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[frodo0800]

anyone knows?

[Raging Mouse]

They were taken out so that the new underground caverns could be introduced when they were.
The UG rivers, chams etc. would have had to be rewritten and re-tested in order to coexist with the new caverns, and I suspect Toady was worried that that would have taken too much time.

[frodo0800]

honestly i preffer the rivers and chasms,caverns causo to much lag depending on their size.

[Raging Mouse]

Each to their own.

The removed features will most likely be revisited in eventually; this game is constantly changing. I wouldn't be surprised if the UG looked completely different after Caravan release 2, with its 3d mineral veins.

[puke]

i think at the time they were pretty much placeholders before the development of the current features.  chasms were what caverns are now.  UG rivers and pools were what aquafirs and cavern lakes are now.

i do expect it to change again; but what would a chasm be, if it was reintroduced?  a straight crack down to the magma sea, cutting through three layers of cavern?

[Raging Mouse]

Actually, aquifers existed back then too. UG pools have been replaced, of course, since we've got quite a lot of water down there now.
Chasms, to some extent, continue their existence as the deep pits, connecting two caverns, you sometimes discover on your embark.

What's missing (from previous features underground) is moving liquids.

[Vattic]

I just did a quick search looking for posts by Toady on this and only found one in DFTalk 3:

Flooding the underground's always going to be this lingering or looming threat anyway, aquifer or not. I'm not quite sure how that should be handled in the end, because people definitely want to have water underground, things like lakes and river

So he at least wants underground rivers. The thing is I remember him talking about this before and saying that it was tricky to plot their course through the underground. I might just be searching for the wrong things.

[Anathema]

If I recall correctly, Toady said somewhere that reintroducing underground rivers depends on the 3d mineral veins getting implemented first (they're scheduled for release 2). I guess 3d underground rivers might eventually be placed by the same algorithm that places 3d underground mineral veins?

[Caldfir]

I like the idea of a chasm being a huge crack through the cavern layers.  I also miss magma pools, and the careful magma rationing that was the result of you magma being a finite resource. 

Bottomless pits are the only ones that are completely impractical as things stand now.  This is too bad because I always liked those. 

[Vattic]

I agree with Caldfir about how chasms could be between layers. We already have those roundish holes between the cavern layers but long, fairly thin, cracks similar to what we had before would be nice, prettier ends, though.

Bottomless pits could have slade sides at the bottom and go down through [redacted] but it would be kind of a bodge.

[Mechanoid]

Another one of the problems with the underground is that there are no maps of any kind that shows how large the caverns are, or where they go; you can't even get cavern maps on an export of the game world. You were informed of where the locations of the rivers, pools, etc were in the 40d embark map, but in 31.x there are no such locational hints... The slade fortress on cavern 3 is effectively the same as the lone adamantine spike in 40d, except this time you don't get a hint as to where it is.
If the caverns get updated for more features, we'd really need ways of knowing where things are in advance, even as an option in the init if need be. [Which, of course, complicates their addition.]

[Vattic]

Maps of the caverns would be complex to represent given that on each layer there are multiple levels and the limitations of a text based interface. In adventure mode being able to get animal-man guides could be an interesting solution. Take some chalk and leave marks so you can find your way back out while exploring?