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Author Topic: Is it possible to have a ground z-level difference of more than 100?  (Read 1338 times)

Untelligent

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Re: Is it possible to have a ground z-level difference of more than 100?
« Reply #15 on: July 19, 2010, 01:55:12 pm »

I'm not actually looking for sheer cliffs, just as much height as possible.

After messing around with the world painter a bit more, it seems that the elevation brush doesn't just paint a fixed elevation, it paints a range of possible elevations. Entering a brush value actually results in two values, displayed as, for example, 200/125; the first value is the one you entered, and the second value is the same as the first for 100 or below (i.e. underwater) and lower when above sea level. Although I'm too lazy to figure out an equation for this it seems that the difference between the two maxes out at 150 for values above 300.

I imagine this has already been worked out by half a dozen threads a long time ago when the world painter was first created. And something about that paragraph... doesn't seem quite right. Maybe it's because mountains start at 300 and a wodge of 400/250 elevation should contain some not-mountain by my logic, which it doesn't. Hmm...


Anyway, it's not going to be easy to get the kind of mountains I want; not on an embark with a reasonable horizontal size, at least. Might be able to get something decent by putting some high mountains next to a deep ocean, though.



EDIT: Got a spot with a mountain 86 levels above the ground and an ocean trench 69 levels below the ground, for a total of 155 or so. The ocean seems to be so deep as to extend into the "fog of war" in the cavern regions, though, so I don't think the ocean counts toward giving me more total room. At least I don't have to worry about having all that water on my map now.

I suppose that map would make a glorious screenshot with a 3D visualizer, though. Had some neat cliffs and plateaus. I'll store that one in a safe folder for later so I don't actually delete it while I wait for Obsidian to be finished.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2010, 02:35:18 pm by Untelligent »
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cephalo

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Re: Is it possible to have a ground z-level difference of more than 100?
« Reply #16 on: July 19, 2010, 03:02:36 pm »

Have you tried messing with this value in world_gen.txt?

[LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:15]

I'm not sure what the limit would be, I haven't tested it.
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Untelligent

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Re: Is it possible to have a ground z-level difference of more than 100?
« Reply #17 on: July 19, 2010, 03:12:16 pm »

Aye, that gives you extra height above the highest ground level (though I prefer to change the worldgen parameters in-game rather than through the init file). You can get up to 100 extra levels with that option. I'm trying to get lots of height between the lowest and highest ground level, though.

New personal record: just got a 126-high mountain, which happened to have a mountain peak in it. With the underground I got and the extra sky, that's a total of 419 levels. Getting there, but I'm going to have to start putting more space between the cavern levels.
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languard

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Re: Is it possible to have a ground z-level difference of more than 100?
« Reply #18 on: July 19, 2010, 03:13:29 pm »

Have you tried messing with this value in world_gen.txt?

[LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:15]

I'm not sure what the limit would be, I haven't tested it.

Limit is 100.  All this controls is the amount of empty space above the ground, which is not what the OP is looking for.  Still handy if you want to build oversized towers though :)

Edit: meh, ninja'd  :P
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Untelligent

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Re: Is it possible to have a ground z-level difference of more than 100?
« Reply #19 on: July 19, 2010, 03:17:41 pm »

Well, it isn't technically "not what I'm looking for"; rather, it's something very important for my goal, but alas something I already know about. Like trying to make a cherry pie, only you have the crust and most of the ingredients but a lecherous orangutang stole your cherry trees last night and you need some new ones. Also the cherry pie is really really tall.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2010, 03:23:48 pm by Untelligent »
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Solace

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Re: Is it possible to have a ground z-level difference of more than 100?
« Reply #20 on: July 19, 2010, 03:27:59 pm »

Tried embarking into a spire? They're not useful, but they are tall.
I don't know what you mean by spire, but I get tall embarks by starting on a large, white grey mountain triangle next to normal ground. Among other things.

EDIT: Oh, the adamantine thing? Already said that doesn't count.
No, I mean a spire. It's like a volcano or cave, you see it in the embark screen, you can only  have one in each of the embark areas, and so on. By default a medium region has 3 volcanoes and 12 spires, I usually make it more like 100 volcanoes and 5 spires because I like volcanoes and spires are kinda useless. :P

EDIT: Further clarification, in case you have trouble finding it. It's got a volcano symbol, but colored like a mountain instead of red. It's basically a super-tall mountain. I forget how tall offhand, but it's a lot.
« Last Edit: July 19, 2010, 03:33:03 pm by Solace »
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Untelligent

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Re: Is it possible to have a ground z-level difference of more than 100?
« Reply #21 on: July 19, 2010, 03:58:49 pm »

Oh, THOSE things. Yeah, the game generally refers to them as peaks or mountain peaks, maybe that's why I was confused.

The 40d wiki claims the peaks are where the elevation hits 400, which is incorrect. However -- and mind you, I haven't tried this enough for it to be conclusive -- it DOES seem that if you embark on the peak, the game forces the mountain to taper off to a point instead of capping it at a plateau at 100 levels above the lowest part of the ground. Might come in handy, I'll try a few things with this later.
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The World Without Knifebear — A much safer world indeed.
regardless, the slime shooter will be completed, come hell or high water, which are both entirely plausible setbacks at this point.
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