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[Jualin]

The spice must flow.

[Neonivek]

One way I guess to make "Underwater" Biomes possible is to add a "Shelf" and "Bottomless Ocean"

The Shelf is underwater from the Shore and consists of the next 1-5 World tiles (or whatever number is needed) away from the shore in all dirrections and be 5-15 Z-tiles Deep. Since most marine life is near the shore this makes sense anyhow. It should function somewhat like land would.

Underwater cities could in truth just be cities built on the Shelf

You and others should also be able to dig into the Shelf.

Bottomless Ocean (It could also be called "Riptide" or "Undertow") functions exactly the way a Chasm does except it won't take in water. If someone falls in it a message that they are sucked into the bottom of the ocean and crushed should happen. Their body and equipment will be thrown to another part of the world.

The Exact name or cause of death isn't important... It could even be the part of the ocean where the pressure is too great. The important part is that there needs to be a cut off point.

That is the best I can think up... In truth I don't EXACTLY know the limitations of why Toady doesn't know if he will ever be able to allow Underwater Civilisations.

[Reasonableman]

Underwater civs would be easy. Just have, at worldgen, reverse the behavoir of water so that it fills from the top down and rename it air. Then, everywhere there would be water normally, there will be build-in-able nothingness and where there would normally be air is an impassible barrier of pseudo-air.

[Awayfarer]

For some reason an image popped into my head of a dwarf digging into a hollow space, and having tentacles comes out of the hole and grab him around the throat.

This needs to happen.

Oh yeah. OH YEAH. OH YEAH.

"As the dwarves approached the lowest level of the mine it became apparent that they were not the first to reach that place. Bizarre symbols were carved into the stone in a harsh, angular script. It was then that the rumbling began. It started as a low insistent hum and gathered in intensity until the stones cracked and fragments fell from the cieling. The wall at the far end of the mine, the wall with the greatest number of runes exploded outward in a shower of rock. Two miners were struck down immediately by the flying rocks. Dwarven blood spattered the rune-covered walls and filled the carvings, giving them an unholy cast.

The creature burst through the stone wall with the force of a colossus. Its bulk was visible through the dust in the dim light, the lanterns reflected off it's cold, clear body. It had no head, merely a gaping mouth stamped upon its torso. A red liquid sloshed out of its body and over its sides.

The beast smiled a twisted grin and the caverns began to rumble and the very stone twisted as it shouted...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The one remaining miner could only say "Hey......ARMOK!" as the immense pitcher of blood slowly bore down upon him.

[Lord Nightmare]

LOL

[PTTG??]

Can you imagine a rockworm digging into your meeting hall, then fleeing into the river above it? I'm not sure how workable it would be, I'm imagining loads of disastrous, unavoidable cave-ins, but that may be paranoid on my part.
Philosopically, if a worm hit upon some HFS, would that trigger the catastrophe? Hows it programmed?

Dwarves are the only being capable of breaching the walls of HFS- I suspect that the beards are involved. All others find the raw material to be impenetrable. That's why the HFS doesn't just walk out.

[Neonivek]

"Can you imagine a rockworm digging into your meeting hall, then fleeing into the river above it? I'm not sure how workable it would be, I'm imagining loads of disastrous, unavoidable cave-ins, but that may be paranoid on my part"

Wouldn't a Proper Dwarf Fortress made underwater be made with several Floodgates so to avoid total flood situations? Especially against the underwater Megabeasts

[Skizelo]

And you'd set them up to water-sensitive pressure plates so that it triggers automatically when water's detected and you'd have dwarves hammering on floodgates as they hear they're friends on the other side, before slumping down the newly damp wall long after the noises stop.
Ignore me, I've been watching The Abyss.

[Neonivek]

I can't even fathom how difficult it would be to set them up to survive Megabeast attacks or possibly Mermaid Seiges and all that

But then again it is supposed to be the ULTIMATE challenge and not the "Just another Locale" Challenge you did 100 times.

[Reasonableman]

Okay, so as far as underground creatures are concerned:

We want to be able to stumble across ancient creatures deep underground, HFS-style without the widespread and unstoppable doom.

We DON'T want to have to stop mining operations every three seconds because we hit another pocket of deep crows.

We want monsters who move through the dirt as if it isn't there, forcing us to think about fortress design in a new way. But, we also want to be able to deactivate it in case we want an olde fashioned fort.

We DON'T want worms chewing through valuable resources or into really stupid things like magma, HFS, or our reservoirs.

We want, overall, to add an element of randomness and danger to mining, while avoiding having to completely overhaul our fortress designs if we don't want to.

[Neonivek]

"we also want to be able to deactivate it in case we want an olde fashioned fort"

It has been a while since Ive heard someone ask for 3d to be capable of being turned off... what ever happened to them?

[perilisk]

For some reason an image popped into my head of a dwarf digging into a hollow space, and having tentacles comes out of the hole and grab him around the throat.

This needs to happen.

Oh yeah. OH YEAH. OH YEAH.

"As the dwarves approached the lowest level of the mine it became apparent that they were not the first to reach that place. Bizarre symbols were carved into the stone in a harsh, angular script. It was then that the rumbling began. It started as a low insistent hum and gathered in intensity until the stones cracked and fragments fell from the cieling. The wall at the far end of the mine, the wall with the greatest number of runes exploded outward in a shower of rock. Two miners were struck down immediately by the flying rocks. Dwarven blood spattered the rune-covered walls and filled the carvings, giving them an unholy cast.

The creature burst through the stone wall with the force of a colossus. Its bulk was visible through the dust in the dim light, the lanterns reflected off it's cold, clear body. It had no head, merely a gaping mouth stamped upon its torso. A red liquid sloshed out of its body and over its sides.

The beast smiled a twisted grin and the caverns began to rumble and the very stone twisted as it shouted...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The one remaining miner could only say "Hey......ARMOK!" as the immense pitcher of blood slowly bore down upon him.

That took a little while for me to get, but what a comedy payoff.

[RP]

The one remaining miner could only say "Hey......ARMOK!" as the immense pitcher of blood slowly bore down upon him.

Lol, how terrifying, but I suppose they call it 'HFS' for a reason... KOOL-AID FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

[Belteshazzar]

We DON'T want worms chewing through valuable resources or into really stupid things like magma, HFS, or our reservoirs.

Somehow the idea of of a particularly stupid rockworm of something (or perhaps tunneling goblins) may not recognize the hot or wet rock warnings. But this doesn't mean I would be against such  occasional "mishaps" However, I agree that any intelegent monster should probalby try to avoid such danger signs.

Unless they have -no fear- or skin made of bauxite or something like that. Perhaps magma imps trying to further the will of their dark volcano mother tunnel into you fort over a period of several years?

As for Hidden fun stuff it seems likely that any natural burrowers would try to burrow around because it's just so difficult to pierce. However it seems unlikely that humans or goblins might try to mine the stuff, albeit at a much slower rate but they would still try.

[SquashMonster]

I think having burrowing monsters that don't leave tunnels, and burrowing megabeasts that do leave tunnels, would be the best way to handle it.  Monsters should be smart enough not to mine into wet/warm tiles, but their undead versions don't need to be so timid.  This means a skeletal monster could get through your moat, but since it doesn't leave a tunnel it won't flood your fortress.  A skeletal megabeast, however, could cause horrible horrible things.