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[Blake92]

Hello fellow cave-dwellers!

I have been working on a mod I hope to release to myself for my own personal enjoyment and found it a surprisingly easy and rapid process to do so, HOWEVEH-

I need to generate a world similar to Mars to best enjoy my new-fangled simulation. I understand things like atmospheric pressure and the like can't be edited, but that is simple enough as I can always simulate the lower pressure on mars. This means a few things, I will try to list my wishlist of parameters, and perhaps you can assist me in realizing them. If not, I would like to know which are possible and which I can dream of in an update at a later time.

Please don't be Hardcoded oh following:
-Mars has virtually 0 water everywhere but it's poles (N and S of map), and in tiny concentrations in the soil. For my purposes, I wish for it to be completely non-existant (save for the poles in the form of ice). This means no rivers, no oceans, no springs, and no aquifers at that! Possible? If not I am deeply disturbed, disappointed, and dismayed.
-Biome editing?! I haven't found the file yet, I don't think, but a thought of mine involved editing a desert-like biome and allowing it to be extremely cold as opposed to hot. Dry and Cold, just liketh mars. On this note, I was hoping too that I can change the composition of the crust, specifically percentages of the minerals and ores and such that occur. I have luckily found the file that allows me to program in any rock to my liking, and this will be of great service.
-Did I mention extremely cold? Surface temps lows of -143C (Coldest temperature furthest from equator line in winter, highs of 35c at equator in summer, with an average of something like 0c or so, I don't know. I converted the celcius into Urists or whatever we call them, but lost the file. I know this is possible though, BUT, how now to configure the parameters file to hit these ranges seeings as you can't define a low or high temp on your world?
-Ice, I think it would be amazing if I could create CO2 Ice (or Dry Ice) that will layer over the normal ice in the north during winter, but don't know if this is possible?

You may be thinking, "how the hell are your men going to drinketh without a well that functions?!", I plan on implementing an instance(? i think it was called?) that allows one to convert certain h20 rich soil types I will create into jugs of water. Simple enough. The alternative is flocking to one of the poles and melting ice, but this seems to be a little out of the way. Thousands of miles so in fact.

In short, parameters one more time:
-DRY (No water except at the north and south, which should be in the form of Ice)
-Extremely COLD (Ranges above) and how to configure in file.
-Evaporation of water off of surface anytime it's dropped despite the fact it's cold and evaporation occurs in DF when it's hot. (This is to simulate the low pressure)
-Location of file allowing one to manipulate Biomes and create new ones
-Location of file allowing one to manipulate crust consistency in said Biomes
-Cool ability to choose what type of layers occur in extreme cold. Ie Changing H20 Ice to C02 Ice.

The idea or premise for my mod (which is one of the many things I can offer you for assisting me! (The other many things is an e-hug brought to you by the internet)) is that your planet, some may call Earth, sent you and a small team of researchers to establish one of our first colonies on the surface of mars. Planned and very implementable features include:
-An assortment of durable high-quality fabrics and EVA Suits to wrap your researchers in!
-An assortment of modern and semi-futuristic tools and implements to carry about not only your day-to-day survival, but to allow you to research the various soil/rock and mineral types your humans encounter. This will be set up with the same idea as how you will get water. Human drops x ingredient into x research implement, and achieves either "data"s of high value to sell to your home planet in exchange for upgraded equipment (via the rocket caravan), or some other system of currency I will use to allow one to create better, more durable materials to increase your colonies odds of survival.
-Rovers and an assortment of as many other vehicles I can imagine to assist in Science! (Via caravan creatures or horse-with-saddle creatures, etc.)
-Re-texture/ modified tile-set to go with new soil types, minerals, and to put a modern edge into the graphics.
-Some sort of Life-Support system implemented. Temperature regulation in a space suit for instance can easily be simulated using different materials in said suit, however, I hope to also find a way to make such that Researchers who want to survive very long above ground shall remember to bring an O2 tank in their inventory. Something to this effect at least.

The more I can edit and change, the way-super-cooler this can be(!!!!) and if enough features I wish to implement are impossible due to hard-coding restrictions I'm liable to just abandon the project due to crushed dreams (for the meantime at least) and work on implementing my ideas in another game/sim. I really really really hope I can do this in DF though, it would be SO COOL, seeing as so much is simulated here, and the fact I can add 10,000 items in the time it would take me to model, skin, program, and implement a dozen in a standard game.

DF is really about letting your imagination go wild, and if these features can't be modded into the game, Sir Toad has my vote in hoping to see these features be possibly added by modders in the future. This means decent control over -zlevel make-up, temperatures, the ability to spawn water of any kind or not, and possibly a few other tricks and the like to make certain creatures or terrain features only appear during certain seasons (see what I did there? Added a terrain feature token to something we all know is already possible! )

So far I believe that's all I've planned. Expect an awesome, highly realistic/accurate and believable extra-planetary survival simulation, where it isn't the monsters that will bring you FUN, it's the environment itself, as the whole world is pitted against you and will stop at nothing to see your crew die horrific ghastly deaths.

Thank you thank you very much, I look forward to your replies 
<3 Blake

[Grimlocke]

Hmmm much as I like the idea, some rather crucial features will be hardcored.

Ill just list what is and isnt hardcoded in order of appearance:

-You can turn off oceans, rivers and rainfall. Im pretty sure you can turn off aquifers, but even if you cant you can just remove all the aquifer tags from soil and stone types.
-Biomes are hardcoded. The stuff that spawns in them however is not. Desserts (and other wastelands, which will be all you get without rainfall) will automaticaly turn into tundra or glaciar once they go below a certain temperature.
-DF maps are oddly persistent about having temperature gradient. Making a completely cold or completely hot planet is not possible, though you can change the balance and minimum/maximum values a lot.
-Nope. Ice and water are hardcoded, you cannot change the material it uses. Possibly though, you could be clever with soil layers. If you make your entire world have only desserts, then make the other soil layers (peat, clay, etc) into CO2 ice.

-EVA suits might be tought, though I have not tried getting creature to survive agains extreme cold with clothes yet (only magma. didnt work.) You can give materials a fixed temprature, and give clothes a coverage above 100 (this increases protection against both attacks and temperature).
-Reactions are fairly well developed now, though you will want to check the wiki carefully if your doing anything extensive. You can make custom laboratory buildings, though you cant remove most of the stock building. (tannery on mars! for all your mars cow leather)
-Vehicles are a no-go. Its a future feature, but this future might be far away.
-Retextures are entirely possible.
-I dont see any way to do life support functions on the suits though.


Of course, work-around exist that I may simply not know. If not, give it time. The game is still being worked on after all.

[Meph]

-DF maps are oddly persistent about having temperature gradient. Making a completely cold or completely hot planet is not possible, though you can change the balance and minimum/maximum values a lot.

Perfect World can. Its a utlitiy to improve the worldgen. You could even do specific mars-landscape and simulate that.

[Blake92]

Thank you 4 oodles! (2 for each of you  )

You guys both had incredibly helpful replies. It's good to now know what's hard-coded and what's not... and I was wondering why custom_buildings only had two of the recognizable standard workshops in it. I was thinking there must be some "non-custom" buildings file or something, but never found it. The names of completely useless workshops will be but a minor distraction I suppose.

Now about the vehicles, I could have sworn you could saddle a horse and ride it... isn't this a part of dwarf fortress? In retrospect I don't recall ever doing this with my vanilla forts... Hmm. My second "what-about" q related to vehicles would be that I noticed the "wagon creature" says it is used to carry people and supplies. I was assuming this is the wagon that rolls into your shop not the one that spawns next to you on embark. If it is the one that rolls into your shop, perhaps I could "reskin" and "rename" it to make various vehicles? I feel the air getting a little too thin on this subject so I shall slap the tag on this one as "Future modder ability" for now.

As for life-supports, at least the critical function of an EVA suit is doable, allowing one to walk around outside in freezing temperatures. I can even rate the 1st tech suit to still not protect one from stupidly cold corners of the world. Later-game tech may enable your researchers to access those areas. Perhaps in the items description (readme?) I can just say the suits generate oxygen from the sweat, blood, and tears of the suits wearer. That way at least the player knows their creatures are breathing oxygen when in the suit, and that if they take them off it won't be the oxy-depravation that kills them first, but the shock brought on instantly from the fierce cold.

Now, you mentioned I could change what spawns in the biomes? More specifically, does this include Ores and soil types and such? Could I say.. edit all biomes other than desert, make them all similar or equal to desert, and slightly tweak them so my biomes (though very similar) will have different types of goodies lying in wait far underground? One expects to find more ore in mountains for instance, and less so in x biome. Since the specific distribution of ores in the soil is hard-coded, perhaps I can just get away with say... making one of my desert template biomes spawn the same amount of ore as the mountains do by changing the name or borrowing from the mountain template. I hope what I'm meaning to say isn't too terribly unclear :s

Here I attempted to clearly state the immediate above (god my mind can be so silly):

Scenario 1: Biomes are Hard-coded. Changing a name of a biome in a template file to better suit your tweaked biome results in game not using it at all. However, can still look up what ore and soil types spawn om their respective hard-coded biomes, and then find which are rarer and less rare, to completely change the ores and soil types to better suit the modders needs (marsy stuff).

Scenario 2: Biomes are Hard-coded, meaning there is a fixed amount to tweak and edit. One can either change the soil types and ore types that spawn within or do that in addition to change at what occurrence and frequency these types occur, even getting so flexible as to allow you to choose which z-level ranges you might find them in.


--------------About the Labs/Workshops---------

Thank you for putting up with all these newby questions PS! So if I have this straight, I will be able to create a reactor that converts x item into z item? This makes me ever so happy to know, but thinking of how many genius mods we already have I guess this is a given. I'm already planning on making the "coin" something synonymous to "research data" or tech points if you will. If the money system is uber hard-coded and won't let you change money names, I could always circumvent it entirely by simply allowing a researcher to drop a rock or mineral type in an analysis workshop, which in turn will destroy the sample and replace it with an item called "tech data" I could in turn input into some other laboratory that dispenses goods. I'm really really glad this sounds doable here, because this will be a critical part of the mod.

The idea is to stay alive long enough not to tame the environment, but to enhance the knowledge of your people in creating better tools and implements such that your environment is no longer a real issue. At this point I imagine one could consider themselves "a winner". I will balance it so it takes a while, and parties will need to research all sorts of fun before getting that far, but then I imagine to keep the late-game interesting I will create a great disturbance to truly put the players colony to the test.

[Shaostoul]

Alright, so my knowledge on the latest DF is a bit thin, but for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume not much has actually changed.

For starters, when it comes to custom buildings/reactions, my guide would probably be the best place to start. It should get general concepts across quickly and hopefully provide a decent understanding of those workings.

I need to study up on 'interactions' and my knowledge on syndromes is a bit lacking, but it isn't nill. Maybe you could tie an interaction/syndrome to something and make it so you can go outside in the extreme weather.

As for vehicles... they're still out. Just keep it simple. It's not in yet.

Max workshop size for the sake of argument is 32x32. There's a program that will let you design your workshop contained within my wiki guide page.

There was a gentleman who set out to minimalize DF so his children could play. I don't know what turned out about it, but you can remove almost all of the materials that make up the world and make your own. Just keep in mind there will be A LOT of debugging and having to go step by step. Don't just remove everything and then add in a little bit for placeholder sake, remove one aspect, generate a world, see what happens, compensate for errors.

[sackhead]

you could make the eva suit out off a constantly warm material to keep them warm in a cold environment.