Very Earthy Canals

[Imperator Vigelius]

I've never really played with canals before. My first attempts were plagued by strange behaviours I can't really explain, canals looking like just a mark on the ground, but behaving like a large water conduit anyway.

To investigate further I had a look at a place where I know the canals ought to be working fine, the magnificent Revelstoke map by Bringer of Fire. See the screenshot.

The water is behaving like it ought to, but the canals look very wrong! Clearly, this isn't going to make designing effective waterways any easier!

Incidentally I'm getting some gaps in the water just behind the dam, too.

Before I start ransacking my mod list (I don't have anything which even mentions canals or water, so this could be a pain...), has anyone seen anything like this before?

 

[HegeRoberto]

What a coincidence, I'm currently working on a canal too! It's almost finished, I might release it in a few days!
I call it "Tiny canal"

Canals actually work as very special roads. They can't connect to regular roads, but they have 1 very interesting additional attribute: "Waterblock-offset"
You see Canals, don't actually lower the terrain to allow water to flow through it. They fool the water, by telling it that the ground isn't as high as it is (waterblock-offset: -20 = water can come here as if the ground would be 20 meters lower) That's why there is no jittery terraforming edges at canals as they are at quay.

To make the water and the canal mesh visible, the canal clips the terrain (replaces the grass surface with invisible surface). You probably disabled "clip terrain" that does this, that's why the terrain is not disappearing. (weirdly some other checkmarks can result doing the same, maybe "lower-terrain", but I'm not sure.)

Anyway, good luck with your project and have fun tinkering with the system!

 

[Imperator Vigelius]

Now that is interesting! Certainly useful information for figuring out how to make the things behave.

So I suppose the pertinent question at this point must be: where can I find the checkbox options which allow me to start clipping terrain again?

 

[HegeRoberto]

Wait, It's just your custom canal that's doing this, right? Not the vanilla ones? If the vanilla ones are doing this the problem might be something else.
My canals (and even some normal roads) behaved like this when I was running low on memory or processing power due to too many mods, so the road/terraforming part of the game didn't load up right.
The main thing that ate up my processing power and made the game wonky like that was "Hide it!" mod's "hide every prop's ruining -> auto update every existing prop on load" option.

If only your custom canal behaves like this, open asset editor with "load asset" option and open said canal asset. On the editor panel's first Tab "Properties" you should find the checkmarks: "Clip Terrain", "Lower Terrain". First one should be on, Second one should be off. Then Save it by overwriting the previous version

Also note that the "Clip Terrain" know how much it has to clip away by the data of "Half Width", so make sure that number represents the size you want the terrain to be clipped by

 

[Imperator Vigelius]

Nope, this is all completely vanilla! I'm trying to make a totally vanilla map, actually.

So the plot thickens. The screenshot in the OP was taken in the map editor. Loading the map in play produces a similar result, until the square containing the canals is purchased. At that point, they suddenly transition to the way they are supposed to look. That moves this from being a real problem to simply an irritation which makes canal design awkward in the map editor.

Since the canals were never designed to be placed in the editor anyway and I've accessed them with Find It, I can live with this as a resolution!

Thanks for your insight, I've learned things and that makes me happy. Good luck with your tiny canals!

 

[HegeRoberto]

OOOh, that explains everything. Yeah. Terrain clipping is not rendered on not-owned tiles and the map editor. That is totally natural. You will notice that both Canals, and road tunnel entrances are all un-rendered until you buy the area. That is just the natural behavior of the game engine to save memory. Nothing can be done there. On map editor because it's not important from a gaming standpoint, and in game because you aren't suppose to have anything with clipping outside of purchased areas (at least not on vanilla maps) I glad that the little info I could provide made you happy regardless!

Thanks! I'll do my best!