Realistic Water Handling - [Bucket & Well]

[JDCollie 66]

One thing that has always bothered me about Minecraft is how much power the player has over water. With a simple iron bucket, one can create rivers, waterfalls, lakes, even oceans with persistence. It's like using the bucket of Zeus.

Of course, manipulation of water has composed a large percentage of human innovation and endeavor, so it makes sense that it should play a part in TFCraft. To that end, I propose the bucket and the well.

Proposal: The Well

The well is a in-world structure, and is created in several steps. Its purpose is to allow you to hydrate farms that are not near natural water sources without doing something silly like moving around water source blocks.

EDIT: (Currently I have designed this with Minecraft's vanilla water physics in mind. When finite water is added, this idea could change a little)

Step 1: Dig the Well Shaft

Dig down below the water table. This just means you need to dig down to one block below sea-level. (the shaft does not need to be 1x1, but it does need to be a clear path down to one block below sea level.)

NOTE: the shaft does not need to actually intersect water, it just needs to reach the appropriate depth. (Not completely realistic, but it makes the well more useful and less frustrating)

Step 2: Construct the Well

To construct the well, you will need:

• 8x Cobblestone (any variety)
• 2x Verticle Supports
• 3x Horizontal Supports

Place the items around the well shaft in the following manner. (Yes, I am aware that horizontal supports currently cannot be placed quite like this.)

Step 3: Buckets and String

Easy step. Make two buckets, and go find some string.

Step 4: Finish the Well

With the string in your hand, right click on the middle horizontal support. This will attach the string to the well and remove it from your inventory. Now right click the same horizontal support while holding one of the buckets. The bucket will become part of the well and will be removed from your inventory.

The well is now active. If you have constructed it correctly, right clicking on the well with a wooden bucket will fill that bucket with water.

Step 5: Using the Well

Since buckets of water are small, you will not be creating running rivers of water with them. Instead, water buckets are used to hydrate soil for planting. Approach a dry, tiled block of dirt and right click with the filled bucket. The soil will become hydrated and ready for planting.

One bucket will hydrate one block of tilled soil for approximately 30 hours. You will need to keep hydrating your farm if you want to keep it from drying up.

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What do you all think? Comments, suggestions? Is this something you guys would like to see ingame?

[bsb23 303]

Fancy animations. I like the idea as another structure but i see a couple things that are kinda strange. Finite Liquid is trying to be added into the game this will prevent the Zeus bucket affect. I think we can think of better ways to get string than that as only kapok wood can be used in this way (still like flax or sinew or pineapple or a hundred other things over hemp for the record). The bucket is already added. A well taps into groundwater, there is almost no groundwater in minecraft. However I do love this idea as a single item/liquid elevator possbly even picking up whatever is at the bottom (groundwater if you are super frickin lucky)

[Lumireaver 101]

Brilliant. Though we've got buckets already. Are you suggesting infinite water from wells though? I'm not sure how I feel about that since we'll be getting finite water down the line. Daily limits would be okay, but could be exploited by recreating wells whenever you needed water. Unless the well needed to be filled manually at least once, or only stored so much water. ... Still brilliant though.

[JDCollie 66]

Fancy animations. I like the idea as another structure but i see a couple things that are kinda strange. Finite Liquid is trying to be added into the game this will prevent the Zeus bucket affect. I think we can think of better ways to get string than that as only kapok wood can be used in this way (still like flax or sinew or pineapple or a hundred other things over hemp for the record). The bucket is already added. A well taps into groundwater, there is almost no groundwater in minecraft. However I do love this idea as a single item/liquid elevator possbly even picking up whatever is at the bottom (groundwater if you are super frickin lucky)

I guess I didn't write that clearly. The bucket recipe does not produce string; you will need to go find some on your own.

If finite liquids are added, then the well would still be useful, but I'm sure some of the functionality would need to change. Still, being able to access liquids where they are not normally available without having to carry it by hand from sea level is a useful thing

I didn't know the bucket was added

[JDCollie 66]

Brilliant. Though we've got buckets already. Are you suggesting infinite water from wells though? I'm not sure how I feel about that since we'll be getting finite water down the line. Daily limits would be okay, but could be exploited by recreating wells whenever you needed water. Unless the well needed to be filled manually at least once, or only stored so much water. ... Still brilliant though.

I'm not a fan of an 'infinite water' idea either. This is kinda what I was thinking. . .

It would depend on how finite water is added. If aquifiers were added at the same time, then the only change would be that the shaft be mined into an aquifier.

If there were no aquifiers, then you would need to dig a river/channel to your wellshaft to supply the well with water. That way you could still get water at higher elevations where you would not normally have access, and it would be fairly realistic as well. (or at least balanced)

[SierraKhaar 20]

I like! (but only if you can make rope out of hemp ;P)

[Lumireaver 101]

Light bulb. Perhaps actually constructing the above ground well structure spawns a randomly sized water table zone (effectively just an ellipsoid selection of blocks where water will spawn whenever it rains) a good distance bellow it somewhere near water-level. Does that work?

[Lycheborne 37]

I liike the animations too...the well looks cool and i like the idea of adding more buildings.....+1

[JDCollie 66]

Light bulb. Perhaps actually constructing the above ground well structure spawns a randomly sized water table zone (effectively just an ellipsoid selection of blocks where water will spawn whenever it rains) a good distance bellow it somewhere near water-level. Does that work?

Sounds like a good idea to me, and it eliminates the issues with world gen trying to create aquifiers. It also creates a limited use element, where the well would become dry once you had depleted the aquifer until it rained again.

If it where to function this way, perhaps the well could be built first, and then you would have to dig down to find the aquifer? That way aquifer depth could be tied to biome type, and would keep the well from being as unbalanced in certain biomes. (I.E., it would be much more useful in deserts than in swamps, and subsequently would require more work to create in desert.)

I like! (but only if you can make rope out of hemp ;P)

I'd prefer the recipe to use rope of some variety, but I'm pretty new to TFCraft, so I don't know what materials are currently implemented/planned.

[Lycheborne 37]

I'd prefer the recipe to use rope of some variety, but I'm pretty new to TFCraft, so I don't know what materials are currently implemented/planned.

Good idea!

hemp rope!!!!!!

[Lumireaver 101]

Sounds like a good idea to me, and it eliminates the issues with world gen trying to create aquifiers. It also creates a limited use element, where the well would become dry once you had depleted the aquifer until it rained again.

If it where to function this way, perhaps the well could be built first, and then you would have to dig down to find the aquifer? That way aquifer depth could be tied to biome type, and would keep the well from being as unbalanced in certain biomes. (I.E., it would be much more useful in deserts than in swamps, and subsequently would require more work to create in desert.)

I'd prefer the recipe to use rope of some variety, but I'm pretty new to TFCraft, so I don't know what materials are currently implemented/planned.

Aye, biome could affect the height and size of the zone. (Possibly also the purity of the water, if that's ever implemented...) I had initially imagined having to dig your way to the water once it spawned, but one thing I didn't really put much thought into was getting back out of the hole... It'd be okay if you just had to bring ladders with you when constructing wells, but could it also be possible to climb the rope back out or something? That'd be neat.

[Lycheborne 37]

i posted a water dowsing suggestion...would work well for finding locations for wells....would work like a prospecting pick...cept for water

[Peffern 94]

How about on world gen, biomes generate a couple of stats. water table depth (higher on rivers etc.) and size/strength(high for jungle low for deserts.) within second ranges. Also instead of the middle support have a special well interface block made from a bucket and some ropes. By putting a bucket In The slot, it would fill it and decrease the water table by one. When it raIned all the water tables would refill a bit.

Scratch everything. How about no water generates in the world. However every biome generates a water table as I described. And any air blocks that are close to the ground become water(decreasing the table) as a random world tick event(as if water is seeping out of the ground) so digging down below the table would quickly fill the bottom of the hole with water. The well would just be a way to recover it.

[Lumireaver 101]

How about on world gen, biomes generate a couple of stats. water table depth (higher on rivers etc.) and size/strength(high for jungle low for deserts.) within second ranges. Also instead of the middle support have a special well interface block made from a bucket and some ropes. By putting a bucket In The slot, it would fill it and decrease the water table by one. When it raIned all the water tables would refill a bit.

I was brainstorming something like that initially, but I thought it was impossible. Then I remembered Thaumcraft does something similar with Vis.

Which just to show you people, don't consider anything 'too difficult,' as that just means you're not being clever enough.

[Peffern 94]

I added a spoiler to my comment. Please read. Sorry I would post here but you hadn't posted then. Also I don't mean thaumcraft style I mean similar to the way TFC already generates rock layers. So on generation of the world TFC says"based on this seed, I decree that all taiga8 biomes have the following rock composition: dacite, granite, etc." while it's doing that it could also say "and it has a water level at height 120 of size 100"

[Lumireaver 101]

That seems sound in theory, but would't it muck up terrain generation significantly? Not to mention our dreams of building underground dwarf kingdoms will be all washed up. First of all, if water began gushing through the Earth at certain height level, wouldn't we be able to just dig around and bring an ocean or two back up? Building a well wouldn't be all that convenient because going down and getting it yourself would yield more, faster.

If we rely on some kind of mysterious phantom water source the game has more control over it which renders the whole thing less prone to exploitation.

So the game would decide taiga8 biomes have xyz rock composition, and that depth a well must be dug up to is z:XX. However, each chunk would save the amount of water available to wells. Adjacent chunks could also affect each other.

[Peffern 94]

Sure. Also how about shoring. Like supports except prevents water from flowing in.

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

How about no water generates in the world.

Ladies and gentlemen.

Marscraft.

[Paragon83 10]

I like this idea a lot, and Lumireaver's idea of how to handle the water table zones seems like the most practical way to go thus far

[Bioxx 796]

Clearly some time went into this. I saw the animation and art and decided that this deserved to be read just because I knew time had to have gone into it. There are some good discussions here on how to implement this practically but I won't address them specifically.

Here are my thoughts based off of your suggestions.

Rope: Rope will be making an appearance soonish so this will be required.

Bucket: This was rolled out recently along with finite water, so clearly it has its use.

Water Table: This is sort of tricky. I don't particularly like invisible information that the player has to have X tool in order to know. The only way that this would be acceptable to me is if I can make the water appear in the world in a way that doesn't cause trouble. My thought is perhaps to have special water blocks that permeate the water table area and will cause finite water to spawn in open areas within 5x5(example). This means that pumps(future) will hopefully have a use in mines. More importantly, this means that creating an actual well is plausible. Dig down 30 blocks into the water table and the hole very slowly fills itself to a point.

These are just my preliminary thoughts on this. It's an evolutionary process so much could be changed by the time this goes live.

Hint: If you want your suggestion to be read and taken seriously make your post professional looking like JDCollie's and I'm far more likely to pay attention to it when I'm skimming the suggestions thread.

[Peffern 94]

Ladies and gentlemen.

Marscraft.

Did you read the rest of the post?