Would you like a sort of terraforming in ShipWrecked?

[SirBuizelton]

The idea of this terraforming concept is rather simple. Either by digging up tons of sand and using it piece by piece to flesh out a coastal area of water connected to your shore (or by using a ton of sand to make some sort of "coast block", or by some other means of actually placing terrain in the world, we could expand islands, tile by tile, and make them bigger or maybe even smaller, so we can shape them to be just the way we want. 

 

I feel like you'd still be restricted to expanding your land in the very shallow water though, or at least to the medium-deep water (requiring a lot more effort/materials for this), because it makes absolutely no sense to me that we could actually place land in the deep ocean and we don't want this feature to be completely game-breaking.

 

Additional ideas, concerns, critique, and questions are more than welcome! Feel free to share! 

[mitboy]

IMO, making bridges and maybe channels is enough.

[rezecib]

I think this has been a long-desired feature generally (usually in the context of bridges, outside of Shipwrecked). I'd really like it partly because it requires a little work on the game engine side (the part we can't mess with in mods), and it would enable a whole variety of mods. But it also makes a lot of sense in Shipwrecked given that the whole map is available anyway, and sand makes sense as a land-creating resource.

[Lacost]

I would rather like the idea of mega-projects where you have to put tons of resources into it.

 

For instance if you want to place a bridge between 2 narrow islands you craft a costly base structure that is placed into the water and by adding wood (like feeding machines/fires) the bridge becomes more and more finished.

 

That would also be nice for new land. You have to place wood pillars (maybe stone for deeper water?) into the water and then you are adding sand until it has become a walkable tile.

 

At least I need some projects to waste huge amounts of resources in the lategame and besides doing cosmetic base-designs (100 chests) there isn't really a sinkhole for all your stuff.

[SirBuizelton]

IMO, making bridges and maybe channels is enough.

 

Well yeah, that would probably be what most people use it for, although I also support the idea of larger projects that consume a lot of resources and allow you to make a much more customized land mass.

 

It'd also be really nice for people who have been wanting to build docks. You could totally just build your very own little peninsula-ish piece of land that juts out from your island and cover it with wooden floorboards for the very same effect and function.

[SirBuizelton]

I think this has been a long-desired feature generally (usually in the context of bridges, outside of Shipwrecked). I'd really like it partly because it requires a little work on the game engine side (the part we can't mess with in mods), and it would enable a whole variety of mods. But it also makes a lot of sense in Shipwrecked given that the whole map is available anyway, and sand makes sense as a land-creating resource.

 

Mmhmm! I mentioned it now because, as you said, everything is accessible anyway in Shipwrecked, so I don't really see why not, as far as game balance is concerned. 

 

I also mentioned it because I feel like a lot of people have been asking for a lot of things that could be satisfied if we had a simple feature like this in the game. (People asking for docks, bridges, and the like) So I just wanted to make one thread to kind of see how the community as a whole feels about it and give them a chance to vote and voice their opinions in one place.

[orian34]

We would get some use of a floating boat/platform where you can put things.

[rezecib]

@mitboy, This would actually be the simplest implementation for bridges and channels, though.

[Kraglok]

I would love this.  A lot of the playing I've been doing lately has been about changing the look and utility of my base island.  This would be a huge step forward in that endeavor.

[AnonymousKoala]

This would be so awesome.

 

[Cyde042]

You can make a makeshift bridge out of rafts if you don't intend it to be used for building.

[_Q_]

Lets say they enable the building, of land or even bridges, it would be very exploitable. All you need to do is build the land that whole of it is visible on screen and hounds wont be able to spawn on you, any other land based boss wont be able to spanw etc.

Even more if you will be able to remove and rebuild entrance to this screen sized island, you will be safe from any monsters.

[GuyPerfect]

I'd really like it partly because it requires a little work on the game engine side (the part we can't mess with in mods), and it would enable a whole variety of mods.

Terraformation can be accomplished with mods.

[Cyde042]

Terraformation can be accomplished with mods.

 

Where is this from? Is the land present on world reload?

 

[GuyPerfect]

I just modified the Pitchfork function, which amusingly enough uses a component called Terraformer. Yes, the new land persists through a save/load cycle.

 

Though I haven't fully pulled apart the worldgen code, the only piece of it I know for sure is part of the application is the voronoi generator. Either way, the full contents of the map save file--which includes the topography and all entities thereon--is processed in Lua through scripts/saveindex.lua through the methods TheSim:SetPersistentString() and TheSim:GetPersistentString(). While TheSim is made of C functions, the data that passes through it is accessible to Lua, meaning everything about a map can be changed by mods.

[rezecib]

@GuyPerfect, I'm aware of that, but there's a very serious problem in that shorelines (as in the collision boundary between land and water) can only be created, not destroyed, without reloading the slot. 

[SirBuizelton]

Lets say they enable the building, of land or even bridges, it would be very exploitable. All you need to do is build the land that whole of it is visible on screen and hounds wont be able to spawn on you, any other land based boss wont be able to spanw etc.

Even more if you will be able to remove and rebuild entrance to this screen sized island, you will be safe from any monsters.

 

I'd imagine a screen-sized island wouldn't exactly be the easiest thing to survive on. You could have a very small base, yeah, but there'd hardly even be any room on the entire island for you to plant a lot of grass/trees/berries/etc if you really wanted to have a decent base like that.

 

You'd also be cutting yourself off from a lot of resources that way because there's no room for you to put spiders on this island without them constantly being in your base at sundown, just as one example. Let's not even start talking about what happens if you wanted to have monkeys on your island at all. What of Palm Treeguards, if you grow palm trees on this small island? There are still a fair amount of things that can go wrong. Especially when you consider things like the Dry season and how that might change to be more difficult in the future. an island that small while still having the resources you need would have to be EXTREMELY dense. Later on monsoon seasons will just soak your entire island in a day with ease. The list goes on and on.

 

I do agree though, there are probably ways that this could be mildly exploitable, but I feel like as long as it's fairly expensive to do, it's definitely not any kind of earlygame option, and it may finally be something that's worth sinking a ton of those excess resources into.

[SirBuizelton]

Snip. Accidentally doubleposted, sorry!

 

[greenglacier]

Absolutely.

[_Q_]

Nothing would stop you from crating a set of few small isalns connected via one block wide long bridge.

Depending on the cost it may be not good idea or just easy way out of any kind of problems.

While I want some kind of larger scale constructions the game is made in a way that makes implementing any of those very hard.

 

 

Mind you simple doors are making hounds very easy to handle, you can shoot at them trough walls etc.

Not even thinking about pathfinding lags that could occur when you build some maze of islands.

 

 

We still didn't get doors implemented, and thinking about terraforming that is much more complicated.

I doubt it will ever happen.

[SirBuizelton]

Nothing would stop you from crating a set of few small isalns connected via one block wide long bridge.

Depending on the cost it may be not good idea or just easy way out of any kind of problems.

While I want some kind of larger scale constructions the game is made in a way that makes implementing any of those very hard.

 

 

Mind you simple doors are making hounds very easy to handle, you can shoot at them trough walls etc.

Not even thinking about pathfinding lags that could occur when you build some maze of islands.

 

 

We still didn't get doors implemented, and thinking about terraforming that is much more complicated.

I doubt it will ever happen.

 

Honestly I always thought hounds were pretty easy to handle regardless, especially in shipwrecked. I don't feel like a super expensive way to alter the terrain would infringe on something that's already very easy to deal with for a way smaller cost (one pan flute usage is enough to completely eliminate any hound wave with no problem whatsoever, for example. Or, for literally no resource cost at all, you can just lead non-fire hounds to an eyeplant. Done. Literally no effort required.)

[ShadowPhazon]

IMO, making bridges and maybe channels is enough.

 

I prefer that idea to actually adding or subtracting more land. Perhaps, even going so far as utilizing channels in order to drain off Monsoon puddling.

 

Lets say they enable the building, of land or even bridges, it would be very exploitable. All you need to do is build the land that whole of it is visible on screen and hounds wont be able to spawn on you, any other land based boss wont be able to spanw etc.

Even more if you will be able to remove and rebuild entrance to this screen sized island, you will be safe from any monsters.

 

In order to avoid such exploits, Bridges (or preferably a dock or floating platform system) could not be extendable beyond a certain point, such as three spaces into the sea (Although, three tiles into the sea may be a bit too restrictive. Perhaps only allowing bridges to be built in shallow waters may suffice, there-in-by connected close islands or archipelagos, but not islands halfway across the map).