Friday Dev Update: Foretelling of a Cataclysm
The world of Salt is largely randomly generated. The positions of the islands, their shape, type, and what they contain are all chosen by a sequence of random numbers. If this sequence changes, the entire world changes. This is why when you choose a custom world seed when starting a new game, the world is different. The seed changes the sequence of random numbers that tell the world what is where.
But what would happen, you might ask, if someone goes into the code that generates the sequence of random numbers and change some stuff. Why, a cataclysm of course!
It is something that lurks in the future. There are some changes that need to be made to the random number generation code, and it will change the world when it happens.
What does a Cataclysm mean exactly?
In short, after the change, it will be as if you had chosen a different world seed. All of your items, boats, and boat upgrades will be in-tact. The only change will be the landscape -- that is, where islands are and what they look like in your world.
Bundling the Changes
Although it is a necessary part of the Early Access phase, we definitely do not like making such drastic changes to the geography of the world. This is why we will pack a few world-changing modifications into one patch. This includes:
- A new island type.
- Re-balancing of island type frequencies.
- Changing far away island distributions. Possibly adding island clusters in the far oceans instead of just very sparse islands.
- Upgrades to the robustness of the island content generation system.
- Re-balancing of island type frequencies.
- Changing far away island distributions. Possibly adding island clusters in the far oceans instead of just very sparse islands.
- Upgrades to the robustness of the island content generation system.
The good news is, once this happens, it is unlikely that we will have to do another cataclysm of this scale for quite some time (maybe never). And don't worry, we will keep you informed and let you know ahead of time when we are going to make this change.
- John Gamble (Lead Developer)
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ReplyDeletethere will be a lot of pissing and moaning about this in the salt community forums. but it's both absolutely necessary and will be a fresh change for everyone. and i get a WHOLE NEW default seed to chart! :D
ReplyDeleteI'm really excited for some new island types! At the moment it can get repetitive as there seems to be only 2 types, an island with a mountain in the middle and the lush beachy island. To really increase the replay ability it would be (in my opinion) a good idea to add as many as possible, I know it seems like a lot but 15 + different types would seem like a good idea to me :)
ReplyDeleteI have spent a lot of time charting everywhere I have visited, and it will be hard to loose all that work! I am all for game development, and more island types would be great. It would be nice if there was a way to mark which islands you had been too in the future, so charting would be un-necessary.
ReplyDeleteWhere will we be after the cataclysm? Will we be back at 0,0 or remain where we were at? (Which could be interesting if the island we are on ceases to exist, lol.)
ReplyDeleteYou will be in the same place in the world where you last were. If there is no longer an island where you are, you will pop up in the ocean where you were last standing.
ReplyDeleteLove this game, paid for full version. Love the RG for island.
ReplyDeleteLove the game , eagerly awaiting multiplay , soon as it does i will buy 4 more copies to play LAn and or friends only listing in steam ?
ReplyDelete