a musing on new world decay

[Kearn]

so judging from what ive read there are at minimum 3 people who would approve of something i will say in this post at some point so basically this is already worth it

mostly im just making this so i can ramble here instead of in the server reset thread

i have approximately zero knowledge of how the codebase for this game actually works and how tiles and corners are individually handled so bear that in mind i guess

first thing is a number of people have mentioned that pavement doesnt really decay in any meaninful manner despite an entire village worth of buildings spontaneously disappearing into the ether over the course of a few weeks. seems pretty straightforward to have abandoned pavement slowly be overgrown, either through multiple ticks of being overcome by grass or just with a particularly slow decay rate

second thing is that even if pavement decayed you would still wind up with large swaths of flattened and terraced areas devoid of trees, boulders, or any natural materials which is still kinda obnoxious

proposed solution: save a template heightmap for the world at worldgen so that the natural state of each tile is known, then flag any tile that is modified for decay checks to slowly add/subtract one dirt over long periods on unclaimed land. when a tile reaches its natural height again the flag is disabled and it no longer gets decay checks

i think this addresses acre clay being permanently depleted and could probably be extended to boulder and mirkwood log depletion also

additionally: whenever a tree in a forest biome is chopped down, flag every forest tile within a radius of 6 tiles or w/e arbitrary value you want to use as being potentially deforested, then check each of those tiles to see if another tree is within 6 tiles. if not, the tile keeps the deforested flag until a new tree is spawned on a decay tick or the tile decays from forest. maybe even have the quality of the sprouted tree be related to the quality of nearby trees so that people could cut down forests and replant them at a higher quality

again idk the feasibility of any of these because i dont know how tiles are individually handled, im just throwing out ideas because i dont have anything better to do with my life

[sMartins]

For sure would be cool, but we need to see what Loftar have to say about.

[loftar]

Pavement should definitely decay. We just haven't gotten to it yet.

As for height decay, I can't really say I enjoy saving away an "original copy" of the map. Not so much for technical reasons as because it just feels like a cop-out. There's no reason for dirt to spring out of nothing just because it was the way the world looked when it started. Please consider my immersion.

As for tree regrowth, I've historically been against it just because it seems like cheating if whatever you've cut down just regrows by itself, but since tree quality matters so much, I'm less rabid about this now than I have been, so may consider again. Old timers may remember the brief time in world... 2? that trees actually did regrow.

[klouyd]

As for tree regrowth, I've historically been against it just because it seems like cheating whatever you've cut down just regrows by itself, but since tree quality matters so much, I'm less rabid about this now that I have been, so may consider again. Old timers may remember the brief time in world... 2? that trees actually did regrow.

not sure I remember trees growing back but I def remember mass deforestation to get LP. but couldn't u have druid planting trees. that's what they do after all. lol

[jorb]

What loftar said.

[Kearn]

i guess to summarize the issue i have with the current system: it seems like the way all structures tend to disappear completely on the order of weeks or months, leaving behind eternal barren flat areas with no resources or natural features, causes a bit of a dichotomy. i think maybe a good solution for this would be to adjust the way decay works on large-scale things like abandoned villages so that nature reclaims the area while still leaving behind slowly rotting structures and materials

maybe slowing down building decay significantly and instead making them progressively easier to destroy with time (kind of like the inverse of hardening) would give them more staying power. that way if new people want to move into the area they can either tidy up and repair the remaining structures or easily destroy them and start over. having some kind of slow, natural regeneration of resources and decay of pavement and other artificial tile changes seems like a good way to ensure that you don't ultimately wind up with swaths of the world devoid of animals and resources, especially on long-lived worlds like is the ideal goal

[Redkat]

I just hope it will be a very slow decay. I used to find it interesting to walk around and looking up how people made villages etc. it was like ruins to me. Of course a huge square paved area doesnt reveal much but lots of people does it differently path wise.

[LadyGoo]

Old timers may remember the brief time in world... 2? that trees actually did regrow.

World 4-5, actually. I thought you've removed it due to server loads and that they would grow into each other.

[Granger]

Old timers may remember the brief time in world... 2? that trees actually did regrow.

World 4-5, actually. I thought you've removed it due to server loads and that they would grow into each other.

Servers got faster since then and the devs got smarter (thus they should be able to avoid placing them too close to each other).
Time to bring it back?

[shubla]

As for tree regrowth, I've historically been against it just because it seems like cheating if whatever you've cut down just regrows by itself, but since tree quality matters so much, I'm less rabid about this now than I have been, so may consider again. Old timers may remember the brief time in world... 2? that trees actually did regrow.

Trees would not have to regrow that quickly, it could take many, many months. They would regrow too slow and be too small quality for any use. It would not be "cheating"

And what comes to implementation. If it was implemented in a bad way last time, it does not mean you should implement it in a bad way again.