Add Bridges

[Trenix]

Just thought it would be neat if we can make a bridge to get over water instead of going all the way around every little river just to get to the other side. Maybe even have some generate with the world. You should be allowed to destroy it too of course.

[Ecu]

17 hours ago, Trenix said:

Just thought it would be neat if we can make a bridge to get over water instead of going all the way around every little river just to get to the other side. Maybe even have some generate with the world. You should be allowed to destroy it too of course.

From my understanding on how the game engine works, this actually cannot be done.  Simply because the world edges are defined at world generation (from what I understand), and as such trying to put a bridge across would still end up with the area unwalkable.  The only way this could work is if bridges were done during world generation and essentially their own preset structure.

Doing that, would require world generation to be aware of where these river like areas generated, which again is something the default world generation does not support.

[Arlesienne]

1 hour ago, Ecu said:

From my understanding on how the game engine works, this actually cannot be done.  Simply because the world edges are defined at world generation (from what I understand), and as such trying to put a bridge across would still end up with the area unwalkable.  The only way this could work is if bridges were done during world generation and essentially their own preset structure.

Doing that, would require world generation to be aware of where these river like areas generated, which again is something the default world generation does not support.

Besides, think of what sense it would (not) make. The water is meant to be a final border. Why would there be bridges in the first place? And if the transients are to build them, what stops them from trying to escape on a boat?

My belief is that water is meant to keep you in. Now, land bridges are another thing. But setting branching to lots offers that.

[An Artifact]

15 minutes ago, Arlesienne said:

Besides, think of what sense it would (not) make. The water is meant to be a final border. Why would there be bridges in the first place? And if the transients are to build them, what stops them from trying to escape on a boat?

My belief is that water is meant to keep you in. Now, land bridges are another thing. But setting branching to lots offers that.

To be fair, it would be very helpful to build bridges between two close together land masses only separated by a tiny string of water. Since as we all know, world gen can be a massive tease, showing you a fertile savannah full of pooping beefalos, but you have to spend half an hour actually finding the natural access to the area.

I personally would be for bridges, but as Ecu said, it's probably impossible to do with how the game works right now. Something to put on the To-do list for Don't Starve 2, I guess.

[Arlesienne]

25 minutes ago, MeingroessterFan said:

To be fair, it would be very helpful to build bridges between two close together land masses only separated by a tiny string of water. Since as we all know, world gen can be a massive tease, showing you a fertile savannah full of pooping beefalos, but you have to spend half an hour actually finding the natural access to the area.

I personally would be for bridges, but as Ecu said, it's probably impossible to do with how the game works right now. Something to put on the To-do list for Don't Starve 2, I guess.

That. Something we'd like, but innately know we can't have...

[Ecu]

34 minutes ago, MeingroessterFan said:

To be fair, it would be very helpful to build bridges between two close together land masses only separated by a tiny string of water. Since as we all know, world gen can be a massive tease, showing you a fertile savannah full of pooping beefalos, but you have to spend half an hour actually finding the natural access to the area.

I personally would be for bridges, but as Ecu said, it's probably impossible to do with how the game works right now. Something to put on the To-do list for Don't Starve 2, I guess.

I personally feel that having to explore to find your way to the location is better than being able to build a bridge there.  We need more challenges to the game, not less.  So I would say that even from a gameplay standpoint, we shouldn't have bridges unless they are generated via worldgen (which would just essentially be the entrance to an area).

[An Artifact]

6 minutes ago, Ecu said:

I personally feel that having to explore to find your way to the location is better than being able to build a bridge there.  We need more challenges to the game, not less.  So I would say that even from a gameplay standpoint, we shouldn't have bridges unless they are generated via worldgen (which would just essentially be the entrance to an area).

I'm more of the mind that having the choice of how to deal with such an issue would be better. Nobody said the bridges would be cheap; maybe have them require a whole buttload of planks and bricks to balance the benefit they would provide. It wouldn't be something you can do from day 1, but a luxury product for when you already established that you can survive just fine without the game giving you handouts.

[Arlesienne]

1 minute ago, MeingroessterFan said:

I'm more of the mind that having the choice of how to deal with such an issue would be better. Nobody said the bridges would be cheap; maybe have them require a whole buttload of planks and bricks to balance the benefit they would provide. It wouldn't be something you can do from day 1, but a luxury product for when you already established that you can survive just fine without the game giving you handouts.

Thulecite bridges as the only magical stuff remotely apt at withstanding the toxic water? After all you don't fish in the ocean.

[Ecu]

Just now, MeingroessterFan said:

I'm more of the mind that having the choice of how to deal with such an issue would be better. Nobody said the bridges would be cheap; maybe have them require a whole buttload of planks and bricks to balance the benefit they would provide. It wouldn't be something you can do from day 1, but a luxury product for when you already established that you can survive just fine without the game giving you handouts.

I understand where you're coming from, however, I disagree.  Even with a high cost, it allows circumventing terrain, which is reducing challenge in general.  Even the other methods of terrain circumvention require specific world generation, or are highly limited.  So in general, it just seems like a poor idea.

3 minutes ago, Arlesienne said:

Thulecite bridges as the only magical stuff remotely apt at withstanding the toxic water? After all you don't fish in the ocean.

If you were to restrict this to thulecite, it would only achievable by early cave runners or end game.  To me,  this would make the feature one that is designed towards a more Minecraft style of gameplay.  As I don't feel that is the intent of the game (supported by official servers only being survival mode), I see such a design as poor.

[CarlZalph]

I did make a bridge prefab from another thread asking for bridges a while ago.

Essentially the walls are 2d plane/very skinny 3d boxes of collision that go along the borders, and these walls are auto-generated on world load.

Which is to say that having a tile set to a walkable and the world restarts by shutting down and restarting the server then it becomes walkable without walls.

 

My prefab did a periodic ping and put a sort of noclip on the player(s) nearby it, while having the 'sides' of the bridge with 8 cylinder collision blocks on the sides (We have don't have access to all of the Bullet physics API and thus cannot make boxes).

It also made the floor tile wood so when the server restarted it wouldn't need to poll at all and it would 'just work' later.

[Arlesienne]

Just now, Ecu said:

I understand where you're coming from, however, I disagree.  Even with a high cost, it allows circumventing terrain, which is reducing challenge in general.  Even the other methods of terrain circumvention require specific world generation, or are highly limited.  So in general, it just seems like a poor idea.

If you were to restrict this to thulecite, it would only achievable by early cave runners or end game.  To me,  this would make the feature one that is designed towards a more Minecraft style of gameplay.  As I don't feel that is the intent of the game (supported by official servers only being survival mode), I see such a design as poor.

The general problem is with little control over map generation. You can't really have islands connected through wormholes and other features of Adventure Mode worlds from DS, which is quite a shame, because they offer more challenge than one mainland. Simply trotting in a straight line is not much of one. It's just boring.

[Ecu]

Just now, Arlesienne said:

The general problem is with little control over map generation. You can't really have islands connected through wormholes and other features of Adventure Mode worlds from DS, which is quite a shame, because they offer more challenge than one mainland. Simply trotting in a straight line is not much of one. It's just boring.

@Kzisorhas already proven this to be incorrect.  World generation can indeed be overhauled via modding to implement said features.  Which means they could be implemented by Klei via Lua as well.  I would definitely support islands that required caving and/or wormholes to reach as it creates solid challenge as well as reasons to create artificial roads and walls and such to keep the path safe.

[Trenix]

I'm not a genius in programming, but I'm pretty sure you can begin a bridge at two points and than have them merge creating pathing and removing collision in that area. Now even if the engine still wont allow that, which I'd be surprised to believe, the engine should be remade because it would be nice if water was more useful than just being a border. I don't think it'd even take much time because of the Shipwrecked DLC. Imagine water mobs, mobs drinking at rivers, and players using rafts to get to other side along being able to build bridges. We could even have deep water and shallow water as well. Spear fishing anyone?

[Ecu]

2 hours ago, Trenix said:

I'm not a genius in programming, but I'm pretty sure you can begin a bridge at two points and than have them merge creating pathing and removing collision in that area. Now even if the engine still wont allow that, which I'd be surprised to believe, the engine should be remade because it would be nice if water was more useful than just being a border. I don't think it'd even take much time because of the Shipwrecked DLC. Imagine water mobs, mobs drinking at rivers, and players using rafts to get to other side along being able to build bridges. We could even have deep water and shallow water as well. Spear fishing anyone?

It isn't really about difficulty in coding it, but the way the engine itself works.  From what I recall (and mind you, I could be wrong), you cannot simply change the edge collision of the map after world generation the way things work right now.  This means that creating bridges during play is not feasible.  Creating them during world generation would indeed be possible (as some form of new set piece), however, it would still require overhauls to world generation to be able to get the two points of which you wish to spawn a bridge between.

So either way would require a pretty extensive overhaul of the existing systems.  In one case, the overhaul would be on the C++ side, in the other case it would be on the Lua side (likely).

Given how many people have posted here asking for Shipwrecked to be implemented into DST, I'm pretty sure Klei understands people want water to be more appealing.  I'm just not sure it is something they care to do.  Shipwrecked itself, while fun, feels quite empty.  So straight porting it wouldn't be super appealing.  Which is why what I have advocated for is merging it into the overworld.  This is essentially what @Kzisoris doing as a mod.

However, doing this has indeed required world generation to be overhauled as I stated it would need to be.  I was looking into doing this myself, after talking with Klei regarding use of the assets.  However, @Kzisor beat me to the punch and so I just am waiting for their system to come out and play around with it.

That said, even their system (I believe), wouldn't give you the information you'd effectively need to set up good bridging between islands as you desire.  I don't believe it changes anything regarding the edging either.  I'm guessing they implement sea travel similar to Shipwrecked, where it basically turns off your collision, moves you outside the edging, and then turns it back on with a boat tied to your character.

[John]

Bridges in concept would be great, so long as there were restrictions as to length. But I struggle to conceive how that might work mechanically, and there are the technical issues others have mentioned. Maybe if they were naturally spawning ruins that could be repaired?

I would love for there to be a lite-DS:SW port in DS or DS2. With the sea being real dangerous and the cave system as a means to bypass it to other islands. But that's all so far away, I just hope the DS franchise gets its sequel