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[peridot]

I had to dig down to the magma sea to find magma. In fact, I hit semi-molten rock first. Which got me thinking: if you channel out the floor on top of SMR, you get a "magma flow" tile. If you build over this and then remove the thing you built, you get a "random" floor type. So can I make some sand tiles right next to my magma glass furnace?

Apparently not. I can build and remove floor tiles, but after some time of doing this all I seem to get is sandy loam, furrowed sandy loam, or gabbro floors. Is there some layer or biome restriction on which floor type you get?

Incidentally, the first time you channel out the floor on top of unrevealed SMR you get magma flow over an unusable ramp. The second time (after you've built and removed a construction, so it's not magma flow any more) you get an unusable downward ramp. I'm not sure what to make of this. (I have read the page on using cave-ins to dig down through SMR.)

[Broken]

Apparently not. I can build and remove floor tiles, but after some time of doing this all I seem to get is sandy loam, furrowed sandy loam, or gabbro floors. Is there some layer or biome restriction on which floor type you get?

This. Is a random ,Biome viable tipe of floor. So you can use this to have sand next to magma in a desert, but not in biomes whithout sand.

[itg]

It's actually possible to create sand in the HFS by combining the SMR cave-in trick with the material duplication/slade mining trick. I'm like 85% sure this is biome-independent (and thus possible on virtually any embark), but my map has sand in the caverns, so there's still a chance the game was just pulling biome-appropriate soil when I did it.

There's also a very real possibility that using the material duplication trick with an "unusual" flooring material (for instance, some variety of soap) will produce a layer of sand. I know for a fact it's possible to create gemstone walls this way.

[Quietust]

I'm like 85% sure this is biome-independent (and thus possible on virtually any embark), but my map has sand in the caverns, so there's still a chance the game was just pulling biome-appropriate soil when I did it.

Then you are 85% wrong - it is 100% guaranteed biome-specific, since that's how geology works in Dwarf Fortress.

Specifically, if you create any sort of "soil" tile within a Stone layer (generally a floor, but it can also be a wall if you trigger a cave-in), then it will choose the bottom-most soil layer material in the local biome; similarly, if you create a "stone" tile within a soil layer, it will choose the topmost stone layer in that biome. Though mountains and glaciers don't have any soil in them, their geology still defines soil layers (you just never see them due to erosion being modeled), so if the bottom-most one happens to be a sand material, that's what you get.

If, for some reason, your local geology happens to have zero soil layers (generally as a result of modding), then strange things happen (what's really happening is that when it fails to locate a soil layer, it instead randomly chooses an inorganic material, and it does that for each individual tile).

[Button]

Cavern dirt seems to be random after you harvest a shrub or tree... at any rate, I've had single tiles of sand show up in caverns when I didn't have any sand in the embark. (If there's just moss, not a shrub or tree, it follows the rules Quietust gave).

So you could try flooding a largish area near your furnaces with water, and keep harvesting until you get sand and/or clay. Worth a try?

[4maskwolf]

I think that while your embark did not have sand, it was in a biome that supported sand, which was why it was able to do that.

[itg]

I'm like 85% sure this is biome-independent (and thus possible on virtually any embark), but my map has sand in the caverns, so there's still a chance the game was just pulling biome-appropriate soil when I did it.

Then you are 85% wrong - it is 100% guaranteed biome-specific, since that's how geology works in Dwarf Fortress.

Specifically, if you create any sort of "soil" tile within a Stone layer (generally a floor, but it can also be a wall if you trigger a cave-in), then it will choose the bottom-most soil layer material in the local biome; similarly, if you create a "stone" tile within a soil layer, it will choose the topmost stone layer in that biome. Though mountains and glaciers don't have any soil in them, their geology still defines soil layers (you just never see them due to erosion being modeled), so if the bottom-most one happens to be a sand material, that's what you get.

If, for some reason, your local geology happens to have zero soil layers (generally as a result of modding), then strange things happen (what's really happening is that when it fails to locate a soil layer, it instead randomly chooses an inorganic material, and it does that for each individual tile).

Just did a quick test with a new fort and dfhack, and I confirmed you don't get sand if there's not sand in the biome. I had hoped the mechanics at work were similar to the mechanics that let you create gemstones by using wood or soap floors for the duplication trick.