Why are caves hard to implement couldn't you just...

[Glommer]

...generate all the caves at the very beginning together with the rest of the world as "one big world" and treat cave entrances exactly like wormholes, where you basically just teleport to another spot on the same world/map.

 

Obviously it's never as easy as it sounds when you have to code it, but isn't that conceptually by far the simplest solution instead of juggling several players across several worlds/maps? I think I heard in a twitch steam that they don't want players to only be able to enter caves when all players in the world enter it together at once (boo, lame). Basically players should be able to hop in and out of caves when they please, so why not make caves part of the same world/map and make cave entrances work like wormholes?

[Michi01]

Good idea

[DarkXero]

You can use this:

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=364821573

[rezecib]

This is what I've been suggesting for months. But as the map is handled by the C++ code, it's hard to get a sense of its limitations. I know modders haven't been able to generate maps above a certain size, it's possible there are some limitations there. Additionally, typically four caves generate per world, so this would make worldgen realllly long.

 

Then there's the whole issue of having different lighting for different players. The lighting system would need to be pretty thoroughly overhauled. And lastly, everything in the caves would need to be networked...

 

But in general, I think the devs are focusing on general stability right now, followed by RoG, in the hopes that a better solution for caves becomes apparent somewhere along the way.

[XirmiX]

The only problem is that you'd have both worlds being visible on one map, even if they're quite far away from each other. That is, unless people can have multiple maps when they enter different worlds. Yeah, this sounds great! Generate everything on the same world, have three cave worlds quite far away from the main world and give players 7 maps, 3 of which will be for individual caves, another 3 for ruins and one for the overworld! Sounds brilliant, except that water would be around everything... Unless you can make one world into multiple giant square rooms, like this:

 

 

The top three are caves, bottom three are ruins and the middle one is the overworld. You could only move your map as far as the within the box which the map is in and not infinitively and you would have multiple maps which would change depending on which world you're in. Also, it's a basic sketch, so don't criticize it too much. within the bounded cubes, you would have different atmosphere, different amount of freezing and heat there is if you're in different place in a certain season and you would have different sounds and music playing at different places.

[simplex]

I don't see this working very well. Caves have different ambient light, season settings, world components (quaker and such)... It'd probably take as much work, if not more, to implement caves as part of the regular world than to implement multi-instancing where more than one world is loaded by the server at the same time.

However, implementing caves requiring all players to be either in or out of them is doable with the current state of the game. In fact, I heard it's been already done.

[XirmiX]

I don't see this working very well. Caves have different ambient light, season settings, world components (quaker and such)... It'd probably take as much work, if not more, to implement caves as part of the regular world than to implement multi-instancing where more than one world is loaded by the server at the same time.

However, implementing caves requiring all players to be either in or out of them is doable with the current state of the game. In fact, I heard it's been already done.

If Two worlds map from Adventure mode can get longer nights and dusk at one world, and longer days in the other world while still being part of the same map, then surely this is possible. It's all about that wormhole business

[simplex]

If Two worlds map from Adventure mode can get longer nights and dusk at one world, and longer days in the other world while still being part of the same map, then surely this is possible. It's all about that wormhole business

You forget Adventure Mode is singleplayer only. It works by changing the entire world state when you travel through the wormhole, it just feels like they are per island settings because there's only one player. Yet another reason why porting Adventure Mode to DST will be tricky. It'll probably be simpler to implement the Two Worlds map by having it actually be two worlds, two different maps, in much the same way caves are meant to be implemented.

[DarkXero]

It works by changing the entire world state when you travel through the wormhole, it just feels like they are per island settings because there's only one player.

 

It's not the wormhole itself: the day segments change as soon as you step in world two. I c_speed(400) my way from one island to another in Two Worlds and the clock changed.

 

But still porting that thing is hell, as noted by tetrified in the world gen mod guide he did.

 

Also kudos on Up And Away team's progress, I'm following it.

[Doddler]

I imagine you could get it to work by making them like special wormholes, where going one way removes the display of day/night (always shows it as if it were night), changes water to look like abyss, and maybe even hides the original map and shows you a different one. Leaving the cave could revert it. It would effectively work like a cave, but you could simulate both in the same world. Main issue is how much it could negatively affect performance to have that much more added to the simulation, but you'd probably be fine for dedicated servers and good machines? I think it would be the best way though.