Rivers, Water and Smooth Terrain

The next thing I’ve spent quite a lot of time on is rivers and water in general.

Water already existed in the previous version of the terrain, but moving from blocky terrain to smooth terrain created quite a few new problems.

The biggest one was that the water simulation itself is still voxel based. I wanted to keep that because it means water can actually react to changes in the world. So if you dig a trench away from a river, for example, the water can follow that new path rather than just being a flat visual effect sitting on top of the terrain.

The problem was getting voxel based water to actually sit nicely against smooth terrain.

With blocky terrain, that was much easier because everything naturally lined up. Once the terrain became smooth, the edges of rivers and lakes suddenly had to match much more organic shapes, and getting that to look right took quite a bit of work.

I’ve spent a lot of time improving that side of things, especially around river edges and how the water meets the terrain.

Underwater has had quite a bit of work as well and now feels a lot better than it did before. I’ve also been improving waterfalls. They’re still fairly limited at the moment, but they’re definitely heading in the right direction and I’ll keep working on them.

The important part for me is that the water simulation is still completely voxel based underneath.

So even though the terrain and river edges now look much smoother, the water can still behave like part of the world rather than just being decoration. You can change the terrain around it, create new routes for it to flow through, and eventually do much more interesting things with how water moves around the environment.