Hi Everyone!

We’ve been working away on all aspects of Nova Roma, from the internal systems, map generation, water mechanics, and more. Last blog post we highlighted the dynamic, physically simulated water system. Today we want to show how that impacts your city.

Citizens living in higher end homes will need access to water, and water is also required to keep public toilets flowing and bathhouses operating. You’ll need to build dams to create reservoirs, then bring that water via aqueducts to town.

Because the water system is dynamic, building a dam has some challenges. How do you make sure your dam will keep the water where you want it? We wouldn’t want you to spend a lot of time working on a dam only to accidentally flood your city. To solve this problem, Michael has been working on a special Dam Planning Mode.

It allows you to add and remove dam blocks and runs the water simulation in a ‘preview mode’ so you can see how the water will respond based on the design of your dam. You can adjust how far into the future you want to see the water simulated.

Here I’ve set up a poorly designed dam, but the dam planning mode lets me know the dangers of my design. Buildings that would be hit and damaged by flooding water are highlighted red.

Now I’ve corrected it and I can see the water will be directed away from my town. When you’re happy with everything you can start your dam project and things should work just as you’ve planned. This allows you to build large dam projects without the fear of accidentally flooding your town.

To get the water to our citizens, we need to add a water tap. The water tap is a building that draws water from the adjacent dam and allows sediment to fall to the bottom. We’ll also need a water tower which will supply water to nearby houses and buildings. We connect these together with an aqueduct and since everything is physical, the aqueducts must run downhill.

You can also create more complex water networks using reservoir-like Water Splitters.

Each building in the system has information on the flow rate of the water coming in and going out. Houses, apartments, bathhouses, and more all draw from the flow of water so you’ll need to make sure you are piping enough in to keep everyone happy.

We’ll of course be iterating and polishing this further as we approach release. Our goal is that it should be a fun challenge to manage dams and water infrastructure to keep your city supplied with water as it grows larger and more dense.

Until next time,
-Pete, Michael, & Sam