OKAY, so a rough guide to genning worlds. As I said in my previous post, to actually gen the specific terrain you are after, to as close to how you want it as possible, you WILL need PerfectWorld. However, the parameters will still work without PW, you just will have to generate a lot of worlds before you find what you are looking for. As a quick point, PW is the easiest and most user friendly way to gen a world to your specific liking, but you can use standard DF - if you enter Advanced Parameters, press 'e' on your desired parameter set (e.g Medium Island), then press 'p' you will open up a difficult to use, but functional Vanilla world painting tool.
Here is the link for PerfectWorld:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=57428.0disclaimer: Even with PW, genning terrain is still somewhat randomised, even genning the same parameters+map twice can change the
exact terrain a region will have.
So you WILL need to play about with these settings yourself, or otherwise persistently gen worlds until you find what you are looking for. As mentioned earlier by another poster, ISOworld is a VERY useful tool for checking out potential sites, but specifically terrain. Here's the link for ISOworld:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=70700.0Anyway on to the guide:
how to use PerfectWorld
To start, simply run the PerfectWorld .exe.
It will bring up a program window with several tabs such as Map Parameters, Biome Map, Elevation Map etc, and various greyed-out parameters. This is the interface you'll be using.
Before you start, notice on the far left, the options Map X, followed by a drop down menu, then Y, again followed by a drop down menu. This dictates how large a world you will be painting on. Non-square worlds do work, but square worlds seem to be better for the most part, but it shouldn't matter.
Now click on Elevation Map. You should see a big grey square on the upper/center left, and on the far right, you will see a set of sliders and variables, beginning at the top with Zoom Level and Preview Small Oceans Filled. Halfway down this column, you should see a clickable button titled 'Generate New Turbulence Field'.
NOTE: These 'Generate' buttons feature on all of the tabs related to worldgen (ie elevation, rainfall etc), and are a REQUIRED part of building a world.
Now, click Generate New Turbulence Field. The grey square on the left will now be filled with greens, blues, reds and greys. This is your elevation map.
The blue is obviously water, (note these are NOT rivers or lakes, but oceans, rivers and lakes are generated procedurally) the green is lowland terrain, the red is mid to high terrain, such as hills, and the grey to white parts are mountains and mountain peak terrain.
The sliders above the Generate New Turbulence Field button control what the map looks like, play about with them to find what you like, note that a high Feature Size will create a crazy world, whereas low feature sizes lead to larger clumps of terrain, such as big blobs of mountains. Generally larger clumps of terrain are more stable for generating civs.
The Coast Control section allows you to add mountains or oceans as borders, and the inland sea adds - you guessed it - an inland sea.
All these features, both landscape and the Coast Control settings, are controlled by the sliders on the far+upper right.
NOTE: If you have an inland sea, but put the Percent Below Sea Level slider to 0%, there will be 0% water on the entire map; ie. no inland sea.
The Percent Below Tree Line slider increases the height at which trees grow, setting this to a low number will limit forestation to lowlands and keep hills and high elevations largely/completely tree free.
Finally, like the Turbulence field, you have a Generate Noise Field button on each tab. These are not required, but simply roughen up the features to make the maps more realistic. The turbulence field will NOT mess up any player drawn terrain.
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If you haven't already, you will notice that above the far right column, and the tabs, are several settings, beginning with Brush Value, Smoothing Brush and Brush Width. These settings are used for painting terrain, rainfall etc with your cursor. The settings impact what your cursor paints, and how.
Brush values range from 0.000 to 1.000, and vary in what they do depending on what tab you are on. On the Elevation Map tab for example, a
Brush Value of 1 will make the highest mountains possible, whereas a value of 0.000 will make deep ocean. Low grasslands usually start at 0.100 up to about 0.400, and then the red hilly terrain ranges from around 0.400 to 0.600. But these values can be a bit buggy. Note that using Coast control will overwrite any painting you try, for example, if you use an inland sea, then try to paint a 1.000 blob in the middle, the 1.000 blob will probably still be under water.
Smoothing Brush is for smoothing the terrain to make it blend more, it aids in painting realistic looking worlds, but won't be much use if you want interesting and varied Z-level changes. However, even with this off, the world-gen will automatically add some degree of smoothing, this seems to be unavoidable, but I don't have time to test this.
Finally, Brush Width allows different sized brushes to paint with, from single pixel, to small or large. Note that depending on your Zoom Level, the actual size of the cursor changes. eg. Painting with Large on Zoom Level 100% will paint massive amounts of land, doing the same on 600% will paint a lot less. ALSO, for those wondering, the single pixel point brush unfortunately does not affect the world how you would want it to - painting a single pixel to a 3x3 pixel block of 1.000 elevation (mountain peak) surrounded by 0.100 elevation (flat lowland) doesn't make a big thin mountain that you can fit into a square of a normal 3x3 embark. It does raise the terrain slightly, but it seems to take BIG blocks of mountain to make it the extreme cliffs work, at which point its difficult/impossible to find a mountain you can embark on where the mountain is completely surrounded by flat land.
NOTE: DFHack's liquids plugin does allow you to spawn rough obsidian walls in a multiple Z-level block, similar to what you seem to be after, but it is a bit buggy, depending on where the sky starts, as in some biomes, the sky is literally the Z-Level above the ground, meaning that you can only generate terrain 1 square up from the ground with the liquids plugin. Although, it should be possible to use the liquids plugin to achieve what you are after.
(to use, type liquids into DFHack, then type o for obsidian walls. '?' will give you a list of commands.)
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The Rainfall Map tab, controls rainfall, funnily enough.
You NEED to generate a Rain Shadow Map each time you change Wind Direction, but otherwise you can play with the sliders as much as you like. They are pretty self-explanatory here. But in general, very low brush values generate deserts, rock wastelands etc, low-mid levels make grass and shrubland, and mid to high make forests. Note that this tab works very closely with the next tab - Drainage.
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The Drainage Map basically affects how much water will pass through the biome. Having 0-200-ish values will generate dunes and swamps depending on the rainfall - I will describe the different values in the next SPOILER TAG. Again, the sliders are self-explanatory so test it out for yourself. As with rainfall, I recommend not using the Point brush on this tab, as it is too small to affect anything.
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The Volcanism Map tab obviously controls volcanism. This is a bit more complicated in outcome, as other than creating volcanism it also has an affect on biome rock types, but otherwise is pretty simple. The Percent Below Zero Volcanism dictates what percentage of the world has no volcanism (note Deep Magma ALWAYS exists unless you turn it off in the parameters), this generally won't have a noticeable effect on its own. In all honesty I haven't got much experience with volcanism, as I always dig deep for magma, but the extra set of Elevation Cusp sliders should allow you to set how often Magma pools and volcano's will appear on the surface. After generating the Elevation Cusp Map, I tend to use the cursor to paint high or low volcanism on the map where I want it to be.
It sometimes works, but it seems parameters affect the volcanism more.
Like I said, I'm not an expert on Volcanism.
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Finally, one of the most important tabs, is the Savagery Map tab.
This decides what the local wildlife are like, but most importantly it dictates what Civs can function where.
There are only 2 sliders on this tab, Below Benign, and Below Neutral. The Benign slider paints the blue on the Map on the left, and Neutral is the Green. Red is Savage, the darker, the more savage. Benign Savagery is basically unthreatening, and elves seem to like it, personally, I play without this setting on 0% because it removes a lot of fun from the game, and limits hunting. The Neutral slider is important, as most Civs REQUIRE neutral savagery to settle an area, and if you have no neutral land, humans, elves and dwarves will not be spawned in World-gen, causing endless world rejects. Having the Neutral slider at about 50 + or - 10 seems to be a good balance, but more savage worlds are possible. Note that SAVAGE biomes seem to increase the likelihood of Necromancer Towers spawning, but the area also needs to be flat. This entire tab CAN be negated by tweaking the entity RAWS to allow each CIV to spawn on any terrain.
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That's the basics of how to gen a world. All you need to do now is to click FILE in the top right. Here you should see 6 options, first you want to save your map set. Call it whatever you like. It should allow you to send the PWmapset files to other people, so that they can simply load the world you have painted, but I don't know for sure.
depending on if you have LazyNewbPack or a mod like Masterwork will affect where the files save to.
with LNP or Vanilla DF, your saves will be in PerfectWorldDF\save.
with Masterwork (or presumably any other mod that is packaged with utilities such as PW), the saves are located in MasterworkDwarfFortress\Utilities\PerfectWorld\save.
The next, and most important thing is the world_gen file. Click Import World Gen File. You will most likely not see anything, because you are in the PerfectWorld\save folder. Navigate back to your DwarfFortress folder.
Then you will need to find world_gen.txt, which is located in: Dwarf Fortress\data\init. It is usually at the bottom of the list.
Once this is imported, you will need to return to the Map Parameters Tab.
Under the tab you will see Delete Param Set, and below this a drop menu beginning with one of the default parameter sets, such as Large Region, Large Island etc. Select the parameter set you wish to generate this world with then edit any parameters you wish to use. I advise using the last SPOILER page 'parameter changes to create more varied Z-levels' here.
generally speaking though, mainly stick to the General Parameters tab. I advise increasing Z-levels about ground, and those on level one for extreme cliffs/mountains/hills.
Ensure that the table below the Map Size menu's say 'USING PW' for everything but Temperature (which is always NO). If you have made changes to the Map tabs after saving the map file, untick the boxes under 'Use PerfectWorld Generated Maps for:', then retick them and click Yes to the pop-up that asks you if you are sure.
You can check your world with the BiomeMap.
When you are done with all your changes, click FILE and export World_gen file, and you should get a pop-up saying it has been exported successfully.
Now all you need to do is generate the world!
Go into DF, select generate a world with advanced parameters, select the parameter set you saved your world to, and generate.
That SHOULD have generated the exact world you just painted in PW.
NOTE: If you get rejected worlds, it is almost certainly due to the world having too high a savagery, too high a number of civilisations, or too many titans/semi-/megabeasts killing off all the playable civs.
Lowering the number of titans, civs etc and/or increasing the amount of Neutral savagery should fix the issues and stop rejecting worlds.
basic requirements for specific biomes - IE, biome cookbook
Foreword: temperature isn't controlled by PW, so glaciers, tundra's etc cannot be custom generated without playing with the temperature variations, which CAN screw up the availability of some plants, woods, creatures etc.
okay, this section is just a list of ROUGH requirements for certain terrain types.
Use the general values I list here for your brush and paint the terrain yourself, and you should get the biome you want. You WILL have to use the sliders to allow for a particular biome type though - having swamps at 0 will negate any attempt to use these values to generate swamps.
there are some caveats and things to remember:
---- high rainfall on flat low land surrounded by higher terrain will often flood the flat low land into lakes, or force rivers down into it.
---- the sliders affect what these values do. to make the values I use below work, on the Elevation Map tab, you need to have percent below tree line at around 80-90. HOWEVER - if you add a lot of high mountains this percentage will decrease. Everything should still work, but if it doesn't tweek that slider til you find a balance that works.
---- this can take a bit of time, getting exactly what you want in terms of terrain, isn't an exact science; in fact it's procedurally generated, so its pseudo-random. Just keep at it.
DESERTS/DUNES/ROCKYWASTELAND: 0.000 rainfall, 0.000-0.100 drainage
SWAMP/MARSH: any level of rainfall, higher the better, 0.100+ drainage, but lower is better.
GRASSLAND/SHRUBLAND: 0.050-0.090 rainfall, 0.050-ish drainage. slightly higher rain and drainage should increase likelihood of shrubland, but its fiddly because the values are so close.
JUNGLE/FOREST: this is the most difficult to get right. So these are not exact, as temperature seems to have an affect. Especially as cold temps make Taiga.
-- Coniferous forests -- You need mid-to-high rainfall ideally - e.g. 0.600-1.000 rainfall, and then any drainage above 0.300 should be fine.
-- Temperate Broadleaf forests -- around 0.500 rainfall, and anywhere from 1.000 to 0.400 drainage, 0.700 genning the lushest forests.
-- MOIST Tropical forests/jungles -- MOIST seems to be reliant on hotter temperatures, rain from 0.300-0.500, drainage from around 0.700 to 1.00 for lusher forestation, lower drainages for more sparse forestation.
-- DRY Tropical forest/jungle -- I find it difficult to make these work, 0.300-0.700 rainfall, 0.400-1.000 for drainage. I THINK dry tropical forests may be affected by elevations, I don't have time or desire to test however.
parameter changes to create more varied Z-levels
On the Map Parameters tab, go to the bottom of General Parameters sub-tab.
Look for levels above ground. Increase the value, and the values of layer 1 and layer 2. Bear in mind that really high values on a large world will likely cause a LOT of lag, due to the number of layers, and therefore stones, ores etc being generated and tracked. Values of 10-20 should be fine, but experiment with it.
Now go to Map Generation Parameters.
Here you have the values that DF will use when generating a world. The only one you will need to use for generating varied terrain is: 'Elevation Mesh Size'.
Firstly, change the IGNORE to one of the options, generally speaking, the larger the values, eg 32x32 the more likely terrain features will be apparent in the world.
Next you have 5 number ranges 0-20, 20-40, 40-60, 60-80, 80-100. To get extreme cliffs try putting 1 in 0-20 and 80-100, and 0 in all other fields. This SHOULD create extreme cliffs and gorges/canyons for you to play on.
Generally speaking, as long as the 0-20 and 80-100 values are significantly higher than the other fields, you can have normal terrain occuring in between, while retaining the extreme cliffs, although there will be less extreme drops as the gap between 40-60 and 80-100 is obviously smaller than from 0-20 to 80-100. Creating noticeable but less extreme terrain would require swapping the 80-100 value with for example 40-60, which should give you cliff/canyon like drops without the soft slopes, but not be ridiculously tall.
Finally, you will want to return to General Map Parameters, and look for Erosion Cycle Count and Periodically Erode Extreme Cliffs. Put the erosion cycle to 0 or a very low number (maybe no higher than 20, 0 is best), and then un-tick Periodically Erode Extreme Cliffs. This should stop world-gen from softening the terrain.
I think that covers everything you'd need to get started with custom-creating your own worlds...
Hope this helps! :-)
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Topic: DF terrain boring and irrelevant? (Read 4584 times)