Sign in to follow this  
Othob Rithol

Better processes to return land to the wilderness.

Recommended Posts

Undeeded, unused land across older servers gets gummed up by ruins and abandoned terraforming, leaving these servers 'stale' and pushing the same players to move to each new server for a bit of freshness before leaving a mess behind. What if the game could actually revert unused land back to a more pristine condition?

 


 


One of the things Wurm needs is a deeper mechanism to return undeeded land to nature, particularly slopes. Something on the order of weekly run a batch check for every tile edge and if it qualifies, shift 1 dirt from the high end to the low end.


  • Slope has to be above a certain threshold; 40 or maybe even 30.
  • Higher corner can't be at rock level.
  • Neither corner can be adjacent to a wall or fence.

Couple that with a similar check to see if a given corner is the highpoint of the surrounding 4 corners. If so, and it's more than , say 5-10 dirt above all of them, then lower it 4 and raise the others 1.


 


Add to that even higher decay for pavings that have more than two adjacent tiles not paved and some mechanism to kill hedges. Decay rates for furniture might also need a look. Usually long after the rest has fallen away, you still find a bed, bsb and chest in the woods somewhere.


 


Obviously, all this applies on Off-Deed.


 


The other thing it needs is a Salvage Skill. By giving a player a long timer action that might result in some useful materials you encourage players to clean up ruins themselves. Checks can be put in to prevent casual grieifng and affect pvp like:


  • Only in your own kingdom influence.
  • Not on a deed of which you aren't a citizen/have permission.
  • Not from an intact (has all ground floor exterior walls) building of which you are not on the writ.
Edited by Othob Rithol

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm afraid that undoing the terraforming this way would have some serious unwanted side effects:


 


1. Most tall mountains (high slopes) that have some dirt on them would end up more bare than they are now (dirt slowly flowing towards their base). But for this you could make it so that trees prevent dirt from flowing downwards (I would actually like that). 


2. Such a change would destroy the result of hard roadwork (mountain roads and coastal roads) which can't be deeded and it would take a lot of time and resources to plant trees or hedges to protect the ones that are not going through forests. In the case of coastal roads planting trees may be even more difficult if the water is deep and the road is an 1 tile wide path between rock and water for example.


Edited by Anothernoob

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

good observations. Maybe add "isn't adjacent to tile types "tree, bush, paved" to the conditions? And maybe another disallowing shifting dirt below sea level which should protect docks and waterfront roads.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

+1 to the spirit of the idea, and + 1 to being conservative on the implementation 


It is MUCH MUCH better if this is implemented and it does precisely nothing because the requirements are too strict, then the alternative of all sorts of stuff going ever so slightly weird.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Honestly I don't believe there is a foolproof way to place a check in to decide the difference between a purposeful roadway tile and left over paved deed tiles.


 


Also, this shifting dirt above 40 slope, there are numerous areas of 40+ slope that are simply natural, how would you discern for those? Not trying to be rude here just trying to figure out what specifically can be coded to, boiled down, determine if something was man-made and what is natural, in order to determine what needs to be fixed. I like the idea of returning wild areas to their natural looks, but don't want it messing up intentional work or rounding out all slopes to 40 or less.


  • Like 1

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That minecraft Creeper. Tssssss. BOOM. And u have a small clear area.


 


Meteor falls to weather, big impacts at random places to clear a bigger area. When u see a meteor shower u might wanna head into the cave safety bunker to duck and cover!


 


Tsunami flooding that clear a few tiles from coast. You need drag ur damaged boat back to water after this and repair.


 


Hurricanes that sweep inlands and make a line of havoc.


 


Earthquakes that rumbles your mine around causing massive cave ins.


 


Summer forests fires that spread, u might wanna be make sure that campfire is snuffed.


Edited by Tissotx

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As much as I would like a process to "heal" terra-formed spots: I do not believe it's possible. Any attempt at it will cost a lot of time and effort from the devs - and won't work in the end anyway.


 


Wurm allows players to wreck the landscape and to make it inhabitable for new settlers, thus that's what players will do. There's only one way around: don't give people the ability to wreck the landscape in the first place.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

-1


 


Wurm is players driven game. You want somewhere return abandoned place to nature? Stop being lazy, go there and do it. You have that power in your hands ...


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

+1, it would be great if the environment in Wurm would react more to players. We already have collapsing mines, so this fits right in with that.


 


As Shrimpiie points out, numerous areas are naturally more than 40 steep. One important thing about those steep areas is that multiple such steep tiles often exist next to each other. The transition in the steepness between adjacent tiles is often pretty smooth, probably within 10 or so steepness of each other. So what you might want to do, is to check if the surrounding tiles are similar enough to the tile you are checking. (the following is simplified, normally tiles have multiple borders) If for example the tile you are checking is 35 steep, the tile north of it is 37 steep, left and right are also around 35, but south is 67, then it's quite likely that the southern tile was terraformed by a player (and that the tile south of this steep tile is almost entirely flat). If on the other hand the southern tile was only 30 steep then that's not a big enough difference, and thus no dirt should be moved.


 


So don't just look at the steepness of a tile, but compare the tile to it's surrounding tiles, in order to determine if there is an abnormality in the area. If such an abnormality exists, move some dirt to it, if this would reduce the abnormality. I think if you check it like that, then the system could become much more accurate. You probably also never want to move dirt onto a rock tile, this way you don't even have to take dirt on mountain tops into account, as the rock would never allow it to flow down. Same with pavement in order to protect roads. I would not include trees as an inhibitor, as they spread far too fast. By the time a deed disbands and the buildings have decayed, that area would already be full of trees, completely preventing any modifications to the land. For tiles near the water, I'd probably only let it spread into the water if at least two of the adjacent tiles are below sea level. Docks would still be protected by the pavement on them.


Edited by Ecrir

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree that this should be a player-driven thing. But the tools at our disposal are only available at mid-late skill levels in various skills, and the effort needed to do this just doesn't make it compelling. And for some items (hitched carts and sturdy shacks), player intervention isn't even possible.


 


I think players should be able to flag a certain area for this kind of environmental clean-up. Make it some kind of ritual that needs a certain number of players to perform, whatever.


 


This flagged state persists for a while, but is cancelled by any player logging in or by any building action done within the bounds of the flagged area. After a months time, decay of exposed items is accelerated. After two months time, decay on buildings increases greatly, and a kind of levelling of slopes sets in as described by OP. This latter process should still be slow in general, but increasingly faster for higher slopes.


 


This way we could still have ruins and steep natural slopes, and let the players decide where to kick in a process of renaturalization.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

-1 for a simple reason


 


Next thing you know deeds are being turned to cliff, houses to lakes, harbors to hills.  Patch will eventually fix the bug but the damage will remain, some will quit Wurm on day 1, more will quit after when they complain and only staff replies are not from staff but from unaffected players saying that Rolf is doing us all a favor by giving us permission to play and that they should be thankful, and a few more will quit when they realize that they gotta undo the damage by hand without GM/dev help.... in the meantime, several GM's will develop a drinking habit from the insane amount of /supports.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

-1 for a simple reason

 

Next thing you know deeds are being turned to cliff, houses to lakes, harbors to hills.  Patch will eventually fix the bug but the damage will remain, some will quit Wurm on day 1, more will quit after when they complain and only staff replies are not from staff but from unaffected players saying that Rolf is doing us all a favor by giving us permission to play and that they should be thankful, and a few more will quit when they realize that they gotta undo the damage by hand without GM/dev help.... in the meantime, several GM's will develop a drinking habit from the insane amount of /supports.

 

That's the "either-or fallacy", isn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

Some examples of how we can apply your argumentation to the game: Some day decay will be messed up with an update and instantly destroy all items in the game. Or mine collapses will be messed up, instantly collapsing everything, including reinforced tiles. Or deed upkeep will be bugged, instantly consuming all upkeep and then disbanding all deeds. Horror scenario's, aren't they cute? Thank god for backups.

Edited by Ecrir

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

We already have added decay on houses for people that aren't active.  I think any terraforming or 'reclaiming' should be done by players not by a game mechanic.  I know our first home on indy had been settled in part before we got there.  What we didnt care for got redone.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thank you Mordraug for that totally off topic rant that isn't at all related to you posting the same thing all over the place. If you have issues with player's suggesting Rolf is doing you a favor by letting you play, then take it up with them.


 


Everyone is addressing my first suggestion (simulated erosion) but what about the second (salvaging)?


Edited by Othob Rithol

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Salvage skill +1. Maybe add a minimum damage before you can do it to make sure it's at least somewhat abandoned.


 


Not convinced by changing terrain. It's not obstructive, you can change it at will with digging. While abandoned ruins are a pain up to a year after they are abandoned.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the salvage skill is a good idea. Personally I wouldn't add a minimum damage, just let it work on anything that's off deed, or is on your own deed (link it to the role used for bashing walls?). This way you can recycle something you've made if you no longer want it or want to replace it with something else and could use some of the parts put into the original item. I think such an ability makes a lot of sense. If you've made a bed, then why can't you take it apart again? Sure, some items will probably be damaged beyond use in that process (like a plank breaking), but at least you could reuse a part of it to create something else. With all the new furniture coming out all the time, I could see a lot of use of this ability for people who want to redecorate.


 


Excluding vehicles (boats, carts) would probably be a good idea, same for locked entities (so you'd have to lockpick them first).


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

-1


At least the reverse-terraforming. I mean why shouldn't a new player take advantage of another guy's work on flattening? If he doesn't want it flat, he can always just do the reversing himself.


 


There could be better ways for people to claim land that has been abandoned. But seriously, why even bother devoting resources on developing this and putting it into effect if i NEVER ever saw a server that was fully packed. You can find huge areas of forest in any server that are undeeded and undeveloped.


 


Sure if you like to measure your epeen on deed size, then you might not get what you want, but the whole point of Wurm is to tame the land, if you don't bother moving away from the centers or the coast even a little, then maybe wrong game.


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this