Tide system

[Sammich]

As I was browsing through screenshots of terrain I came across one of a coastal cave. This gave me an idea of having such a cave entrance be "closed" as the tide rises.

Is it possible to raise and lower water levels in-game? How difficult will it be? Basing such a system on elevators for the pathing changes and graphical raising/lowering sounds like it could work, but just doesn't seem polished. Also, I'm thinking the tide should be synchronized with the game clock and have an impact on land/amphibious/naval units respectively.

The general concept of having the same terrain undergo different changes (e.g. flooding) as the game progresses intrigues me. Any discussion on this is welcome.

 

[NullCurrent]

Well, technically you can do this, with the water rising model or a custom model. You would have to close the cave with triggers and the naval units would not raise up like they should so you would have to do that with triggers as well... this is all because the model does not effect pathing like that.

Blizzard did not make in-game terrain/water manipulations very easy. I would say that this idea is a very clever one, but would be extremely to effectively create.