Water in Medieval Engineers

Why do we need water in ME ?

watering plants (pumps, pipes, tanks)





strategic possibilities (e.g. drawbridge over water, can't swim with armour)





boats (transport goods, players, war machinery..., battles on sea??)





water power for mechanical blocks





more interesting planet (rivers, oceans, beaches, …)





breathing, swimming, diving, thirst, …

Why is there no water yet in ME?

time/priority





technical difficulties





voxels





=> what happens if a player digs out voxels next to/under a water deposit? It obviously should flow, thus requiring volumetric water

Why volumetric water is not viable in ME

would take forever to develop





bugs, bugs, bugs





lags, freezes, crashes...





exploits, balance problems





more issues: https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/what-are-the-difficulties-of-adding-liquid-water-to-me.7385229/





even if it would work perfectly, volumetric water would take ages to develop and it alone would bring relatively little gameplay improvements

A different approach

How would it work?

World generation in detail

Voxels

indestructible





prevents „floating“ water





prevents players form digging to deep (especially in MP)





there is as little surface bedrock as possible to prevent players from building on it (would be tunnel proof)





cannot grow crops

very hard to mine – but still possible





buffer between normal voxels and bedrock





example: player builds tunnel, instead of suddenly reaching bedrock and being unable to continue the player would get „warned“ before they actually reach the bedrock





some surface granite so you can build small castles and towers on it → better resistance against mining attacks





cannot grow crops

exactly the same as it is right now





much surface area so you can build huge castles / towns on it → not tunnel proof





also this is the place where you would go mining for stone and iron and grow crops on

Technical view

if water is planar it can be handled like in any other game





=> shaders / reflections etc.





=> shaders / reflections etc. rivers could have streams that can push players and boats, also with a nice animation





with volumetric water this would require massive calculations all the time and it probably would be quite ugly as well





with volumetric water this would require massive calculations all the time and it probably would be quite ugly as well implementation of the whole thing would be a lot faster compared to volumetric water because:





water is just a plane (except oceans which would need to have a curvature)



bedrock/granite generation should be possible with the current vRage engine, it is already possible to change hardness of voxels (see space engineers ores) and probably also to make it indestructible



it should be possible to automate the generation of bedrock/granite based on defined water deposits



most of the development time probably would go into actually making the planet i.e. placing rivers/oceans/lakes where they make sense







Building in water

Water and the player

swimming animation





diving animation





breath bar

Boats – Naval Engineers confirmed!

rowing requires people that row and consumes stamina but is independent of wind





for sailing there could be a wind system of varying strength and direction depending on day time and weather. There would be a tool to measure the wind. You can hoist/strike the sails depending on the wind situation





it would also be possible to use both at the same time

More potential