Does the Dozer steal gold as well?

[HerpDerp1919]

So, I've just learned the front loader steals gold (which would explain my slow progress). Usually, what I did when I used the excavator, was Id dig in an area, then when I dug all I could reach, Id push more dirt into my reachable area. So by doing this, would I still be losing gold? I'm trying to understand this "dig from the top", but using the excavator would make mining an entire claim a nightmare if I have no way of organizing the pay dirt.

[Ruges]

Yes and No. it all has to do with the physics involved with the dirt ingame. Dirts not represented as a physical object ingame like a sea of grains of sand. Instead it is a voxel world. (think minecraft with its blocks). Each block represents dirt and each block has a gold value to it. However Minecraft only has a voxel world, and does not use voxel rendering. The voxel rendering is what makes the world look natural and flows together instead of blocky like minecraft.

We just dont have the processing power to represent the world in a physics world of each grain of sand. So the voxel system was created. It works pretty good. And Gold Rush has done a pretty good job of making it look real ingame. And after you understand how there is a bit of trickery in the way that it works I hope it does not ruin the game for you. So if you dont want to destroy your perception of a fun game just stop reading now.

Now lets put that into the game. When you take a shovel and dig. When you take a shovel and dig your taking one of those points of data out. (I assume its one, I dont know the true scale of the world setup devs would have to answer that). And the voxel rendering tries to smooth everything out. That one point of data and the gold associated with it is transferred to the shovel. and then to the buck (or washplant).

When the voxel rendering smooths out the terrain. it will take that block and stretch some sides and contract other sides. So you end up with a natural looking hole instead of a hole with a square taken out of it (like you would see in minecraft). It works pretty good but is not perfect. Its one of the reasons you can get stuck when walking in these holes with the need to jump out.

When the front loader scoops up dirt, its adding several of those points of data into the bucket. Same with the excavator and same with the bulldozer(even thow on the bulldozer those points of data are added on the outside of the dozer). Those points of data inside the bucket are static, they are limited in shape (never paid attention to how many shapes, but probably only 1-10). Those points of data and the associated gold value dont get lost. So you can move those around the map inside the pit and into buckets and the dump truck and into wash plants.

So you might ask what does all of this have to do with the front loader stealing gold. Because the world is represented in this voxel shape your not really pushing dirt (points of data) around. Instead it gets added to the bucket and transported to where you dump it. The trickery is what happens around the bucket. After the initial scoop of dirt (which is deleted from the world and added to the bucket) The game compensates for what is happening around the bucket. Some dirt gets reshaped. And here is where dirt gets deleted and added. Sometimes when dirt gets misshaped the game says hey these two points of data cannot occupy the same place, so one gets deleted. Or it says hey this point of data cannot exceed this size shape so a point of data gets added. When a point of data gets deleted its gold value is deleted. And when a point of data gets added a new gold value is added.

So if you are on really good gold. these points that are deleted is considered this lost gold. And these points of data that are added. Well we dont know how much gold value is in them. Is the value created from the gold that is around it, or is it created from a set number? Devs have not said, although early tests have shown this gold to be valueless. All of this represents the theory of stolen gold.

Now you might say this is a horrible system. But it has to be this way for two reasons. One is processing power. Our current computers can handle this system. And ease of use. Think of when a bull dozer gets stuck on a small mound of dirt (they have fixed allot of this since early release). If they made the game more rigid so less dirt is deleted and added, the gameplay would feel pretty bad. it would feel like your constantly running into a brick wall. It would just not be as fun.

A couple other worthy mentions to add to this. Dirt does not fall. For instance you cannot dig a tunnel. Whats worse is when you try and dig a tunnel the dirt that is above does not fall down. instead that dirt gets deleted. This can be done with the excavator, the front loader, and the bulldozer. it has advantages and disadvantages, and knowing this will allow you to expoit the game a little (IE not having to remove overburden, or allowing you to delete vast tracks of worthless dirt with the bulldozer).

So to answer your problem. Dont push dirt around. You can use the front loader or excavator to load dirt. But the bulldozer should just be used for smoothing out terrain, and removing overburden (if such a thing really exists in the game. And what I mean by that is. In a previous game I drilled a site to see where all the good gold was. I then used the bulldozer to remove all the low paying dirt from the top and then used the excavator to dig all the good gold. I did an AAR of it back then https://steamcommunity.com/app/451340/discussions/0/1752358461526528428/#c1752358461532589317

[HiSaZuL]

What it all boils down to, is when a zone defined in voxel is moved, it is moved into bucket/plow/etc where it does not retain voxel parameters, its a 2d layer, and then when it is reintroduced math is not perfect nor is voxel logic and most certainly not when it's all controlled by something as finicky as unity. All it has to go by is rough estimate of how much is in the bucket/plow... as you know it doesn't really always make sense and there is the whole deformation only allowed from top to bottom and not sideways so there are loses there as well... and you end up with messy stuff. They made it look believable enough consider what they had.

[HerpDerp1919]

Wow. Seriously thank you for that explanation. I love this game, even with all it's quirks. Kind of cool to know how the dirt system works though! I'll definitely remember that for future reference. Guess I'll just have to switch up my play style a bit. What I had going was I would use the front loader to dig from basically a wall of paydirt and dump into the rock truck. Seriously though, thank you for taking the time for that response.

[HiSaZuL]

Personally, as long as it doesn't lead to losing game I'd play the way that's more fun for you :P Besides it's nice to switch methods from time to time, just using excavator and mobile dirt bucket gets old eventually. There is plenty of dirt that doesn't have gold yield which necessitate careful digging, so personally I just go free style on those spots and put more effort into good spots. I still drag my mobile wash plant out when I get sick of driving to my digging spot... the way it all ended up working is not really ideal, didn't pay attention and entrance ended up being kind of tight, fixing it with dozer just got me a bunch of death traps all over so it didn't really help lol.

Also as long as the "spot" you'd ram with loader is the good spot out of the wall, do you really care about the other stuff getting deleted? Can be really hard to plan tho and it's not like it always places the gold rich level down below, it would kind of be nice if that was the case but maybe not... don't know. To each his own I guess.

Also, look at the bright side. You don't have to deal with processed dirt :p In real life... dirt after running through machinery wouldn't just cease to exist... I'd still be there and you'd have to deal with that. In earlier versions first stage where big rocks fly out... those stayed there... and lagged things hard, people had to stand there and shovel that pile of rocks to slowly eat it away just to keep the game running.