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Wilczan

Erosion event of terraformed areas

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How to make land look natural? Simpliest way is to trying to catch shape of the rock layer, couse it's less terraformed than dirt. Of course there are places where rock is highly terraformed, but there could be solution for this. Anyway, for the natural look of area could be used erosion event.

 

Erosion, is a one time event, that could happen when:

- admin select area and start an event

- player places special item (bought from merchant for silver or won in scenario) in area and start an event

- god wins scenario and as an effect event starts (problem - how area should be chosen)

 

First option is safest.

Second option could be used for griefing (destroying off-deed mines, pens and farm fields) so not sure about it.

Third option could be too chaotic.

 

Event:

- on the selected area (could be for example 100x100 tiles) dirt is calculated on every corner and summed up (probably server already has that data so no need for calculations)

- check if there is no deed/perimeter tiles, or buildings

- all other structures, fences, mine doors, mine reinforcements etc are removed

- all mine entrances and mines are collapsed

- all dirt is removed and summed up in data

- summed up dirt is divided by the number of corners (for example 1000000 total dirt on 100x100 area, so there will be average 98 of dirt on each corner)

- dirt is placed on each corner (starting from the rock layer) in quantities as above

- temporary increase of growth and spread speed of flora on area (for example 10 times faster for one day)

- done

 

On highly terraformed rock areas (check if there is a flat on rock tile or very high slopes) there could be added some randomness in quantity of a dirt to make tile more diversed.

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This would actually make a nice slow natural process rather than a sudden event.

 

+1 though

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something is needed for those more 'scarred' servers where everywhere you look you can see the remnants of an old deed.  I like the erosion idea or any 'natural' process that smooths out the jagged edges and puts a bit of contour into an otherwise flat deserted deed.

 

+1

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Yeah I can see it now...

 

"An unintended issue with our new Erosion code has caused the deformation of several villages.  Sorry.  We are working to correct the issue..."

 

:(

 

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As I remember, when choosing epic, after character creation, we have warning that our deed could be destroyed by some event. So seems legit.

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7 hours ago, Wilczan said:

- all other structures, fences, mine doors, mine reinforcements etc are removed

- all mine entrances and mines are collapsed

 

No thanks, especially to this part.  There are just too many areas that have been terraformed to ease travel (a huge, necessary, biggie on Xan).  Hunting areas, deserts, meadows, etc., have been made that aren't on deeds, but are instead left un-deeded for all to enjoy, complete with wells/fountains and in some cases safe-houses.  Tunnels have been mined through impassable mountainous areas, some partially or fully reinforced.  Roads have been excavated that are sorely needed.

 

These kinds of things are sorely needed on Xan especially.  Maybe people on the smaller, older, more developed, and not-so-inhospitable servers, have never tried to traverse Xan and just can't appreciate why these terraformed areas should remain as they are. Maybe a road trip across Xan (or an attempt at one, lol) would be a good thing for them before convincing themselves that these kinds of ideas would actually benefit the game overall.

 

I understand (sort of) some people's fixation with this idea of undoing the work done by others who then leave the game, but imo any "fix" would be far worse than the minor inconvenience it causes for the few. (or the perceived affront to their aesthetic ideals). 

 

It would open the potential to destroy the hard work of active players who have put a lot of work into creating off-deed areas and/or passage through bad areas.  And once the damage has been done, we all know it will be up to the players to try and repair it since a revert is usually impractical and/or just wouldn't work to put things back the way they were.

 

edit: Also, these so-called eyesores of terraformed, abandoned deeds are often seen by some as the perfect places to drop a new deed since the majority of the "work" has already been done.  Not everyone enjoys terraforming like I do.  :)

Edited by Amadee
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I will respond with the usual No to these lazy easy mode suggestions about returning the landscapes to their original appearance just because some players don't like the look of what others have done to transform areas for various purposes.

 

Players are what shape these blank slates of servers created out of the nothingness by map generation. Travel to the more remote areas upon any server and there is little to impress anyone within this vast emptiness, other than the potential they offer to anyone that envisions what can be created by themselves out of them.

 

Still, there is the option for anyone so disturbed by their transformation to put the time into reshaping them once again in their own image. This is the legacy left by former players long after they have departed. Please do not disturb and let their final flickering flames of reflection remain. R.I.P.

 

=Ayes=

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15 hours ago, Amadee said:

I understand (sort of) some people's fixation with this idea of undoing the work done by others who then leave the game, but imo any "fix" would be far worse than the minor inconvenience it causes for the few. (or the perceived affront to their aesthetic ideals). 

 

It would open the potential to destroy the hard work of active players who have put a lot of work into creating off-deed areas and/or passage through bad areas.  And once the damage has been done, we all know it will be up to the players to try and repair it since a revert is usually impractical and/or just wouldn't work to put things back the way they were.

 

I know that many people are proud of their "hard work" and want to preserve it for eternity :) ... I also know that this attitude harms the game. New people come after the old ones have left (either left the region, the server or the whole game) and something needs to be done to provide play-room for new people. New people want to build as well, they want to shape the land as much as many of the older players want. How do we give them room to play Wurm when we also want everything older players have done to stay for forever?

 

Something has to give, either you accept that old work gets removed or you accept that new players cannot play the game in the same way as older players did. That's the old Wurm dilemma,

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1 hour ago, Eobersig said:

How do we give them room to play Wurm when we also want everything older players have done to stay for forever?

Creating hills and terraces from flatlands is not much different from a vice versa kind of activity. But the flatlands can be used for farming or building right away. I fail to see any issue, except:

17 hours ago, Amadee said:

(or the perceived affront to their aesthetic ideals)

 

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2 hours ago, Eobersig said:

 

I know that many people are proud of their "hard work" and want to preserve it for eternity :) ... I also know that this attitude harms the game. New people come after the old ones have left (either left the region, the server or the whole game) and something needs to be done to provide play-room for new people. New people want to build as well, they want to shape the land as much as many of the older players want. How do we give them room to play Wurm when we also want everything older players have done to stay for forever?

 

Something has to give, either you accept that old work gets removed or you accept that new players cannot play the game in the same way as older players did. That's the old Wurm dilemma,

 

Have you been on line lately?  Trust me, new players having "play room" isn't a problem. 

 

And things don't last forever and he never asked for them to.  Even the roads are decaying on Independence from lack of use.  I doubt new players are going to be benefited from the servers returning to their pre-developed state.  Do you?

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My deed is fairly close to a starter deed. As a result, I see tons of new players showing up, setting up shop, doing a lot of random terraforming, then leaving forever. This is a problem, not just in terms of player retention, but in how screwed-up the landscape gets.

 

Never mind the older servers... looking at map dumps of the older Freedom servers just makes me not want to bother exploring there, because I feel like they've already been pre-flattened and essentially paved over.

 

Structures decay, fences decay, roads might decay (not sure of the current state of this)... the only thing left really is for massive dirt slopes to decay. I would propose a very limited additional mechanic where dirt naturally slides down >40 slopes very slowly over time, provided there is no pavement adjacent to that slope, and that it's not in anyone's deed or perimeter. I also suggest that decay of unused pavement should also be reimplemented, if indeed it's gone. We don't really need any other additional decay mechanics.

Edited by Ostentatio
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I had wondered about something similar...  I'm thinking along the lines of any given area seeing an 'earthquake' once every several months or so.  If you've got +30 days of upkeep paid, you would notice almost nothing...  if the area is abandoned, some objects would have a significant chunk of decay quickly, and some tiles would gain or lose between 1 and 5 dirt, possibly evening out some steeper slopes, and possibly collapsing the occasional mine tile (not surface opening, though).  This would not be anything extreme enough that a player would have to do much to maintain even a non-deeded area, but if an area were abandoned for a year or two, it might start to look unterraformed,

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On 14.2.2016 at 3:38 PM, Proximo said:

And things don't last forever and he never asked for them to.  Even the roads are decaying on Independence from lack of use.  I doubt new players are going to be benefited from the servers returning to their pre-developed state.  Do you?

 

Yes, I'm sure of that. Think about it: "Why have new servers been so popular in the past? Why did Wurm always had a population increase when a new server opened? Why did even old players move to this new server?" Answer: because people like to settle in a wild and undeveloped server environment. Many people like this - in fact for many people it's the reason to play Wurm at all.

 

Wurm can only grow and attract new players when Wurm provides an enjoyable server environment for these players - and dirt walls and roads everywhere and terraformed flatness is not what most of them consider an enjoyable environment. Too few people consider settling in the mess left behind by other players and grinding their skills an enjoyable game experience.

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Your interpretation of 'most' may differ from someone elses, the trend I see is that those who return or set out with excitement to explore a new map are also those who tend to leave again after a few months and we end up with more empty servers and spreading players thinner.

 

-1 btw

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There IS already solution for pristine natural areas never touched by shovel or pickaxe ... it IS called Wurm Unlimited.

 

Start new custom server and you will have whole new uncorrupted world, where you can shape land as you like ...

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3 hours ago, Eobersig said:

 

Yes, I'm sure of that. Think about it: "Why have new servers been so popular in the past? Why did Wurm always had a population increase when a new server opened? Why did even old players move to this new server?" Answer: because people like to settle in a wild and undeveloped server environment. Many people like this - in fact for many people it's the reason to play Wurm at all.

 

Wurm can only grow and attract new players when Wurm provides an enjoyable server environment for these players - and dirt walls and roads everywhere and terraformed flatness is not what most of them consider an enjoyable environment. Too few people consider settling in the mess left behind by other players and grinding their skills an enjoyable game experience.

 

New Player Scenario #1.

 

Our new player finds an area he wants to settle.  He needs flat ground to build his first 1x1 shack to survive the night.  He then spends 10 minutes in CA_HELP chat just figuring out how to dig in Wurm because it's anything but intuitive.  He's already frustrated when he's met by this in Events:  You do not have the digging skill to dig here.  He starts to look for a flatter area when a bear suddenly kills him.  At this point he's wondering why he even bothered to log on.

 

New Player Scenario #2

 

Our new player finds the remnants of an abandoned settlement.  A large flattened area with paved slabs ready for building, and it even has cobblestone paths connecting it to the highway!  This is great, he thinks to himself.  I can make my first house here, and the area is so nice I might even deed it and live here while I learn more about the game.

 

 

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I was just trying to illustrate how it's not so black and white, and how the current system can and does benefit new players.

 

No need to be so sarcastic over it....

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Exactly what I did, Proximo... bear included. I couldn't dig in a spot, moved, got eaten, then found an abandoned spot. 

Edited by Audrel
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On 13.2.2016 at 1:29 PM, Etherdrifter said:

This would actually make a nice slow natural process rather than a sudden event.

 

+1 though

 

That is what I proposed here:

 

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what i suggested a while back was to have the trees be the catalyst in undeeded areas and essentially randomly (i.e. sometimes not add) add a single dirt every time a tree dies (if and only if the tile was flat up to a a certain height) and re-seeds until an edge of the tile was a certain max height, would only affect grass, flat, undeed, untraveled, fields.  

 

Mines already return to natural state, roads decay, houses decay, fences decay,.....only thing that does not decay is flat ground and raised slopes.  really only the large flat areas look wrong and unnatural imo

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