Attention to detail is amazing . . . until I got to the desert biome

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Latest hotfix: 0.8.0.1 (2024-12-20)

    Let me start by saying that I love this game. The detail is outstanding, but the desert biome is having an identity crisis. -- Saguaros don't grow in sand dunes.


    They look great. Don't get me wrong. These are some of the best depictions of animated saguaros I've ever seen. (Though, they are quite short. Adult saguaros grow to over 12 metres in height.)


    If you're trying to recreate the Sahara (re: pyramids) make the sand red/brown and lose the cacti.


    If you're trying to recreate the Sonoran Desert, where saguaros grow (and they grow *only* in in the Sonoran Desert (e.g. Arizona and Northern Mexico) you need a **whole bunch** more plant life. Palo verde and creosote grow like weeds in the same landscape. Mesquite, ironwood, cholla, occotillo, barrel, prickly pear with edible apples (as long as you cook them first to get the thorns out.) And rattlesnakes and rabbits and javalina and lizards. And the ground would be decomposed granite, not sand. And desert-colored mountain lions, not tigers and jaguars. And saguaros don't produce usable wood, nor grow from cuttings or seed--at all--which is why they're so strictly protected in the U.S.


    I could go on and on, clearly, but the easiest fix is to just take out the saguaros and reflect an African desert, not an American one.


    Another easy fix, while the scarcity of ponds is quite accurate, if it were drinkable water they would be surrounded by thirsty plant life, creating an oasis. I skipped several ponds assuming they were salt water because there weren't any plants around.


    Thanks for a great game. I've been playing a week and I'm already hooked.


    ~Kesselia

    "The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage." ~Jack London

    Like 3

    This is excellent info. Tagging @red51 to make sure he sees this.


    The deserts do need quite a bit of work. I agree there needs to be seperate biomes for both east and west desert types. I want to say this is planned but I'm not 100% positive. I know there are more biomes (including a jungle and a swamp) and an overhauled world type are in the works. We definitely need more ground textures are needed: white sands for beaches and and other colored sands, standstones, and clays for a Painted Desert (with flat top mountains). There's a plan to implement loose rocks (for primitive crafting), so I want to say that large boulders would come too. These would also fit in with the American desert well.


    I'm sure more plant life will come (i definitely want a prickly pear) and I agree with you on plants being closer to water. Probably once more stuff is added the code can be tweaked to improve the arrangement of plants.


    Snakes and rats are already in the game but not activated yet. You can spawn them from the console if you want to check them out. I'm not sure if any variation of snakes is planned. Other animals are coming too (lion, horse, and gazelle for certain).


    I'm curious now what your thoughts are on this. The other biomes seem to be sized just fine but i think for a desert, they need to be several times the size. I can usually stand in the middle of a desert and see some green at the edge of my viewing distance. I imagine something majestic like Monument Valley would probably dominate such a tiny desert biome and look rather odd.

    Thanks! Those updates sound great! Yet, to quote a previously read post (I forget who to attribute the quote) "Better late than bugged". I'm perfectly patient for, indeed, great art takes time.

    "The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage." ~Jack London

    Quote from Kesselia

    Thanks! Those updates sound great! Yet, to quote a previously read post (I forget who to attribute the quote) "Better late than bugged". I'm perfectly patient for, indeed, great art takes time.


    The quote sounds very familiar ^^
    Upcoming: New player models


    Nice that several other people think similar! :thumbsup:

    Well, the immediate entertainment in gaming can be blamed on the Indie game movement, the early access concept, and game engines like Unreal and Unity with there asset stores. Those asset stores let you piece together a game without having to do your own modeling work. Its great for whipping together a concept game but it looks so generic. I'm glad Red is making stuff from scratch.

    I hope this doesnt seem like a hijack. A steam review recently suggested some changes. I thought many of these were good to copy over. Not all desert related but are all comments on biomes. Actually it probably wouldn't hurt to put together a super-thread of biome suggestions


    • Dictate larger biomes or select which biomes to include in the generation.
    • More varied seashores (rocky like the northwest pacific of the U.S. or fjords) in addition to sand and palm trees.
    • A density setting for cave generation and ponds.
    • A portion of mountaintops be more rounded (older looking) and longer. Perhaps that would be a differnt biome?
    • This next one is way out there...(difficult) An occaisonal water filled trench from the base of a mountain (Spring) to a lake.

    Since I mostly play in creative (at least until we get a more challenging survival game mode ;) ... all that about deserts got me to thinking about creating a Utah/Canyonlands type of environment using the terrain tools. I think it could be done and would be pretty fun. (In my spare time! LOL)

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