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Gunnbjorn

Decay and Land Restoration

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Whenever I check the forum I see folks talking about wiping servers. Older servers eventually just look horrible. Old deed sites, abandoned boats. carts and wagons. Roads to no where , flattened mountains, stripped dirt and holes everywhere.....

You get the idea, like the background of every zombie movie ever made.  Instead of wiping a server lets fix the issue.

 

Faster off deed decay

Very fast off deed decay. Buildings, walls and fences first, containers after that then the equipment it contained.  Make the decay cumulative and fast. 3 months of so for the buildings to go and 1 month for the remainder. Allow re deeding to remove the damage. No reason to punish someone that forgets to add to upkeep for only a month or two. This also avoids all their gear taking a ton of damage to quickly. Add an item like the eyes for roads to keep them from being affected yet continue using the current decay rules as well (don't walk on it decays as normal)  An idea for new players is add a "temp deed stake". Something that allows a 1 month temp deed that cant re deeded, unless you pay and make it a full deed.

 

Land Restoration

Once everything has decayed away have the land itself begin to revert back. I'm guessing the game has a memory of what was, actually I know it does. So basically reverse decay of the land. Dirt walls loose levels while surface mined stone regenerates and gains its dirt back over time.  I have never been happy with the idea of building sites lasting forever, even after the buildings are gone its still forever ugly. Even temp healing areas for rifts are there a year later, way to long to decay.

 

Just think this a good way to keep servers clean and reusable without having to wipe them.

 

 

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On the subject of land restoration you may be interested in this post where Sindusk describes a Wurm Unlimited mod that achieves slow slope erosion. Unfortunately the animated gif that shows it in action has gone but there are before and after pictures to see the effect.

 

 

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my initial idea was a form or constant erosion but I realized eventually all the dirt on mountains gets thin and everything gets flat. So figured having a static form that everything slowly returns to would work better. Don't have a clue how hard that would be to code in though

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-1 I love a lot the old areas of Xanadu where some signs of settlements exist until someone cares to renaturate. In our area, we have removed most ugly traces of old deeds and questionably tasteful terraforming.

 

On the other hand, work worth to be memorized, even if not of up to date best practices, has been preserverd and held dear, such as a spiraling parish road down to the lake which has cost tens of player deaths to establish.

 

As to abandoned carts and wagons, I have pushed not few of them into unused mines, collapsed them to wait for caveins to settle the problem. On the other hand, I have placed the cart of the founder of the deed formerly in place of my deed at the side the highway stub to my waypoint and wagoner container, a pleasant view and remembrance.

 

No automatic process can ever make that distinction. When players are not able to keep their surroundings tidy, they deserve the mess.

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Huge -1 to this idea. Like i've said before, if you want to change what I worked to create via terraforming, then put in the time and effort that I did to create it. I've transformed several large areas, including the entire Lake Woebegone, into something I liked. In the case of the lake, it was a parking lot of pavement, so I put in countless days removing the pavement, terraforming, removed 2 land bridges across the lake, dredged it down to a level that will hopefully deter future parking lot kings from filling it in, put in a canal, surface mined 10's of thousands of shards, etc. 90% of that was off-deed, and you want to have it automatically revert to whatever flatness you think it should be? GTFOOHWTBS! Go put in the work to change the landscape to your liking, and quit being lazy and expecting the devs to do the work for you with some code.

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There is a clear distinction between abandoned vehicles and old landscape.  Many players quite enjoy the landscape, but I have never come across anyone saying they actually like all the abandoned vehicles.  There certainly needs to be a way to clean up the vehicle clutter.

 

For the landscape, there have been suggestions for slow, limited transitions of long untraveled land to soften the empty giant cubes of dirt.  A basic "angle of repose" setting would ensure limitation of any changes.

 

I think an automated process of some sort is in fact needed. New players simply have no way to address massive blocky landscape - it isn't a case of being lazy at all, but of the game not permitting them to make such changes.  Calling new players lazy or saying they deserve a mess seems counterproductive.

 

 Having a look at DaletheGood's example, erosion based absence of infrastructure (including among other things paving and fences) and angle of repose would not undo the terraforming work that has been done there.  I understand the concern here, because if an automated process DID erase people's hard terraforming work there would not be a way to restore it, so anything like this would need to be tested to within an inch of its life.

 

See these discussions as well;

 

 

 

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Old terraforming makes it look like land is in use even when it's long abandoned and this gives new players the illusion that there's nowhere to settle. For some it might be interesting to see remnants of all the people who don't play the game anymore but when the server is full of jagged edges and weird blocky terraforming it just makes it feel like everything is used. 

 

4 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

I've transformed several large areas, including the entire Lake Woebegone, into something I liked. In the case of the lake, it was a parking lot of pavement, so I put in countless days removing the pavement, terraforming, removed 2 land bridges across the lake, dredged it down to a level that will hopefully deter future parking lot kings from filling it in, put in a canal, surface mined 10's of thousands of shards, etc. 90% of that was off-deed, and you want to have it automatically revert to whatever flatness you think it should be?

 

A parking lot of pavement sounds like it was made by players. If this change took place, you wouldn't have had to do all that work in the first place because it would have returned to a natural shape on its own.

Edited by Vorticella

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4 hours ago, Vorticella said:

A parking lot of pavement sounds like it was made by players. If this change took place, you wouldn't have had to do all that work in the first place because it would have returned to a natural shape on its own.

It was made by a player, and when his deed dropped I stepped in that day and deeded over what I could to prevent the re-deed. I then went to work on changing it to a more natural state. When he came back less than a month later, I out-worked him over the next 3-4 months and made that lake and surrounding area beautiful. Yeah, he didn't like it, but all the neighbors did. If you want your neighborhood to look nice, put in the work.

 

If new players are under some disillusionment about how much work is involved in this game, then it's unlikely that a pristine wilderness will appeal to them as that's a lot of work to make into a deed. As a new player I was happy to find a flat piece of ground with a guard tower right there to make my first deed as it meant I didn't have to get my digging skills up in order to make it livable. Quit looking to make shortcuts to the game just so some hypothetical new players don't get discouraged. If they're put off that easily over some funky landscape, I doubt that they're going to stick around when they realize it'll take them 2 years or more of grinding just to master 1 skill to 100, much less the 140 or whatever skills we have.

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So, let's say I've put a deed on top of a hill (around 1600 above water), the sides were steep cliff, it's a narrow island. After using 250k+ dirt, there's no longer any cliff on deed. Then this deed disbands, all the structures, etc, decay away. What would happen to the land then? Does the dirt from the steeper tiles all flow down, in this case into the ocean, possibly clogging up travel routes for boats? And what if deeds are in the way of where the dirt would flow to? Or does the land just get reset to how it was before the terraforming, permanently removing 250k dirt from the game? Aassuming such data is even saved, which seems unlikely as such data serves no point at this time.

 

I see the point behind the suggestion, but then I also see some of the more extreme cases (like the above, which actually describes my deed on Xanadu) and I just get a headache.

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Too convoluted in coding if you ask me. What about public infrastructure : canals, highways, public mines, paths up a mountain or through a mountain, etc. 

 

I get where OP is coming from, personally I think the land decay is not the issue but rather the garbage cluttering the server. I've stated in the past but I am against so much "protectionism" of items from players that haven't logged in more than a year. If anything I think items (boats, carts, etc) from players afk for more than a year should have decay speed up by 100x. 

 

Case in point, right now I have a wagon on deed with 4 hitched horses from a villager that hasn't logged in 2 years. Those 4 horses do nothing but add to my village ration and the wagon simply sits there, a 4 wheeled garbage bin at this point. I'll have to ask for a GM to unhitch them and remove the wagon off deed or something. 

 

It's quite annoying but people who quit the game leave a lot of garbage that almost never decays due to people constantly repairing boats, carts etc for the repair skill gain. 

 

 

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41 minutes ago, Ecrir said:

Then this deed disbands, all the structures, etc, decay away. What would happen to the land then?

Well, if the mechanic is slow and more importantly limited, as has been suggested elsewhere, then there would be some movement, but certainly not enough to clog up travel routes.  How steep do you mean by "the steeper tiles"?  You say there is no longer any cliff on deed; does that mean there is still a cliff, but elsewhere and made of dirt, or does it mean that there are instead slopes?  

 

5 minutes ago, elentari said:

What about public infrastructure : canals, highways, public mines, paths up a mountain or through a mountain, etc. 

 

I don't speak for others, but in the mechanism as I envision it any kind of infrastructure would stop it completely.  Personally, I would say at least a full tile of "empty" (nothing but grass, steppe etc) should be a requirement for a corner to be "tick" on an erosion roll.

 

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One concern with an erosion algorithm is where does it stop? where do you draw the line and say, that's enough smoothing, that's enough dirt in the valleys and holes and those slopes are now not too steep, so stop.  Smoothing must stop at some point between whatever eyesore the player left, and completely flat land, and where this point should be is largely a matter of personal taste. 

 

Reverting to the original map seems soul destroying for those that spent many hours and endured many deaths trying to conquer steep slopes, deep ravines and other unpassable areas.  How exactly did they 'leave their mark' when everything returns as if they had not been there?

 

Everything players have dug and built on the server they did for a reason.  How can we make an algorithm discern the difference between an unwanted hole or a long forgotten quarry, as opposed to a useful old canal or other communication link?  Flagging tiles and features for preservation according to how often they are used may not be enough.  Just because an old pathway, embankment, cutting or tunnel is seldom used, it does not mean it is not a vital access route for the person that occasionally uses it.

Edited by Muse
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12 minutes ago, Muse said:

 

Everything players have dug and built on the server they did for a reason.  How can we make an algorithm discern the difference between an unwanted hole or a long forgotten quarry, as opposed to a useful old canal or other communication link? 

I don't think you could. Bugs would happen and they might have disastruous consequences. Consider what would happen to mines over time, specially people that have their dwarven - fortress - deeds set up. 

 

One of the selling points in wurm and in the trailer is "Make your mark upon the land" reinforced in different points in the video and wurm gameplay. 

 

Also I'd add that pre-terraformed abandoned spaces actually are a positive for the game. I've met many people who settled down in former deeds due to this singular quality, saving time on terraforming a bunch of dirt/ rock. 

 

And some places in Wurm have some insane terraforming in their past, hundreds if not thousand of hours put into them. Even their "ruins" quality gives wurm a unique history no other game has. 

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4 hours ago, Ecrir said:

What would happen to the land then? Does the dirt from the steeper tiles all flow down, in this case into the ocean, possibly clogging up travel routes for boats? And what if deeds are in the way of where the dirt would flow to? Or does the land just get reset to how it was before the terraforming, permanently removing 250k dirt from the game?

 

This is exactly why I dismissed the idea of EROSION. The dirt is not lost, it is basically put back. Where ever you dug the dirt from originally (as long as it's not a deeded location) would slowly rise, adding a few dirts per month while a few dirts a month vanish from the location that was built and abandoned.

 

This does not need to be used on all servers. Xan is HUGE and not even beginning to be trashed from settlements. There are many small servers that barely have any locations left that haven't been terraformed is some way.

 

I expected BOTH of these ides to work together. CANT change the land till the decay is finished. Roads you add something like the catseyes to to keep them from early decay. Canals .......no idea but i'm sure they could add something to keep them from reverting.

If you think about it we already have this happening, caveins, you just add supports to stop it. 

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1 hour ago, Muse said:

Reverting to the original map seems soul destroying for those that spent many hours and endured many deaths trying to conquer steep slopes, deep ravines and other unpassable areas.  How exactly did they 'leave their mark' when everything returns as if they had not been there?

 

Do we need to see the marks left by every single player that has passed through the game though? A lot of people try the game for a few weeks or months, make a big mess of the land and then leave forever.

 

What about something similar to catseyes that could be made to preserve areas that are considered important? I picture an item similar to the base of a waystone maybe. It could be easy to make, and imped to a higher quality to protect a wider area, and planted like a sign. It protects from natural decay only, no effect on player actions. Examining the ground within range could say something like "This area is protected from the forces of nature". It could decay like a normal item but maybe at a reduced rate, and if it eventually crumbles to dust the protection would disappear with it. This would make it very easy to protect an off-deed space from land restoration indefinitely, as long as people care to protect it. If nobody can be bothered to repair the stone for the entire length of time before it decays (months and months), that's a pretty good indicator that nobody cares anymore and the land can begin returning to a more natural state.

Edited by Vorticella
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Use blessed buoy's to secure canals, give them a 5x5 area of effect. No decay (on the buoy) and can only be removed once a player raises them above water level.

 

I never intended this to be a fast process.  A plateau made with 250k dirt would take years to completely revert back, but within a year that giant cube would look more like a flat top hill. Another player can always reclaim it and with minimum work make it a deed again.  BUT if no one else likes the spot it eventually reverts back instead of being an eye sore forever.

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11 hours ago, Muse said:

One concern with an erosion algorithm is where does it stop?

 

A basic angle of repose - or in other words a set slope which is the threshold for any of this kind of decay. 

 

IRL  Coarse sand will settle to about 45 degrees, from memory, so slope 40 for the least stable terrain type.  Bare dirt varies a lot but can easily repose at 60 or 70 degrees (slope about 70 to 120), while any kind of ground cover will hold dirt to slopes almost vertical - call it to 85 degrees or slope of about 460

 

This "settling" could occur at the corners where there is the greatest change in slope, ie at the top edge, resulting in a slow, limited softening of the sharp angle at the top, with the dirts from there collecting at the bottom.  So for example instead of having (from foot to plateau) slopes of  0, 0, 0, 1600, 0 , 0, 0 you would, after a VERY long time (multiple to many years) have a stable landscape at 230, 460, 460, 460, 230.  Even this would ONLY occur if there was no infrastructure of any sort encountered on any of the otherwise effected tiles.   I am a bit of  Wurm mountain climber, and can say that these would still be challenging slopes to scale.  

 

Because this would be a decay mechanic, all of the things that prevent decay would also prevent this. It would not occur at all on rock, clay, concrete.

 

EDIT:  I wouldn't want to see a total reversion of the land, just a bit of a realistic softening to smooth the jarring and unnatural cubes of landscape that do seem to frequent the wilds of Wurm.  I like ruins and such, so I have always thought that this softening would be the last bit of the slow decay of genuinely abandoned areas.

 

EDIT EDIT:  Oh, and nothing would happen underwater.  Under water everything is already Magic Sand so that would just continue.

Edited by TheTrickster
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I like the idea of reducing the "ghost town effect" that abandoned deeds have.

At the same time, I'm concerned about any suggestion of trying to return stuff where it came from. That's two changes, rather than one, so it's double the chance to do the wrong thing.

 

Natural style erosion is a possibility, if you keep it limited to, say, the sort of thing that a person could do with a shovel and the Flatten action. And it'd need all the usual safeguards about nearby buildings and caves and highways. And it would need to stop before slopes get below, say, 20. 

 

I do like the idea of paved ground decaying gradually back to bare dirt, too. That's esential.

 

 

Edited by Sheffie

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As much as I hate those left-over dirt masterpieces and like the idea of erosion I don't think there will be a solution for them as it can interfere with people's projects.

 

One solution would be to make digging down extreme slopes faster. So people looking to fix the scenery get a boost. It would allso be an easier way to gather dirties.

 

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