0002651: Coastal river deltas often genning in glaringly implausible ways - Dwarf Fortress Bug Tracker

ID	Project	Category	View Status	Date Submitted	Last Update

0002651	Dwarf Fortress	World Generation -- General	public	2010-07-12 03:57	2015-01-16 12:41

Reporter	ChickenLips	Assigned To
Priority	normal	Severity	minor	Reproducibility	sometimes
Status	new	Resolution	open
Platform	AMD	OS	Windows	OS Version	XP
Product Version	0.31.10

Summary	0002651: Coastal river deltas often genning in glaringly implausible ways
Description	At first I thought this was probably not appropriately reported as a bug, but rather something nitpicky to suggest improvements for. But I've been running a good number of worldgens and embarks trying to get a good river/coastal location, and have noticed some quirks about how it generates those that seem to rise to the level of bugs. For reference, what I say below uses the site shown by these screenshots as an emblematic example: http://i31.tinypic.com/141eep.jpg http://i27.tinypic.com/30boa3c.jpg http://i26.tinypic.com/2lb62v.jpg This site was where a major river meets the coast. The southern section of it is actually really interesting, like a cove, but the glaring problem is how the river delta is handled (and I've seen similar stuff in other embarks). I really like the river cliffs, but here the river and is delta is actually fully separated from the sea (the 3rd picture makes this very clear), turning it into, effectively, a long lake ending near the shore, rather than a major river emptying into the ocean. There is also the problem of the river delta, instead of showing up as plausible eroded, smoothed or graduated areas, appearing as miniature channels ray-traced down, and cutting through two Z-levels (though I suppose in certain situations this could be cool and appropriate; in many/most, though, it comes off as wrong-appearing). If I had to choose between river deltas appearing in this manner, or just rivers that open up right to the ocean without any delta, I'd definitely prefer the latter. As a separate sidenote, there's another thing shown which I'm not sure whether it is or is not intended, but which seems strange -- that checkerboard of stone pebbles among the sand which doesn't get covered up by waves as they wash over them. Is that supposed to happen? (Either the checkerboarding or the waves only showing up over sand.)
Steps To Reproduce	Generate a world with a lot of rivers. On the embark selection screen, find coastal locations with major rivers emptying into them, and look at how they tend to manifest.
Additional Information	Savegame and/or worldgen parameters available if it would be helpful.
Tags	No tags attached.

ChickenLips 2010-07-12 23:02 reporter ~0010101	Come to think about it, I might add that, as shown in the example, the natural coastline/erosion process itself creates very persuasive and appealing river deltas in themselves, so the artificial one kind of interjects in an unnecessary way. Almost like it is an old remnant from a time when the worldgen process made more flat, simplistic coastlines or something. (I have no idea, of course, if that's the case -- I've only been playing since .03.)

ChickenLips 2010-07-20 12:22 reporter ~0010732	More example pics to show how the river deltas are genning: Alum Beach River Delta Example: http://i26.tinypic.com/23w905s.jpg http://i30.tinypic.com/1e57y1.jpg http://i25.tinypic.com/28cpo38.jpg

ptb_ptb 2015-01-16 12:41 reporter ~0031973	I didn't think those were deltas. I thought they were river sources that happened to be right on the beach (equally silly).

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2010-07-12 03:57	ChickenLips	New Issue
2010-07-12 23:02	ChickenLips	Note Added: 0010101
2010-07-20 12:22	ChickenLips	Note Added: 0010732
2015-01-16 12:41	ptb_ptb	Note Added: 0031973