CollapseStory

A Wilderlands Community Mod - Discord channel for player feedback and mod development discussion, graciously provided by The Wilderlands/Thalius

MOD IS IN BETA STATE, but getting close to stable. Any bug reporting help to iron out bugs and balance values as well as any feedback on unintuitive feature implementation is appreciated.

 

CURRENT NEWS - v0.7.1:

• Tooltip trimmed and its calculation double on the client side removed, instead you'll see "Calculating" for a few microseconds while the client asks the server for the stress value of a block from the server's stresscache. Values now don't display in the tooltip, but in the handbook, except for Filled, which appears when hovering over fillfractioned blocks and shows the percentage mass of any block that is not 100% full (full: filling the whole 1m3 cell).
• New handbook integration, blocktype and material combination's structural properties (e.g. sandstone ashlar block or oak plank stairs) now searchable in the handbook, and a 7-chapter guide under the Guides-section explains all the features.
• Fences brought more in line with my intent, so they don't take part in the tie-foundation, lateral bracing and confinement systems, while they also drop as items now, when they break.
• fixed missing vertical application of structural effect of non-100% fillfraction on stress for fences, stairs, slabs.
• fixed bug in server-client environments: stress value jumped between two disconnected values when looking at any block above the first floor of any building, fixed by removing the client-side tooltip stress calculation duplication.
• fixed Bug with multiblock columns (e.g + shaped or 2x2/3x3) resting on foundations that can move upwards infinitely with no stress accrual.
• fixed Memory bug on multiplayer servers when harshwinter setting is set or if in a snowy biome. All blocks, not only structural, had an ungated check for broken beams on neighbor block transformation. This ONLY happened for neighboring melting snow layers. Crowded out server memory, should be fixed now.
• fixed placing stack of sticks, furniture or similar on the anchor block of a beam removes the beam.
• fixed bug with wood slab floor cantilevering off a corner wall (2 perpendicular pillars) collapsing on placement, bug might be impacting other blocktypes in same setup.
• fixed missing coverage of diamond patterned stone blocks.

 

CURRENT BUGS - v0.7.1:

• section pending player feedback and dev testing on the v0.7.1 upload.
• bug with infinitely horizontally cantilevering blocks if enough horizontal separate support beams are applied (partly related to the below beams-within-walls exploit possibility), derived from when a support beam's knob index touches both the base of a pillar and another block in that pillar, the beam doesn't break when the pillar base is removed and its supported blocks don't collapse (fixed in v0.7.2).
• bug with multi-block tall lintels getting 0% stress polluted by an ungated 0% arch keystone detection (basically an arch detects itself within a >1 block tall wall that is suspended between two pillars, that is in fact not an arch but a multi-block tall stacked lintel)
• bug with top very-fractioned roof blocks preventing a roof from collapsing under certain below-roof-is-air-then-structural-block conditions.
• outstanding minor issues:
  
  • possible balancing of fillfractioned blocks, one player report on them seeming too weak.
  • Translation string format exception thrown for: "<font size="20"><strong>Materials and How to Build With Them</strong></font> (thx client-mail.log)
  • player report on wall mounts not being placeable on walls bco lack of "solid" state.
    • confirmed, wallmounts have canattachblockat behavior, different than say a torchholder's horizontalattachable, and that behavior is conflicting w collapsestory pillar code, someho turning the mount into a "pillar" block that requires blocks below it to be placed (you can in fact place the mount on a block touching ground or one that has a block in front of and below it). Insane bugpath. Fixed in v0.7.2.
  • stony rubble still has question mark rendering when dropping/in falling state
  • some coral cobblestone apparently not covered by json patch
  • player report on at least some aged blocks, in player's case aged polished rock (granite) and aged granite ashlar blocks, don't seem to show the true stress on them. Building straight on top of bare granite, the player saw 0% stress all the way up the wall (6 blocks high), but when adding a granite cobblestone on top of it, the whole thing suddenly collapsed. possibly related to the very-fractioned roof block bug.

 

MOD FEATURES:

CollapseStory introduces a real world simulated structural engineering physics model, based on blocktype and material Mass/Weight, Crush/Compressive Strength, Tensile Strength and Stiffness.

• Blocks & Mass Every block is treated as 1m³ of mass. Partial blocks (slabs, stairs, fences, chiseled) scale mass by volume fraction — a slab has half the mass of a full block. This matters: slabs extend horizontal reach; upside-down stairs become structurally relevant for arching.
• Materials Each material (chalk, sandstone, kapok, purpleheart, copper, steel, etc.) has real-world mass, crush strength, bending strength, and stiffness. When in doubt, look in the handbook for the specific blocktype and material combination's values.
• Support Beams Beam endpoints can be placed in air; blocks can then be placed on the span via hovering the cursor over the beam, then placing. The block is placed on the beam relative to the player's position. This lets you build floors or roofs on beam stilts, or span blocks between pillars by laying them on horizontal beams. Beams also reduce stress on their anchor block if angled above 30°, with maximum reduction at 45°. This stress reduction is also transmitted downwards in the pillar.
  • Stick beams are weakest and can't carry stone or brick, while metal beams scale up to very supportive steel and stainless steel.
• Ground Type Build foundation matters: rock is best, then soil, glacier ice, gravel, sand, down to peat and snow and so on.
• Foundation system and Tie system If you place a stone, brick or metal block nested in, not on, soil, it acts as a foundation for the pillar above. Its bonus stress reduction is dependent on its blocktype and material. You can increase that bonus by placing neighboring blocks of any structural type in a 5x5 diamond radius around the initial block, they are counted as long as they are connected to the foundation block via other blocks, are placed in that diamond radius, and touch ground below (soil/rock etc, not other structural blocks) below them. The bonus of the foundation block can be increased even further by first digging a hole up to 5 blocks deep, filling that with structural blocks (the tie), and then placing the foundation block last in that hole. In total, the effect of a deep tie as well as a filled diamond floor around the foundation block results in some advanced blocktypes+material building more than double the height of the same blocktype+material placed just directly on ground (soil/rock etc.) Towers can be safely constructed without also bracing with beams in this way.
• Confinement & Bracing Blocks horizontally surrounded by other blocks gain crush strength (confinement). Lateral bracing between walls and columns is also modelled and additive (the neighboring pillar, and the next-neighboring pillar as well also, helps a pillar's bracing).
• Arches and Domes Arches are built stairway-diagonally with keystones where the two arms meet. Load from blocks above the arch is simulated, and load distributes downward through the arms. Works for domes too, in a performance-efficient way.
• Material Roles Stone excels vertically (foundations, columns). Wood excels horizontally (bridging, flooring, upper stories on stone). Metal excels at both.
• Roofing Roof blocks have a strong horizontal/diagonal structural behavior matching their real-world form. For weak roofing (thatch) or diagonal roofing without horizontal steps between each angled block, lay a support beam skeleton first. Thatch only needs stick support beams, but heavier rooftypes need wood beams and above.
• Unstable dirt and plant-based materials. Hay, straw, packed dirt behave like soil/sand/gravel with instability on — they fall sideways, with varying chances. Support beams can gate this, enabling bear pits, earthen moats, and similar constructions. Rammed Earth is created (and nerfed) by placing roughhewn fence on both sides of a packed dirt block, then breaking the dirt with a shovel. This mimics real rammed earth forming. Breaking rammed earth drops packed dirt.
• Chiseled Blocks Mass scales with remaining voxel volume. If the chiseled material/blocktype isn't covered by the mod, it defaults to clay values. If chiseling would push the block to 100% stress, it drops as an item and the structure above collapses, if stressed above 100%. You can place doors or blocks on top of the beam start anchor collision box, if the start point is placed in a chiseled socket of a chiseled block, since the collision box is merged into the chiseled block via vanilla VS logic! You can support doorframes with beams AND place a door in the doorframe without it being blocked by the beam start point. Just remember to convert the start anchor block to a chisel block before you place the beam, as if you were making an IRL putlog hole for the beam to rest in/on a wall.
• Clutter and furniture CollapseStory adds tons of non-buildingblock structures/items to unstablefalling, which means they behave like unstablesoil'ish (don't float in air if you remove blocks below them).
  • CollapseStory also adds custom falling rendering for clutter, avoiding the standard vanilla questionmark box when they fall, via harmony prefix on genMesh. Enjoy the falling skeletons.

 

Stone values based on Winkler 1997, Stone in Architecture and Eurocode 6 https://eurocodes.jrc.ec.europa.eu, Metal values based on Smithells 1998 Metals Reference Book, 7th Edition, Wood values based on Meier's wood-database.com , timberpolis.com and USDA Forest Products Laboratory Wood Handbook. Mortar values used in stone and brick are based on common European medieval carbonating lime mortar, 0.5–3.0 MPa.

 

NOT IMPLEMENTED YET

• Exotic blocks (chimneys, chutes, etc.)

• Mod-local scaffolding system — for building arches and supporting non-pillar constructions needing stress distribution to not collapse before finishing the construction, with medieval visuals and buckling behavior.
• Multiplayer — further refactoring
• (coming in v0.7.1 or v0.7.2) Structuralload behavior for beams, so they break and collapse like blocks do, if overstressed.
• (coming in v0.7.1 or v0.7.2) Wilderlands Block Adjustments will be integrated into this mod in a near future version.
• (coming in v0.7.1 or v0.7.2) Many new mortar types for all mortar-bound blocktypes, with varied texture overlays Common European medieval carbonating lime (in-game) mortar is 0.5–3.0 MPa. Alhambra had gypsum mortar with a strength of 11ish MPa, stronger in bending than typical medieval mortar but weaker in crush strength, Roman "cement" (lime and volcanic ash) had ranges of 6-20 MPa. Besides that, red, blue and fireclay also all have different binding properties, as well as different colors.

 

CURRENTLY OUT-OF-SCOPE

• Block degradation— blocks decay over time or during bad weather or temporal storms based on material/type reinforcement values, ultimately triggering collapse but repairable with plumb and square.
  • Will be made in a separate, future mod, which will of course compatch seamlessly with CollapseStory.
• Shear failure, overturning/eccentricity (meaningless at 1m³ voxel scale)
• Porosity
  • Will possibly be defined in the future block degradation mod, as a modifier on degradation speed for some materials, in wet biomes)
• Lateral earth pressure
• Brittle vs. ductile failure modes
• Full flying buttress simulation

 

COMPATIBILITY:

In general quite compatibility-friendly, new block, material or furniture stuff just won't be covered by the mod's structural values and behavior (most obviously noticed in that covered blocks won't be able to rest on other-mod blocks). The problem is, CollapseStory is super complex so some mods that also mess with code can, in interplay with collapsestory, cause ungated and unidentified memory leaks, especially in multiplayer, so take care.

• BetterRuins: Fully compatible. Special radial BFS trace gating applied, so blocks placed or removed in ruins and other worldgenerated structures only collapse in a 3x3x3 radius. No ruin cascades just because almost no ruins neither in mods nor vanilla are structurally stable.
• Underground Mines: Fully compatible. By allowing placing only log or wood blocks on a horizontal rock face, and making the BFS trace skip the weight of blocks anchored in this way, the Underground Mines mineshafts no longer collapse on disturbance of a block in them (except when the log pillars only touch air of course), which also circumvents the massive server tick overload from this mineshaft edge case.
• Wilderlands Block Adjustments: Fully patched; adds wet mudbrick variants.
• Wilderlands Waymarkers: Recommended if running without a worldmap, since very tall wattle/packed dirt/rammed earth/hay navigation pillars are no longer viable.
• Salty's Catch Ledge: If you get [Error] [catchledge] File 'CollapseStory.cs on world load, just delete the CathingLedgeClient+Server jsons in the ModConfig folder and restart the game.
• Scaffolding mod: Recommended for supporting arches that would otherwise fall before connecting arch abutments with the arch keystone blocks, and hedging unstable placements.
• Planned compatches so far are:
  • Geology Additions
  • Wooden Fortifications
  • VS Roofing mod if feasible (The VS Roofing blocks work, they're just not covered by structural values, and CollapseStory beams that you place the roofing on essentially do the same, but without the graphics of course)
  • Dana Tweaks
    • compatch bug with Dana Tweaks' setting EverySoilUnstable: true