I'll have to insist. We need water. Plain, simple water.
Space engineers is a game made for people to create stuff. What we have to interact the stuff we create with is basically the environment. Right now what we have are planets, asteroids and the empty space in the vacuum. The only practical difference between planets and asteroids is gravity strenght and environment size. Atmosphere is great, but unless you use mods, there's no wind, so there's little difference in engineering to asteroids and planets... it just adds a layer to resource management with different thuster types.
Now, if you add water to Space Engineers, besides land and space, we will have a third major environment to create stuff for. It really doesn't need to be spectacular water. It doesn't need to be volumetric. People don't want carry water around to make pools in their bases, but I'm certain they would want to make underwater bases. None of the environments we have right now are spectacular in regards to simulation because: a) voxels aren't exactly realistic and b) space... well, it's just space. What really makes these environments spectacular are not the environment themselves, but how we and our creations are able to interact with them.
Imo water could be just a fixed level present on certain planets. Dig until ocean level and you get to the water. Simple water like that is not hard to implement. You already have air tightness mechanics. Rename atmospheric thrusters to something like displacement thusters and add a dehumidifier block to clear interior grids. I know the harder part is implementing buoyancy but even that does not seem very complicated. It's basically just a reverse gravity field that also takes into account air mass inside the grid. Would it have a significant impact in the game processing? I know there are a lot of nitpicks involved but we just need a basic version and modders can implement more realism if they want like there is with atmosphere and thrusters physics for example.
Imagine you need to build a ship airtight and heavy enough to dive for resources. Imagine building a base in a planet where the whole surface is covered in water. Imagine launching a rocket to space from under the sea. Don't waste that.
Well ... good luck simulating proper liquid physics ;-)
It's not that it cannot be done - but it is really taxing on processor power ...
Or implement some simplifications ...
I suppose that's why Keen didn't implemented liquids - they are either too taxing for simulation or the simplifications destroys believability too much ...
I think this is an interesting and expandable idea. ;)
They shot down retractable landing gear because it was "too complex"... so... liquid water?
"People don't want carry water around to make pools in their bases" Yes, i want a swimming pool in my flagship! :)
It seems to me that if SE can simulate grass blowing in the wind, then they can similarly simulate the movement of “water”. At least, that’s my simplistic view of the issue.
This reminds me Medieval Engineers water mod. It was adding some offset planets to add a water level to the world.
The bad thing about it is, it was leaving previously made structures underground. Probably it was adding a larger diameter planet over the actual planet. Maybe this is to change deepest/highest points of the planet. Then adds a water planet/sphere adjusted for the offset planet.
It's not too complex if you use a simplified model such as something like Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft.. A range of voxels with different 'levels' of water, with voxels of higher level 'flowing' to those of lower, down to a minimum level. Yes, it does require some amount of processor power, but only when there's instability in the system and the water needs to 'settle' - otherwise they're static voxels. You make sure during world creation that all voxels are either completely full and contained on 4 sides or else completely empty, to eliminate the need to 'flow' from the outset, and then the only updates that need to happen are triggered by interactions and relatively localised.
Minecraft can manage it in java on phone processors. Dwarf Fortress... yes, water is a pig there but that's mostly because it's generally flowing all the time - it can still do it on pretty minimal hardware though. Surely it's do-able in SE on a modern PC.
would be a cool feature, but as the game has already problems with physic calculations, don't overload it anymore for the moment...
We finally got a water mod of sorts and I made a planet for it and thats something at least and its not ice oceans. I think the water mod itself is pretty fun too its a heavy work in progress right now.
World I made for it https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1681475411&searchtext=water
Water mod itself https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=1654233231
No i don't like the idea and and i feel it is not necessary, its just not needed and i feel it's not the type of game that needs it anyway.
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