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Show HN: Terra Firma, a playable erosion simulation

by mehwoot on 1/16/23, 2:18 AM with 79 comments

• by gampleman on 1/16/23, 2:03 PM

  Actually if this had a good export feature, this could be a very useful tool for other level designers to start crafting their imaginary worlds in a way that those worlds make logical sense.

  Especially if you could mod in/script/configure strange flora/fauna, this could be a great tool.

• by greggsy on 1/16/23, 11:35 AM

  I like poking around with these sorts of sandboxes, but in order to gamify it, you might need some objectives, limitations and planning goals, eg:

  - you have a limited amount of some mineral or rock that erodes quicker or slower than others, and you need to move water from one location to another.

  - there is a magma chamber growing under a mountain. Move the villagers out of harms way / destroy enemies.

  - introduce sinkholes: make as many sinkholes as possible within some period.

• by mabbo on 1/16/23, 12:14 PM

  My wife is a water resources engineer, a type of civil engineering focused on flood prevention and erosion.

  I think I've finally found a PC game she's going to be excited by.

• by calebegg on 1/16/23, 4:51 PM

  It looks really cool and I'd love to play it but I don't have a Windows PC. Any chance you have plans to make it available on Linux/Steam Deck?

• by DocTomoe on 1/16/23, 12:57 PM

  Add some way to export heightmaps or topographical maps, and this will be useful for RPG scenario writers (so much better than the standard "macaroni throw" method of island creation)

• by bradbeattie on 1/16/23, 4:59 PM

  Any plans on dealing with topsoil vs bedrock? Seeing water only on the surface above what looks like an impermeable layer looks odd to me, unless I'm misreading the video.

• by gus_massa on 1/16/23, 3:02 AM

  Is it only sandbox mode, or does it have some scenarios with an objective?

  The river look too straight. I expected more meanders.

• by iFred on 1/16/23, 9:48 PM

  Evokes the same "staring at a lava lamp" feeling as Weather Sandbox [0]. I yearn for a Sim Earth replacement and seeing folks work on simulation sandboxes like this give me hope.

  Now give me something planet scale with basic climate, biosphere, evolutionary models, and a Simpsons "Genesis Tub" approach to Civilization and I might not leave the keyboard days on end.

  [0] - https://niels747.github.io/2D-Weather-Sandbox/

• by gizmo on 1/16/23, 11:44 AM

  I think simulators like these are cool, and there is clearly an audience for it. Maybe, instead of simulating more stuff (rainfall, biomes, lava) you can go deeper into simulation you're already doing. To sell a game like this people need to be blown away by something, and that happens when you do one thing extremely well.

  Maybe think of the experience you want the player to have and then work backwards from that?

• by atan2 on 1/16/23, 3:05 PM

  I was just watching this video last week about the Voxel Space technique used in the 1992 Comanche game by Novalogic.

  The video mentioned that besides the rendering engine, Novalogic also develop their own terrain generation tool, with erosion methods, elevation decay, etc.

  Voxel Space (Comanche Engine):

  https://youtu.be/bQBY9BM9g_Y

• by gmadsen on 1/16/23, 11:30 AM

  I understand this would be a magnitude more work, but I'd pay money for these mechanics in a snes style populous remake

• by alex_duf on 1/16/23, 2:36 PM

  I've myself tried to create a small simulation of water and erosion, and although very fun I found it extremely hard to implement. (so well done to you!)

  Is it a grid based system underneath? How do you calculate water displacement, is it with a vector field? anything else you'd like to share about the implementation?

• by letsburnthis on 1/16/23, 8:47 PM

  Just a heads up, I think there's a couple typos on your steam page. In the second bullet point it says "Observe the ecosystem respond to the availability of water. Plants automatically -gross- across the -lanscape-..."

  Cool idea and thanks for sharing. I'm definitely going to give it whirl.

• by opencl on 1/16/23, 4:59 PM

  Very neat simulation.

  As a note, you said it requires a dedicated graphics card but it does seem to work fine on my laptop's integrated graphics (AMD 4500U) and performance was good with at least the default map size.

• by drcursor on 1/16/23, 6:58 PM

  Reminds me of watching Vista slowly building landscapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VistaPro

• by waiseristy on 1/16/23, 9:53 PM

  I think the water is missing momentum? It seems to always to prefer to create 90 degree bends and straight lines. Or maybe that's just an artifact of the terrain mesh being axis aligned

• by zokier on 1/16/23, 9:27 PM

  Somehow reminded of this weird obscure project Songs of the Eons, they too afaik have somewhat comprehensive simulations of basic geography https://demiansky.itch.io/songs-of-the-eons/devlog/365296/st...

• by nullcaution on 1/16/23, 12:45 PM

  Very nice! It reminds me of my old childhood favourite Erupt3. Although this seems much easier to use.

  https://www.lanl.gov/orgs/ees/geodynamics/Wohletz/KWare/Inde...

• by Jysix on 1/16/23, 3:08 PM

  I perceive an inspiration from the terrain editor of Simcity 4, really nice!

• by knolan on 1/16/23, 7:22 PM

  I’m reminded of Wetrix on the N64.

  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetrix

• by bilsbie on 1/16/23, 3:40 PM

  I’ve always wanted to build one of those projector sandbox combos. I’m surprised no one has commercialized that.

  It seems like it would be a hit.

• by antegamisou on 1/16/23, 8:52 PM

  Love it when Computer Graphics submissions make it to the front page :-)

• by antihero on 1/16/23, 12:40 PM

  Do you as a dev have to do anything to make it available on GeForce Now?

• by h2odragon on 1/16/23, 12:13 PM

  What a cool toy! Thank you for sharing this.