same for lakes and shores. I was lucky in my last seed and basically found fjordlands at a lake. Have giant "white cliffs of Dover" and palm lines tropical beaches.

I agree with this for the most part. Although, I have a few mentions. 

1. Crossing the ocean to discover new land is valuable in itself. New land means new prospecting opportunities, or dungeon spawns etc. So that alone is worth the cost of build a boat. 

2. We currently have ocean generation down pretty good on the multiplayer server VintageCiv. One thing you need to add is tons of life and some danger to crossing an ocean. I think this will require some player testing to determine how difficult and powered the ocean mobs would be before it stops being fun. 

3. I agree that spicing up lakes and rivers should be first priority. Then port what we learn there into an ocean generation system. Coasts come a long with oceans and I think if oceans are never added the game would feel incomplete to me. 

4. Continents have been mentioned numerous times on this thread and I believe that continents should be the end game goal of map generation. We have massive massive maps in this game, making the continents truly massive and vary in shape / size I think adds the level of realism this game tries to uphold. Small islands, massive continents, oceans separating them, rivers and beaches, this is all realistic land generation and I think it's key that at some point development adds this in. 

5. IF Tyron and the team somehow can make multi-block ships a reality. Please for the love of God don't skip over adding oceans. Those two functions go hand in hand. I could deal with not having multi-block ships, but having muli-block ships without oceans would feel like a missed opportunity. 

I hope in a few years time this game looks unrecognizable from today. I'm faithful that will be the case. To the team, thank you for this wonderful game and for caring what we want to see in it. 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Davis

[Kazeoni]

Ohh boi. Such possibilities... and such technical hurdles. But this topic sent my mind racing for the last week, so buckle up for a massive outside the box suggestion-dump.

 

I'll also second oceans and multi-block-ships going hand in hand despite programming those being a herculean task. And such large bodies of water which should be impossible to cross without proper ships imply thinking on general worldgen on the continental scale. But an ocean on a realistic scale may as well be extremely dull and daunting to cross as Garjouan pointed out.

 

So here is the WTF idea: what if oceans get implemented by not actually implementing, just faking them.

And now let's deepdive on my smokes and mirrors of an ocean generation concept:

 

Make the open seas/oceans not part of the actual game, but as a meta-map and handle it in a different layer/engine whathaveyou once we sail out past a loading screen.

Once we are out on seas, it's basicly Mass Effect's on the ship situation. The outside world doesn't really exist, just coding magic makes us experience we are moving in a larger environment. Of course it has to be way more immersive than ME's galaxy map with the off.scale ship and planets. Think proper sailing mechanics and pathfinding via the stars.

With this, ocean storms would not need to burden the water physics of the main engine, and worldsize (IRL on the HDD/SSD) is greatly reduced not having to save vast uninteresting open waters or programming a ton of features for it in worldgen just to make it presentable.

And since now sailing is it's own separate mini-game, we can mess with our preception of time more freely like sleeping through the night just on steroids. Meaning, while our little Seraphs prep the rations, to be at open seas for weeks if not even months, and the supplies would dwindle accordingly, us the players won't have to play through the whole journey IRL at the standard 48minutes/IG-day rate. We can have a 2-month-trip in 3 IRL minutes if the waters are merciful and we don't have to attend to a storm or a monster situation in real time during the journey. This should make it feasible to replicate Magellan's and Columbus' legendary journeys and make it feel like an achievement without spending IRL weeks on open seas. Also a proper meta-map eliminates the sillyness of multiple polar-equator lines on the map and istantly makes theese journeys rewarded by the change in climate being both reachable and more realistic than the current solution. 

This "fast travel" can even be used to cheat time in the actual world. Imagine you are not in the winter mood, this time. Your cellar is stocked, you are ready for it just don't want to deal with it, want to explore in spring or whatever. Instead of cheating with commands, you take your ship, sail down to your tropic resort, have a fun week there, sail back. And the rest of the time is fast-forwarded while on open seas. You back at your well-established temperate fortress, the farmlands recovered during the winter and the flowers are blossoming.

 

 

Then here is one more out-there idea on the top of this: 'World-stitching":

Given how this idea of oceans essentiall cuts the world into smaller worlds, we can also play with the other possibilities these technical shenanigans open. The Naval meta-map only needs the ship and a low-res shoreline of the world, the actual continents should basically be storable in separate world files (.vcdbs) with one govering little file holding it together. This means the world saves are not one .vcdbs, but a subfolder with multiple of them tied in a bow. We can have some fun with this newfound modularity!

Get a world-edit tool, that can mix and match continent worldfiles to the naval meta-map. And instead of just letting the game generate new continents, have the ability to import existing ones. (Maybe I'm a naive layman, but it seems to me, this continet save would only need to differ from the current worldgen in one new noise layer which tells the game where to generate the end of continet/deep shoreline where you can only leave the map with a ship. And instead of a janky worldborder have a guaranteed 'lurker attack' near the edge if you dare to go too far out just swimming/raft/rowboat.[lurker is just me spitballing the drifter version of a whale/krakken, whatever we need])

Newly generated land is cool, but imagine generating and existing one by a toggleable chance. I think I'm not the only one with a beloved world that had tons of hours, but stopped for any reasons, and once I came back, it was too advanced to get back into rythm and I preferred to start fresh. We can give some love to these abaddoned world. Whitelist them to the new world and we can play-pretend that the old campaign happened in the same world on a different continent, our old Seraph perished, and the current one can stuble upon the abaddoned fort. This can has it's own mapDB on the site to give singleplayer a sense of community. As I don't want to deal with online multiplayer's server-time food spoilage (only SP and the ocasional LAN afternoon). But I would really love to engage more with the community's creations and not just on a superficial worldtour scale. So let's share maps, let the creative mapmakers suprise us, if we want some extra handmade spice other than freshly generated lands.

 

 

Ok, so instead of actual ocean talk, I ended up working around them with a continent-management meta-map and a sailing simulator minigame, but I think these concepts can work nicely and could help performance-wise as well. Plus IMO actual sailing mechanics and exploration are more fitting for Vintage Story's "relive medieval industry" ethos, than just adding massive waters not large enough for real oceans but almost too large to ever cross. Very interested in everyone's feedback, as these "shower thoughts" literally kept me up at night after reading the thread while on the bus home from work.

The other ocean features everyone talking about are also rather interesting and have place in the deeper shores. Or if the continent map is not technically a continent but an archipelago. I just can't add anything meaningfull to those aspects.

 

 

One more not on the multi-block ships, which are still the big IF in this equation:

Imo the separate standard map/world/engine and naval/ map [...] can also make this more feasible. Until getting out into open sea, which wouldn't nned to bother with anything but the sailing stuff. If overly daunting it doesn't really have to have any special behaviors, and we already have Vies' vehicles in mod working: https://mods.vintagestory.at/viescraftmachines so we are not that far off.

Here I also have a constraint/slight-of-hand solution.

Because the big difference between the ships we are dreaming of and these vehicles in the mod is that these are predetermined large entities not structure built from individual blocks and that's a huge barrier to cross right? So limit the ships to presets. Have them be like in-world recipes of certain historically accurate ships.

We build a dry-dock... that get's recognized similar to greenhouse/cellar... mechanics. Inside that you have to place the hull of the ship block-by-block exactly as a recipe. Then there is a free-form hidden interior which we can fill with cargo and custom fluff to our heart's content. Since the outside is matched to a recipe, the game can switch that with a pre-coded ship entity, and we have that as the ship. The interior just gets saved and is practically non-existent while we use the ship in-map. And the naval-mode meta-map/engine should be designed specifically to handle the ship and not much else so a solution to have our custom ship there is a bit more reasonable, than all the time. Of course for the ship to have the ability to switch between the block-build and the controllable frame, in world we could only dock at pre-built sites to trigger the switcharoo or on new land open water, where it does not conflict with any other blocks, and we gotta get to shore via rowboat or swimming. I'm no coder, just some veeery basic understanding, but this concept seems feasable as a rough framework. (someone more professional is probably pulling their hair on my nonsense, but please elaborate, I wanna understand more, just never got to it properly). And at worst-case-scenario / very rudimentary WIP implementation, we can have the ship not really movable, just go straigth to naval-meta-map via GUI from the dock. I'd not consider that a finished feature though.

 

 

A final-final tangent not with oceans, just the multi-file continents setup:

That obviously locks Temporal Translocator to be only workable inside the same continet. Unless we tier them. Having an intercontinental Translocator should be extremely rare, perhaps even an actual boss-dungeon. But maybe with clues pointing towards it in smaller ruins. And depending on world settings it could be a one-way trip (would have it connect on exploration, and not on normal, maybe bite into your stability-meter on wilderness)... just slinging you across the globe for the adventure of a lifetime, to a regular Translocator on a preset continent. You have to activate the intercontinental Translocator on the other side or build a ship to get back for added thrill and challenge. Oww dang, here I go again ranting and ripping of Mass Effect's Relay system.

Thank you to anyone who even dared to read this long.

[Garjouan]

On 6/16/2022 at 7:24 PM, Davis said:

I agree with this for the most part. Although, I have a few mentions. 

1. Crossing the ocean to discover new land is valuable in itself. New land means new prospecting opportunities, or dungeon spawns etc. So that alone is worth the cost of build a boat. 

2. We currently have ocean generation down pretty good on the multiplayer server VintageCiv. One thing you need to add is tons of life and some danger to crossing an ocean. I think this will require some player testing to determine how difficult and powered the ocean mobs would be before it stops being fun. 

3. I agree that spicing up lakes and rivers should be first priority. Then port what we learn there into an ocean generation system. Coasts come a long with oceans and I think if oceans are never added the game would feel incomplete to me. 

4. Continents have been mentioned numerous times on this thread and I believe that continents should be the end game goal of map generation. We have massive massive maps in this game, making the continents truly massive and vary in shape / size I think adds the level of realism this game tries to uphold. Small islands, massive continents, oceans separating them, rivers and beaches, this is all realistic land generation and I think it's key that at some point development adds this in. 

5. IF Tyron and the team somehow can make multi-block ships a reality. Please for the love of God don't skip over adding oceans. Those two functions go hand in hand. I could deal with not having multi-block ships, but having muli-block ships without oceans would feel like a missed opportunity. 

I hope in a few years time this game looks unrecognizable from today. I'm faithful that will be the case. To the team, thank you for this wonderful game and for caring what we want to see in it. 

To number 1, and a bit 4, and I might repeat myself a bit in my reply:
What you said again comes with that is on the other side of the ocean, not the journey itself. For us here in the real world, there was a good reason to cross oceans - resources, mostly spices. But the seraphs in game have no problem with eating turnip stew and flax gruel for all their lives.

As long as the journey is not interesting, there is little incentive to spend the time and resources to make them - if said journey between continents is not more than "staring at a more or less blank screen for RL-hours". Exploring the continent you are on is much more interesting, even with possible storms and seemonsters and whatnot. There are landscapes and caves and and and. And as long the same resources can be found on the continent you are on, there is little incentive to make the trip over sea (and then setting up a new base etc.) instead of just taking a long long hike through the continent you are on. This gets even worse the bigger they are, and thus the more resources they have and biomes they span.

Now I am all up for oceans and sea travel, though I don't think VS will become a good enough ship simulator to justify a hours long journey to basically the same from where you started (at least in the foreseeable future).

Unfortunately, I can't really say anything to @Kazeoni's post, that's a bit (okay, a lot) above my level of understanding of programming...

[Nikol Bibik]

Do you think the world's oceans will ever dry up?

[Davis]

20 hours ago, Garjouan said:

To number 1, and a bit 4, and I might repeat myself a bit in my reply:
What you said again comes with that is on the other side of the ocean, not the journey itself. For us here in the real world, there was a good reason to cross oceans - resources, mostly spices. But the seraphs in game have no problem with eating turnip stew and flax gruel for all their lives.

As long as the journey is not interesting, there is little incentive to spend the time and resources to make them - if said journey between continents is not more than "staring at a more or less blank screen for RL-hours". Exploring the continent you are on is much more interesting, even with possible storms and seemonsters and whatnot. There are landscapes and caves and and and. And as long the same resources can be found on the continent you are on, there is little incentive to make the trip over sea (and then setting up a new base etc.) instead of just taking a long long hike through the continent you are on. This gets even worse the bigger they are, and thus the more resources they have and biomes they span.

Now I am all up for oceans and sea travel, though I don't think VS will become a good enough ship simulator to justify a hours long journey to basically the same from where you started (at least in the foreseeable future).

Unfortunately, I can't really say anything to @Kazeoni's post, that's a bit (okay, a lot) above my level of understanding of programming...

I find this to be, in all honesty, hugely contradictory. I respect this is your opinion, but I disagree. 

1. We have no idea what the size of these oceans will be, could take 5 minutes to cross with a boat, could take 15 minutes. I am highly doubtful it will take hours like you reference. So, I won't touch on that specifically, but my point was centered around it being maybe a 15 minute - 25 minute long journey at most. If it took hours, I'd agree that'd be way too large. 

2. You reference why real life humans crossed the ocean, and how that doesn't translate to the game. I'd say you don't have much experience playing the game then. Resources, resources, resources. If I need more iron, if I need more copper, if I need materials to make refractory bricks or lime that isn't on my continent. All reasons to cross the ocean. Things can be added to the ocean, like sea life (duh?) for things to be more interesting and vibrant. Ideally small island generation could be a thing in the oceans so you'd have a stopping point here and there, just like how there are small islands in the real ocean. 

3. Who said anything about this game being a ship simulator or needing to be, to have ocean travel? Seems like a silly thing to say, it's a survival game. Oceans add to the world building aspect of the game. It makes it feel more like a real world, that alone adds value to the adventure for most of us players. 

[Garjouan]

I was thinking that the size of an ocean should be in relation to the size of the available continents, which can take quite a long time to travel across. If it's just 5-15 minutes or so, yeah sure, then the issue of "it being a boring journey" of course doesn't apply. Though then the (academic) question arises: is it an ocean, or just a very wide river or lake?

For the resources, so far, you can find almost all types in the same areas, or at least to a degree that you do not have to travel half of the world to get them. Sure, some biomes have different woods and plants, but for the most part those are just vanity - i can built my fences out of oak as well as out of ebony. If that was going to be changed: sure. Then there is the missing incentive to invest into an expedition. My point was: so far, there would be none - it's easier to just keep exploring the landmass you're on already.

The idea with the ship simulator was just an idea to make a longer journey interesting.

[Hal13]

tbh in my last worlds I saw so much water, adding more wouldn't be necessary, only a convenient way of travelling on it and things living in it...

[Kazeoni]

On 6/22/2022 at 5:49 PM, Garjouan said:

Unfortunately, I can't really say anything to @Kazeoni's post, that's a bit (okay, a lot) above my level of understanding of programming...

Aw C'mon I was most interested in your reply, given how you seem to have a good focus on keeping the game enjoyable and having the new features add real gamplay value not just be there for bloat and realistic generation.

And I haven't gone into programming at all, as I only scratch the surface of the field at best. Though as an engineering drop-out I'm more versed in technical/conceptual thinking than the avarage gamer regarding these mechanics, and I really went HAM on that aspect.

But we don't have to go into the technical details as far as I've run ahead. Feedback on the general concept in layman's terms is well apreciated. Especially with such a radical aproach. My own immedieate protest was cutting the game-world into several pieces with loading screens at the oceans would be immersion-breaking, but the upsides were numerous enough I decided to throw it in anyway and see what others think.

On 6/23/2022 at 5:17 PM, Garjouan said:

Though then the (academic) question arises: is it an ocean, or just a very wide river or lake?

That! Exactly that was the core opposition between immersive/realistic sizes VS managable/rewarding travel as far as gameplay was the issue I wanted to tackle which sent me down on my rabbit-hole.

With this system, once you are stocked on food, prospected the 2-4km radius of your base but need more, sailing out would be actually more time-efficient for a player than going on a long hike.

Though given your tangent on not needing ebony or the fancy other-than-starter-biome stuff, you might still be the one, who doesn't engage much with sailing. But mines get stripped after a while, and getting to climates with longer farming seasons on a relatively fast way once the economy can sustain the ship is always nice to have.

 

 

On 6/23/2022 at 2:38 PM, Davis said:

3. Who said anything about this game being a ship simulator or needing to be, to have ocean travel? Seems like a silly thing to say, it's a survival game. Oceans add to the world building aspect of the game. It makes it feel more like a real world, that alone adds value to the adventure for most of us players. 

That may have been a lost in translation moment on my previous textwall. Ship simulator is probably too ambitious of a name, as I wouldn't call the vanilla mealmaking system a cooking simulator exactly, tho certainly a solid base. What I suggested was more of a seafaring-mechanic/fast travel minigame. And then went overboard on the technical implications and possibilities this workaround opened.

 

 

On 6/28/2022 at 4:21 PM, Hal13 said:

tbh in my last worlds I saw so much water, adding more wouldn't be necessary, only a convenient way of travelling on it and things living in it...

Sooo, cutting out the vast too-deep-to-explore middle parts of the great waters with a sailing fast-travel mini-game can work right?

[Hal13]

1 hour ago, Kazeoni said:

vast too-deep-to-explore

Wdym with "vast too-deep-to-explore"? Most of the "great waters" is less than 10 (heck from what i've seen less than 5) blocks deep, seraphs, at this point, do not need to breathe, have a massive density (do not even float on lava) and do not succumb to pressure as long as it's a fluid exerting it (are able to deep dive into lava), there is no water too deep to explore.
Apart from that, water is supposed to become more dynamic instead of infinite source blocks, we might get pumps and other ways to drain a body of water.

1 hour ago, Kazeoni said:

sailing fast-travel mini-game can work right?

no

Travelling is a main part of the game so there should be as little rowing/sailing mini game as there is a walking or container opening mini game. A boat building mini game maybe, but no mini game to use it.

[Kazeoni]

@Hal13how far have you read back the thread before commenting?

By the too deep part I meant on the hypothetical oceans we were discussing the possibilities and challenges of. Of course there is no such thing in the current worldgen. Though I stumbled upon a 30+ block deep massive lake recently. But I play with 512 worldheight instead of the standard 256, so a 10-15 block depth of the current generation's 'seas' sounds about right. And Primitive Survival's raft is more than sufficent to cross them.

 

And the crux of the issue is multi-block ships are a whislist item on the roadmap by the developers. But having anything larger than a rowboat with small cargo is meaningless fluff and a vaste of development effort if we don't have actual oceans needing multiple days to cross. But who would want to just sail ahead monotonously for IRL hours? That's the specific case for where I threw in the fast-travel idea, specifically large end-game ships to cross several kilometers of just water. I wanna play Magellan or build my own East India Company. Accurately using up food for days of journey for the seraphs but not burdening the player IRL with hours of straigh ahead serves the exploration and immersion aspects of the game way better than restricting water sizes to irrealistic sizes for seas, just so people won't get bored trying to cross them at least in my eyes.

[Laskuna]

I wish, continents can have thier unique flora. Botanical expedition will be a nice addition to the game. 
Soemthing like in RL, but more random maybe? For example: some plants from warm and dry climate can be popular and some can be unique for specific continent. 
https://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/origin-of-crops/ 

[Laskuna]

As for the oceans themselves, perhaps it should be possible to build ports with fast travel between them. (Some kind of lighhouse maybe ? Required rare parts from ruins to build? ) 
This can work similar to bed. But not only time pass, but also distance. On multiplayer can be possible only whenn all palyer are in boats or beds.

[Garjouan]

On 7/1/2022 at 9:36 AM, Kazeoni said:

Aw C'mon I was most interested in your reply, given how you seem to have a good focus on keeping the game enjoyable and having the new features add real gamplay value not just be there for bloat and realistic generation.

Aww thank you.
I do think your ideas are interesting. I just can't tell if or how they could be implemented in the game.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Garjouan

[jbutt]

On 7/20/2021 at 9:34 AM, Stroam said:

Hello all,

There's just been such great content on Discord about this subject that I had to make a forum post to try and preserve that discussion. The question is how to make bodies of water interesting enough to add into the game? Some of that is how many minutes/size would be too long for crossing a body of water? What are some ways to make crossing a body of water more interesting that doesn't get old?

I think a game to look at for water travel is Valheim.  The sailing in that game is genuinely fun, and there's even some serious threats at sea.  There's a real special feeling being on a boat with 2-3 other friends and going on a whole expedition together.  The boat can act as a mobile base, gives you something to do while traveling too.