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[Lord Dullard]

Further nitpick: Is there any way to reduce the frequency or size of the inland seas?

I could throw something together relatively quickly, I suppose.

[squeakyReaper]

Quick question; my knowledge on biomes is horribly small, but...  are there some deserts next to tundras and snowy-fields?

[Lord Dullard]

Sure. Temperature =/= humidity. There's nothing preventing non-equatorial areas from being deserts, or even areas that are close to being polar themselves.

http://geology.com/records/sahara-desert-map.gif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia#Climate

Polar deserts (oddly) do exist. I didn't really see any reason to remove them from mapgen since they're an actual phenomenon.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Quick question; my knowledge on biomes is horribly small, but...  are there some deserts next to tundras and snowy-fields?

   The largest desert in the world is actually in Antarctica.

[squeakyReaper]

Haha, I was more referring to the uneducated version of desert.  Hot, sandy and wide.  Though I think deserts are incredibly cold at night...  eh.  You're the boss.  Dwarf Fortress often generates deserts where it snows (I thought the lack of rain made it a desert..?) so I guess it's just me.

[Lord Dullard]

Haha, I was more referring to the uneducated version of desert.  Hot, sandy and wide.  Though I think deserts are incredibly cold at night...  eh.  You're the boss.  Dwarf Fortress often generates deserts where it snows (I thought the lack of rain made it a desert..?) so I guess it's just me.

Yeah, it's weird, but it happens.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_g476rU5vrAk/SO0nMym94ZI/AAAAAAAACu8/Gvc8qY-NErA/s1600-h/Snow+in+Desert+(2).jfif

[squeakyReaper]

That is pretty awesome.  Pretty weird, but pretty awesome.

Will gods be able to terraform the land?  Possibly during the worldgen, possibly during the game.  My God likes fish, but is faced with a dilemma; the area he wants to send his believers to colonize is far from water.  Could he split the land, creating a river and a lake for his people to fish from?

[freeformschooler]

This is pretty cool, but is there any way to reduce the resolution of the game?

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

Haha, I was more referring to the uneducated version of desert.  Hot, sandy and wide.  Though I think deserts are incredibly cold at night...  eh.  You're the boss.  Dwarf Fortress often generates deserts where it snows (I thought the lack of rain made it a desert..?) so I guess it's just me.

   It is the lack of rain(precipitation) that makes a place
a desert. Even though places like Antarctica are covered
in snow they actually get very little snowfall. It just never
gets warm enough to get rid of what little that does fall.

[chaoticag]

A good example of a cold desert is The Gobi desert. Lack of rain means lack of water, lack of water means lack of life. No plants are able to hold the topsoil, and so you get sand.

[Lord Dullard]

This is pretty cool, but is there any way to reduce the resolution of the game?

The resolution is locked right now at 1024x768 (the maps you see are exported as PNG files; you do not view the entire map in-game, just a portion of it). I'll probably make this adjustable, but it will require some tedious retooling that I can most likely finish in under a day.

(ETA: most likely finish in under a day - never believe any coder who says this)

[Lord Dullard]

Starting to get into the swing of things with creature gen, finally, and the approach I'll have to take on this is starting to make sense. Of course, it's also becoming clear that this is going to get REALLY complicated, but... what the heck, that'll make it more fun.

Things I'm currently thinking about, both short- and long-term, and attempting to implement:

* Creatures should fall most prevalently into Earth-similar norms (i.e. no multiple heads, fairly sensible body arrangements, and so on). The reaction upon seeing new creatures should generally be 'woah, neat, what's that?'. A rarer amount of creatures should fall mostly or completely outside of earth norms (multiple heads, many-legged/armed vertebrate, pincers on a mammalian-ish creature, subterranean creatures with beaks, tentacles, and fur, yadda yadda) and should induce at 'WTF!?' reaction. Of course, creatures should also possess some rare traits that are more magical than morphological.

* Creatures need not be particularly interesting to be useful. Something like a sponge, which is seemingly useless and defenseless, might possess morphological traits which make it drop a useful item upon death (dye, processable skin or organs, medicinal substances). Similarly, larger creatures should drop appropriately relevant items depending on their traits. These sorts of items should eventually make it into cultural references and item creation/economies.

* I should probably also think about unique plant/tree generation, though this will be a headache because it will require the recoding of certain parts of world gen.

I will probably release a new tech demo soon just so people can play around with the up-to-date worldgen as it stands. Even though it's rather useless at present, the maps do make rather nice desktop backgrounds.

[squeakyReaper]

While each world will be very wondrous and unique, make sure to keep it well grounded.  I should be able to look at a creature and say "So that's the equivalent of this world's cow", not "OH BUGGER WHAT ARE ALL THESE THINGS".  Don't want to be overwhelmed.

[nenjin]

* Creatures need not be particularly interesting to be useful. Something like a sponge, which is seemingly useless and defenseless, might possess morphological traits which make it drop a useful item upon death (dye, processable skin or organs, medicinal substances). Similarly, larger creatures should drop appropriately relevant items depending on their traits. These sorts of items should eventually make it into cultural references and item creation/economies.

Sometimes the things that make them interesting don't even need to be game mechanics. They just need to have flavor and be distinct. I would take a page from the Book of the The Toady One, and try to arrange some detail elements that are random and purely cosmetic. Skin vs. fur types, palette selection for said skins and furs, size descriptions, ect...

One problem I have with random or procedurally generated animals is you get a lot of indistinguishable animal masses. Without the details to under pin it, you end up memorizing a name string attached to an animal rather than relying on the picture it creates in your head.

[Servant Corps]

nenjin: That is just the very Madlibs style version of Dwarf Fortress that makes some people critique it. Overloading with fluff is only useful when people think the fluff and flavor actually mean something useful. If it means nothing, if the players know that the game just picks random cosmetic details (like how Gods work currently), then players will see through that illusion and it cheapens the game.

I suggest you make every detail important for gameplay.