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[Manveru Taurënér]

I quoted part of this earlier, but with how the discussion evolved the whole part might be appreciated as well for those've missed it

Capntastic:   What is the cosmology of the dwarven world; is it heliocentric?
Toady:   So right now there is a sun that sets on one side and rises on the other side; I think it determines that at random, although those words depend on the sun and magnetism, so maybe that's meaningless, and there's also a moon. But we don't really have anything decided for those. What will probably end up happening further along is that you'll have the creation tale, there are several civilizations with different sets of gods, so I'm not really sure who's going to be right, or if's all going to be different sides of the same multi-sided coin, the same polyhedron or whatever, but it's probably going to be one of those things that's easily randomized and so it will be randomly decided what the deal is there. And that could also, with a little bit of work, have to do with the shape of the ... not just what is orbiting what, if anything's orbiting anything, rather than being dragged along in chariots and stuff, but also what the shape of the world is; how the edges work. Right now the edges just have this invisible barrier, but migrant groups and certain foreign materials can come in off the edges depending on the version you're playing; it's just not really well defined right now, what the world is. But it would be easy to make a torus or a cylinder, or to fudge a sphere with the proper edge behaviour, like something going off the top edge and then coming half way over on the other top edge. I don't remember if you actually get a sphere from that or some kind of weird projected space, but it's close enough. So we'll probably mess around with that later on ... the myth stuff might come sooner rather than later, just because I really want to mess around with that stuff, it's a lot of fun to do.

[Dirst]

This all assumes that the in-game worlds are an entire planet, which absolutely nothing in the game hints at (all of the worlds are called "regions" or "islands" in worldgen, meaning small parts of a larger world).

That's true for now; I envision a region as being a bit less than a quadrant of the globe.  Round worlds are already a planned feature (as quoted by Manveru), and planes of existence are going to cause geometric headaches anyway.

Can't wait to build a fortress that extends into the fevered Dream World of an irrational noble, where all of the furniture is made of impossible materials...

[SmileyMan]

...one quibble: If you go with the 20 triangles, there is no need to include pentagonal faces.  Pentagons show up in a truncated icosahedron (soccer ball).  If you are willing to keep the player away from the 12 corners, a hex map built on underlying triangles is quite serviceable.

To keep nice 'cells' for the gameplay I would take the dual of a massively stellated icosahedron such as your map*, so that there would be a large number of hexagons and twenty pentagons. My background is in doing this stuff for paper-based RPGs, and in my experience, people don't like playing on a triangular grid.

Of course, in the modern 3D graphics world triangular meshes are all the rage, but it wasn't always so, and unless you're allowing fraction movement across the mesh, then it's very limiting to the player to only go in three directions.

* as near as makes no difference!

[Dirst]

My background is in doing this stuff for paper-based RPGs, and in my experience, people don't like playing on a triangular grid.

Of course, in the modern 3D graphics world triangular meshes are all the rage, but it wasn't always so, and unless you're allowing fraction movement across the mesh, then it's very limiting to the player to only go in three directions.

That's why I said a hex map based on the underlying triangles.  Unfortunately, people like to see 90-degree corners, which requires subdividing the triangles as well (each wall surface is either at a triangle edge or bisecting a triangle) or giving up on smooth even walls (as those hippie Elves would like us to do).

[magmaholic]

This all assumes that the in-game worlds are an entire planet, which absolutely nothing in the game hints at (all of the worlds are called "regions" or "islands" in worldgen, meaning small parts of a larger world).

That's true for now; I envision a region as being a bit less than a quadrant of the globe.  Round worlds are already a planned feature (as quoted by Manveru), and planes of existence are going to cause geometric headaches anyway.

Can't wait to build a fortress that extends into the fevered Dream World of an irrational noble, where all of the furniture is made of impossible materials...

how about non-euclidean geometry?
It would enable things like this:

[Bronze Dog]

I say we make a klein bottle planet.

[Zavvnao]

I really hope it is a torus planet.

I do as many people want something wrong, while at the same time want things to be as stereotypical fantasy as possible, which is why I like to make things the opposite of what they want.

[WillowLuman]

Or, in the future, many different shapes will be possible?

[LordBaal]

Square grids in the center and a "circle" as top and bottom would do.

[Skuggen]

Whatever base shape is used, it needs to menace with spikes in some way.

[neblime]

thought of a bit of an extension to our previous question:
when retiring a fort, will AI dwarves mess with lever status at all?  if you have a drawbridge say that controls the only entrance to your fort and leave it closed when you retire will the dwarves lower it when you're gone? (and if they don't will the game recognize that the fortress is inaccesible while it's abstracted?)

[Sizik]

Whatever base shape is used, it needs to menace with spikes in some way.

Ever look at the South Pole in Google Earth?

[LordBaal]

To be done with it, I imagine it like this

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sorry if it's really crude, I literally made it in less than a minute with crayons and paint.

[Dirst]

Whatever base shape is used, it needs to menace with spikes in some way.

The Eternal Dimensions
This is a randomly generated medium world.  All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality.  It is studded with necromancer towers and encircled with biomes of terrifying glacier and mirthful jungle.  This object menaces with spikes of adamantine.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is being flooded with magma.  One the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is succumbing to a goblin siege.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is collapsing due to poorly planned mining.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is overrun with elephants.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is being flooded with water.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is suffering a tantrum spiral.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is succumbing to a forgotten beast attack.  On the item is an image of a dwarf fortress.  The fortress is ...

[LordBaal]

... making industrial quantities of cheese.