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[SixOfSpades]

In real life, a vivarium is essentially a glorified greenhouse: A large room with carefully controlled light, temperature, and humidity set to match specified conditions. It is most often used to maintain a suitable habitat for species that have been transplanted far from their original ecosystem, such as African orchids in England.

In DF, a vivarium would be not so much a room as a designation of a room, like a tavern. It can be any size, but must* be almost completely enclosed. The size is not determined by the player; rather, they simply place the cursor, and any tile that shares airspace with the cursor (everything bounded by doors, hatches, walls, floor, or ceiling) is considered part of the vivarium. When the vivarium is designated, the game calculates the average temperature (even if the temperature is turned off), humidity, illumination, and rough O₂ / CO₂ balance within the enclosed area. It will then treat the vivarium as its own self-contained biome, enabling players to construct and control environments quite different from their outer surroundings, and import species that ordinarily would not be able to thrive in the area. Vivaria will appear in the Locations menu, allowing you to view (and tell the game to recalculate, which is also something that should automatically happen every year or so) the conditions there.

Vivarium calculation boundaries do not actually stop at the first wall or door at the edge of the region, but rather at the second one. This will enable things like running magma pipes next to or below a room to heat it, or necessitate "airlock" rooms to insulate the vivarium from direct contact with the outside air.

* Any vivarium designation with an uninterrupted "path" to a map edge takes the base climate conditions of its biome; it can still be viewed in the vivarium menu, but only as a "control", to see how your enclosed vivaria compare with the natural climate of the region.

Vivaria would be useful because A. they would allow the player realistic climate control, and B. would impose only a relatively minor drain on a fort's FPS. Even in a vivarium the size of an entire cavern, calculating the weather once a year would be a doddle, compared to checking the temperature 24/7 over the entire map.

Other possibilities include influencing the vivarium's Good/Evil conditions, by introducing living quarters for elven residents or a caged necromancer.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Interesting. So explain once more, simply, how would my dwarves go about creating an enclosed tropical biome in a non-tropical area (let's say, I intend on raiding the tropical forest retreats a few times). Magma and mist pipes?

What prevents regular rooms being heated up the same way if they remain enclosed? Are the walls constructed in a certain way? Like, out of glass or something? Or is it just the magical "zone" which activates special climate calculations?

[SixOfSpades]

So explain once more, simply, how would my dwarves go about creating an enclosed tropical biome in a non-tropical area (let's say, I intend on raiding the tropical forest retreats a few times). Magma and mist pipes?

Yes, that and a ton of clear or crystal glass to allow a "tropical" amount of sunlight through the roof. (Bioluminescent trees could also provide illumination, but they aren't a thing yet and in any case would be quite unlikely to match the spectrum of the sun.) Waterfalls would provide the strongest sources of humidity, flowing streams the next best, then pools, then damp stone.

What prevents regular rooms being heated up the same way if they remain enclosed? Are the walls constructed in a certain way? Like, out of glass or something? Or is it just the magical "zone" which activates special climate calculations?

Well, if you've got temperature turned on for the entire map, then yes, every room should be able to be heated / cooled by things like magma, furnaces, and nether-cap furniture. But the game (as it currently exists) still wouldn't calculate light or humidity, which is definitely a thing that should happen in areas with glass walls & windows, and food stockpiles. The construction of the walls, etc. shouldn't matter much--different varieties of stone could have different (realistic) specific heats, but that shouldn't have any dramatic impact. The "vivarium" designation is just a handle--useful for the computer to have a much smaller area for which to perform more in-depth analysis, and useful for the player to have only a handful of areas for which you consider the atmosphere to be important (you might, for example, want to make sure that your public baths and hospital beds are nice & warm, while your meat-storage area is quite cool).

[Shonai_Dweller]

So, would you even need to assign a zone? Seems like you could just set it up naturally, like traps in the future. And then have animals and plants be happier (or just not die) while in their natural habitat.

Having a totally evil biome right in the middle of your fortress would be very cool.

[ShinyandKittens]

It doesn't seem like controlled climates are in the time of mythical creatures such as dwarves and elves. Just my opinion

[Bumber]

It doesn't seem like controlled climates are in the time of mythical creatures such as dwarves and elves. Just my opinion

You don't think mythical creatures can control climate?

[Shonai_Dweller]

It doesn't seem like controlled climates are in the time of mythical creatures such as dwarves and elves. Just my opinion

I think it's exactly the kind of thing you've expect a fantasy wizard to have in his tower. Dwarf Fortress isn't a history simulator.

And changeable biomes fits nicely with Toady's plans for post Mythgen being all about 'change'.

Imagine if hell didn't appear in a swarm, but sneakily through a portal deep underground and slowly started corrupting the biome. That would be fun.

But yeah having dwarf constructions naturally manipulate heat and humidity levels to create an underground tropical paradise in the middle of a glacier embark would be great. Straight out of a cheap fantasy novel, which is the aim after all.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

It doesn't seem like controlled climates are in the time of mythical creatures such as dwarves and elves. Just my opinion

That implies there WAS a time of mythical creatures in real life.

Most fantasy settings are an entirely alternate world from ours that merely happen to superficially resemble the Middle Ages, they're not the ACTUAL Middle Ages and so don't need to reflect them exactly (otherwise we'd obviously have to complain about the historical inaccuracy of dragons and trolls and magic existing at all).

[SixOfSpades]

So, would you even need to assign a zone?

Technically, no you wouldn't, but if the game knows what areas you DO care about, then it can stop checking the areas that you DON'T care about. That's got to be easier on the computer, even if the check is only once a year.

Seems like you could just set it up naturally, like traps in the future.

Yes and no. Ideally, every tile would be constantly monitored with pinpoint accuracy, but at that point FPS starts to stand for Frames Per Season. One thing that the game could do nearly for free, over the entire map, is handle shade: Inside Dark tiles should, in general, have an ambient temperature several degrees cooler than the Outside Light tiles above.

Of course, these are only minor considerations in light of the Big Picture, I just think that having even a minor amount of climate control could be a real boon to a lot of players. For instance, my current fort is halfway up a mountain, there's a large meadow with a fair amount of trees--but no bees at all, because the biome is apparently too hot for them. Realistically, I could simply build walls to increase the amount of shade, and then import some populated hives. Being able to make the game recognize a microclimate would allow this.