CFD in Minetest

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Chrysolite Azalea
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CFD in Minetest

by Chrysolite Azalea » Post

Hello everyone! Recently, I've created a topic on my idea of a game with a breathable liquid environment instead of air environment (for example, MineClone 5 already allows players to be in the liquid for long amounts of time using water-breathing and fire-resistance potions). I've experimented a bit with breathable water (I plan beginning with allowing unrestricted water-breathing and removing mining penalties, as well as implementing unrestricted source replication underwater). However, unrestricted source replication can pose a problem with rivers (in fact, the valleys mapgen requires a workaround -- the river water with restricted propagation).

I've tried playing in Creative mode, and despite living underwater is possible if damage is disabled, it's highly inconvenient for a long-time play, because of mining penalties in Survival mode, light source problem (the main light source in MineClone 2/5 and Minetest Game -- torches -- do not work underwater, therefore, more expensive light sources are required), source/flowing dynamic. I'm currently trying to modify the game in order to make long-term underwater playing more convenient, and one of the ideas I had is implementation of CFD (computational fluid dynamics), either directly in Minetest, or through third-party software such as SU2. Moving the gameplay entirely in the breathable liquid environment and disallowing air breathing could simplify solutions of some problems, such as liquid propagation -- it would have to propagate as freely as possible, however, implementing internal streams based on Navier-Stokes equations seems like a good idea to me.
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Astrobe
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Re: CFD in Minetest

by Astrobe » Post

My game has a "diver class" that can live under water, and sea water (as opposed to "river" water) self-replicates (flowing water is converted to water sources by an ABM); it behaves more like IRL oceans in the sense that it will flood everything below sea level.
However, this property restricts what you can allow players to do, though, and is probably dangerous if one uses a lot of mods with unsuspected effects. So, not for "kitchen sink" style of game.
At best one can have artificial rivers and channels, possibly falls, but it is not bad as you get landscapes more pleasing than proc-gen, and it creates an in-game goal that's not trivial to achieve (one could argue that the result is not impressive enough compared to the time spent on it).

Players can use a device that usually has other purposes (the ice wand) to build under water.

Light underwater can be obtained more easily with a player-selectable skill. So players can choose to specialize in underwater activities, and it is I think a viable choice.

I would advice to not "swim up the stream" with MT. It has limitations and belong to the genre where things are symbolic rather than realistic - a compromise for letting anyone and everyone edit the world inside and out.
My game? It's Minefall.

Chrysolite Azalea
Member
Posts: 79
Joined: Sun May 03, 2020 05:38
GitHub: ChrysoliteAzalea

Re: CFD in Minetest

by Chrysolite Azalea » Post

Astrobe wrote:
Sun Mar 26, 2023 09:02
My game has a "diver class" that can live under water, and sea water (as opposed to "river" water) self-replicates (flowing water is converted to water sources by an ABM); it behaves more like IRL oceans in the sense that it will flood everything below sea level.
However, this property restricts what you can allow players to do, though, and is probably dangerous if one uses a lot of mods with unsuspected effects. So, not for "kitchen sink" style of game.
At best one can have artificial rivers and channels, possibly falls, but it is not bad as you get landscapes more pleasing than proc-gen, and it creates an in-game goal that's not trivial to achieve (one could argue that the result is not impressive enough compared to the time spent on it).
Thank you, I'll check that out. I got the idea from how water-breathing potion in Terraria used to work -- it temporarily allowed breathing underwater and disallowed breathing air, so players had to stay underwater (or drop the effect), so I thought that underwater life was a good topic to explore.
Astrobe wrote:
Sun Mar 26, 2023 09:02
I would advice to not "swim up the stream" with MT. It has limitations and belong to the genre where things are symbolic rather than realistic - a compromise for letting anyone and everyone edit the world inside and out.
I got it. Replicating real-world physics is not the best idea (even NodeCore that tried to be more realistic, such as requiring tools to cut trees and on-map fire to smelt also steps away from realism, for example, by removing death), and too much abstractions can ruin the experience (not to mention it would be computationally complex). I'm currently experimenting with Minetest Game (currently, with restrictions it places on being underwater), and moving from air to water environment would break a lot of mods, since a lot of them expect the air environment, so some mods need to be adapted.
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