Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Cliffs with water on both sides should have the occasional waterfall.

What ?

I suggest adding a new cliff graphic that has waterfalls.

Why ?

Water can be placed on both sides of a cliff and in nature water tries to flow donwhill. With cliffs that results in a waterfall. It would be nice if maps could be created that have those waterfalls going down cliffs.

The problem I see is that is that the map terrain is currently not 3D, i.e. there is no up and down. Therefore, the game has no way of knowing which way the water should flow.

Randomly selecting a water flow direction would not work, because the water flow direction would not be consistent with nearby tiles.

I'm not sure if the map generator itself is 3D. If that is the case, then the waterfalls could be added during map generation, before the terrain height information is removed.

There is an elevation function,

but it has been problematic to use to generate cliffs :

how would this improve gameplay? and 2. why dont you make a mod for it instead?

water wheels too for a pollution less energy source.

dog80 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 05, 2019 12:55 pm how would this improve gameplay? and 2. why dont you make a mod for it instead?

Because I don't have the 3D model of the cliff to add water too and I can't draw to save my life. I'm primarily just asking the art department to come up with some nice graphics. Scenarios and mods can then use that even if the automatic map generator would not.

As for picking the direction the water should flow that is simple. Water flows downward. From the high side of the cliff to the low side. Cliffs already have a direction that way.