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[The Architect]

I suppose giving an example could be misconstrued as a comment. If you want a comment, I'll explain why that example is crazy. BUT I didn't.

smartass.

[Felblood]

I suppose giving an example could be misconstrued as a comment. If you want a comment, I'll explain why that example is crazy. BUT I didn't.

smartass.

Actually, I just got smart with you because the alternative was to be frank, and I do try to keep things light when trying to influence other people's behavior. Nevertheless, it seems bluntness is called for.

If you don't have anything to contribute, just don't post.

Nobody wants this thread to be derailed by you opinion of alien microbes in meteorites. Yes, even if you are a certified expert on the topic. If we actually cared about whether the idea was credible in the real world, we wouldn't take the work of some random person in a forum, anyway.

Woulnd`t it be funny if those meteors could even contain some megabeasts? 

I was kind of poking at this when I said some of them could contain random titans, but there's a lot of other things that could come out of meteors.

Would anyone support the idea of a special class of mega-kaiju type monsters, that is designed specifically to homage Tokyo-style monster movies, or would it be better to make them as procedural as possible?

[The Architect]

It has a smiley on it man. Chill the f*ck out. I don't know how to be any more clear about what is a joke and what isn't if you are going to truly be an ass about it. And this time there's no smiley.

[Felblood]

Now this is probably just me being up a 2AM with a stomach ache, but what if there where meteors that altered the terrain in other ways?

Like, a giant acid meteor that spatters fragments of itself across the area, poisoning the land, and speeding up the erosion caused by it's rivers.

The fragments would eat downward, for a number of years based on the size of the fragment. This would lead to smooth lowlands, where all the rock was hyper eroded, and only the strangest wildlife had survived.

I'm thinking the ground should be really uneven, because of the acidic rocks and dust scattering out, but also smooth and lacking in tall features like spires and mountains. I'm picturing the American Midwest, but with less windblown sand, and hundreds of pools of greenish water. I'm not a geologist; it's just a fun mental image.

The wasteland would shrink over time, as the acid will be the least concentrated around the edges of the impact, but there might be a sizable chunk of toxic rock and mud left in the center of the most blighted part of the wasteland.

This could all tie back to an effect table for an acid sphere, too. There's a lot to be said for meteors adding sphere effects to the local area.

Acid could cause erosion and poison, and lead to bile mutants

Fire could burn away the local populations and create rivers of fire and fire mutants.

Evil meteors could turn the area into Derry, USA (It, by Stephen King).

[The Architect]

It would certainly fit with a fantasy concept, and it would be pretty damn cool.

So I guess what you're suggesting for the terrain is the old idea that DF ground be a level from 1 to 7, so that the land has transitions? That way it could be "smooth but bumpy"? (Forgive the summation if I am misunderstanding your description). The idea being not to have even short cliffs?

[Felblood]

At the time I was more thinking in terms of everything having all the sharp edges melted off, but with all the acid running downhill, river erosion would be a lot stronger, too.

Wouldn't that lead to leading to really deep river canyons, downstream?

It's things like this that make acid, specifically, a bad idea. You need a whole lot of research and custom code, just to make the terrain look right.

It looks like we're supposed to avoid specific effects like that with spheres, so that they don't each need a huge amount of custom work, for every possible way they could be used.

[Lord Nightmare]

lets see if we can get the thread back on track;
Megabeasts from meteors would be awesome, as well as semimegabeasts, unique creatures, new randomly generated creatures/races/horrors, etc.

LN

[The Architect]

Pardon me if I'm mistaken, but I don't see how discussing possible climactic effects of meteorites is off-track.

[Felblood]

You're a little late LN, we've got our business settled, and we're talking about falling rocks again. Nevertheless, your heart is in the right place.

I think sphere based meteors has a lot of potential, especially if some of the spheres are harder to recognize than others.

If a meteor carves out a huge crater, and then alters the local spheres to a large degree, then having a meteor strike would be like having a big bowl full of Fun, in you gameworld.

It also serves as a great way  to have really high levels of sphere association crop up, without having them all over the place. Perhaps there should be a worldgen setting for maximum meteors. Once that value is reached, they stop falling, even if the seed would otherwise produce more meteors.

Spheres that have temperature relationships could also trigger global climate change. After all, a giant pit full of fire or a valley where it always rains is going to have some sort of impact on the local weather.

Really, meteors are a great way to deliver things into the gameworld, from prehistoric god origins, to unusual creatures.

[Dakk]

Mass extinction and dust clouds? Sweet.
Could the Color Out of Space be like a megabeast/special event?

Very much this..

[silhouette]

Unobtainium could be found only in the form of native unobtainium, that yields two bars to a mined square. Unfortunately that's because it's the wrecked vehicle of some creature from beyond our existence. I'm thinking creatures so crazy random that you never know what to expect inside.

I know what you've seen .

It should deffinitly still have a chance of happening when continuing world gen events after world gen finally gets worked in.
Imagine having a fort, then suddenly a pop up box of...
"Run for your lives! the sky is raining fire!"
then suddenly this massive ball like shape crashes into the earth.
Now i dont know how you might change it so it would have an effect on the earth or not (basically making a crater) or not....
The meteor could then start spawning monsters, (sort of like the hidden fun stuff).

Or better yet...
Walking around as an adventurerer, then pressing W and having a message like...
"The sun is rising in the eastern skys.
There are no clouds in the sky.
There is a faint mysterious object to the north..."

or at night.

"the moon is setting in the west.
There stars are out.
A weird trail of fire follows one star..."

Then prehaps in the off chance of actually standing right at the spot where the meteor hits... lol...

Well it would be the most epic way to die in adventure mode... well... second most epic...
the most epic would be fighting a HFS and trading blow for blow, neither of you can win then suddenly the meteor lands and kills you both...

[DDR]

When I first saw this thread, I had a vision of Urist McIdiot plummeting 25 z-levels to his doom, and leaving a crater covered with dwarf giblets and dust at the bottom.

This thread seems a bit overblown, in general. I'd be pleased with impact craters, perhaps some metal around them. I could easily live without.

[silhouette]

When I first saw this thread, I had a vision of Urist McIdiot plummeting 25 z-levels to his doom, and leaving a crater covered with dwarf giblets and dust at the bottom.

This thread seems a bit overblown, in general. I'd be pleased with impact craters, perhaps some metal around them. I could easily live without.

Urist mcmeteor fell from the cliffs of heaven in 1051 late summer.
Urist mcmeteor landed at the base of the cliffs of heaven in 2013, destroying all in his impact.

[Eric Blank]

This would be a very interesting thing to implement, craters, filled with water or not, would be an interesting feature, especially if they contained small, not quite epic, materials and meteor fragments. There could be some unique animals, or have it returned to normal/act like a desert badlands.
If they're more than geological and can fall during world gen, the same could be true, but it would leave a blight of desert of a certain size But not affect the climate beyond that, else it would be hell to generate, especially from a parameter set. Increased volcanism in the region struck would be nice, a few small magma pipes and pools in the region. It could destroy any nearby cities and towns as well, creating ruins farther out and destroying all nearby, Dwarven halls may be exempt from these effects.
If it is possible to have happen during game play, outside the region the player is currently viewing, there could be a heat wave and dust storm across the map, acting like a wall of infinite miasma and leeching into structures, extending a distance relative to the meteor's size, even across the world, which would kill everything caught on the surface (outside, light) and raise the temperature up to the level of magma. This would be possible to ride out underground. Less destruction from smaller/more distant meteors.
A large impact on the same map as the player's fort/adventurer would potentially destroy everything above a certain Z level, and leave a large crater around the point of impact. the smallest impacts may leave only a small spot of obsidian down a z-level or two and start a wildfire. Heat could also be relative to size and distance.

As per the metals, I'd say allow for a stronger version of iron and nickel, Mithril from the dig deeper mod in the core, names are meh.
For creatures, HFS could arrive after the impact wave, or mutilated/undead versions of normal wildlife, from many biomes downstream, in a swarm from the same edge as the wave, maybe more than once, maybe not right away either, it could take them a season or two, and they could act like usual enemies and siege you. Zombie siege... Allowing this plague to occur in a handful of your own survivors would also be interesting. They could hang around in the craters for centuries if during world gen. And spawn from those that land at the doors to your fortress, in swarms, maybe with quite a few just leaving entirely. And let them wield precious and powerful weapons! If there are any special creatures of course.

Fit in procedural generation wherever possible, just for the hell of it if that suits your thoughts.

[jokermatt999]

Heh, I actually emailed Toady about this a while ago, because I saw an awesome spear made from a narwhal horn and meteoric iron, and realized how damn awesome that would be in DF.

"Yeah, I'm not sure how it would work with smelting...  it looks like
you just use the stuff directly.  The link also made me want to add
narwhals, he he he.

Tarn"

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite