Rivers, design and aesthetics

from SorcererKing Forums

Currently rivers have a start and end point. The start is shown as a spring, the end on the cloth map looks like the mouth of a river, but only on the cloth map and not actually attached to any body of water:

I think rivers should (at least usually) end either at the coast or at a lake or large body of water.

So many real cities and people have used rivers as ports and a route out to sea. Wikipedia has this to say:

An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea...Of the thirty-two largest cities in the world, twenty-two are located on estuaries[13]
[13] ^ Ross, D. A. (1995). Introduction to Oceanography. New York: Harper Collins College Publishers. ISBN 978-0-673-46938-0.

 

Simply put I think more rivers should be estuaries. Why?

Realism is only part of it, but still important. Since 2/3s of big cities are on estuaries not having estuaries doesn't fit with the real experiences of rivers for 2/3 of city-dwelling folk.
Secondly. Game design. Sorcerer King has very little visual 'fluff'. Almost everything shown has a real impact on the game, the general "if you can see it you can use it" design philosophy is key and elegant but overlooked in the case of rivers. Which seem at least to have no use, no way of interacting with them and no effect on the game.

Thirdly. Fun. I think it'd be fun to mess with rivers just like messing with mountains.

Suggestions:
1. Have rivers touch the coast, with a foaming-water river-mouth tile.
2. Have spells to create rivers (possibly even just as the visual part of the 'fertility' spells.)
3. Have spells and events to destroy, harvest or otherwise dry-up rivers (turning them pale grey, with a brown/yellow or black close-up)... possibly lowering the fertility of tiles touching the river.
4. Have rivers impact movement again, not much but at least as much as forests do. Preferably with a tooltip. If pathfinding can handle forest-movement costs then it should handle rivers with the same movement cost. (Even if it couldn't handle 'rivers end movement' from early Elemental games).
5. Have bridges where roads cross rivers, with normal movement costs.
6. Give rivers names.
(7. Give mountains and seas names too - so nearby cities can use them in their name)

Basically I'd like to be able to have capital and important cities like London, Cambridge (literally Bridge over the river Cam) in-game. Arising naturally through fertility and rivers. If you saw a river, you'd know it leads to the coast and that somewhere along its length there would be fertile/more fertile terrain. It would also be nice to be able to sacrifice rivers in your territory for massive gains even if it causes the city nearby to wither and die.

15,341 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

I'm wondering if we can travel rivers by ship? If not, we definitely should! (and ship is generally faster).

Reply #2 from SorcererKing Forums Top

I agree with everything you're saying but there's no easy cosmetic way to do it.  We don't want to force rivers to end at oceans because of the gameplay affect.

But I don't know of a good cosmetic way to have them just end other than what we're doing.  I don't want to see the game placing swamp tiles at the end or distracting 1 tile lakes.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from SorcererKing Forums Top

What if you changed the end-of-river graphic tile not to a lake, but to an approximation of the river going back underground.

In this case you'd have either one of two tiles at the end of every river. Either:

a. current tile (mouth) - this would be used whenever the tile does end in the sea.

b. new graphic (my suggestion) - used any other time

Of course if that is something the random map generator is incapable of doing without a dramatic re-write, I understand. But if you could throw that either/or decision in there, seems like it would be a nice touch.

Reply #4 from SorcererKing Forums Top

What I am imagining is perhaps the river flowing into a open crack in the ground within that tile. Something that would look like the ground had been torn deeply asunder directly in the path of the river and now the river is just pouring into that opening.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Bridges are something that I have been waiting for since WoM. Having rivers just bisect roads and having units magically crossing rivers quickly is just annoying.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I'll be doing a rivermod for SK when we're closer to release. There are already bridges in, but I'll see if I can come up with a better riverend.

Reply #7 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Heavenfall, that's very impressive work from LH (and certainly makes the world look a little more magical). What ideas do you have for how to handle river-ends?

Frogboy mentioned ruling out lakes, swamps etc. Although I think foul swamps, an acid lake with a green acid river would be cool, just not for all rivers. I like the cracks/chasms idea from Leo in WI. It should look great for the magma, corrupted and blood rivers. For the bog-standard, non-lava, fresh water sort of river... It seems like quite a bland suggestion compared to all the others now that it comes down to it, but if some could reach the sea and have a river-mouth it'd be nice.

Anyway, I'd like to see what you have up your sleeve. I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.

Reply #8 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Pretty amazing work there HF. We should talk pre Sk release on working together. :)

Reply #9 from SorcererKing Forums Top

I did like your rivers HF. The river endings have always been a little problem. The visuals on the cloth map look odd. Be even nice if there were river crossing that we placed in the middle, but I think that is a bit much to randomize and make it look good.

Reply #10 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Civ does it right, and now SD has some Civ artists on the staff...I don't understand why it is such a big deal to do it the right way.

Reply #11 from SorcererKing Forums Top

Civ does their rivers procedurally. doing it the way they do it would mean completely redoing the way terrain is done. our terrain was done the way it was done to supporting terrain morphing (which civ v doesn't).