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[diglet]

I made a below ground farm, channeled a giant hole above it to turn the tiles into "above ground" so I could increase the variety of alcohol in my fort but kept getting the "no seeds available for this location: message. After mucking around for a while trying to get my farm going I realized that its never going to work since its in a mountain biome.

So is there a way I can return the subterranean status to the area?

[Tryble]

As mentioned at the wiki, there's no going back once it's been exposed to sky.

[Bumber]

I think it's possible with DFHack, using tiletypes plugin:

Code: [Select]

paint light 1 -- Light
paint light 0 -- Dark
paint subterranean 1 -- Subterranean
paint subterranean 0 -- Above Ground
paint skyview 1 -- Outside
paint skyview 0 -- Inside

[Quietust]

I think it's possible with DFHack, using tiletypes plugin:

Code: [Select]

paint light 1 -- Light
paint light 0 -- Dark
paint subterranean 1 -- Subterranean
paint subterranean 0 -- Above Ground
paint skyview 1 -- Outside
paint skyview 0 -- Inside

If you do that, you'll probably also have to use similar commands to replace the roof with natural terrain (or use cast obsidian), otherwise the game might automatically convert it back to above-ground.

[mikekchar]

I don't know if it's related, but I have experimented with building a floor on top of a piece of land and then tunnelling out underneath it.  The part below the floor stays subterranean even though it just has the floor above.  It seems to survive everything I've been able to throw at it without becoming above ground.  I *think* the determination of "subterranean" is done by ray casting from the last known above ground level.  Because the floor is technically the same level as the previous ground, the game never checks.  I have to admit that I haven't tried retiring and unretiring, which might cause the game to figure it out.  So if I understand that correctly, the key is to ensure that the level *above* the one you are interested in has an object on it and is classed subterranean.  It shouldn't matter what that object is.

[PatrikLundell]

I think it actually is sufficient for the tile never to have been touched by a ray traced from the sky. Building a building (with a roof) and then digging through the floor leaves the "basement" as underground in my experience, and I've found channeling under thick branches and trunks of trees also leaves the dug out ground as underground. Adding a roof and then cutting down the tree keeps it as underground.

Channeling out the ground and adding a roof afterwards obviously leave the ground underneath as above ground, but channeling down from there results in underground, in my experience.

[mightymushroom]

Huh, I had the opposite experience.

Z=0 is ground level. I built a bridge on z+1. After that I dug out z-1 including a ramp+hole directly under the bridge for my water wheel powertrain to come inside. Almost immediately the ramp grew grass; that tile is Inside Light Above ground.

[Skorpion]

Once touched by the sky, it is forever tainted.

[PatrikLundell]

@mightymushroom: A bridge is not a roof: it does not block the sky, and it does not block trees from growing through it (which is a pain, of course, as the tree blocks the passage over of a single tile wide bridge. The only good thing is that you can chop the tree down without harming the bridge).

[Larix]

A bridge does turn everything below it into "inside", blocks vertical passage and will not be targetted by building destroyers (although it can be destroyed by heat/fire or misbehaving dwarfs), so it's a perfectly serviceable roof, but it's quite a bit different in behaviour from constructed floor. To check your statement:

I dug out a two-z high underground room, built an artificial floor through the middle, then channelled away the natural floor above.

As soon as the natural floor was removed, the area under the built floor turned from dark subterranean to light aboveground. Light never reached the tiles directly, the lack of natural floor above was enough to turn them to surface. Substituting wall made no difference - a tile under one layer of constructed wall (or a layer of constructed wall with constructed floor on top) instantly turned from underground to aboveground when the natural floor above the wall was removed. Feel free to do your own tests.

BTW: if you construct floor on top of natural floor, any tunnelling under that will refuse to touch the natural floor - miners will not channel from above "through" the artificial floor, and ramping from below will leave the natural floor intact (can be shown by deconstructing the constructed floor). That tiles below remain underground is simply due to the fact that the natural floor never went away.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks for the investigation, Larix. I find the results surprising, but I don't doubt them.

Regarding roof vs. bridge: I didn't mean to say that a bridge does not have any of the properties of roofs, only that there are some it doesn't have. I agree there are a number of cases where a bridge is a better alternative than a roof for something that is intended to block passage from above (and I don't think trees growing through bridges can be used to climb down, but I wouldn't bet on it).

[mikekchar]

@Larix That makes sense to me.  When you channelled out the natural roof above the floor, the ray tracing is done.  The "roof" below it is not a natural tile, so the ray passes through it.  Contrast that to the situation I was discussing before: the floor/roof is *on the same tile as the natural floor*.  Because you are digging (not channelling) the ray tracing doesn't get triggered and so everything below that tile is "safe".  I admit that my technique is a hack that simply avoids the ray tracing from triggering :-).   Probably if you obsidianise a tile anywhere above my "roof" and then remove it, it will become "above ground".