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[zacaj]

Whilst exploring in minecraft I saw a small river in my way, and without a thought, jumped in and swam across.  I did the same thing in Skyrim.  Which made me think: no one would do that in real life!  Youd be soaking wet and your shoes would be squilching for hours!  Youd go out of your way to find a dry way across the river, maybe walking 20 min in either direction if necessary, or else trying to jump from stone to stone across.  Theres no stones in minecraft of course, but the problem still stands:  can you think of any way to deter people from wanting to get soaking wet in games thats beleivable and actually punishing enough?

[1982]

The solutions for punishing from wetness depends on the game itself.


In normal setting you would punish for example like this:

- Whatever you carry, gains little bit more weight, thus making walking harder and more energy consuming.
- You'd get cold. Means you lose more energy and need more food.
- Later, you develop sickness like cold, rash (poisonous water?), or even parasites. These lead into death in worst case scenario, but at least makes everything again more difficult.
- Any water sensitive equipment goes defunct.
- Without swimming skill, you drown and die. Also if too much equipment or bad clothing, you could also drown even with swimming skills.
- If the swimming distance is long, you lose energy ans might drown again.
- If the water is too cold, you develop hypothermia and die of drowning.
- If the water is too hot, well you boil I guess.

[snowyowl]

I think just the psychological factor should be enough. Maybe going in water gives you a status effect "Wet" that slightly reduces health regeneration, defense, or something like that. It doesn't have to be a debilitating weakness, and it should wear off after a while, but that should be enough to make players think twice before crossing streams in case they get attacked on the other side.

That's if you want to slightly discourage going through water in an exploration game like Minecraft. If you want water to be an actual danger, make it deal damage if you stay in too long, or rust your armour and ruin your scrolls/spellbooks.

[MattG]

1 - speed reduction / density increase
2 - change footstep sound effect
3 - lerp texture maps to wet set
4 - add decaying drip particles

[Nillo]

I think that many games have some form of punishing the player for going into water, but not many of them go so far as to have a "wetness" attribute given to the player.

In ADOM (a roguelike game), going into water will first test your swimming skill; if you can't swim, you will quickly take damage simply by being in water. Then, it will test your equipment; if you are wearing metal items, there is a risk that they will rust, and if you are carrying magic scrolls they may be drenched in the water and destroyed. However, these effects can be countered by carrying waterproof blankets and dipping your metal items in blessed oil of rust removal (which makes them rustproof).

[Ben_Hurr]

Mostly people don't go wading through waist high water because its cold, wet, slow, and overall unpleasant.  Nevermind walking around in soaked clothing afterwards is also unpleasant.

Think of a way to simulate that in your game, I guess.

[JobLeonard]

Well, if it's an first person game, I think that coldness causing you to shiver is punishment enough. Screen gets shaky, difficulty aiming. You could introduce it with simply adding random jittering to mouse input.

[baconman]

Just having it slow you down is often enough.

I'm gonna lol at the first game where:

1. You enter water and get "wet" status.
2. You pull a dry "Towel" object from your soaking wet inventory to dry off.
3. You use a "Dry Towel" object to dry off your inventory full of Towels.
4. Towels, naturally, have a disposable one-use-only nature, where they harmlessly vaporize into thin air.

[rek]

The speed of the water should also be a factor. Watch some Bear Grylls; in the scenes where he isn't drinking his own "water" he's warning of the dangers of fast moving water. you can drown in two feet of water if there are rapids.

Underwater/shore predators are another real world reason to avoid water.

[xrabohrok]

One word: Piranhas.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

In a game like minecraft where I find a underwater deposit of water I'm usually nervous enough because if I enter the water, escaping from an enemy is already harder.

That said, the first thing that comes to my mind regarding penalizing "wetness" would be to have a encumbrance addition that decays over a certain amount of time.

[bart_the_13th]

Your character cant swim then drown and die... GameOver...
Except if the river is not deep enough, say only 1 or 2 foot deep...

[Glyph]

The Answer: Oregon Trail. You will learn to fear rivers.

[XRA]

since Sonic is on my brain, the air bubble mechanic was great, one of the few anxiety-inducing things in games regarding water (aside from the usual finding pockets of air in FPS games)

but I guess both of those are submerged... not the same as just swimming across water and getting wet. 

[unsilentwill]

I've always thought about a filth or smell meter and wetness could be part of that. Something to do with how other characters react to you after you've spent an hour in a sewer or covered in npc blood. That doesn't quite capture wetness as a personal disruption, heavier clothes could lead to a bit of a slowdown as someone said.

Also if you're wearing armor and decide to go for a swim, one you should drown and two it should rust.

[Tumetsu]

Could swimming capability be combined to constitution/stamina stat of many games? Or even swimming stat acting similar way as carrying ability where with too heavy armor you hit the bottom if you aren't strong enough.

The wetness status sounds interesting. I have this image about some kind of wilderness exploration where if one gets wet, s/he must build fire to warm up and dry the clothes. Wetness could cause several effects which slowly disappear. First movements are slowed because of heavy, damp clothes. After that cold reaches you which eats some of your stats (depends what you want: hp, stamina, defense, attack etc.) temporarily.

[Herr Schnurrbart]

The real question is: Why would you want people to not swim across a river?
Swimming across a river is fun. Games should be fun and waiting for your characters clothing to dry certainly isn't, at least in Skyrim/Minecraft and the likes.
Now if we are talking realistic RTS/Turn based strategy stuff, wetness could be a cool mechanic, here I would go for slow movement resulting in awkward combat performance (you'd actually think twice to take the shortcut right into your enemies hands but it could still be useful for scouts on the run).

[mirosurabu]

Swimming across the river is analytically inept though. If you had to look for a bridge, whether it's a real bridge or something like stones you have to jump over, then wouldn't it be much more fun?

Though, that would introduce a new problem: is there any interesting growth/progress function you can apply to bridge challenge?

[rek]

The real question is: Why would you want people to not swim across a river?

For the same reason you put hazards and risks in any game.

[xrabohrok]

Well, in the real world, people can just walk across certain streams and rivers, though it can be inconvenient and/or dangerous.  People also have the usage of small personal craft, such as rowboats and canoes, so there's that. 

Bridges become important when a person needs to transport lots of something (tanks, goods), or cross something truly dangerous (rapids, pits).  I was only being part sarcastic earlier with the piranha comment earlier, but the hazard is not limited to aggressive carnivorous fish.  The water can be really deep, or fast moving, or in a deep ravine, or all three.  Limit a character's swimming ability and the player will learn to respect water really fast. 

As for dealing with the status of "being wet"...ask yourself if that is the type of fun you are going for.  If it is, I would be careful where I add bodies of water to maps if I were you.  Dealing with it would be a ridiculous hassle.  Dying from pneumonia is something I deal with on a regular basis enough as it is.

Here is a thought: when diving or otherwise underwater, reduce the characters Max Hp by half and then reduce that max gradually while submerged.  Then add piranhas.