Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Derakon]

To help keep my framerate acceptable, I tend to avoid mountains and the extra z-layers they imply. However, this means that I miss out on chasms, underground rivers, adamantine, et cetera. It'd be nice if those things were available outside of mountainous regions. It might break theme a bit, but right now it's just a slap in the face for those of us who can't afford the more complicated areas.

[Neonivek]

While there is some sense of realism... I do agree... I would like my Deserted Islands to be much more interesting then they currently are.

I mean afterall... Dwarves can dig VERY far into the earth

[Bask]

Sorry, I disagree. While some geological features (underground rivers, chasms of some kind) could possibly very rarely occur in non-mountainous regions, adamantine as currently envisioned is strictly mountainous resource.

The very point of this game is to be an ultimate world generator within its self-consistent rules. Adding unrealistic (within the game) features breaks immersion and invalidates large parts of both current and planned worldgen.

A suggestion more within the spirit of DF would be more non-mountainous terrain only features - quicksand, seasonal herds of migratory animals, wildfires, many kinds of magical stuff. Fortresses already drift towards specialization - hunter/gatherer settlements don't work on mountains, steel production is a giant undertaking in itself and leaves little time for other things, massive amounts of mechanized fishing are possible only in very special circumstances.

As for deserted islands - seal grounds, usable driftwood, whale carcasses than can be gathered for bone, specialized unique randomly-generated fruit trees are features to dream of and ask for. Underground brooks seem reasonable. But special mountain things would seem simply glued on, not part of the world.

[Lyrax]

I'm leaning towards Bask on this one.

But making more neat stuff for the non-mountainous regions?  Way cool.  Making a way for us to access the mountainous regions better in order to get at said neat stuff?  Also cool.  Making mountain neat stuff be part of jungles and tundra?  Not so neat.

[Solara]

Adamantine is too drastic but I wish there were at least smaller random things to spice up non-mountain maps. Just picture it: deep in a forest, a ruined and abandoned castle with catacombs below filled with the restless undead. On the lowest level, skeletal knights clad in adamantine platemail and wielding adamantine weapons stand guard over the treasure-filled tomb of an ancient king.

Or for the coastal maps, sunken ships filled with adamantine wafers deep beneath shark-infested waters, just waiting for someone to devise an elaborate pumping system and claim their prize. Bonus points if it's haunted.

Double bonus points if it's haunted by pirates and a giant squid is somehow involved.

[ May 14, 2008: Message edited by: Solara ]

[Capntastic]

Adamantine is not the point of the game; especially as more and more features are added.   People who complain about sites that aren't perfect (water, lava, flux, adamantine, and on and on) and insist that it's the only way to play the game need to realize that realistically, not every location should have everything, and that is what makes the world so cool.

[Bricktop]

I don't agree with adding adamantine to none-mountain maps, but I do think there should be a load of non-mountain features. And, also, they don't NEED to be adamantine. There are better things than adamantine.

Maybe there could be underground tombs hidden in jungles and deserts, with an undead lord and a few undead soldiers defending the tomb of an ancient king, complete with an artefact-level object located down their?

A demon living in a hidden shirne, with a random group of humans, goblins, dwarves, kobolds and elves all worshipping him? The shrine could have a horde of gold objects and a few eleite guards weilding masterpiece steel weapons?

Maybe if mega- and semi-mega- beast caves were improved into something more impressive than a sprawling network of 1-tile thick caves then they would be a good feature to settle on top of. If these caves were made into something more impressive, like a large cavern filled with gold crafts in the case of dragons etc then these would be a good challenge as a site. You would have trouble living next door to a dragon, but when you did finally kill it you would have a pile of gold crafts and a great new expansion to your fortress.

I certainly think that the undead need to make a come-back. They were nice to have around and I think bringing them back would add far more flavour to the evil area's of the world. I eman, what is better than a stepped pyramid in the middle of a jungle, swarming with undead soldiers and full of valuable crafts?

[Akroma]

the bloats include about 10 different HIDDEN FUN STUFFS

I am sure that there will be more than our curren HIDDEN FUN STUFF in the future

instead of just MOUNTAIN FUN STUFF we get DESERT FUN STUFF and SWAMP FUN STUFF and the like

[Capntastic]

For the record, hidden fun stuff doesn't equal adamantine or anything like that- I think one of the hidden fun stuffs was just being able to bait traps and catch purring maggots.

So, hidden fun stuff generally means what it says.

[Jiri Petru]

I love the idea of special features even outside mountains, it would make each game more unique (as long as these features are different). We might as well come with some ideas and see if Toasy likes something.

A few days ago I started a game in savannah and saw anthills for the first time. Neat! This lead me to an idea: there could be antman collonies in the savannahs - intricate networks of narrow underground tunnels swarming with dozens of antmen. These would wander randomly under and above ground, attacking your dwarves. A huge ant queen would live in the middle of the tunnels, and she'd keep respawning the antmen. The only way how to get rid of the endless hordes of antmen would be to get through the tunnels to the queen and kill her, which would of course be quite difficult. A nice long-term goal for your fortress!

[rkyeun]

I think you should be able to get magma anywhere by digging deep enough to reach the "magma aquifer", which you have to pump away five or six layers deep to find the adamantine layer below.

[Bricktop]

@ Jiri: I do like that antman colony idea. Sounds really cool.

@ rkyeun: Adamantine and Magma are not required to play the game. They are not these all important comodities that are an absolute must in order for the game to be fun. I admit, at the moment exitement can seem a little thin on the ground, but that is because most of the fun-causing stuff was ripped out of the game when the z-axis came in and its only slowly being added back in (the army arc is a good example. When that is finished then building up your fortresses defences will be a much more important task).

[Hague]

I don't see why adamantine has to be "Mountain-only." I mean, can't demons come from anywhere? We've got frog demons, tentacle demons, fire demons, and so on. Why not simply make the varieties of demons in those pits related to the biome in which they are sealed? Adamantine deposits in the woods could hold some evil plagued forest demon or other horror. Seems to me, that if some ancient power wanted to seal these things away, they wouldn't all kindly usher themselves to the mountains to be imprisoned but be sealed wherever they might be.

[Jiri Petru]

I believe the magma isn't question of realism, but a question of gameplay. Different areas should provide for different game experience, and special features are an excellent way to accomplish that. Having the same things appear everywhere would ruin the point of having different biomes.

Just my two cents.

EDIT: Though I don't mind if adamantine appears elsewhere, as long as it is under different circumstances. The aforementioned hidden tombs in swamps are a nice example.

[ May 15, 2008: Message edited by: Jiri Petru ]

[Puzzlemaker]

A giant, flat rocky wasteland with a huge castle, visible for miles around, jutting up from the flat earth, seems dwarvish enough.  And thus, should have dwarvish things underneath it.