FOSS gamedev and creative worlds

Now that we have two types of water (regular and river) maybe it's time we change regular water into sea water (salt water). With this change, something need to be change too. First beach sand only appear on sea water side not river water side. Sea water doesn't quech your thirst. Sea water have rustic effect on corrosive metal like steel. Etc.

If I have the ability to mod it by myself I'll do it. But alas, I don't have the ability. So maybe any people would be intersted to mod it. Anyone?

And then maybe we can add it to the minetest game?

huh, this is an interesting idea. Though I am currently busy with several other mods and already have plans for others, I'd like to encourage somebody to give this a go. If not, maybe I will have time to do so in the future.

I wonder how such a thing can even be done.
I would have a use of it since i am importing a minecraft plugin which brings saltwater plants.. hm.

having different sand on sea beaches and rivers can be done with the biome API.
there is a new line for "riverbed" and "riverbed depth" to define the material in the rivers.

the "rust" can be done by using the same function that makes cobble mossy.
you just need a rusty steel texture and define the function for sea water and steel block/stairs.

=(^.^)=

I wonder why player does not drink water? Only eats: muchrooms, apples and bread. Dry food is bad for stomach and health. He must drink freshwater from rivers (filtered beforehand), and not sea (salt) water.

firefox wrote:having different sand on sea beaches and rivers can be done with the biome API.
there is a new line for "riverbed" and "riverbed depth" to define the material in the rivers.

the "rust" can be done by using the same function that makes cobble mossy.
you just need a rusty steel texture and define the function for sea water and steel block/stairs.

=(^.^)=

Someone wrote a rust mod some time back, you can search for it.
I do not remember who but, I think it is in the old mods section? It does function same as moss

When river_water was added we considered calling it fresh_water instead, which would imply blue water was salty. But we decided to not force these aspects, for example there are many water pools at y = 1 with blue water which could be considered to be fresh water. Many worlds and mods use blue water for purposes that salty water would not be suitable for.

Is there any chance that salt water will be added to minetest game some time in the future?

Seems to me that it would be very hard to tell enclosed water sources and pools apart from "open water". How are larger areas of water made up in mapgen v7 for instance? Could they be told apart from smaller water sources when generating it?

It would be too much disruption to change the name of 'default:water_ ..' to 'default:salt_water_ ..', instead we would just change the description to 'Salt Water', but as explained this is unlikely.
Correct it's impossible during mapgen to quickly detect whether a water node at y = 1 belongs to a small pool or a huge sea.
In mgvalleys and future mapgens with sloping rivers any water above y = 1 is automatically 'default:river_water_ ..'.

paramat wrote:In mgvalleys and future mapgens with sloping rivers any water above y = 1 is automatically 'default:river_water_ ..'.

What if I fill bucket with sea water and make artificial waterfall above sea level. It will also be considered as fresh (river) water?

Sergey wrote:

paramat wrote:In mgvalleys and future mapgens with sloping rivers any water above y = 1 is automatically 'default:river_water_ ..'.

What if I fill bucket with sea water and make artificial waterfall above sea level. It will also be considered as fresh (river) water?

no, because you will place a (sea) water source, not a river water source.

you could add an ABM to the water source that turns it into river water if it is placed above y=1, but that could obstruct creativity and building as it makes it impossible to have (sea) water above sea level.