Diod v0.1.0.17 — Into the water
Pre-alpha | 22 October 2026

Changes since v0.1.0.16
- Shallow water slows walking; deep water automatically switches to buoyant swimming. WASD swims, Shift gives faster strokes, hold C to dive and hold Space to rise or exit low clear banks. Collision sweeps prevent assisted exits through walls.
- Breath drains underwater and refills above the surface. Running out of breath damages health. Swimming uses stamina; floating slowly recovers it, and exhausted swimmers can still move slowly. A dedicated HUD reports water controls and breath. Menus pause water needs.
- Breath and the last validated dry shore are saved. Death keeps the existing recoverable-cargo and respawn flow, with dry-shore and bunker fallbacks when no nearby landing exists. Land tool work is cancelled while swimming.
- Water colour and transparency now use actual bed depth. Animated normals, small surface waves, shoreline foam and pooled disturbance rings replace the old angle-only colour treatment. Camera immersion enables underwater fog.
- Original procedural water ambience and splash/stroke cues accompany movement. Underwater sound is muffled with reversible filters. The character uses an initial procedural swimming/treading pose.
- New terrain profile 5 creates gentler shore transitions, generated lake basins and coastal shelves while preserving valid source-ocean depths offshore. Island banks use their surrounding lake’s canonical level estimate. Earlier saved terrain profiles remain unchanged.

Water controls: WASD swim, Shift faster, hold C dive, hold Space rise or leave low banks. Watch the breath HUD; float to recover stamina. Existing saves receive swimming and presentation; New Game enables profile-5 shores and generated underwater geometry without deleting the older run. See docs/WATER.md and EARTH_DATA.md in the source for behaviour and data limits.

Validation
linux: Focused actual-export water movement, breath/stamina, save reload, drowning needs, physical shore exit/wall rejection, camera restoration, Earth terrain/metadata compatibility, survival recovery, audio/presentation, HUD and navigation checks passed. Original profiles 2/3/4 also matched 27 comparisons against the pre-update engine. Small water-only software-rendered surface/underwater and procedural-pose fixture reviewed; no full-world GPU playtest. Actual exported content/Earth/legacy-save path identity passed. No full-world GPU playtest.
windows: Sequential export, native icon groups/sizes and four-part version checked. Native Windows GPU playtest pending.
macos: Universal bundle identity/version and x86_64/arm64 verified. Fresh Developer ID signed, Apple notarized and stapled. Native Mac GPU playtest and fresh Gatekeeper assessment pending owner/local testing.

Known issues
- Native Mac/Windows GPU water appearance, long swimming crossings, difficult natural shore exits and fresh Mac Gatekeeper assessment await owner/local testing.
- Depth geometry still uses existing coarse ETOPO and estimated lake levels with procedural fallbacks. No new GEBCO, EMODnet, HydroLAKES or surveyed Mälaren depth dataset is included.
- The initial swim/tread pose is procedural IK; bespoke stroke animations, swimming horses/NPCs, boats, tides, large-wave physics and current forces are not implemented.
- High cliffs and obstructed banks cannot be climbed with the water exit assist. Seek a low clear landing. Underwater needs continue during active play; drowning can cause death and recovery.
- Older terrain keeps its released bank shapes, which may be harder to leave than the new profile. Choose New Game to evaluate the new geometry.