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[Outcast Orange]

What exactly do you mean by "triggered"?
Somebody walking over it?
In that case, I could put something similar in the local view.
They wouldn't get super tall though.

Right now, I'm on the verge of renaming the hellspikes as "landpillars".
They do look a lot more proud and reverent then we expected them to.
Also, they are a bit flat at the tip.
If I really felt like fighting it, I could probably get them to grow shaper.

So maybe they are made out of a similar ground type to the plates, since they have
cores and everything else like that.
They could even be made of the same exact material, and be useful for holding some
of the plates up.

Right now, hellgrass is red.
It's a little to surreal for me, so I'm going to make it a dark brown shade.

[Boksi]

Well, if they don't look hellish there's no point in calling them hellspikes. I like the direction this is taking, but right now the top is lacking a bit of personality compared to the ground.

[Outcast Orange]

Here is my game plan, as of right now:
I can't really do anything today, so don't get too excited.
I want to (quickly, because I can) put in three more features.

-A default lip around the subplate:
In bad world spawns, it will at least be able to hold water.

-The ocean:
In the future, I want it to sort of be a drainage bowl that gets the runoff from the plates above,
but for now, I just want to fill it in with some water tiles.
Also, I don't think the world map will ever be animated (except for possibly plate collapses)
and I don't think the amount of water falling at once will ever exceed the size of a world-tile.
But, I have thought up a system where stuff that leaves the edges of local map will be stored in memory,
then when you go to back to the universe map, things will be reconciled.
I would like water that pours off of plate edges to be added to the corresponding tile below,
so it can pile up on other plates and stuff.
The ocean at the bottom could be a large net to catch all of the falling water.

-Subvine detail:
I want to increase the connectivity of the subvines, and add in leaves that take up most of a tile.
This would add a ton of flavor.

Also, don't worry, I'm going to get to the top eventually, and don't forget that all of the waterplates and mountains are already mostly up there.
But I would really like to move on to local view, so that this thing can start to get closer to working condition.
I'd like to add support for land tiles (rock) at first, and experiment around in them to get a feel for it.
I can probably finish up everything listed above in about an hour, so I expect to start on the local tomorrow evening.
Thursday evening will be mostly free, and Friday is when I expect everything to really come together.
So I expect the lot of us will be exploring local maps by Saturday.
Look forward to it, I know I will!

[qwertyuiopas]

You probably would want to limit the water buildup level, otherwise the whole world would slowly flood.

A use for hellgrass, the tips removing water? (Haven't seen screenshots yet, will when I get home)

[Outcast Orange]

What do you mean? The plains are relatively flat, (with empty space surrounding them at the edges)
and I would prefer some water was retained, so that there could be lakes and ponds and rivers and such.
If you mean the ocean at the bottom filling up, you do not have to worry.
The corners of the map are still empty space, and at some point,
they will function as a void, eating all that touches them.

I WANT the bottom plate ("subplate") to fill in with water. Please remember,
I don't want the world mode to be too dynamic, I want the actual physics and reactions to primarily occur
on a local scale.
But the tiles will interact in a way that can effect the entire universe.
I have a very interesting system in mind.
I would like adjacent tiles of water that have gained or developed an "ocean" tag,
to maintain the same sea level as each other, and the conjoined entity will have an assigned volume.
Then the subvines could subtract from the volume of the ocean,
and at certain increments, the sea level will drop.
Also, if it drops enough, the top tiles will be removed.
On the flip side, if the ocean rises beyond the "capacity" of it's top tiles, the next row will be added,
and then they can change location to reconcile with other features, causing flooding, (decreasing sea level)
until things have reached equilibrium once again.
Also, I'd like collapses to be animated in the world view.
Don't worry, I've been thinking a lot, and I have a system to deal with local change,
so after collapsing an area, all of the local maps will show signs of the collapse/mayhem.
That sounds cool, no?

Ideas for features and physics (simple though) will be considered.
I would like to do the actual thinking and programming mostly on my own though.
If you can see a better way of doing something than the way I currently am, feel free to comment.
But don't think of the solutions to problems I don't even have yet,
that is truly something I look forward to doing myself.

[Outcast Orange]

Here we go:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Time for more progress!

Now landpillars are made from the same material as plates, and even have golden cores at the bases.
Also, the subplate is made of the same material, and will soon have it's own golden core.
This basically ensures that anything connected to a landpillar will receive support.

It's not done yet.
I'm going to change the order that the universe forms, to encourage consistency.

The universe will do things in this order:
-Create a subplate
-Create land pillars
-Spawn "subseeds" and rain them down
-Create landplates
-Spawn landcloud and rain it down (includes waterseeds)

The raining of the subvine seeds is key.
Also, I want stuff falling to the very bottom to be deleted if it isn't plate material.

[Outcast Orange]

Prepare to drool:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The entire universe at its best.
I feel sort of proud.
The extra material falls off of the edges now.
There is some sort of bizarre problem that is causing the water to "drain"
even though it doesn't have any physics yet.

[Armok]

Woah! Awesome!
It reminds me of MSPA for some reason.

one thing thou, have you considered making the plates a whole lot rougher? So that they look more like islands and less like half spheres. Same with the spikes really, some more imperfections are needed to make them look natural.

Also, what are those root things coming out the bottom of plates?

[Outcast Orange]

They are actually growing up out of the subplate. (big round green thing)
I call them subvines, and in a couple of updates, they will have giant leaves growing on them.

Also, the plates are supposed to be sort of supernatural, just like the eventual waterplates.
(Giant marble columns support equally giant marble plates, which are the "natural" source of water)
But don't be afraid, the mountains and rocks and all will be very natural, to make mining around in them fun.

[Outcast Orange]

For those of you who don't follow this thread every few minutes, the "awesome screenshot" can be found on the first page, in place of the old one.

The following screenshot is something sort of interesting:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the picture above, it seems that a subvine grew in the shape of a corkscrew, was caked over with
land, and a waterplate grew straight up through the center of it.

I wish I had finished local maps before seeing this, I would have loved to mess around on a map like that.

Also, as the more observant of you will notice, water is doing something strange now.
It's supposed to be doing that at this point, because I've started work on water level calculations and such.
I can't do anymore until later, but when I get the chance, I will add basic map-view water physics,
to reconcile the cases where an entire water tile is displaced.
(I thought this would never happen for some reason)
I'm not sure at this point whether it will be animated or not,
so you can all cross your fingers and hope for some ridiculously fast animation.
(maybe even the land clouds falling will be included, and the waterplate growth)
I know I can increase the draw distance during animations to slow down framerate,
and then cut back in after everything settles.
That way you can see the action slow enough to enjoy it, but things will still run correctly afterwards.
(Unless you have a monster computer, then you're screwed)

[Outcast Orange]

Water is about 1/4 of the way to completion.

Properties implemented:
-Gravity
-Displacement

Properties left to implement:
-Spread
-Collection (becoming part of a larger body)

So basically, I created an endless tap in my universe.
It's a very temporary feature, used to test water physics and animation rate.
I have it running at a pretty decent speed when you hold down space bar, it seems pretty natural.
I've modified a bunch of the different processes to work on a smaller scale.
Now when I want to have a visibility test run, perhaps after a few tiles have moved around,
I can specify the center of the test, and the distance from that point to be tested.
So after every water call has ran (1 frame) a sub-global test is ran for visibility.

[Killas[SiN]]

Looking sweet!

If possible, make water 'round' not blocky as it helps us define it with more ease. Also, I agree with Armok when he says the islands need to be more rough.

Good job and good luck!

[Outcast Orange]

I've been considering adding some sort of debris to the sides and bottoms of the plate,
Sorry about the blocky water, it's destined to stay that way.
Maybe in the long-run I'll worry about making something more complex, but it is a tile-based game,
and tiles are generally square shaped.

Today I should have the water physics finished up, at least on a global scale.

[Boksi]

If you want to roughen up the islands, just mark a few points on their bottoms and have a sort of "stalactice" grow down from it.

[Outcast Orange]

Sounds good to me.

Here's the latest scoop.
Water is making tons of progress, I'm really pleased with the achieved frame-rate.
All I have to do is correct this bug:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Please note that the pink test water is the only water that should be doing anything, as it represents
non-ocean water.
But for some reason, the ocean water is either flying up out of the ocean, or is being created mid air.
The blue ocean water tiles you see are static.
For some reason, they fly up into the air, and then don't fall back down.
Once I've hammered out this problem, water will be almost finished.
I'll still have to do ocean level at some point, but that should be much easier,
and can be considered separate.