Maybe a seamless glass block that’s say…15% transparent cyan? = fake water for now
1 Like
Titans were just an example. You can fill in that blank with any number of things. My point was that there are things higher up the list of wanted features than water, and things with fewer complications.
I am not quite sure about this one, People already can kind of build with water if they build below water level and have a near by waterblock that is higher then them that they can manipulate to degrees, into their build,
Adding a new system, I feel is more likely to create complications, then refining an existing one.
The only complication I see from this, is I know there will be bad neighbors who make floating cubes of nothing but water. or try to rebuild an old idea of extremely questionable nature.
Latency is the main issue. Something that not even the goliath Minecraft has solved.
Couple that with a single universe for all players and you have a problem. It was issue enough during beta.
2 Likes
I just never noticed it, and I built mob smashers and grinders using alot of water in minecraft, and the devs can make it such that, player placed water blocks update slower so they it will not create as much lag, or they can cap the amount of player block updates to a defined amount, yes it may cause slightly unexpected behavior while building with it, and the player may have to wait a bit longer for all the water to flow, but that should fix it, because after it is all said and done and the water has flown out to its final result.
Inless I fail to understand something, The block updates are then gone, then takes some kind of action to cause more block updates to happen, which in turn requires a player removing or placing a block next to the water flow, and depending what that is, it may only trigger a handful of block updates or it might trigger alot of them. Since we do not have Pistons in this game yet, I don’t really see how someone can create a lag machine.
But I will give you that the lag situation in this game is far worse then how it is in minecraft, maybe due to bad coding, cause i dont understand why someone throwing a bomb to remove blocks under a mob spawning portal will cause me to lag for 2 seconds
Doors can currently gate water. Good suggestions though.
In beta we had builds with a single water source block at the top that then branched that one block through flowing and clever aqueducts could fill very large areas in flowing water. It looked great but on my setup which isn’t top end but pretty darn good, there was noticeable churning and chugging around that one build. Then there were shopping districts that would tank fps upon loading generally just for the first load. But that’s enough if your game tanks passing through a portal hub its going to cause issues 
water is a genuine issue that we had problems with earlier. They are working on it, when they have it solved we will get it. Unfortunately not before then
I really just don’t understand how this is any more hard on the machine then swimming in the middle of the sea which is full of water. oh well, whatever the case may be, I do hope the devs fix the problem soon.
Oh! That’s due to how they load flowing water as opposed to stationary water, reflections on water you’ll see are also different, they only load at base ground height essentially. And sides of water aren’t see through etc. You would have to ask a dev for exact coding but essentially a process happens for each instance of the water animating or “flowing” so the more of those you have the more of those processes there are. And due to water being a flowing block as well as character enter able and having its own physics applied to the player there are alot of variables that get loaded etc. It’s been a while since I’ve done coding of that variety (not since classes) but I do remember the load being process heavy and multiplied increasingly as the water flowed more places. When in an ocean you are loading the source blocks only, not their temporary flowing blocks. So it’s got a separate process load. I belive James has stated that they could do just the source blocks and kill the ability of placed water to flow, but that’s not a great solution and kind of a workaround band aid thing. So it’s alot of work on the water flow coding etc. Optimization and I’m betting placed water will end up having a chunk limit like some of our other blocks.
3 Likes
ok well thank you for that Information, I assumed that even flowing water, once it had halted to its final state, was more or less the same loading level as any other normal water block.
2 Likes
What makes you say that? Do player placed blocks take more processing power than natural? Some worlds have plenty of water and seem okay. (Real question, not sure if player placed blocks require more server juice to process.)
I dislike this reasoning on our part. If the engine can’t handle a world feature well enough, something needs to be changed. Having a sort-of functioning virtual world in which you can’t control water is weird. This kind of thing isn’t our problem as players, though I can sympathise with implementation difficulties.
(Not aimed at you, I just see this kind of reasoning often and it confuses me, the comment was just a starting point.)
Could they be considered complex blocks like meshes, perhaps? Max “generator” blocks per chunk or similar?
I heard an awful story of a world having to be deleted bc of a few well-placed blocks.
I do not ever want that to happen again, and even though I really, really want water blocks, I’ll patiently wait until they figure out how to avoid this.
I, personally, will have a beautiful fountain with a gleam unicorn in it. 
At least, that’s my dream.
Presumably if you can only place source blocks in your beacon and they end at the boundaries of said beacon then abuse will be impractical and costly to achieve.
To see how water causes lag, play Minecraft Creative and…
-
Build a one block tower up to the max height limit.
-
Build a one block path leading away from the top block on the tower, 200 blocks long.
-
Use a lava or water bucket on the bottom of all 200 of those blocks to create a lava or waterfall.
It’s the flow calculations that kill the build. The problems in beta were significant enough to warrant not releasing live, flowing blocks now. It’s not that the devs don’t want us to have them.
1 Like
Which is a shame, because I love waterfalls irl, and in Minecraft I always went exploring for all those waterfall gems, looking for the perfect one to build my base within viewing distance, beside or behind.
Makes bases really secure too.
I thought I saw a waterfall on Circa once. Got super excited until I realized it was just a shadow. 
1 Like
I think they’re trying to avoid quick fixes or temporary placeholder features, due to how the community react to just about any change later on down the line.
I imagine that when they do implement water, it’ll be as close to their intended vision as possible. They just need to settle on the best solution for everyone (when they get chance)
6 Likes
That’s a really good post of insight into the water mechanics, thanks for this!
1 Like
Paying Cubits for devs to fill my ponds and fountains!