My thoughts on no water in the world

[Blue Hasia]

I've seen discussions about the game's world being devoid of water, replaced instead by a red, deadly shroud. I share the sentiment that having water in the game would be beneficial, as fishing adds a fun dimension to survival games and allows players to create ponds at their bases.

I speculate that the reason for not including water might be related to performance considerations. Implementing water that flows freely when altering the terrain would require significant enhancements to the game engine to ensure smooth interaction. This feature could potentially strain the game's performance.

As an example, the water engine in 7 Days to Die has faced ongoing optimization challenges over the years, illustrating the difficulty of integrating dynamic water physics in games

[Minotorious]

tl;dr it comes down to how complex the Enshrouded voxels actually are.

A reply on this from one of the CMs:

It's very difficult to get water to work with voxel tech like ours, most voxel games with water either "fake it" (for example having a flat water table if you dig down far enough, and using that to build lakes/rivers/etc), or by having much more simple voxel tech, like in 2d games like terraria, or very big square voxels like in minecraft (and even minecraft really struggled to get water to a non-janky state for a long time).

It's definitely something we'd love to attempt eventually, but there are much more important things we'd like to get done for early access so we probably won't have it at launch. Also hard to say whether or not it'd even be worth the work, given how much other stuff we could build with that dev time.

[Tenoshii]

Yeah it would be cool, but I certainly see their point that there are other things just as cool they could spend their time on.

[SaberToothDeathMouse]

So why can't they just add water and not have it show when you dig down into the ground? I mean like, just a lake or a pond here and there, or a little stream to cross? I've played many games that just have that. I would just like it for purely asthetics.

[NF_Crenos]

Originally posted by Minotorious:

tl;dr it comes down to how complex the Enshrouded voxels actually are.

A reply on this from one of the CMs:

It's very difficult to get water to work with voxel tech like ours, most voxel games with water either "fake it" (for example having a flat water table if you dig down far enough, and using that to build lakes/rivers/etc), or by having much more simple voxel tech, like in 2d games like terraria, or very big square voxels like in minecraft (and even minecraft really struggled to get water to a non-janky state for a long time).

It's definitely something we'd love to attempt eventually, but there are much more important things we'd like to get done for early access so we probably won't have it at launch. Also hard to say whether or not it'd even be worth the work, given how much other stuff we could build with that dev time.

You COULD make it so the areas that have water cannot be terraformed. Certain surfaces says "ineffective" or something to that degree.
I'd be totally on board with some areas being untouchable if that means we get some water to fish from.

[Gerpir]

One has to wonder how hard was it to implement water in Valheim. It's quite nice. Fingers crossed one day we will get water in enshrouded. I would be totally fine if it just behaves like a digable block that you could build.

[Toast]

Originally posted by Gerpir:

One has to wonder how hard was it to implement water in Valheim. It's quite nice. Fingers crossed one day we will get water in enshrouded. I would be totally fine if it just behaves like a digable block that you could build.

The method Valheim uses wouldn't work in our game, as our game has deep underground caverns and tunnels. Valheim circumvents this by just not having underground zones, instead dungeons and whatnot are separate instances the player is transported to.

Valheim essentially makes a flat "water table" across the entire world, and anything below that is underwater. If we tried to do something similar in our game, then every single cave would be completely underwater, not great.

[Pluto]

can do fishing without water, like shroud fishing or what not, imagination is boundless

[Blue Hasia]

Ya water is defiantly a tricky thing to add

I would be happy if the dev team can figure out a way to make it so water just appears in are flame zone.

I would love to have water features at our base.

A very simple start would be pre made structures like fountains.

But having a pond at my home would really add to the coziness

[404]

Originally posted by Minotorious:

tl;dr it comes down to how complex the Enshrouded voxels actually are.

A reply on this from one of the CMs:

It's very difficult to get water to work with voxel tech like ours, most voxel games with water either "fake it" (for example having a flat water table if you dig down far enough, and using that to build lakes/rivers/etc), or by having much more simple voxel tech, like in 2d games like terraria, or very big square voxels like in minecraft (and even minecraft really struggled to get water to a non-janky state for a long time).

It's definitely something we'd love to attempt eventually, but there are much more important things we'd like to get done for early access so we probably won't have it at launch. Also hard to say whether or not it'd even be worth the work, given how much other stuff we could build with that dev time.

Yeah this makes sense. I do hope they try though.
TBH i would rather see moving parts using the voxels, like windmil blades etc.
But i'm guessing that is just as hard if not harder to impliment.

[Czarik]

I like the idea about water in decorations, such as buckets, fountains, pools, etc. or a decoration that looks "natural" like a fishing pond. Something that can be built / picked up / outright deleted but not affected by the voxel editing.

[Storm Reaver]

Dragon Quest Builders had Water Jars and was a voxel based game. You could collect Water, Lava, Mudy Water, Poison Lake, etc. and then put these where you want in your own base, But this games graphics are way better then Minecraft or Dragon Quest builders, so the water might cause a huge performance increase.

You could compensate by using Luminous Growth. Having a cool cave with the Luminous Growth acting as a nice detail could look really nice.

[Storm Reaver]

Originally posted by Czarik:

I like the idea about water in decorations, such as buckets, fountains, pools, etc. or a decoration that looks "natural" like a fishing pond. Something that can be built / picked up / outright deleted but not affected by the voxel editing.

Water Fountains would be really nice. Honestly, having more options to decorate your base in general would be nice all round.

[BoogieMan]

I think it would be fine if they just made the areas around water to just be protected areas where you can't damage the terrain (like temples and such) and thus can't redirect the flow of water. Not as great as if you could, but I'd be totally fine with static areas of water that you can't change.

[Storm Reaver]

It depends on how it's designed. They could make water blocks, that look like a pool of water when layed out like a floor. But then look like a waterfall, when placed like a wall. It would be very similar to how they already handle walls and floors.

[Skywalker]

Originally posted by ÆŁ⚡:

and perhaps buildable pools or other water objects for decoration? That way, we can have a bit of water around our bases, like a water fountain and stuff like that.

This, buildable little ponds, pools, fountains, that are not alterable ... just for nicelooking decoration!