Annihilator wrote:if you consider that they have rewriten a good part of that code just a year ago to make player terraforming possible.
Terraforming has been a part of the engine since the very beginning, you just didn't have access to it because we didn't have the proper player tools and rules and mechanics for it.
Being able to create natural bridges and dig caves does not only require a rewrite of the engine, but a complete conceptual shift from 2D (pseudo-3D) to real 3D. I can't even think of all the issues we'd have to solve, starting from the storage of the islands: 2D bitmaps wouldn't cut it anymore, we'd need 3D voxel volumes, and with the current resolution that would mean _at least_ 1 GB of raw data per island (that's just the terrain, without mineral, plant and whatever data). And then we'd still only have the blocky looks of minecraft, though I'm sure there are some nice smoothing algorithms for that. But then we'd also need some proper physics, because how would it look like to have floating chunks of terrain in this game. There are games that do it, but as far as I know they are situated in space where this doesn't matter, and they do it on a much smaller scale than us (Miner Wars 2081 and Blackspace come to mind).
And that's just the terrain itself, you also have to consider the way you move the robots on the terrain, how blocking and line of sight works, how plants and minerals are distrubuted, and so on. It's not like it wouldn't be awesome, but it would be a completely different game already.
Of course there is a much simpler way to have bridges and caves, the way the majority of games do it, with predesigned terrain. But then we'd have to say bye to terraforming.
*edit: that said, there is a small chance that we might have model-based bridges eventually (no promises).