Board Thread:Off-Topic/@comment-24108228-20151223151243/@comment-25998654-20151224173518

After doing some research: This issue is not present in current 303. The method used to move a character upward increases in speed the further it has to go to reach sea level. Given that in normal operation this feature would only change sea level +- a stud or so, there is no reason to change that method, so it is always (within reason; see below) possible to swim to the surface in less time than it takes to drown. Thus, the question of whether one can survive the journey upwards is irrelevant.

Additionally, due to the nature of the ocean, it will continue to move upwards indefinitely (again, within reason). The ocean is a 1-stud thick grid of parts; it does not extend from sea floor to sea level. It is easier to move parts upwards than resize them to move in a given direction, so that is likely what would have been done. I will also note that your movement times are irregular and appear to assume a non-uniform change in height across the ocean, but that's not particularly important.

So what if I drop the 'within reason' notes from the previous paragraphs? Well...

There is a theoretical upper bound at the maximum value a signed single-precision floating-point number can reach before losing precision. In C++, this is 3.4 * 1038. The server will likely be shut down by an editor, crash, or simply die off as players leave long before this upper bound is reached, however. Were the server to remain online and players were to remain at the surface they would experience a number of unusual effects as the floating-point number representing the Y coordinate of their camera loses precision; I lack the knowledge to speculate on exactly what these effects would be, but I can't imagine it would be good.