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[AlStar]

Currently, all mountains contain the same 4 features - an underground river, a chasm, a lava lake and the abyss/daemon area. There's variation in how far each of these is from one another in each mountain, and of course the rock and minerals are different every time, but it's still all the same.

An idea I was thinking of would be to add in some other mountain features that could be randomly inserted into the mountain, spicing things up.

Some ideas I've had:

A cavern - just a natural cavern, that could be anywhere from very small to very large.

An anciant hall - I'm thinking "Halls of Moria" kinda thing - a big hall, with pillars down the sides.

A crypt - A room filled with coffins and/or sarcophagi ... and maybe skeletons/zombies, who are pissed that you've disturbed their slumber.

An old treasure chamber - filled with gold/gems/etc. And possibly a defender (golems? undead? dragon?)

Lair - A small settlement of ... something. Maybe frogmen in a pond, or a hive of antmen. Anyway, they're unhappy that you've come.

Anyway, that's just me thinking for half an hour or so, I'm sure there are tons of little things people could come up with.

Each mountain could contain a number of any element, or none. So maybe one game I run into a bunch of caverns while I'm tunneling, but never see any crypts or lairs. The next I hit a bunch of antmen hives, and have to deal with that.

You'd have to tweak the numbers and probabilites, I'm sure, but even just a few of these things would help make each mountain a more 'alive' and individual place.

[Mechanoid]

The difficulty of the map location could influence what appears. Haunted maps would have lots of crypts for example.

Also, it should be possible to link certain things together; A crypt in the shape of an ancient hall... A monster lair containing treasure, where instead of a ancient golem-like gaurdian, it's just a bigger and nastier version of the monster type in the lair.

What would be really interesting is if there were parts of the chasm that lead to the surface, and would be effected by the weather in those areas, and when lighting gets in + thunder storm...    

Anyways, i like to flesh this sort of thing out, so we have:

Area Types:

- Cavern :: A empty space, possibly filled with limestone and siltstone pillars (representing stalagmites) Some smooth from natural forces, some rough.

-- Lake /Pools :: A underground lake filled with Water or Lava that never floods, and may contrain creatures. Pools are like lakes, but with a ring of floor around it; maybe even multiple pools. [Shallow (aka outside water) and deep water (aka underground water) are both possible here.]

-- Chasm Cavern. Another place to dump your shit. Maybe even have some sort of LotR-ish natural stone bridge over it, or a giant pillar in the middle, like a doughnut chasm.  

- Air /Gas Pocket :: Like an ore vien in appearance, except it's filled with either air (flavour "Fresh" or "Stale") which is basically empty space, or filled with the purple miasma, which disgusts the miner that hit it and all that breathe in... Maybe knocking him unconcious, after vomiting for a bit.

-- Crags :: Like the chasm, except going UP instead of down; again, looking like an ore vien, except with rough stone floors. If the weather is snowing or raining, this area would show that effect. Dragons and the like could enter from here, too. Crags too can be filled with some initial gas... If the purple stuff is denser then air, it would DEFINITELY collect in this. 6 years pass, loads of corpses, and just imagine the stink and how deep it'd reach into your fort.

- Hall :: A place which was constructed by some unknown and (possibly not to be) likely extinct species. All of it would be smoothed (maybe a few rough spots; 1 in 100 tiles) and well-crafted with pillars instead of smooth rock walls. All halls have traps though, sometimes pressure plates, sometimes stone-fall, sometimes weaponry traps. Maybe even flooding traps!

-- Statue Garden /Armory /Treasury /Bedroom + Barracks /Noble's Quarters /Farm :: Like the hall, except specialized, like the crypt, but for a specific task... Mostly strait-forward; Noble's room has lots of high-quality shit, the Armory lots of weapons (broken leather, never cloth; it's all rotted and mothy) The farm would be a room with dirt; that would never need flooding. Maybe even an ancient smithy with an adamantine bar /lava forge...    

-- Crypt :: Like the ancient halls, but dedicated to storing corpses /statues... Or the coffins could be empty. Each crypt would operate under it's own rules for when the dead rise (if there are any dead stored there) possibly even never. If the bodies in the crypt are used in items, those items would become cursed; as would any loot taken from the coffins with bodies.

- Water and Lava falls :: Like the one that's found at the river, except simply sitting in the middle of the rock; the liquid comming from above. Bridges built through it would be slippery (pushing dwarves to either side once in a while) or simply be outright destroyed; a weak wooden bridge doesn't cut it under the water pressure... Lava falls then would have only one purpose; to build an aquaduct to capture some of the falling liquid, and put it into nearby channels. Occasionally flooding just a few exposed tiles all around it.

Then the contents of those assorted areas:

- Treasure :: In varrying amounts, and dependent on the TYPE of area it's found in. Caverns could have loose rough gems, while ancient halls would have old (Circa <900s?) or possibly even very old (<400s?) coins... Upon which traders would shit themselves on seeing and give LOADS of stuff for them.

- Monsters' Lairs :: A single powerful dragon-like creature, or a horde of weaker, stupider enemies, like frog, ant, and snakemen. Even kobolds and goblins.

- Pits :: Like the channel, except naturally occuring, and varrying in size /shape. An ancient hall could actually be an ancient, grand channel.

- Refuse and skeletal /mummified bodies :: Found in crags (mountain goat remains; sure-footed my ass) and generally any place that was once prone to life in-general. Sitting there, or falling down... Crags could be considered one giant animal trap, and fresh bodies could always appear (obviously killing any dwarf they fall on at the time; LOL, NETHACK-STYLED DEATH!)

[ September 07, 2006: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]

[Capntastic]

I'm pretty sure this has already been slated to be added in at some point.   I'm really looking forward to see what Toady has in mind (Which could be said about essentially every other aspect of the game.)

[flap]

Very good suggestions I think. And very likely to already be somewhere in Toady's notes (well, I hope. But probably lost between thousands of others. This game might not be finished befor and few years. Assuming Toady don't get fed up with it. Donate ! Donate !)

[Abyssal Squid]

I like the idea of the crag, but it'd have to occur before the river due to dark adaptation problems.  Also, if there's going to be much variation in what you get, not only must every function (farmable land, refuse destruction, and fuel-less smelting) be present, it has to be readily accessable.  That basically means either making a single vertical band like the current features, or a whole bunch of them, as abundant as tin.