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[foradan]

I have been experimenting with the world gen parameters for cavern shape: openness and passage density.  Min and max of each parameter are the same, so that there is on;y one possible value.  I use a 'Smaller Island' world with no water in the caverns (to make exploring them easy).  Embark happens in a 2x2 region with a group of 7 miners (see later), and I dig down and explore the top 2 cavern layers.

I tried 5 different parameter settings (O = Openness, P = Passage Density, H = sum of height of top 2 layers of caverns in z levels):

a) O 50  P 50   H = 33
b) O 0    P 50   H = 80
c) O 100 P 50   H = 99
d) O 50  P 0     H = 77
e) O 50  P 100  H = 16

a) as expected is a fairly average set of caverns, with some passages, and some open areas.

It is difficult to tell the difference between settings a) and b), but c) is different, with very large caves in each quadrant of the image, mostly open, but some with passages.

d) is also noticeable with no passages (as expected), while e) has passages filling all the cavern space.

I think openness has something to do with the shape of the caverns, while passage density controls how full of passages they are.  Both settings seem to influence the number of z levels, but I have only looked at one embark for each set of parameters, so I don't have enough statistics to tell how properly.

There were a few things I noticed relating to the lack of underground water:

0 water level in the caverns => no underground plants in the world => no underground plant products available at embark.  This includes ALCOHOL!.  I had to give one miner herbalist, and one miner brewing skill and collect some plants to make drink out of.  Not that I ran any of the embarks for more than a season, so I might have managed without any drink.

The 2nd level of caverns in c) had some underground trees, despite having no water.

I can upload the 5 sets of caverns to the DFMA next Wednesday if people are interested.

[Dave Mongoose]

Some interesting results!

I've been wondering if there is a way to influence the height of caverns (so they have taller ceilings): From what I've seen, openness seems to make them larger in the X and Y dimensions but not have much effect on the Z.

Do those H numbers include levels in-between the caverns?

[Djohaal]

Passage controls the ammount of those spaghetti-like areas, while openess controls the ammount of the more open cavern sections.

Open cavern sectoins also tend to be flat, so you get overall flatter worlds (magma sea at -40 or so)

[Melagius]

I thought passage controlled the number of passages between layers?

[Dave Mongoose]

I thought passage controlled the number of passages between layers?

Based on the name ("Passage Density") and some experience tweaking it, it definitely seems to control the passages within layers. It may also have an effect on connections between layers, but I've not really noticed those in Dwarf Mode (and I don't play Adventurer Mode often).

[ggeezz]

I've been trying to gen some open and flat caverns.  I don't have anything against the default caverns expect that I like to be able to see what's going on without changing the view so much.  So really I want "flat" more than "open." 

Right now I'm using Openness 90-100, Passage 0-10 and Water 0-20, but the caverns still aren't very flat.

Anyone have suggestions for more "flat" caverns?

[Djohaal]

I've been trying to gen some open and flat caverns.  I don't have anything against the default caverns expect that I like to be able to see what's going on without changing the view so much.  So really I want "flat" more than "open." 

Right now I'm using Openness 90-100, Passage 0-10 and Water 0-20, but the caverns still aren't very flat.

Anyone have suggestions for more "flat" caverns?

Set passage to 0 and leave water from 0 to 100 otherwise you can get dead zones with no water and plants.

[ggeezz]

Do the flatness of the caverns have anything to do with the flatness of the terrain above?

[Hyndis]

If you want big, open, flat caverns go with O 100 and P 0.

For water, you can create gigantic underground lakes that are almost completely flooded except for pillars of rock using W 100. W 0 is a dry wasteland.

For most nice caverns you probably want W 25-50. No higher than 75 though or you won't have much cavern space to use.