from the picture, it seems like it draws from water around the pump, rather than lowering the overall water level... am I understanding this correctly? it would be great to see the water level go down around the whole shoreline. It means that using water can destroy the natural barrier that water usually provides, even if the pump is far away.

Every tile of the lake here has the same constant depth, like if you have a perfectly flat lake bottom with no shallow areas, no smooth beaches. You can interpret the different colors of the water as different water levels: blue means a lot of water, yellow means just a small amount left on the bottom.

I made the picture this way: I created a continuous barrier around the pump using landfill to form a small closed pool. Then, after the pump drained all the water, I created an inlet by removing part of the landfill. After a while, the water level began to even out, and you can see a gradient in the picture.
The pump actually keeps scanning all the water it can reach and gradually lowers the water level evenly across all areas within its reach, based on the water consumption of an offshore pump

This is how it works now. Not very realistic, but I’ll think about changing the algorithm.

Hey!

In v0.2.0, I implemented the behavior you mentioned. It’s not the whole shoreline, but it’s closer to natural behavior :) And I added some screenshots to demonstrate it. You can find them on the main page.

Check it out with The Shallows mod!