Terraforming and all it's possibilities

[TheMap]

IakXastur wrote:

So I watched TheMap's terraforming video, maybe multiple of them, who knows, and it got me thinking of a couple questions.

1.) If you dig down, when there is no water around, will the space fill up with water, i.e. default when group is below ground level

I am not sure about the log thing you was asking, it seems others has answered you in which case no you cannot put dirt on logs. The question quoted above I can answer for ya.

Yes and no. The ground filled in the water after a certain number of floor tiles I was able to dig deep and make pits in my castle floor. On occasion I would spring a leak and it would fill with water, this in turn would have to be filled back in to the top to remove the water. Eventually I stopped trying to dig and just kept the ground level because it was buggy and didn't want to stay water free.

[Farmerbob]

The only difference between my understanding and Prokop's is that if you are standing on a tree trunk and terraforming underneath it, there is indeed a limit to how deep you can dig, and this limit is certainly skill based. This is as of a few days ago.

Basically I cut down a tree and tried to make it float in the air. As I skilled up terraforming I could dig deeper under parts of the tree that I had already gotten to my maximum digging depth when I had lower terraforming skill.

I did not test to see if terraforming skill also affected raising terrain when standing suspended above it on a tree - just didn't think of it.

[Cunk]

I just hope they give us finer control over the terraforming process. As it works now, digging drops or raises the terrain by 0.50m (and levels the tile). Adding a fine raise/lower action that does only 0.10m would allow us to make our work perfectly flat if we want (and I think most do). And it appears that leveling ensures the tile winds up at a height with an increment of 0.10m so the added fine control would be all we need. And just have the coarse action take 5x longer than the fine.

However this is still not enough. The current functions all result in flat tiles (except for the ones connecting your flat tiles). This doesn't give you nearly enough control over things. It makes all sorts of geometry impossible. The simplest solution would be to add the ability to raise/lower corners (which is how Wurm Online works). But there would need to be a better way of targeting corners. In Wurm whichever corner you are standing nearest is affected by an action but in that game it's very simple to tell what corner you are working on because the tiles are much larger (4m) and they highlight when you mouse over them. Trying to raise/lower corners with Xsyon's 1m tiles with no highlighting would be frustrating at best. However I'm not suggesting Xsyon mimic Wurm in this regard -- I'm sure there's a better system that can be implemented. I want to keep Xsyon's 1m resolution. Perhaps simply adding 4 corner-digging buttons, NW, NE, SE, SW that only do fine (0.10m) control would be the answer.

Another area of concern is how will we measure our work once the position indicator is removed from the UI (which it will since that is just for bug locating during this phase). Wurm shows you the slopes of tile borders when you mouse over them but again, I'm not suggesting Xsyon copy Wurm in this. Maybe we could just leave it up to eyeballing and judgment which would allow people who enjoy terraforming to have some way to demonstrate their abilities.

Another option would be to add some sort of surveying tool to the game that tells you the height of a tile's corners. And rather than just making it a UI button with the other terraforming tools perhaps make it skill-based (no access until terraforming reaches 75 for example) or else make it an actual tool that has to be built or purchased (but perhaps still can't be used until you have enough skill). One thing though, if it is a physical tool, make it so only one person is needed to operate it. Real life surveying tools seem to require two people but I don't think anyone wants to be the guy standing there holding the target stick (whatever it's called) in a game. It's not likely anyone is going to be patient with some terraforming perfectionist as they measure every tile of a large project, making sure everything is just right.

[Cunk]

prokop15 wrote:

@Farmerbob:

I think you were seeing the slope restriction get changed.

@ Cunk:

Yeah, raising/lowering the points (or at least having the option to) and leveling the tiles would be a better system IMO. As it stands now, you have to do strange things to get certain results.
EDIT: The points aren't that tight. I wouldn't find them any more difficult to pick out than a single tile.

This would also help to address the exploit of using tiles as a compass!

Yeah, didn't think about how that would serve as a compass.

I suppose you could rely on standing near corners but if that proves too hard to accomplish maybe you could replace the compass labels for the 4 corner actions with 2 buttons, Left Corner and Right Corner, and have them work relative to which way you are facing. I suppose they could prompt you to click near the corner you want to dig but that could result in too much clicking. Click action button, click spot. Repeat. That would be annoying. Unless the action button was a toggle.

Maybe if they all were toggles and you used the mouse cursor to indicate the tile or corner (or edge for that matter) you want to work on. As long as you were within a certain range. That would probably make terraforming pretty fun for most people.