Topic: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos! (Read 1899 times)

daggaz · « **on:** January 10, 2018, 11:44:47 am »

This is a thread for posting great seeds, and for figuring out the world generation tricks.

I'll start with this awesome volcano embark, the fruit of several days labor trying to figure out exactly what the parameters in world gen do. This embark has a bit more than 10,000 iron total from all three ores, several thousand units of fuel (bituminious coal and lignite are both present), a dwarven-crapton of copper, gold and even platinum. Plus a fair amount of diamonds (not the best vein I've seen but hey). And of course flux : miles and miles of marble, more than enough for your steel industry and your construction needs.

The site is a perfectly flat and wide valley running north and south, covered in trees, and carrying a small stream. There is deep soil, which happens to be loaded with gold and turqoise. Massive cliffs rise to each side on the east and the west, running the full length of the valley. The magma pipe towers in the eastern cliff an impressive 25 z levels above the valley floor. It's a !FUN! accident just waiting to happen.

The only way this site could possibly be better, were if it had a single square of aquifier on it for self-contained power and plumbing. Oh well. The lack of waterfalls is EASILY remedied by a little dwarven industriousness.

https://ibb.co/c3KBmm

And so without further ado:
Created in DF v0.44.03.

[WORLD_GEN]
   [TITLE:VOLCANO VALLEY]
   [SEED:O8isg8iWaEYCgQSImQ0E]
   [HISTORY_SEED:sSAque4aG6amAYKmq8Ug]
   [NAME_SEED:qw8OsKW4UGCQGsmsesiq]
   [CREATURE_SEED:GySg0628s0mi0oemsMCE]
   [DIM:129:129]
   [EMBARK_POINTS:1504]
   [END_YEAR:50]
   [BEAST_END_YEAR:200:80]
   [REVEAL_ALL_HISTORY:1]
   [CULL_HISTORICAL_FIGURES:0]
   [ELEVATION:1:400:3200:3200]
   [RAINFALL:25:100:500:500]
   [TEMPERATURE:40:60:10:10]
   [DRAINAGE:0:100:1000:1000]
   [VOLCANISM:0:100:3200:3200]
   [SAVAGERY:0:100:200:200]
   [ELEVATION_FREQUENCY:5:3:0:1:1:2]
   [RAIN_FREQUENCY:5:0:0:0:0:1]
   [DRAINAGE_FREQUENCY:5:1:0:0:0:1]
   [TEMPERATURE_FREQUENCY:2:0:0:2:0:0]
   [SAVAGERY_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [VOLCANISM_FREQUENCY:5:3:0:0:0:2]
   [POLE:NORTH_AND_OR_SOUTH]
   [MINERAL_SCARCITY:100]
   [MEGABEAST_CAP:18]
   [SEMIMEGABEAST_CAP:37]
   [TITAN_NUMBER:9]
   [TITAN_ATTACK_TRIGGER:80:0:100000]
   [DEMON_NUMBER:28]
   [NIGHT_TROLL_NUMBER:14]
   [BOGEYMAN_NUMBER:14]
   [VAMPIRE_NUMBER:14]
   [WEREBEAST_NUMBER:14]
   [SECRET_NUMBER:28]
   [REGIONAL_INTERACTION_NUMBER:28]
   [DISTURBANCE_INTERACTION_NUMBER:28]
   [EVIL_CLOUD_NUMBER:14]
   [EVIL_RAIN_NUMBER:14]
   [GENERATE_DIVINE_MATERIALS:1]
   [GOOD_SQ_COUNTS:6:63:0]
   [EVIL_SQ_COUNTS:6:63:0]
   [PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:3]
   [PARTIAL_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
   [COMPLETE_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:4]
   [VOLCANO_MIN:200]
   [REGION_COUNTS:SWAMP:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:DESERT:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:FOREST:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:MOUNTAINS:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:OCEAN:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:GLACIER:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:TUNDRA:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:GRASSLAND:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:HILLS:0:0:0]
   [EROSION_CYCLE_COUNT:250]
   [RIVER_MINS:50:20]
   [PERIODICALLY_ERODE_EXTREMES:1]
   [OROGRAPHIC_PRECIPITATION:1]
   [SUBREGION_MAX:2750]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_COUNT:3]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MIN:0]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MAX:100]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MIN:0]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MAX:100]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MIN:0]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MAX:100]
   [HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_1:1]
   [HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_2:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:15]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_1:5]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_2:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_3:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_4:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_5:2]
   [LEVELS_AT_BOTTOM:1]
   [CAVE_MIN_SIZE:5]
   [CAVE_MAX_SIZE:25]
   [MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:15]
   [NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:25]
   [ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE:1]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_TUNNEL:2]
   [TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER:100]
   [TOTAL_CIV_POPULATION:15000]
   [SITE_CAP:600]
   [PLAYABLE_CIVILIZATION_REQUIRED:1]
   [ELEVATION_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [RAIN_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [DRAINAGE_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [SAVAGERY_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [VOLCANISM_RANGES:0:0:0]

daggaz · « **Reply #1 on:** January 10, 2018, 12:22:48 pm »

How to generate volcanoes + iron + coal.

This is all information I have gleaned online from the wiki and random posts. The wiki is hard to decipher tho, imho, so I am putting it down here in a more direct explanation.

1.) Choose to create a world using advanced parameters.
2.) Select a world "sytle" on the menu on the right (large region, small island, etc)
3.) Type e for edit. I will now explain how to create terrain.
a.) Dont mess with min-max values (you can but you have to change things later to match it anyhow so..)
b.) Find the Weighting parameter-sets. The first value is to turn on the mesh-size. You want LARGE mesh sizes because its mislabeled. What it actually does is tell you the number of grid-lines which cause feature variation in the map, and more variation is better if you are looking for something special. Set these to 16x16 for volcanism and elevation. Now set the weighting values, which tell the game what random state a grid intersection should have. If all the numbers are equal, they all have equal chance to occur, etc.

We look at the elevation first, because we want some cliffs. For maximum cliffs, set the parameters to 1 0 0 0 1. Now each grid intersection will either be really low, or really high. 1 0 0 0 2 would cause twice as many grid intersections to be peaks than low-points, for example. You can play around with this (sedimentary layers prefer to be low but they dont HAVE to be at the bottom of the range) but keep in mind that except for basaltic hawaii style magma pipes which are rare, volcanos need elevation to occur, so the last parameter should be non-zero. If you dont allow peaks to form, you will almost never get volcanos.

For volcanism weighting, we also want 1 0 0 0 1. The first one causes completely non-volcanic zones to form (sedimentary) and the last one is for high-volcanism zones which are the only zones magma pipes can break the surface.

C) Now the game is going to generate all the grid intersection points according to these weightings. All the space between the intersections is handled by interpolation between the points (the game will try to make a gradual change from one state to the next, ie high to low elevation, etc). If you want a lot of volcanoes, you need more peaks than what will appear from the grid-intesection weighting, so you need to add variance to this smooth gradient. Even more so, because you dont want huge blocks of unembarkable mountain-ranges, which can also occur (if the game interpolates between two high peaks with no additional variance, then you get a long line of mountains). Go back up and find the volcanism variance and set it to maximum for X and Y. Now your chances of finding a volcano right next to a non-volcanic spot are bigger. You are going to want to do the same thing to the elevation variance as well, in to make the map more rough and break up the mountain ranges, giving you higher chances of putting a high-elevation, high-volanism area right next to a low- or mid- lying sedimentary zone.
D) Turn off or set to zero all the minimum/maximum requirements related to terrain. The game takes your parameter inputs and rolls the dice, and you only want to use these requirements if you are pedantic and your map ABSOLUTELY MUST OR MUST NOT exceed some arbitrary limit. We dont care how much many mountains exactly we have and the parameter settings already took care of that. NOTE that the minimum volcano parameter (which is not in the same group with all the min/max terrain parameters) actually does have an affect on the world generation and is not just a filter. Set minimum volcanos to 200.
E) Set all the other parameters (number of civs, number of sites, beasts, etc....)
F) Press Esc to exit, F6 to save changes, and Enter to generate your map. If you did it right, you should only get 1 or 2 rejections at most.

Now you have to go thru the map and inspect all of the volcanos to see if they fit your needs. Almost all of them will be large cones that dominate the landscape (and the underlying geology) so you want to avoid those. Look for maps with a volcano as a very high, very small peak, with large canyons nearby for the most fun and best chances. Totally flat maps on the other hand tend to have basaltic shield volcanos and even tho it says deep soil and flux and all that, 99% of the time the entire map is basalt and granite with very little iron.

I think I did 5 maps in all before I found this one, sorting for high number of neighbor civs (with at least one hostile), soil and flux, and interesting terrain features.

daggaz · « **Reply #2 on:** January 11, 2018, 02:19:33 pm »

Just realized today that that seed will reject one (1) world before generating the correct world on it's second go.

Also, today, I found out that the utopian valley of magma is home to giant keas. This.... changes things.

They Got Leader · « **Reply #3 on:** January 11, 2018, 08:37:23 pm »

Quote from: daggaz on January 11, 2018, 02:19:33 pm

Also, today, I found out that the utopian valley of magma is home to giant keas. This.... changes things.

Having literally just talked about Giant Keas in another thread: mother of god.

Bradders · « **Reply #4 on:** January 11, 2018, 10:55:48 pm »

We shall try this seed. Steel + Gold + Platinum + Diamonds is what I always want for a blingfort but can never find it all in one place.

feelotraveller · « **Reply #5 on:** January 12, 2018, 12:44:44 am »

Quote from: daggaz on January 11, 2018, 02:19:33 pm

Just realized today that that seed will reject one (1) world before generating the correct world on it's second go.

This is a problem. For worlds to be the same cross-platform (at least) the seed needs to generate without rejections.

ldog · « **Reply #6 on:** January 26, 2018, 11:21:53 pm »

Very nice. Thanks!
By the way, there is a small aquifer in the NW corner, in the latest (LNP) build. For me at least. Only tweaks I made were getting rid of vamps and weres.

daggaz · « **Reply #7 on:** January 31, 2018, 01:57:39 pm »

I did some more science to probe the world-gen parameters with respect to coal formation, and discovered a few things.

First, coal can and will be produced on a map (in prodigious amounts) containing any of the "volcanism" settings except the last one. There didnt seem to be a strong dependency here in fact (for those layers that do produce coal) and if I had the time I would be very curious to build a data-catching script for the output data in DFHack. The last volcanism parameter, which is also the only one which can form volcanos, is guaranteed to stop all formation of coal on the entire map. Furthermore, soil layers will form in all of these settings.

I also found that high elevation (second to the last elevation parameter) has no trouble supporting coal formation and could even get it to form in mountain biomes. Playing with the drainage/rainfall settings seemed to have a stronger affect, with one particular setting seeming to almost double the occurance of coal (I think it was high rain and high drainage but I cant remember right now and I did not do enough tests to be statistically sure).

Maps with high coal content always had iron, but iron ores could also be found in large amounts in non-coal bearing maps.

I got this information by reducing the parameter variance to zero and restricting the seed to a single parameter setting per variable. Ie volcanism [0 0 0 1 0]. Unfortunately I do not know how to mod species yet; for access to the maps, it is needed to have a civilized species which can generate in any possible biome. As it is, I was forced to work with elevation [0 0 0 1 0] in order to not mix eleveation ranges on the map, while still supporting dwarves.

EPM · « **Reply #8 on:** January 31, 2018, 03:14:25 pm »

One thing I experimented with for a while was to set only one X or Y variation value to max and the other to 0. So something like volcanism X 3200 Y 0, and then elevation X 0 Y 3200. Then same thing with rainfall and drainage. The idea was that by doing this I could specifically bias the map generation to form intersections of regions that could be spotted from the world map.

Also, to modify that, you want to edit the entities_default.txt Each civilization has starting biome tokens, and you can just change dwarves's to be the same as Goblins (which spawn nearly anywhere) for a quick and dirty edit.

I just wish you could stack the PSVs onto world generation... Apply custom map tiles only to one part of the map, rather than it being all or nothing.

ldog · « **Reply #9 on:** January 31, 2018, 06:36:34 pm »

Which I guess is why we never had coal in the old worldgen cookbook volcano gens.

daggaz · « **Reply #10 on:** February 01, 2018, 12:11:29 am »

Quote from: EPM on January 31, 2018, 03:14:25 pm

One thing I experimented with for a while was to set only one X or Y variation value to max and the other to 0. So something like volcanism X 3200 Y 0, and then elevation X 0 Y 3200. Then same thing with rainfall and drainage. The idea was that by doing this I could specifically bias the map generation to form intersections of regions that could be spotted from the world map.

This doesnt sound optimal to me as the variance means you dont know what the parameter has been changed to for regions off the grid x-axis. Unless you were just exploring the mesh dimensions themselves? But for exploring the parameter effects, you need to control the variables, so spawning a world with zero variance for all paramenters on both axis, and then doing statistical analysis on the layers produced, reveals the parameter dependency of layer generation. But it is extremely complicated data as there are so many possible layers, and quite a few parameters, so ANOVA statistical analysis is likely going to be required. It's bad enough as it is with zero variance because you still have a range allowed within the parameter choice (so using my method still produces a random patchwork of regions), but adding (maximum) variance to that is just dropping everything into a black-box, doubly so if you do this for more than one parameter at the same time on different axis.

Would love to do this when I get more time, but right now finishing up a PhD and can't be blowing my non-existent freetime on this puzzle. Also I am not much of a script kiddy and would need to automate data retention from DFHack prospect- to .txt files.

rhavviepoodle · « **Reply #11 on:** February 02, 2018, 07:07:21 pm »

I haven't got much to contribute in the way of optimization, but here's one of my favorite seeds for your enjoyment:

Spoiler: Here's the seed (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Here's a picture (click to show/hide)

Fyi, tarns are lakes atop mountains. Often they're carved out by glaciers before filling with water. They're also usually much smaller than this, too. There's a bit more to the world than this, but the image shows pretty much all of the tarn. And no, they aren't exactly optimal for embarks (for example, they don't have much soil). I like to think they make up for it by being very cool, though.

daggaz · « **Reply #12 on:** February 03, 2018, 03:05:02 am »

Thats a cool map, especially with the Island of Nightmares in the SW corner.

Jazz Cat · « **Reply #13 on:** March 21, 2018, 08:56:48 pm »

I'm pretty late to this thread, but here's another bit about volcanoes: You know how they usually push up the terrain around them so the 8 embark tiles surrounding them tend to be massive cliffs? If the volcano is at the edge of the 16x16 local screen on the map, it won't do that, as far as I can tell.

Lenny Zicree · « **Reply #14 on:** April 06, 2018, 07:17:56 am »

Hey -- NO Volcano here -- but coming back to play 44.07/09 after an absence of some years, I had a terribly funless two weeks where i did a new fort about every two days. I wanted fast and small and interesting and kobolds and necros and more visitors and all that and i was to stupid to get any of that.

that's after having given every civ in entity_default.txt [BABYSNATCHER] [SIEGER] [AMBUSHER].

nothing. total boredom. i thought bad thoughts. thought this was more trauma conditioning experimentation at play. like configuring the temples is. but no. that was all me. i upped the number of civs and made all the [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_s:1] -- and using this config

[WORLD_GEN]
   [TITLE:SMALL W KOBOLDS]
   [CUSTOM_NAME:Smalll World]
   [SEED:1]
   [HISTORY_SEED:1]
   [NAME_SEED:1]
   [CREATURE_SEED:1]
   [DIM:33:33]
   [EMBARK_POINTS:2000]
   [END_YEAR:50]
   [BEAST_END_YEAR:100:80]
   [REVEAL_ALL_HISTORY:1]
   [CULL_HISTORICAL_FIGURES:1]
   [ELEVATION:1:400:102:102]
   [RAINFALL:0:100:51:51]
   [TEMPERATURE:25:75:51:51]
   [DRAINAGE:0:100:51:51]
   [VOLCANISM:0:100:51:51]
   [SAVAGERY:0:100:51:51]
   [ELEVATION_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [RAIN_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [DRAINAGE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [TEMPERATURE_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [SAVAGERY_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [VOLCANISM_FREQUENCY:1:1:1:1:1:1]
   [POLE:NONE]
   [MINERAL_SCARCITY:2500]
   [MEGABEAST_CAP:3]
   [SEMIMEGABEAST_CAP:5]
   [TITAN_NUMBER:6]
   [TITAN_ATTACK_TRIGGER:0:0:0]
   [DEMON_NUMBER:20]
   [NIGHT_TROLL_NUMBER:10]
   [BOGEYMAN_NUMBER:10]
   [VAMPIRE_NUMBER:10]
   [WEREBEAST_NUMBER:10]
   [SECRET_NUMBER:20]
   [REGIONAL_INTERACTION_NUMBER:20]
   [DISTURBANCE_INTERACTION_NUMBER:20]
   [EVIL_CLOUD_NUMBER:10]
   [EVIL_RAIN_NUMBER:10]
   [GENERATE_DIVINE_MATERIALS:1]
   [GOOD_SQ_COUNTS:1:16:0]
   [EVIL_SQ_COUNTS:1:16:0]
   [PEAK_NUMBER_MIN:1]
   [PARTIAL_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
   [COMPLETE_OCEAN_EDGE_MIN:0]
   [VOLCANO_MIN:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:SWAMP:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:DESERT:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:FOREST:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:MOUNTAINS:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:OCEAN:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:GLACIER:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:TUNDRA:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:GRASSLAND:0:0:0]
   [REGION_COUNTS:HILLS:0:0:0]
   [EROSION_CYCLE_COUNT:250]
   [RIVER_MINS:6:6]
   [PERIODICALLY_ERODE_EXTREMES:1]
   [OROGRAPHIC_PRECIPITATION:1]
   [SUBREGION_MAX:2750]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_COUNT:1]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MIN:0]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_OPENNESS_MAX:50]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MIN:0]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_PASSAGE_DENSITY_MAX:50]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MIN:0]
   [CAVERN_LAYER_WATER_MAX:20]
   [HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_1:1]
   [HAVE_BOTTOM_LAYER_2:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:5]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_1:5]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_2:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_3:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_4:1]
   [LEVELS_ABOVE_LAYER_5:2]
   [LEVELS_AT_BOTTOM:1]
   [CAVE_MIN_SIZE:5]
   [CAVE_MAX_SIZE:5]
   [MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:2]
   [NON_MOUNTAIN_CAVE_MIN:4]
   [ALL_CAVES_VISIBLE:1]
   [SHOW_EMBARK_TUNNEL:2]
   [TOTAL_CIV_NUMBER:25]
   [TOTAL_CIV_POPULATION:15000]
   [SITE_CAP:100]
   [PLAYABLE_CIVILIZATION_REQUIRED:1]
   [ELEVATION_RANGES:136:272:136]
   [RAIN_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [DRAINAGE_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [SAVAGERY_RANGES:0:0:0]
   [VOLCANISM_RANGES:0:0:0]

i got something that's been working for me. up north, its dangerous and busy and fast and still more or less vanilla. i get 6 dwarven civs and it can happen that you get to claim the crown in year one in the default civ. or not.

tons of gods, just one dragon, no metal beasts would be the downside. but its got that DF crazyness i was craving. maybe it works for you too!

News:

Author Topic: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos! (Read 1899 times)

daggaz

The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

daggaz

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

daggaz

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

They Got Leader

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

Bradders

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

feelotraveller

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

ldog

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

daggaz

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

EPM

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

ldog

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

daggaz

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

rhavviepoodle

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

daggaz

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

Jazz Cat

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!

Lenny Zicree

Re: The Super-Seed Thread, now with extra Volcanos!