ReWeathered Landscape

[Baid 116]

A simple enough idea, no clue how hard to implement. 

Old deeds and roadways, unused and unseen to be slowly weathered away. 

 

Old teraformed land with high slopes, gradually have dirt slide down after not seeing any players for a set period of time. Deeds and roads disapearing back into the landscape for new players to explore. Imo the littered landscape keeps new players from enjoying what wurm is. Run in the forest and make it your own. 

[Wargasm 1,927]

No.  

[Yaga 2,887]

Yes! This has been suggested several times before and I would like to see it!

 

However, something like this may indeed be hard to implement, so I doubt we will ever see it in Wurm.  (Back to manual re-naturization... ?)

[Wilczan 2,048]

2 hours ago, Baid said:

Old teraformed land with high slopes, gradually have dirt slide down after not seeing any players for a set period of time

Hard to set a marker if land is terraformed or not, and even then would just make all terraformed areas completely flat after some time.

 

2 hours ago, Baid said:

Deeds and roads disapearing back into the landscape for new players to explore.

Deeds already do, altough I must admit that fences go down too slow comparing to houses.

 

Roads shouldn't disappear, but after very long time of not being used could lose some paving to be replaced by gravel or other texture of "destroyed" pavement, wich would gave signs that road is old and destroyed.

[Haseroth 70]

its already on WU so i doubt it would be that hard to implement.

[Mordraug 2,542]

5 hours ago, Wilczan said:

Hard to set a marker if land is terraformed or not, and even then would just make all terraformed areas completely flat after some time.

 

 

Preeeetty sure I've seen the "Is terraformed" option in the tile's data when playing on my solo map with a GM-5 toon.

[Ayes 3,715]

I am not for "unused" road pavements gradually decaying away since whoever codes this must determine what "unused" actually is. There was and maybe still is some code that does this already but I really don't even like that because if you travel down some of these "unused" roads you will find that they lead to some interesting places. I particularly remember doing this years ago on Independence where seldom used (the term I prefer) roads led down to peaceful abandoned coastlines or remote high mountain perches that were previously settled by others.

 

Even these remnants of old settlements only indicated by terraformed areas are intriguing to ponder and sit awhile within their tranquility undisturbed by the presence of others. Now with archeology those who use it can even get some indications of what had been there long ago. I would not like to see some game mechanic erode all this past away. It is easy enough for players to remove or transform these places if they for some reason object to them. So as always I am a No to this type of eradication of the past for the sake of convenience.

 

=Ayes=

[Baid 116]

The idea of coming across old areas is fun when exploring. I dont disagree.

 

Wurm needs new players and the fun in a sandbox when first joining is the exploration and settling imo. Not examining history within a game ?

 

This suggestion isn't based on entertaining experienced players, but to give more to new players to enjoy. 

[Wilczan 2,048]

1 hour ago, Mordraug said:

Preeeetty sure I've seen the "Is terraformed" option in the tile's data when playing on my solo map with a GM-5 toon.

 

Yes, that could be done, but I wonder on what level of changes area i set as terraformed. 1 action of digging/mining or X actions?

 

If 1 action, then I can imagine nice natural hill 5x5, with curves and everything. Then, some player digs 1 dirt on top of it. From now on game slowly starts to slide dirt over time thus leading to flattening this nice hill.

 

Maybe those mods on WU got some max slope of changes so it won't go till 40 or flat.

1 hour ago, Ayes said:

I am not for "unused" road pavements gradually decaying away since whoever codes this must determine what "unused" actually is. There was and maybe still is some code that does this already but I really don't even like that because if you travel down some of these "unused" roads you will find that they lead to some interesting places. I particularly remember doing this years ago on Independence where seldom used (the term I prefer) roads led down to peaceful abandoned coastlines or remote high mountain perches that were previously settled by others.

There is a code that checks if someone crossed a bridge tile. If tile isn't crosssed for week or two (do not remember exactly) then bridge takes decay tick.

 

I'am not so much for "decayed" roads, but slightly changed texture of paving would indicated some older roads, so player would know if it's a commonly used road or old track to some abandoned and interesting places.

[Reylaark 1,100]

I could have sworn roads already reverted back to nature if not traveled for a period of time. 

Would like to see it for roads as well as landscape.

 

Not sure how this would affect archaeology?  Is a previously terraformed area an important clue?

 

As an aside, there is a mechanic for tossing around landscapes related to rifts I think.  Maybe that can be leveraged if needed.

 

[Roccandil 959]

+1 to erosion.

[Mordraug 2,542]

4 hours ago, Reylaark said:

Not sure how this would affect archaeology?  Is a previously terraformed area an important clue?

 

 

That's most likely a totally different "marker" in the code.  I get all the old deed's data on parts that were never terraformed just as well as in the flat leftovers.

 

While I do love the concept, my one true worry about this isn't "flatten a hill by a single shovel hit", can be fixed with "was deed AND has been terraformed" oversimplifying a bit.   What is a bit worrying is the lag spikes that all that terrain polling may cause on some servers.

[Budzilla 186]

+1, would help clear up some land for new or even old players looking to deed.

[Sindusk 2,448]

Since the mod was brought up (the one I made for exactly this purpose), I feel it's valid to provide some context. Basically, when I first generated the map for my unlimited server, it was riddled with horrible bumps and hills all over the terrain. It looked incredibly unnatural and was terrible to travel across. 10 slope up, 13 slope down, 11 slope up again. It was miserable.

 

After some time, I managed to design a system that would naturally terraform the ground back into a more natural state by detecting severe deformities. It does this by moving dirt using logical amounts of slope differential between two sides. If you're looking at a hill that's 10-15 slope each tile up to the top, it's going to be entirely unaffected. If someone digs a 20 slope ditch on a single tile corner, the system would detect that and start moving dirt from the top down into the pit.

 

It's actually somewhat difficult to describe how the system works, but it doesn't just "flatten" the world or make it look miserable. It also doesn't impact building sites, it doesn't work on deeds, and since its implementation there have been no complaints about the map terrain or existence of the system.

 

The best way to describe it is probably a demonstration. This is the gif I used when I posted the patch notes to my server:

 

 

[kochinac 1,395]

23 minutes ago, Sindusk said:

Since the mod was brought up (the one I made for exactly this purpose), I feel it's valid to provide some context. Basically, when I first generated the map for my unlimited server, it was riddled with horrible bumps and hills all over the terrain. It looked incredibly unnatural and was terrible to travel across. 10 slope up, 13 slope down, 11 slope up again. It was miserable.

 

After some time, I managed to design a system that would naturally terraform the ground back into a more natural state by detecting severe deformities. It does this by moving dirt using logical amounts of slope differential between two sides. If you're looking at a hill that's 10-15 slope each tile up to the top, it's going to be entirely unaffected. If someone digs a 20 slope ditch on a single tile corner, the system would detect that and start moving dirt from the top down into the pit.

 

It's actually somewhat difficult to describe how the system works, but it doesn't just "flatten" the world or make it look miserable. It also doesn't impact building sites, it doesn't work on deeds, and since its implementation there have been no complaints about the map terrain or existence of the system.

 

The best way to describe it is probably a demonstration. This is the gif I used when I posted the patch notes to my server:

 

 

That actually looks great and makes sense in some longer periods if changes are slight over time untill evens at some more natural slope.

How often ths happen and how long does it take to bring land to ideal not spiky state? If it's a procces that last some time then i find it quite immersive and it actually make sense to realistic natural behaviour of land

Edited December 6, 2018 by kochinac

[Sindusk 2,448]

10 hours ago, kochinac said:

How often ths happen and how long does it take to bring land to ideal not spiky state? If it's a procces that last some time then i find it quite immersive and it actually make sense to realistic natural behaviour of land

The effect you see there was highly "forced" by using a GM account to apply the effect in that area repeatedly. I condensed about ~2-4 months worth of terrain erosion into that 15 second clip.

Edit: a quick before/after when I was working on it. This was roughly a week of erosion being live on the server:

Before

 

After

[moonpie 56]

On 12/5/2018 at 10:39 PM, Wilczan said:

Hard to set a marker if land is terraformed or not, and even then would just make all terraformed areas completely flat after some time.

 

Deeds already do, altough I must admit that fences go down too slow comparing to houses.

 

Roads shouldn't disappear, but after very long time of not being used could lose some paving to be replaced by gravel or other texture of "destroyed" pavement, wich would gave signs that road is old and destroyed.

Unused roads already disappear after months upon months of no usage

[griper 535]

This would be great in WO.

Provided of course that it doesnt happen on deeded land.

Also it should be well tested as to not mess up current servers.

[SmeJack 5,798]

[moonpie 56]

5 minutes ago, SmeJack said:

this 100 times this

[Xandaros 49]

I quite like what Sindusk described. (I feel like I'm repeating myself... just said the same thing in another suggestion thread)

 

As long as there is an option to prevent it from happening. Pave the sides, for example.

Eventually the pavement will disappear so something that has long been abandoned will be subject to this erosion, while spires that see active use remain unaffected.

 

Making your "permanent" mark on the landscape is a stretchable concept anyway. At any point a player could come along and change it. Sacrificing this aspect, which only works depending on your definition of "permanent" is a small price to pay for the ability to actually move around in certain areas in my opinion.

[Baid 116]

Out of curiosity, how would say an erosion of 1-2 slope every 2 or 3 months in an untouched area of land negatively effect any active players new or old? 

 

On 12/6/2018 at 9:02 AM, Sindusk said:

 

 

Imo WO would benifit from a system similar to the one Sindusk demonstrates for experienced players, returning players and new players alike. There's many ways to look at implementing a system like it to avoid destroying old areas players enjoy visiting or passing through on occasion. 

[Muse 2,220]

This is great where nobody needs the landscape left as it is, but it could be potentially problematic to public infrastructure that is used but not deeded.

 

For example huge scale one-off community projects like canals would need protecting somehow long-term, so that the sides do not collapse rendering the canal impassable by some boats. 

We can not deed the whole canal. We would need to mark the whole length for preservation in some way.

 

The higher level players that create this kind of infrastructure usually move on in the belief that it was a tough job that won't need to be done again. 

What we don't want is a huge maintenance burden on the little guys that use the canal every day to get to their deeds, long after the infrastructure was put in place for them.

Edited December 8, 2018 by Muse