<story><title>Show HN: Terra Firma, a playable erosion simulation</title><url>https://store.steampowered.com/app/1482770/Terra_Firma/</url><text>It&amp;#x27;s free to play on steam, but you&amp;#x27;ll need a computer with a dedicated graphics card.&lt;p&gt;I just released a new version after first releasing it 18 months ago.  It&amp;#x27;s been a hard slog to scrounge time as it&amp;#x27;s not my day job but that&amp;#x27;s life.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a ton of obvious improvements in the future (weather systems, temperature, varying rainfall, ice&amp;#x2F;snow, more biomes, more plate tectonics, lava, etc) but all suggestions&amp;#x2F;feedback is welcome.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>greggsy</author><text>I like poking around with these sorts of sandboxes, but in order to gamify it, you might need some objectives, limitations and planning goals, eg:&lt;p&gt;- you have a limited amount of some mineral or rock that erodes quicker or slower than others, and you need to move water from one location to another.&lt;p&gt;- there is a magma chamber growing under a mountain. Move the villagers out of harms way &amp;#x2F; destroy enemies.&lt;p&gt;- introduce sinkholes: make as many sinkholes as possible within some period.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>awelxtr</author><text>Why do they need to gamefy it? Toys as townscaper exist and have received positive feedback.</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Terra Firma, a playable erosion simulation</title><url>https://store.steampowered.com/app/1482770/Terra_Firma/</url><text>It&amp;#x27;s free to play on steam, but you&amp;#x27;ll need a computer with a dedicated graphics card.&lt;p&gt;I just released a new version after first releasing it 18 months ago.  It&amp;#x27;s been a hard slog to scrounge time as it&amp;#x27;s not my day job but that&amp;#x27;s life.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a ton of obvious improvements in the future (weather systems, temperature, varying rainfall, ice&amp;#x2F;snow, more biomes, more plate tectonics, lava, etc) but all suggestions&amp;#x2F;feedback is welcome.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>greggsy</author><text>I like poking around with these sorts of sandboxes, but in order to gamify it, you might need some objectives, limitations and planning goals, eg:&lt;p&gt;- you have a limited amount of some mineral or rock that erodes quicker or slower than others, and you need to move water from one location to another.&lt;p&gt;- there is a magma chamber growing under a mountain. Move the villagers out of harms way &amp;#x2F; destroy enemies.&lt;p&gt;- introduce sinkholes: make as many sinkholes as possible within some period.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway290</author><text>Plenty of us prefer open ended sandboxes&amp;#x2F;simulators like Minecraft, C:S, flight sims. Following game designer gets boring fast, setting own goals is always fun&lt;p&gt;Speaking of CS, I wish this simulator had heightmap export.</text></comment>