Water Seepage

[Hyena Grin 92]

I realize on the face of it that the processing requirements for this may be prohibitive, so grain of salt:

 

Water has a way of passing through permeable substances and even minute fissures in hard rock. I feel like digging very near to water sources should be more involved. Basically, water should begin to seep through semi-solid and solid blocks given the right circumstances. Basically, the deeper the water on one side of the block, the more penetration the water would have through adjacent blocks.

 

Basically, water blocks would need to be aware of how many water blocks are above them, then pass that information to all solid blocks adjacent to them horizontally and beneath. This would flag solid blocks with a 'waterlogged' trait that checks a threshold (this could be different for different material types, lower for dirt/sand/gravel, higher for natural stone, higher again for masonry and certain other block types). If the threshold is surpassed, the block then passes half of its 'waterlogged' value to blocks adjacent to them horizontally and beneath. If there is open space instead of a solid block, it will generate 'moving' water, or a waterfall effect. Blocks that receive more than half of their threshold (but less than the amount to allow water to seep through) will 'weep,' causing droplets to form on the wall or ceiling - a harmless indication that digging the block out will almost certainly result in water forming.

 

Legend:

W~ = Water

G = Gravel

~ = Seepage

+ = No seepage

 

0    |  1   |  2   |  3  :  0 = Water column, 1 = First block column, etc.

W~ | G+ | G+ | G+ : 1 horizontal block deep, no seepage (perhaps weeping walls but no water formation)

W~ | G~ | G+ | G+ : 2 H-Block deep, water will seep through adjacent block, forming a waterfall effect in 2nd block column if dug out.

W~ | G~ | G+ | G+ :

W~ | G~ | G~ | G+ : 4 H-Block deep, water will seep through two adjacent blocks, creating waterfall in 3rd block column if dug out.

W~ | G~ | G~ | G+ :

W~ | G~ | G~ | G~ : 6 H-Block deep, water will seep through three adjacent blocks, as above.

G~ | G~ | G~ | G+ : 7 H-Block Deep, 1 V-Block deep. Water can only travel three blocks away from source at this depth.

G~ | G~ | G+ | G+ : 8 H-Block deep, 1 V-Block deep. Diagonal fall-off of seepage is more pronounced.

G~ | G+ | G+ | G+ :

G+ | G+ | G+ | G+ : 10 V-Block deep, water no longer penetrates.

 

This would make digging around lakes, beaches, rivers, etc, a little more interesting, making accessing certain clay deposits somewhat more complicated, and also simulate a rudimentary 'aquifer' type effect in some areas.

 

I do realize that this might not be practical in terms of performance or coding, it's just something I've been kicking around in my head without the benefit of coding experience in Minecraft.