Realistic Water

This mod makes water flow and spread more realistically, with rivers and wetlands forming and changing dynamically depending on the terrain, without being predetermined at world generation.

It makes it possible to do some cool things, like building dams to redirect rivers and dry up wetlands, connecting lakes with canals, and building aqueducts for irrigation or other needs.

 

Trailer Video

 

Discord

 

Questions and answers

Can I add it to an existing world?

Yes it's possible, in already explored areas water will start spreading realistically when you disturb it.

 

Does it affect rapids?

By default rapids are not affected. However you can install Realistic Rapids, my official addon that makes rapids and waterwheels work more realistically.

 

Can I still create new sources with a bucket?

You can keep the option on, but I recommend you turn it off because you risk creating huge floods and also it's more fun to build an aqueduct :D

 

What happens when I dig at the border of a lake?

If you dig an aqueduct or canal that is a single block wide it will be made of normal flowing water that dries up when you disconnect it from the lake.

If it's two or more blocks wide it's considered a lake extension and it will be made up of source blocks just like the lake, to allow the creation of navigable canals.

You can disable lake extensions in the configuration file.

 

How can I build an aqueduct?

There aren't any special pieces needed to build an aqueduct, you can use any combination of blocks/slabs to form a channel and doors/trapdoors to control the flow. If it looks right it will (probably) work right.

You will need to make water jump down a block every 100 blocks or so to keep the flow going.

 

How is performance?

There is basically no fps impact as the calculations are performed outside of the graphics thread. The impact on tick time (server load) is present only when something is happening (for example if a wetland is forming or drying up).

 

Compatibility with other mods

• Watersheds
  • Works
  • If you notice some streams spilling apply the following tweaks to your Watersheds configuration:
    • Increase "Bed Lowest Depth" and "Bank Lowest Depth"
    • Decrease "Valley Lowest Depth"
  • Keep in mind that the rivers created at world generation by Watersheds cannot be redirected with a dam as they are made of source blocks
• Vintage Engineering
  • Causes errors because it applies stock behaviour to Realistic Water blocks
• Hydrate or Diedrate
  • Explicitly compatible
• Interesting Mining & Extraction
  • Explicitly compatible
• True Archimedes Screw
  • Explicitly compatible
• Waterfall
  • Explicitly compatible
• Everything else
  • Should work, if it doesn't let me know :D

 

Configuration

The following values can be changed in the configuration file "<span style="font-family: andale mono, monospace;">RealisticWater-Server.json</span>":

• <span style="font-family: andale mono, monospace;">MaxPathDistance</span>: smaller numbers = more wetlands, bigger numbers = more flowing rivers (minimum <span style="font-family: andale mono, monospace;">5</span>, default <span style="font-family: andale mono, monospace;">15</span>, maximum <span style="font-family: andale mono, monospace;">50</span>)

• <span style="font-family: andale mono, monospace;">AllowLakeExtension</span>: whether to create new source blocks when digging at the border of a lake&nbsp;(default <span style="font-family: andale mono, monospace;">true</span>)