Talk:Tutorials/Water-powered boat transportation

Uphill!
I had written this tutorial originally in Tutorials/Endless circling pool and decided it would be best as a standalone general-purpose tutorial about boat transportation.

I'm especially pleased that today I figured out how to make a boat climb a hill using only Minecraft water physics and no fancy techniques like pistons and bubble columns. I have some screenshots but I need to figure out the best way to present it. Step depth can be as small as two blocks (that is, for every one block rise in elevation, the boat must move at least two blocks forward). That's a reasonably steep climb, especially for a boat just going with water flow!

It isn't fast, but it does provide some interesting opportunities for transporting villagers and mobs around. Amatulic (talk) 08:19, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

Java Edition
I'm confident that the level-water techniques described (turning corners, extending flows) work in Java Edition.

I'm not so sure about the technique to cause a boat to ascend in elevation using only water flow. In Java Edition, boats can sink. The trick would be, when removing the dirt blocks, to make sure that the water taking place of the dirt isn't flowing. It should be still water. Amatulic (talk) 13:23, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Tested the designs out (JE 1.17.1), level designs work (as expected) but uphill does not. Will add a note in a bit. Rechner2 (talk) 19:26, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I appreciate that someone could test this. I wonder if, instead if a dirt block, you used an ice block and then placed a torch near each one to make them melt. Then you'd have a non-flowing source block of water in place of the dirt. I understand (and I could be wrong) that in Java Edition, breaking the dirt block would transform it into a downward-flowing water block. Amatulic (talk) 21:32, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Tried it with ice and got the same results, I then experimented with different ideas (i.e. what if a low flowing water on top meets high water on the bottom?) yet none of those worked. JE boats really like sinking apparently. Rechner2 (talk) 22:27, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Hm. It might work by putting soul sand below the ice blocks to create an upward bubble column when the ice melts. The boat would still be powered by water, which is in line with the theme of this tutorial, although it is an exotic items that isn't readily available to players who don't venture into the Nether to find soul sand.
 * Thanks for trying. I remember reading that there's an effort underway to remove the differences between Java and Bedrock. If that happened here, something would break on one side or the other, because Java and Bedrock have opposite behaviors: boats like to sink in Java, whereas they like to float in Bedrock. Amatulic (talk) 22:51, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * That does work of course but I feel it just doesn't fit the theme of the tutorial at that point. (to quote: "It is actually possible to cause a boat to be propelled uphill using only the power of water flow; no fancy techniques like pistons or bubble columns are required.") Besides: If you are going to use soul sand anyways, why not just use a standard boat bubble elevator? It's more efficient in a couple ways: only one soul sand per elevator needed, smaller footprint, not limited in how far it can go up - unless you use it to transport mobs, but even then you can just use 4 soul sand. One reason to use the design in the tutorial with soul sand would be aesthetics, which is understandable so one may want to add that to the tutorial. On a different note: you don't need ice, a regular bucket works just as well. Rechner2 (talk) 17:40, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. I just added a note saying that Java Edition requires something like a bubble column elevator to move boats uphill. Amatulic (talk) 01:35, 21 October 2021 (UTC)