USER ISSUE: Flooded! Help?

[seaglassfoxen]

\ User Id: (Not logged user) Version: 0.9.4.4 beta release-273

Steps to Reproduce: Accidentally leave the water pump running while installing a metal sink or rearranging copper pipes.: Water came shooting out. Reconnected pipes promptly but I now have three "waterfalls" on my lot that don't seem to be going away. The dirt underneath has even taken on the appearance of the gravel in a riverbed. Right in the middle of my storage area and access roads.

Expected behavior: I would have expected the water to drain off eventually but it seems...stuck? Tried putting aqueducts under the area to drain water off. Will try more pipes and another water pump and see if that has any effect.

Actual behavior: Waterfalls. The game seems to think these accidental puddles are actual waterfalls. There's mist coming off of them and everything.

Do you have mods installed? Does the issue happen when no mods are installed?: No mods ever.

**Please provide log files. Instruction is here https://github.com/StrangeLoopGames/EcoIssues/wiki/Getting-the-Eco-game-log-file

[TwixterZ]

Hi @seaglassfoxen , sorry that this have happen to you and thank you for raising this issue to us.

I have tried to reproduce the same at my end but the water eventually subsides, can you share some photos of your setup? and where these waterfalls is happening? Even better if you can share your world save for us to look at.

[seaglassfoxen]

Hi @TwixterZ ! Thank you. I played for a couple of hours last night and still have waterfalls. lol I got one of them down to more of a pond with some creative digging and dirt placement, but it's still refusing to drain away. I also tried pumping it away with the pipes and mechanical pump but that just dumped "polluted" water (even though it came out of the pipe looking blue and clean) into the ocean and the water level never dropped. (Had an accident with the water treatment thing and unwittingly dumped dirty water into the river earlier too, so the water looks a mess right now.)

SeaglassFoxenFloodedSave.zip

Hopefully, those are the right files. Please let me know if I goofed up. Still not too familiar with Eco's file system. Also attaching a bunch of screenshots in case the problem "magically" corrects itself when my save is loaded onto a new setup.

EcoFloodedScreenshots.zip

[seaglassfoxen]

Still flooded. I managed to get rid of the waterfall near the beach by filling it in with dirt working towards to water. I tried to do something similar with the other waterfalls on my lot. It did NOT go well. I made it worse! Ugh. The water spread. I do not understand why the game thinks this spill is a natural waterfall. :( AND it's dirty! The sink's outlet just started spitting out "dirty" water as soon as I hooked up the water. I guess I didn't expect it to start spewing water without being In Use. Oops. O.o

What a mess! LOL

[TwixterZ]

@seaglassfoxen Im sorry that this disaster continues to happen to you, I have looked at your save and currently looking at what could cause this and what can we improve. will keep you posted.

[TwixterZ]

We have found a few possible reasoning for this happening, and informed our developer for possible fix.

For internal use :

• https://app.clickup.com/t/21vdmgm
• https://app.clickup.com/t/220vubb

[seaglassfoxen]

Thank you! Wanted to mention the ground pollution that cropped up too. The water appeared dirty and then seemed to start polluting the ground around it. Finally, a ground pollution "hot spot" developed near (but not under) the giant spill. I'm not sure if it's connected, but it seemed worth mentioning.

I turned on the feature to view ground pollution in the main game view as an overlay and pinpointed the location. That area has never had any storage or tailings piles or any machinery placed on it. I have no idea why it would suddenly read as severely polluted. For curiosity's sake, I dug up the spot in a 4 cube radius, down to the rock layer. I found nothing. BUT, several game days after digging up and then filling in the area, the ground pollution started to dissipate slightly. It was no longer bright white/yellow, it began to darken into deeper oranges and reds. Very strange. Phantom pollution!👻

I just started a new play-through. (Though I still have the glitched game saved and plan to keep it; maybe tinker with it periodically.) The new map has more even terrain, whereas the original map had very little level space: Almost all areas were full of dramatic changes in height every few blocks. Very few flat spaces larger than 3x4 blocks anywhere that weren't just sandy beach. It took me forever to level off enough space with just a wooden shovel (at the start) to be able to cram all those stockpiles and that building in. I'm hoping that having access to more "flat" space (without having to drastically terraform every single block) will help prevent the crowding of stockpiles and machines and thus prevent glitches like the water incident. (Anyone tinkering in my save: big level spaces with roads and such were 100% hand-dug or filled in by me. It took hours. lol Having to pack things into small spaces and vertical heights may have contributed to the glitches. I think some of my setups may have been a bit unorthodox as a result.)

Ground Pollution Hotspot - Night

Ground Pollution Hotspot - Day

The "Water Monster" after trying to "fix" it. lol It's about 30-35 blocks long and 13-15 blocks wide. I'm tempted to try to box it in with mortared stone or cement and see if fish will spawn in it. 🐟 😃

[Jem6411]

Same thing is happening to us. Any update on a fix for this?

Thanks!

[seaglassfoxen]

@Jem6411 I haven't heard anything from them yet, no. Part of the problem seems to be height; how high off the ground the spill is and whether or not it hits an obstacle on the way down. In my case, the spills hit the tops of stockpiles, pooled, then ran down again until it reached the ground. The "running waterfall" effect started where the water pooled first, at the tops of the stockpiles.

If you can fill in the entire area with dirt/clay/gravel, that's supposed to help. But it needs to be contained on all sides with some kind of earth (building blocks don't seem to work for this). On a smaller scale, that worked for me: If you look at that last screenshot, you'll see a windmill down on the sandy beach, right next to the ocean: I had a spill behind the windmill which also caused the "waterfall"/running water glitch. I built up sand/dirt/clay/etc around the flowing water, then started filling it in completely working from inland, closer to the dirt/grass hill, and working towards the ocean. The glitched "mini-river" was 3 blocks tall and 2-3 blocks wide, so I filled it in from the back and sides, leaving the side facing the water open so the water had somewhere to go as I went.

If that's not clear enough, or just too confusing, please tag me in a reply and let me know! I'll hop on that save, see if I can recreate it, and make a short video of how I fixed the small one if it works.

Best of luck! Oh, and I will say this: I ended up creating a new save. I know that's probably a pain, but for me, it was worth it. I made sure there was plenty of open space around my buildings and stockpiles (it helps to generate random maps until you get one that's already a little flatter to start with). I planned for the large wooden stockpiles, and put most of the stockpiles on the roofs of my buildings, keeping the ground around them open. I didn't have any major glitches on the new, more open map. The map I had so much trouble with was ridiculously hilly and took hours to flatten enough for just one or two stockpiles, which is why everything's so crowded in these shots.

So, to prevent the issue in the first place, some tips that seem to help. (I'm not a dev or game tester so I haven't played with the glitch as extensively as they probably are/have been but these seemed to help me.):

1. Plan ahead as much as possible. Some of the later game machines are a bit huge, and if you have multiple people playing, everyone will need space for their buildings, roads, storage, etc. Planning where you want large buildings, stockpiles, storage chests, decorations, and roads will help prevent issues that seem to stem from the problem of, "Uh-oh, I need more room for this," which leads to... "creative" solutions that can get pretty crazy.
2. Keep it simple! ### Planning ahead will help with this. The more you have to get creative to solve problems (like my floating stockpile platforms and weird access points like roads, stairs, and ramps) the more likely you are to run into issues. Elaborate buildings, decor, park areas, and such don't seem to mess anything up, but having to create space where you don't have any does. Complex "workarounds" to solve problems do seem to contribute to the glitch.
3. Learn which biomes have which resources, especially ores. If you know where to find iron, for instance, you'll be less likely to spend forever digging up more rock than you can actually use, which means you won't need 25 stockpiles to contain all that excess rock/dirt, and won't need to cram all that excess material into tight spaces. (You'll still have to dig, but the soil sampler tool is a big help for finding ores. Nothing like digging for hours only to realize that the copper you were after was two blocks to your left but you were digging to the right the whole time.) Finding an area that's close (easy walking distance) to at least three different biomes will help make everything you need more accessible and prevent you from having to dig like crazy to make roads, ramps, or bridges, which can cause you to end up with too much waste earth (rocks, dirt, gravel, clay) that you then have to store somehow.

[TwixterZ]

Hiya @Jem6411 & @seaglassfoxen apologies for delay in getting this fixed, issue is still being investigated by our developer.

might interest you that a proper fluid physic update being considered further down the line too.

[seaglassfoxen]

Hi, @TwixterZ That's great! Thanks for the update! Definitely looking forward to seeing the fluid physics update. Sounds very cool. :)

Hiya @Jem6411 & @seaglassfoxen apologies for delay in getting this fixed, issue is still being investigated by our developer.

might interest you that a proper fluid physic update being considered further down the line too.