Daggerfall Workshop Forums

I feel like most people who've played Daggerfall have noticed this: why there are no rivers? Where are all the lakes? I was really excited when the roads mod was released, but there is still something missing. The map as is still feels quite barren without rivers/bodies of water, so a mod for it would be appreciated. I am already creating another mod, but I still have no clue how to change the game's map so drastically so as to add them, but everything is possible in Unity. Either way, a mod like that would definitely make the game feel more complete and feel 'just right'.

Agreed. Back when the Basic Roads thread was first posted, I asked if it was possible to take the same code and modify it to create rivers (not sure about if we need more lakes, tho. Lakes DO exist in the vanilla game).
Having rivers would also help explain why cities as far inland as Wrothgaria are considered "ports" in the game data despite being nowhere near water.

Basic roads has all the code needed to put simple rivers and streams on the terrain. The tasks remaining are for me to modify the editor and then to get people to layout rivers and streams. Doing the paths took a lot of effort, so I've not wanted to start yet. If someone is prepared to put in the time and effort to lay them out and ensure that they don't run down one hill then up another with the default terrain, then I'll do the editor to allow this, but at this time I am not really up for reviewing a lot of random contributions.

Yeah that's understandable. I'm guessing rivers would be a little less work to actually lay out than paths, since they'll probably be a lot fewer than paths, but given the scale of Daggerfall it would still be a massive undertaking.

On the long term I think it'd be easier to give the code some form of terrain smoothing to kinda "carve" the terrain down around the rivers rather than having to manually check and ensure that they don't interact with the default terrain in nonsensical ways, but I understand that that'd also be a lot of effort required on your part, which you might not want or even be able to tackle right now.

Just an idea regarding this:

Maybe you could buy a raft (which you would have to store in your wagon), and then use the raft to float down rivers using the follow roads functionality already in place for basic roads

The rivers are actually more difficult than roads - they have to stream downwards at all times. So, they must have a source somewhere high-ish, and then flow downwards, passing through as many towns as possible on the way (since towns would logically be located on the rivers). One option is to change the landscape for rivers to make sense.

I also think rivers are a must have for a believable world, but they won't be easy.

The best mod to look at for this is not basic roads in my opinion. As pointed out, the amount of hours to properly detail rivers would be pretty high, even with it being offloaded on to other devs and players, like what was done with roads. You also have the terrain realism issue, of ensuring they are always running downwards from a higher water source, which humans will inevitably miss at times.

The best mod and person to work with on this, if we really want realistic, natural forming rivers, is Daniel and his wilderness overhaul. He is already breaking down the terrain generation a bunch, and he has already found solutions and created things like proper forming oasis based on terrain generation data. I believe he has mentioned he isn't working/looking into rivers really because of the complications in generating them, but I would think this would be a better place to start than using the basic roads approach.

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4485

The height of water in the world, isn't that the set back for this to become a real thing?

aka, isn't there limitations on water height in chunks based around classic daggerfall..?
This would fall under someone expanding the code to allow for 'enhanced water', right?

I think Daniel could shed some light on this and how it works in terrain generation. From his post though, it seems water can be generated above a set water level. It would make sense to me, water is merely a tile right now and nothing else. I imagine the water level setting was put in to ensure water always generated at sea level because they didn't have time/resources to develop a more intricate water generation system that didn't look wonky as hell on original DF release. So, force all water to spawn at set sea level and avoid all the wonky generation issues and mounds of code to work around it.

If I'm understanding the below post correctly, Daniel has already made water spawn on top of hill sides and mountains.
If that is the case, could some one take his work from there, and get rivers to spawn from water/lakes created on mountain tops and large hills using terrain generation data to find the lowest points from said water source and laydown water from there keeping it searching and dropping the water on the next lowest point until a river was formed? The other issue is, how will the river know where to dump into? tribitary system are actually very complicated with many smaller sources leading into the rivers and streams we know before they go into the ocean.

Hazelnut wrote: ↑Fri Mar 26, 2021 2:31 pm Basic roads has all the code needed to put simple rivers and streams on the terrain. The tasks remaining are for me to modify the editor and then to get people to layout rivers and streams. Doing the paths took a lot of effort, so I've not wanted to start yet. If someone is prepared to put in the time and effort to lay them out and ensure that they don't run down one hill then up another with the default terrain, then I'll do the editor to allow this, but at this time I am not really up for reviewing a lot of random contributions.

Creating a mod like this will make other terrain mods incompatible for sure. Unless... you colaborated with those terrain mod creators to make one all encompassing terrain/roads/rivers mod. With the random way terrain is generated in the game now... this could be a monumental task...