On the topic of: The environment, atmosphere, and immersion

[Thor-axe]

This is my first post here, and I am very aware of what that means so please forgive what will be slightly long winded and possibly already discussed. If this post is worth views from the Rust Suggestions subforum maybe a mod can move it there?

First let me say I am now, and always will be up-to-date with this game's progress. Just today I saw that a simple arid biome was added, so of course I went online to check it out. Before I talk about the different biomes and how they feel so far, I want to say that I LOVE any addition to the game that brings a natural, realistic, and immersive environment, so please don't stop! Now, onto the part where we talk about each one so far. I have every bit of confidence that these are all things the devs are working on as we type, so hopefully this is at least helpful.

[B][U]Forest:[/U][/B] In my personal opinion, the Forst biome is going to be the most used and most important of them all. I believe this because the wide open fields that make up most of the game at this build are so vast and open that living there and harvesting recourses daily will be incredibly dangerous. When I set up house, until I have guns, I want my house to be safe and as hidden as possible, and I don't see that being possible in these wide open fields. Also, while these open fields are important for their own merrits, they can feel quite bland and boring compared to forests. I hope to see the forest biomes have a much larger range of radius that they can cover. Something that actually does justice to the name 'Forest' and isn't just a cluster of 15-30 trees.

[B][U]Arid[/U]:[/B] This is the newest biome at my time of posting so I don't want to say too much for it yet. To be totally honest, I'm not even sure if I found it. I discovered LARGE dunes of sand that was far enough in every direction to see no grass, but it was also near a shore, so maybe I just found the biggest beach in the game so far? Avoiding the issue that it's hard to tell the difference between Arid near water, and the beach, my first reaction was that it felt very empty, and unfinished. Yes, I know in the twitter post they said it was very basic so obviously it will get better. The one thing I didn't like is there were barely any rocks. If any of the biomes is going to have higher rock spawns than the others I would imagine it's either 'Arid' or a new one along the lines of 'Rocky/Mountainy'.

[B][U]Northern Tundra:[/U][/B] I have to say up front that I haven't found this biome yet, I've only seen the picture of it in the blog post. I don't have much to say about it so far for that reason. What do you guys think of it so far?

[B][U]Lakes/Beaches:[/U][/B] Obviously this is a vast improvement from legacy even without the fact that we can swim now. I'm so glad the game is finally going to have realistic bodies of water. Hopefully as the game develops there will be emphasis on the strategic advantage of living near lakes. I also imagine that at some point we will want there to be a distinction between ocean water and continental 'lakewater'. Perhaps even the possibility of disease from un-boiled water. This is all unrelated to the biomes itself tho, so I digress.

[B][U]Grasslands:[/U][/B] This feels like the most common and 'basic' biome. It's expansive, grassy, and has many hills. Seems like it will be the hunting grounds/resource heavy parts of the map, with more animals per block than others that would be less hospitable, in theory. If I could make 1 complaint about this biome, it's that there shouldn't be a complete lack of trees. It doesn't need to be like Forest, but I think enough so that you don't have to rely on woodpile spawns. Obviously we still want them to be vast and empty, as lots of land space promotes creative buildings and villages/towns.

[U][B]Ideas for more biomes:[/B][/U]
Swamp/Marsh, Tropical, Rocky/Mountains, ect.

Please join me in this discussion if you're articulate and polite.

[B]TL;DR:[/B] What do you like/dislike about each biome and what ideas do you have for improvements and new ones?

[elix]

On the topic of forest coverage, it's worth noting that [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1378982"]I suggested dynamic forest cover that shrinks and expands in response to how much logging demand by players happens[/URL].

I can't be arsed to find the random thread it happened in, but I brought the thread up to garry in a different thread that he was active in and talking about experimental, and his response was, paraphrased, "yeah, that fits under farming, I guess," which I took to mean it was slated to be at least experimented with when they get to adding farming.

So, forest cover should change depending on how much it's harvested. You may need to practice sustainable logging or go further afield for resources to keep your house in the woods masked.

[Thor-axe]

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;45509596]On the topic of forest coverage, it's worth noting that [URL="http://facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=1378982"]I suggested dynamic forest cover that shrinks and expands in response to how much logging demand by players happens[/URL].

I can't be arsed to find the random thread it happened in, but I brought the thread up to garry in a different thread that he was active in and talking about experimental, and his response was, paraphrased, "yeah, that fits under farming, I guess," which I took to mean it was slated to be at least experimented with when they get to adding farming.

So, forest cover should change depending on how much it's harvested. You may need to practice sustainable logging or go further afield for resources to keep your house in the woods masked.[/QUOTE]
Brilliant, my good sir. I want to say off the bat that this sounds hard to code/program, but I know nothing about either, so maybe it isn't. IMO, the more dynamic things can get, the more realistic and balanced it will be. When I think of a decent sized forest, I'm thinking just a tad larger than the biggest forests in legacy, but it would vary between that big and much smaller obviously, since procedural is perfect for this game.

[Ebrim]

Thanks for the thoughts...

The Arid biome I found yesterday was much more than a very large beach area. I felt like a naked Lawrence of Arabia in an expansive, rocky, dry desert.

As for the grasslands, I'm not sure there should be much if any harvestable wood present. If you need wood and want to settle down seek the edge of the woods/mountains/other or simply travel to source your materials. Earlier I made a thread about how it would be great if the grasslands had bison that could serve for the making of hide shelters and bone tools (think bone knife/bone arrows). The shelters could be great little temporary ways to hide from the elements while you're out in the open. Alternatively, even without bison this sort of survival shelter from other materials seems like it'll happen anyway from the concepts.

I'm also not super concerned yet about people's vulnerability if calories are sufficiently precious to make activities like farming and fishing useful then you also won't have to worry about people chasing you endlessly unless they have some very specific purpose or they are willing to spend a lot of resources and risk doing so. Also a prone is planned, which will make hiding in the grass easier than it is now and far easier than it was in legacy.

[Grangoko]

In the game Don´t starve they got this dynamic forest already implemented, it is dynamic forest system until the player makes contact:

[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e8DIJBi4nI"]Plant[/URL]

There is no need for coding/programing, you give the people the seed to create forests. They will deal with their needs. Forest wars bitch. Very rusty.

[URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvOvlPWUzFs"]Burn[/URL]

[Redeamed]

Good summaries of the areas. Wouldn't the existing mountains be a biome as well?I think mountains will be noob slaughter sights for griefers as it will be one of the most obvious places for new players to flock to when trying to meet friends or find there way around.

But forrest currently have the most resources so will likely be the highly contested zones later on. Balancing this by throwing prefab structures/towns into grass lands and other resources light areas should create a good conflict over where you want base near (I think a town biome would be a good idea.)

I do believe that all biomes should have at least a little bit of resource spawning, so if you are patient you can avoid high danger areas and exploration has little scattered rewards. But a large part of the balance is still dependant on how they do structures and higher tier item gathering.

As for the dynamic forest size and or forrest size in general, didn't they say something about a polygon mesh count limit that was problematic in current unity for numbers of tree? I might be remember that wrong. Maybe after the transition to Unity 5 this will be possible.