A better model for water flow as it relates to CATA might be dwarf fortress. But that game is practically a madness-fueled physics mockery simulator at times, and I wonder how much environment-processing/building might just lag down gameplay. Not sure how current CATA could handle such an addition.
Unless minecraft mods change water’s ‘rules’, I recall the generation of infinite water being both a bit wonky and unrealistic, though hugely useful and something that can be mastered. As such, it’s ‘unreal’ nature is very much an integral part of the game.
For comparison, Terraria’s limitation to two dimensions allowed them to run fluid dispersion and collection more realistically, in that bodies of water actually drain when waterfalling into new locations.
How would we want/expect water to be used or interacted with in cata? More realistic, or more designed to fill a functional role? Would you want preservation of the water’s mass in CATA? Or more like minecraft’s better-for-landscaping, worse-for-realism method?
I do agree that some level of interactivity with water would be quite interesting. I am considering how surviving the local weather could include said flooding of basements, or zombo barricades being washed away. Likewise, you could use moats as a part of your base’s defense, bring in water for farming, or dare to dump precious water down your entranceway, flooding/washing out mobs trying to get in. We really need better Z-levels for this.
These ideas would make the game further about environment survival/manipulation, and less about zombies, though - an ongoing process we’ve been seeing since this game started getting community-dev’d.
