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supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Surely theres been some research into like pressure relief holes or something…antacid tabs?

I am sure there are lots of geologists who have thought of it, it makes sense right?

The problem is that nobody gives a shit about listening to geologists unless they are talking about where to find oil. Even if a geoengineering project of this scale and magnitude (with such catastrophic consequences if it goes wrong) where possible with near current geological science and hardware this degree of interest and investment of society is only ever committed to visions techbros provide and I don’t think a single techbro has ever taken a geology class and actually remotely paid attention.

It was geologists in the 1970s who first pointed out the obvious connection between human released CO2 emissions and global warming. Nobody gave a shit :)

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Nindelofocho@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You are right sadly :( but dont discredit yourself so much! A ton of people do listen and a ton of people think yall are cool! I think you’re cool. Its just that those people and I dont tend to be the people that have the resource to make decisions

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Jorgelino@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
On the game side of things, while i agree more realistic landscapes would be awesome, making games is really hard work and you need to be careful where you’ll invest your time in if you want to actually get anything finished. The truth is most people who are not geologists can’t tell the difference between a realistic landscape and an unrealistic one.

We have some tools for world generation, though i’m not sure how realistic they are. Mostly a mix of noise functions (Simplex, Perlin, etc) and erosion simulation. But i barely understand how that works, so your “geological sandbox” seems a lot less obvious to me.

Another thing to consider is that in game design, realism will always take a backseat for good gameplay. A map that naturally guides the players where they need to go is usually much more desirable than one that is realistic but unintuitive. Plus when you add magic, gods, or even enough sci-fi, the bar for what counts as a realistic landscape really goes out the window anyway.

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- supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Another thing to consider is that in game design, realism will always take a backseat for good gameplay. A map that naturally guides the players where they need to go is usually much more desirable than one that is realistic but unintuitive. Plus when you add magic, gods, or even enough sci-fi, the bar for what counts as a realistic landscape really goes out the window anyway.
  
  Why would a map that reflected natural landscapes be more unintuitive than an awkwardly fabricated one that doesn’t reflect any landscape a person has seen looks like?
  
  sigh and I am really trying not to come off like I am claiming everything has to be realistic to the stupid little details on a geologist would know.
  
  My point was that building landscapes to tell stories in without building the landscape as a story too is a silly thing to do, both for immersion of the player and for overall work.
  
  There is no reason a sort of clay like modeling simulator couldn’t give you an artistically conveyed sense of two continental plates colliding, and if the tools were playful and immediate to use (like I pointed out, just being able to smash continents together by clicking and dragging them in different directions at each other like Besieged but for geology) it would be easier for world designers overwhelmed by a blank canvas to start because their canvas already has a story rather than suffocating blank space.
  
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  - Jorgelino@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Why would a map that reflected natural landscapes be more unintuitive than an awkwardly fabricated one that doesn’t reflect any landscape a person has seen looks like?
    
    Mountain ranges blocking off high level areas, terrain elevation being changed to make sure certain landmarks are more visible/look better on camera, resources such as water/ores, etc needing to be close together for balancing reasons (For survival/crafting games), etc. Reality doesn’t always conform with one’s artistic vision.
    
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    supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    My main gripe with your comment is just the “This is so obvious! Why hasn’t anyone made this?” attitude. Because it ignores the work that needs to go into each of these tools, often for almost no recognition/compensation.
    
    It is obvious, and you still aren’t seeing it. You keep misidentifying the main thing I point out as the beginning of the creative process and a catalyst to seeding inspiration for level and world design as an arbitrary complicated ask that has nothing to do with the experience of level designers engaging in the creative process nor how organic and engaging a landscape feels in the end product.
    
    It’s like, an axiom to this conversation is that the knowledge I have of geology must mean MORE work for game designers and that gives you a right to portray me as having a snarky, unappreciative attitude towards the incredible amount of work that goes into video game development.
    
    It honestly portrays that lack of interest in geology well, you almost seem annoyed that I would suggest geology contains anything that might be of use to video game development because it involves learning about something other than computers and computers are already hard enough.
    
    I didn’t make the computers too hard to fit anything else in your brain, I also constantly give mad props to my favorite video game designers especially indie ones and ESPECIALLY open source projects with loving communities or developers who have maintained wonderful games for years and years.
    
    …but yes… this whole landscape thing? It is obvious as fuck to a geologist, I’m sorry but it is. Treating open world design like it is this thing you have to build entirely by hand or with awkward algorithms that attempt to procedurally generate some unsettling landscape that has to be fixed by hand JUST as much one like this
    
    Mountain ranges blocking off high level areas, terrain elevation being changed to make sure certain landmarks are more visible/look better on camera, resources such as water/ores, etc needing to be close together for balancing reasons (For survival/crafting games), etc. Reality doesn’t always conform with one’s artistic vision.
    
    Procedural generation has to be hemmed in by guard rails, Minecraft doesn’t just generate ores willy bully with no thought or check for game balance? No procedurally generated game worth its salt does and there are innumerable successful examples of those. Why would it be any different for building worlds with geologically inspired tools in a fashion I describe?
    
    I don’t understand why you see a difference there.
    
    These processes also don’t have to be extremely advanced geophysical simulations, you can abstract shit into elegant systems that reflect deep complexity, it is called good game design.
    
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