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[SatelliteOfLove]

PTW.  Thanks for all your hard work, Japa!

[Ygvir]

Some of this is reiterating what others have said. I spend a lot of time searching for what I want and this tool could make my life way easier if it included this info:

1) Depth below surface the aquifer begins, whether there are stone layers above and how many z-levels are in the aquifer.
2) Where the magma pipes are in a region and what depth below the surface they start.
3) Depth below surface of the top of the cavern and how many z-levels it covers.
4) Depth below surface of the magma sea or just the depth of the embark altogether.
5) What metals are available with depth information.

I know this is a big ask but any of the features above would be something I would greatly appreciate. I get pretty frustrated embarking over and over trying to find the right area. Even a little bit of help in knowing where to look would be a huge gain for me. It might also be helpful to tell people what sort of things just aren't going to be possible, e.g. if it can't be known until embark. For the posted above even rough numbers (+/-10z) would be useful.

[Nagidal]

Any progress on this tool set, Japa?

[Rose]

Sadly no, I've been busy with other stuff.

[Sabin Stargem]

If it were possible, I would prefer a tool that generates a desired embark location, then creates the world around it.  This would save many CPU cycles, since I often have to discard worlds that don't have the right place.

[Fleeting Frames]

You may be interested in world painting and exportmap/tweakmap.

[PatrikLundell]

I think the generation of an embark with desired parameters is a process with several steps:
- Generate a suitable world, typically using PSV values and appropriate world parameters (in particular mineral scarcity). An understanding of biomes is needed if you want particular animals plants to be available potentially. Knowledge of how DF generates minerals ought to be applied to set up the stage for that. [Since Fleeting Frames referenced tweakmap I updated the post to the current version, which supports world editing from parameters: I hadn't bothered since nobody seemed to take any interest in it].
- Very optional: Tweak the region map to suit your needs/desires, refining the above.
- Very optional: Tweak biome flora/fauna.
- Optional: Tweak geo biomes, which is what I assume this tool is about, on the manipulation side.
- Optional: Tweak region interactions so you get the desired evil weather(s) in evil biomes.
- Embark

[Starver]

Elevation:
I'm not too fond of sites with a large variance of Z-levels on the surface. I'd like to be able to search by the difference in the max surface tile from the lowest surface tile.

Coming late to this thread, and straight across this comment, in the old, old days I quite liked Canyon Lands to embark into (ready-made overlook structures that I could carve fortifications and muster-rooms and complex entrances in), even altering erosion params in worldgen to try to get them back after they seemed to stop spawning so much.  More recently I have looked for specifically planar embarks.  All things that reviewing the elevation (i.e. "cliff indicator") mode of embark helps with, but only across the current embarkable tile-grid.

I suggest options for 'all embark min/max elevation' limits (upper and lower, e.g. must be zero for a completely flat plain) and a cliff-finder(/excluder), such as finding at least one three-Z cliff change between adjacent ground tiles to indicate some interestingly uneroded geology (would not include open volcano tubes, filled to the brim with magma).


But exactly how to do this (both as capability to process this and as interface/presentation), I leave up to others.   Now to read the rest of the thread.

[Roses]

I'm wondering if this project is still be continued, and if you managed to find a way to display the world map whenever you want. I am interested in creating an expedition system (I know the next version will let you send dwarfs out on missions, but I am hoping to expand on that and allow you to send raiding, scouting, adventuring, trading parties) where you can see various sites and locations on the world map and select which one to send an expedition to. I've got everything worked out and can even bring up a list of sites and such, but it would be so much better if that list was accompanied by an actual map.

[Rose]

I'll be honest, I never really properly got started on this. I meant to do it on the side, when I'm not working on Armok Vision, but I tend to spend all my dev time on that, so... yeah. >_>

[Roses]

Hahaha, completely understandable. I wish I was more like that. I tend to get side tracked every time I sit down to work on something and end up with 100 started projects and 0 finished ones

[Dunamisdeos]

No rush, its a great idea. Maybe one day

[PatrikLundell]

While waiting for Japa to finish the minor side projects of Armok Vision and raising a family

A script to flatten the embark region prior to embark

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

function flattenregion ()
  if not dfhack.isWorldLoaded () then
dfhack.color (COLOR_RED)
    dfhack.print("Error: This script requires a world to be loaded.")
dfhack.color(COLOR_RESET)
dfhack.println()
return
  end

  if dfhack.isMapLoaded() then
dfhack.color (COLOR_RED)
    dfhack.print("Error: This script requires a world to be loaded, but not a map.")
dfhack.color(COLOR_RESET)
dfhack.println()
return
  end

  local cursor_x = df.global.world.world_data.region_details [0].pos.x
  local cursor_y = df.global.world.world_data.region_details [0].pos.y
 
  local biome = df.global.world.world_data.region_map [cursor_x]:_displace(cursor_y)
 
  dfhack.println (biome.elevation)
  for y, Y in ipairs (df.global.world.world_data.region_details [0].elevation) do
    for x, X in ipairs (df.global.world.world_data.region_details [0].elevation [y]) do
  df.global.world.world_data.region_details [0].elevation [y] [x] = biome.elevation
end
  end 
end

flattenregion ()

The embark region is generated from an unknown seed every time you move the embark cursor into the world tile, so the effects of the script are lost if you move the cursor away from the region (but not within it). Similarly, embarking again in the same region (i.e. close to a previous fortress) will again have the region map generated afresh with the original elevation. The previous fortress will retain the geography in force when it was generated, though, so reclaiming won't have the ground buckle under it...
The script sets the elevation to that of the biome associated with the region's world tile (while ignoring the elevation of the surrounding world tiles, even if their biomes appear in the embark).

I've tried the script by flattening the area around a volcano, resulting in an embark with a volcano hole in the flat ground, with magma a few levels down.

Hacking things yourself is fairly easy through "gui/gm-editor df.global.world.world_data.region_details[0].elevation" which gets you to a 17*17 matrix covering the 16*16 region tiles (I don't know what the last index, 16, is used for). Again, moving out of the region resets the edits.
Using manual hacking I've flattened the terrain around the volcano above (in a copy of the save) while raising the volcano itself to the maximum height. It resulted in a silly spire surrounded by flat ground (with the embark team clinging to the sides of the spire, and the wagon (but not goods) lost).

Edit: I tried a couple of variations on this theme, with interesting results. First I lowered the terrain of some the tiles a stream was passing through, in the hope of creating a waterfall. Instead, I ended up with an "aqueduct", where the stream was flowing high over the landscape in the lowered parts of the terrain, with no waterfall, and it seems the aqueduct walls were straight. I then reversed it to raise the terrain around a stream, and ended up with a vertical gash 10 levels deep (I'd raise the terrain 10 levels).
I guess both a gash and an aqueduct can be of interested to some people.

Edit 2: You can create waterfalls by manipulating region details data, but you have to do it to rivers_vertical and rivers_horizontal, respectively. In addition to that, DF refuses to have a river flowing upwards, so lowering a river in the wrong direction is ignored. I tried lowering a river's middle section of a 3 tile embark, and ended up with a waterfall at one of the embark tile boundaries and the rest of the river taking the lower level. It seems river_vertical/horizontal.active takes a value of 0 if no river is present, and -1 or 1 depending on the flow direction, with 1 = N->S / W->E, and -1 = S->N / E->W. Lowering/elevating rivers have the same effects as doing the opposite action on the elevation, by the way, i.e. creating canyons/aqueducts. It should also be possible to manipulate a river's width through x_min/x_max and y_min/y_max respectively in river_horizontal/vertical, and that ought to allow you to control their course (where they exit the tile, based on the flow direction).

[HMetal2001]

PTW. Japa is a demigod as far as I'm concerned.

EDIT: Can the volcanism map from Legends be used?

[PatrikLundell]

PTW. Japa is a demigod as far as I'm concerned.

EDIT: Can the volcanism map from Legends be used?

The volcanism map exported by Legends Mode is just a visualization of the volcanism values associated with each world tile (and which can be defined as PSV values for advanced world generation). This means the information is readily available and can be manipulated with relative ease. However, manipulating the values post world gen will probably not achieve anything at all, since they probably influenced the generation of the geo biomes, which took place during world gen, and certainly played a part in the placement of volcanoes during world gen. I'm not sure if magma pipes are generated together with the region (in which case volcanism might actually play a part, if it is used by the generation of the region map), but I suspect they're actually placed during world gen as well.

Edit:

Some of this is reiterating what others have said. I spend a lot of time searching for what I want and this tool could make my life way easier if it included this info:

1) Depth below surface the aquifer begins, whether there are stone layers above and how many z-levels are in the aquifer.
2) Where the magma pipes are in a region and what depth below the surface they start.
3) Depth below surface of the top of the cavern and how many z-levels it covers.
4) Depth below surface of the magma sea or just the depth of the embark altogether.
5) What metals are available with depth information.

I know this is a big ask but any of the features above would be something I would greatly appreciate. I get pretty frustrated embarking over and over trying to find the right area. Even a little bit of help in knowing where to look would be a huge gain for me. It might also be helpful to tell people what sort of things just aren't going to be possible, e.g. if it can't be known until embark. For the posted above even rough numbers (+/-10z) would be useful.

1. As far as I can tell, an aquifer always start at the 3:rd level below the surface if there's an aquifer supporting layer there. As far as I've found, any aquifer supporting layer at or below the 3:rd one contains an aquifer. However, DF's pre embark aquifer indication is often incorrect as it doesn't take elevation based soil erosion into account, so promised aquifers may not actually be there.
2. That info should be available when a region is in focus. When a region is out of focus it seems the only info available is general depth (cavern X/magma sea), but no X/Y coordinates, so you just know it's present somewhere in that world tile (and it seems even this is available only when the corresponding "feature shell" [16*16 world tile block] has been loaded, i.e. typically had a world tile in focus).
3. That info is possible to extract when a region is in focus.
4. Ditto.
5. Ditto.
In fact, "prospector.cpp" (the "prospect" DFHack command) does all of the above except the aquifer one as part of its calculations.
A part of the problem is how to present this kind of info in a way that's legible and compatible with other people's wishes of what they want to see (most people probably don't want a 16 * 16 info matrix with 100 or so lines of data for each cell in the matrix).