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[Catastrophic lolcats]

"You have been waylaid by carp and must defend yourself."

Urist McMinsc cancels Berzerk: Drowning.

[Ephemeriis]

In real life the banks of rivers and lakes are almost always sloped such that you need to walk quite a ways out into the water to be in danger of drowning.

In my experience, this is untrue.

Sure, your average public beach or boat launch has a nice gentle slope into the water...  But most streams and rivers have done some kind of eroding over the years. 

Frequently the banks are more vertical than sloped.  Maybe not a steep 3' cliff, but more vertical than sloped.  And depending on the composition of the banks and the kind of vegetation you've got, it can be very hard to get out of the water.

And that isn't even considering the depth of the water itself, or the rate of flow.  A stream/brook isn't going to be too challenging...  But just about anything that qualifies for the name "river" is going to be swift-moving and fairly deep.  Fast and deep enough to pose a very real drowning hazard unless you are a strong swimmer.

Lakes and ponds, depending on the local geography, can have very steep edges as well.  Especially in rocky terrain.  Frankly, I've seen more cliff-like shores to lakes and ponds than I have gentle slopes.

Obviously this isn't universal...  I'm not claiming that all bodies of water have sheer cliffs for banks...  But I strongly disagree with the assertion that they're almost always gentle slopes such that you need to wade out a good distance to be in peril.

Until we've got a decent way of modeling impassable underbrush and unstable ground, a sheer 1z cliff is a decent compromise.

Adding ramps would certainly be nice...  But I wouldn't make them universal.  It would be the difference between the steep/crumbly/impassable banks that I'm more familiar with, and the gentle slopes you've experienced.

It might also be a reasonable change to brooks/streams...  Give them a permanent water depth of 3 instead of 7, and ramps on both sides, and you wouldn't need to do the weird "roof" thing we have today.

[Starver]

It might also be a reasonable change to brooks/streams...  Give them a permanent water depth of 3 instead of 7, and ramps on both sides, and you wouldn't need to do the weird "roof" thing we have today.

I'd favour for the more minor watercourses "floor only" designations.  One application would mean even that only digging up into them would of course cause (slow, 1/7th at a time) flooding, but otherwise they lay on top of the ground, while another would treat the layer below as damp when there and flooding if dug through.  But it gives options for dynamic watercourse movement, a cellular-automata process taking place at a slow but definite rate sending the 'brook' floor tile out into curves across any flat neighbouring tile (or spilling over any downward edges it encounters), leaving 'sediment' floor tiles behind (and possibly causing small giggling waterfalls) and possibly 'oxbow ponds' of tiles when the movement leaves disconnected segments, which then transition into muddy ground.  What happens then if it goes over a dwarf-dug area of one kind or another could be interesting.

Midi-level streams could be as you suggest, rivers as they are now...  Maybe some other distinctions, between.  But with erosion/deposition happening at an appropriate rate during gametime.  (Also imagine active back-erosion of resulting major waterfalls (especially where 'encouraged' by dwarven miners and not actively proofed against by the actions of the stoneworkers), both at the lip and in the plungepool area.  But that's more even more advanced world dynamics.)  Anything like this would certainly benefit from an d_init line to give a choice of (various degrees of?) on or off, however.

[alamoes]

Adventure mode has a way around this.  I think alt moving works.  If your drowning, you're dead though.  It might be a bug, but I have to hit alt direction down slope then alt direction space. 

[marcusbjol]

Stop being pedantic.

Erosion may cause the river to be in a canyon that might have steep sides true.  But the majority of those rivers have banks at the bottom of the canyons, which might be hard to get down to (cliffs n such).  This is really dependent on the rate of flow, a fast flowing river will cut a deeper trench.  So a river in the mountains will have a steeper bank than one on a flatlands.  If we were to do a statistical evaluation of the worlds rivers(such as the amazon), most banks would show less than a 45% angle.  So, yes, you could stand farther out in the water than you were in the water.  Thats a ramp.

This is supposed to be a simulation, I dont see people making downramps to ponds and rivers IRL. 

[vogonpoet]

Well, river banks are pretty complicated things - if the river curves (and if its a natural river without dwarf-made flood controls, then you can be sure that your river curves) then on any particular curve, the bank on the outside of the bend will be steeper than the bank on the inside of the bend - water is moving faster on the outside edge of the river, eroding the bank. On the inside bend, the river is very slow, and the bank is very gradual, due to deposition. If the river then bends in the opposite direction, the banks will have the opposite degree of slope, and between the two bends, where the river may be flowing straightish for a while, the banks will tend to be averaged out.

This is true for mountain streams and massive rivers meandering their way slowly towards the sea, just that the effect is more pronounced the larger the river gets.

So yeah, at any particular point on a river, it would be realistic for one bank to be easier to escape from than the other - shallow and slow on one side, deep and fast on the other.

How much river bank realism does DF need? Rivers are currently modelled as flowing at an equal speed across their cross-section I believe.

[Areyar]

in fact, in general the smaller streams tend to have steeper banks than bigger ones, due indeed to rate of flow.

some generalizations:
small streams are most prevalent at high elevations (mountains trigger rains, also melt water)
as water makes it way down to lower elevations, streams merge and become bigger.
at the lower elevations, the slope of the land tends to be increasingly more towards flatland. This slows the flowrate.
Slow flowrate minimizes erosion and causes sediments to settle out. (as vogonpoet mentions this happens in bends, some interesting sickleshaped ponds can be created by this .)
Also (depending on drainage&evaporation) flatlands become swamps/lakes, untill water finds a way lower, then it overflows and erosion will deepen the overflowpoint and the basin will drain.

---
I don't think I like the 7/7 tile digging concept. My own odd/even idea I no longer like either.
I feel the idea of allowing all creatures to climb a single Z cliff would help alot and make ramps superfluous except for use by wagons.   
Maybe the size of creatures could have an effect on the traversability of Z-levels, but this would become more complex due to pathing issues.

eg:
marmot size: cannot climb (unless has climbingskill)
dwarf size :  can climb 1Z cliff without skillz, skill allows higher climbing.
troll size : can ignore 2z cliffs.
collosus size+ : can ignore 3Z cliffs.

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ramp / 1z-cliff / 2z-cliff

[Lord Darkstar]

The problem with that is what does it do to the game... if a dwarf can climb up 1Z level change, that implies a Z level is less tall than a dwarf. If that is true, then tunnelling into the mountain or ground suddenly requires you to cut 2 Z levels to get a full dwarf height chamber or tunnel.

[Starver]

That's what long pick handles are for.

[Areyar]

yeah, maybe. . . or it just implies innate dabbling climbing ability, dwarfs are homonid afterall.
smoothed walls would pose a problem to this idea  though

[ctrlfrk]

Rofl @ Rowanas.