Hiya! My question is a simple one, that may or may not have a not-so simple answer.
Would a biome made from floating islands be possible? Kind of like the Archipelago mod, but without the water and land underneath it.
That’s all!
I don’t know how the game handles digging out below the last Z-level… I wouldn’t want to find out how that works with islands of different heights with different “bottom” levels.
Also, even water bridges require scaffolding built down to the riverbed… don’t want to mess with that with the infinite deep unknown.
Crud, I forgot about scaffolding. Well, there goes that idea, more or less.
you actually can’t mine out the bottom level (though you used to be able to) so i definitely think floating islands would cause problems…
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I’m not sure how well negative height works, but you could always tweak the landscape generator to just start generating the landscape at level 100 or something, that would give you plenty of space.
Also, I suppose it could be possible to build a bridge tool or similar that does not require scaffolding, or a different type of scaffolding. Maybe something where it’s first built vertically and then lowered down? That could be kinda cool.
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I know I’ve seen screenshots where someone had built an airship beyond the edge of the world. Long ago though so it might not work anymore.
I haven’t actually played the game for almost a year, but when I did I know there were cases when I was building with overhang that they started building scaffolding on the ground below, but before they finished someone else built the overhang by standing on the part of the building where the overhang was connected.
Floating islands would be cool. I’ve always liked them. Might be tricky to make water stay on them though.
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Can placeable objects have walkable surfaces?
For example, making a bridge as a craftable object, that you place down, and then the hearthlings can walk on it?
Maybe?
Yes, entities may define a collision box. For example, trees have one to avoid hearthlings walking through them (and I think maybe for placement reasons). You can even turn them on/off I believe, at least that’s how doors work, somehow.
So in the very least, you could just have an entity and two collision boxes, one vertical and enabled, one horizontal and disabled. As soon as the bridge is lowered, the collision boxes swap: You can now walk above them, but not under them.
It’s simple enough so I might be able to draft an example for it, so you see what I mean. I’ll add it to my todo. I’m not entirely sure how the pathfinder works with them, however - it’s certainly recognising them as obstacle, but I’m not sure if they define it as walkable area. For the train project, we’ve defined the two rails as collision boxes, and hearthlings happily walked over them, so technically, I believe this kind of bridge could work.
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Awesome! I forgot about trees having a collision box, but now it feels blatantly obvious…
This whole floating island idea might be more feasible than I originally thought.
Hearthlings walk over tables and beds and when they introduced crates I think someone built stairs with them.
I’m not sure but I’ve got the impression that collision boxes consists of voxels the size of voxels in buildings and the ground. That’s not an answer to anything. Just mentioning that it’s probably a limitation in the engine so keep that in mind when you’re making plans.
Collision boxes are aligned to some grid, but can actually scale pretty much any size. At the very least, the size the model has. You’re not limited to those world blocks at the very least. I think you can see the collision boxes in my train video, they are the black wireframes… but it’s been a long time, so this might be wrong.
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Steps to mine through the “bedrock” at the bottom levels:
- Tell your hearthlings to build a road on the bedrock (see note 1)
- Watch them mine the bedrock
- Cancel the road after they’ve mined the bedrock but before they place the road (see note 2)
- Repeat until you’ve punched a hole through the bottom of the world
Note 1: It’s best to build the road out something that you don’t have in your inventory (clay bricks?) so that your builders don’t start placing “road blocks” in the way.
Note 2: Currently (for Alpha 17) you can’t cancel or remove buildings, so for “step 3” you have to use the “destroy” command in the console.
If you do this and a hearthling falls into the void (e.g. while mining), the game doesn’t crash or anything, but the hearthling seem to get stuck and kind of “bounces” a little on the top of the void. I was hoping for a more dramatic “hearthling falls through the void forever” situation… 
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I believe hearthlings are able to walk over any collision box as long as the final size is something they can handle (1 world unit tall, or stairs with steps of that size).
I remember this Pond mod by @phector2004 and the bridge was walkable 
Still, there was land underneath, so technically it could be walked over, even if there was a step. The same rules don’t necessarily apply to places where absolutely no land is underneath, only entities - I suppose it remains to be seen. I guess somebody could whip out a microworld, place a bunch of tables between two islands and see if they walk across it.
where I can download the train