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[ral]

Being a bit dissatisfied with the lack of complete documentation on advanced world generation, I''ve decided to take it upon myself to improve the docs. See what I have so far here:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Advanced_world_generation

At this point I mostly know what most of the parameters do, and all the questions I can think of have been answered. Thanks!!!

(Note, I have deleted the questions that have been answered already.)

Editing help would still be appreciated If you have some time please look over the docs and fix any errors that you're reasonably sure of.

[tolkafox]

Being a bit dissatisfied with the lack of complete documentation on advanced world generation, I''ve decided to take it upon myself to improve the docs.

At this point I mostly know what most of the parameters do, but there are some that I'm unsure of the exact meaning/effect of and considering that I'm trying to write comprehensive docs I'm hoping some people can help me with the following questions:

• Site Cap after civ creation - What exactly is a "site"? Does this mean town/fortress/lair or what?

I thought this was just for the three primary civilizations, I don't think goblins and what not have a cap. Then again, I don't really know for certain as I might have 8 dark towers or I might have none.

• Percentage of beasts dead for stoppage - i'm assuming that this means history generation will stop early if this % of beasts die for any reason. please verify

I was under the assumption that this stops them from dying after a certain percentage?

• Cull Unimportant historical figures - Does anyone know what constitutes "unimportant"?

Do you really care about ast the sheeps adventure? I think it's every being who isn't a leader or doesn't take part in a major event.

• Min/Max Elevation - If I understand properly this does not actually impact the depth of the terrain, only the range of elevation levels available at the regional level. Please confirm/elaborate

You've got me, I've never messed with this and gotten a world to generate. Kept complaining that the world was too flat for mountains.

• Rainfall - What are the effects of rainfall besides filling murky pools, unhappy thoughts, and being required by certain biomes?

aquifers, lakes, rivers/brooks. Goes with drainage I'm sure. Drainage plays a big part here, of course I'm just assuming this I've never payed enough attention to say for certain.

• Temperature - What are the units here? They can't possibly be celcius. Are they degrees F or some arbitrary unit?

My guess would be that Toady made it up, but if you compare the temperature of ice and magma to real world data you could probably get an estimate. What's the temperature of humans?

• Drainage - What does drainage do other than being required by certain biomes?

[if you make a lot of drainage, you can get a pretty nice lake. I got a big lake that looked almost like an ocean once, but the info assured me it was a lake.[/b]

• Mesh Size - How exactly does mesh size work? Does a mesh size of 2x2 mean that the map is divided into 2x2 blocks each with weighted elevation/etc applied to blocks as a whole or what? What's the overall effect?

No clue....probably why my recent attempts at mucking around with this creates perfectly split biomes. Into squares.

• Minimum mountain peak number - What's the point of this parameter? I mean why does anyone care about peaks?

Makes more mountains available? More mountains means more different mountains.

• Partial/Complete Edge Oceans - How are partial and edge defined?

Not a clue :/

• Mineral Scarcity - I noticed a thread on this a while back. has anyone compiled the results of peoples' experiments?

Only info I have is that it can change you from having only one metal available per layer to having our usual multiple metals per layer.

• Titan number - After playing with this parameter a bit, I'm guessing that this actually impacts the total number of titans/megabeasts/semimegabeasts but does it include forgotten beasts?

Not a clue

• Night creatures - Can anyone confirm that setting this to zero eliminates bogeymen?

I think I read somewhere that that was a no

• Desired good/evil squares in small/medium/large subregions - What is a subregion exacly? A biome? And how large or small qualifies as large, medium, or small?

A subregion is a region within a region, or from what I've seen a region that can overlap other regions. Overlapping capable region would probably be a better name for it. Small is usually a good/evil area in one region, large is a larger area that can spread over many regions.

• Minimum initial/final X region count - What exactly is a region or subregion and how does it differ from a biome?

Regions aren't just temperature and whatnot, but depth/ceiling as well. I've been trying to understand them as well, confusing as hell but if you figure it out completely many people will write songs about you.

• Erosion Cycle Count - Does anyone know of any guidelines on what values of this result in what effects?

I haven't messed around with this one, but I definitely can.

• Periodically erode extreme cliffs - I'm assuming that turning this off results in more extreme cliffs, but does anyone know how it works exactly?

From what I can tell it's just random. Or procedurally generated :p Turning it lowers your chances of getting a volcano I think, but it depends on what it counts as an 'extreme' cliff. Is that a straight drop down or a 1-3 tile floor followed by a ramp down 10 times? If it's the latter, then no cliffs are still there.

• Orthographic percip. and rain shadows - I'm assuming this is related to mountain lift effects on wind but can anyone elaborate on why you might want to enable or disable this?

Not a clue...again

• Max number of subregions - What's a subregion and whats the practical impact of changing this?

Not sure what the impact would be, but see above for an attempt at describing them. Turning off subregions might actually be a good thing if you hate 200 Z level maps.

• Natural Cave Size - What are the units here? Tiles of empty space?

Probably, not sure exactly how you would figure this out.

• Allow Init Embark Options to Show Tunnels - What is this?

Never seen one myself, but I'm assuming it allows you to see where tunnels are. If there still is tunnels.
[/list]

I think that's about it. Everything else I'm pretty sure I understand pretty well, or can figure out from the list of rejection errors and other stuff on the wiki.

Your answers will help to reduce constant redundant questions, so thanks in advance for any help you can provide.
I can neither confirm nor deny this.

As you can see, I know very little about this and gave up a long time ago due to a lack of information. Most I've done with research is messing around with elevation and rain/drainage, I'll go play around a bit with it and see what I can come up with.

Probably not much help, but it's a start :?

[ral]

Thanks for the info. I guess I may end up having to do some experimentation.

Anyone else know any of the unanswered questions?

[white_darkness]

Percentage of beasts dead for stoppage ~ Controls the point at which history generation will stop.  If you set it to stop year 1050 and 80% for this figure and 80% of the megabeasts are killed in year 351, then history generation stops there otherwise it continues.  Not seen very often in the 31.xx series, but it did occur often in 40d, since in the 31.xx the megabeasts and semimegabeasts are apparently a lot tougher.

Temperature ~ Units are degrees Urist.

Metal scarcity ~ Only serious discussion with experimentation on this I'm aware of is here.  I won't deny I may be a bit biased.

Visible tunnels ~ Left over from 40d where dwarven and goblin civilizations would have their fortresses connected by tunnels.  You could get an adventurerer lost in those things.

The others, I'd have to do some serious experimentation and I haven't felt the urge, though occasional annoyance with the mysteries of the impact of the settings does prompt me.

[ral]

Thanks for the help.

Temperature ~ Units are degrees Urist.

This can't be right though, because the parameter defaults to something like 25 to 75 and the full allowed range is -1000 to 1000..... Everything would always be way below absolute zero....

[Coaldiamond]

Well let's see what I can contribute. Thanks for taking the time to update the wiki, by the way.

Being a bit dissatisfied with the lack of complete documentation on advanced world generation, I''ve decided to take it upon myself to improve the docs.

At this point I mostly know what most of the parameters do, but there are some that I'm unsure of the exact meaning/effect of and considering that I'm trying to write comprehensive docs I'm hoping some people can help me with the following questions:

• Site Cap after civ creation - What exactly is a "site"? Does this mean town/fortress/lair or what?
• Percentage of beasts dead for stoppage - i'm assuming that this means history generation will stop early if this % of beasts die for any reason. please verify

The last time I heard anything official, the program will begin checking megabeast % every year after the year 200. If the number of megabeasts killed reaches the set threshold, then world generation will stop regardless of what the "End year" was set to.

• Cull Unimportant historical figures - Does anyone know what constitutes "unimportant"?

From my personal experience, unimportant figures are people who suffer early deaths, never having offspring or killing anything named during world gen. Frequently, residents of goblin towers would get murdered by demons at a young age, and after culling 'unimportant' peoples, Legends mode would say something like that the demon had killed "a creature at Eviltower in the year 102"

• Min/Max Elevation - If I understand properly this does not actually impact the depth of the terrain, only the range of elevation levels available at the regional level. Please confirm/elaborate
• Rainfall - What are the effects of rainfall besides filling murky pools, unhappy thoughts, and being required by certain biomes?
• Temperature - What are the units here? They can't possibly be celcius. Are they degrees F or some arbitrary unit?
• Drainage - What does drainage do other than being required by certain biomes?
• Mesh Size - How exactly does mesh size work? Does a mesh size of 2x2 mean that the map is divided into 2x2 blocks each with weighted elevation/etc applied to blocks as a whole or what? What's the overall effect?

Based on my personal experience, mesh size determines how 'finely grained' changes will be between world squares. So a 8x8 mesh should produce large swaths of land with similar values for rainfall or elevation, etc. Smaller meshes allow more diversity within a given area than do large meshes.

• Minimum mountain peak number - What's the point of this parameter? I mean why does anyone care about peaks?
• Partial/Complete Edge Oceans - How are partial and edge defined?
• Mineral Scarcity - I noticed a thread on this a while back. has anyone compiled the results of peoples' experiments?

Yes, Urist Da Vinci did a great job. I don't have the link handy. Values are inversely porportional to what we care about: metal. A value of 300 = good abundance. A value of 10,000 = nearly empty rock.

• Titan number - After playing with this parameter a bit, I'm guessing that this actually impacts the total number of titans/megabeasts/semimegabeasts but does it include forgotten beasts?
• Night creatures - Can anyone confirm that setting this to zero eliminates bogeymen?
• Desired good/evil squares in small/medium/large subregions - What is a subregion exacly? A biome? And how large or small qualifies as large, medium, or small?
• Minimum initial/final X region count - What exactly is a region or subregion and how does it differ from a biome?

Based on my personal experience, regions are contiguous (or nearly so) terrains that have a single alignment (good/neutral/evil). A forrest region may encompass several forest biomes (wet tropical/dry tropical/temparate broadleaf/etc) Having only 1 mountainous region results in a single huge mountain range (assuming other mountain parameters are unchanged). Regions may share a border, but separate mountain regions do not physically connect to each other. Generally, more regions = more variety in the world.

• Erosion Cycle Count - Does anyone know of any guidelines on what values of this result in what effects?
• Periodically erode extreme cliffs - I'm assuming that turning this off results in more extreme cliffs, but does anyone know how it works exactly?
• Orthographic percip. and rain shadows - I'm assuming this is related to mountain lift effects on wind but can anyone elaborate on why you might want to enable or disable this?

You might want to disable this if you hate having badlands and/or deserts constantly appearing along one border of your mountain ranges.

• Max number of subregions - What's a subregion and whats the practical impact of changing this?
• Natural Cave Size - What are the units here? Tiles of empty space?

Based in part on 40d experiences, increase in values results in an increase in cave complexity, not in empty space. So you get more twisty passages and the cave complex stretchers across more Z levels.

• Allow Init Embark Options to Show Tunnels - What is this?

Dwarves and goblins will construct tunnels between their own settlements during world gen. If you want to see them on your embark screen the same way that you can see roads then change this parameter. In v0.31.xx, roads and tunnels are usually obscured by settlement boundaries on the embark screen. They were more visible in 40d.
[/list]

I think that's about it. Everything else I'm pretty sure I understand pretty well, or can figure out from the list of rejection errors and other stuff on the wiki.

Your answers will help to reduce constant redundant questions, so thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[RiderofDark]

Okay, nailing stuff that I know:
Site Cap after civ creation
Determines how many civilations are required. Each civ has its own biome requirements.

Dwarves require a "fair"-sized mountain range to flourish. I've noticed that when the elevation mesh emphasizes "low" elevation that there are few (single-digit numbers) dwarven civs. Altering that mesh to emphasize the highest setting on par to the rest will yield a couple dozen (although they won't necessarily survive world-gen.) I'm sure that the same applies to humans, elves, and goblins as those are the other civ-capable species.
Percentage of beasts dead for stoppage
Already been nailed.
Cull Unimportant historical figures
Important figures I'd imagine would be heads of state: generals, monarchs, liaisons, etc. Heroes that have vanquished semi- and megabeasts I'm pretty sure would also count towards it.
Min/Max Elevation
Oceans, wetlands, and deserts can only be created in elevations between 1 and 99. Mountains require 300 to 400.
Rainfall - What are the effects of rainfall besides filling murky pools, unhappy thoughts, and being required by certain biomes?
Grasslands won't generate if rainfall is higher than 33. Rocky Wastelands are probably high-elevation no-rainfall zones.
Drainage - What does drainage do other than being required by certain biomes?
Mesh Size
Easiest way to relate to mesh size is to look at wire mesh. The finer mesh has more inside it. The weight means that any given point on the mesh (where x-axis meets y-axis) has a chance to be that. Locking the mesh size to both extremes (like 5,0,0,0,5) will still have worlds with the mid-values. I've not experimented with extreme values such as 1000.
Minimum mountain peak number - What's the point of this parameter? I mean why does anyone care about peaks?
Having no mountain peaks doesn't affect world gen, although I'm not sure how it affects dwarven civs.
Partial/Complete Edge Oceans - How are partial and edge defined?
A guess here, but it's probably how much of the ocean is on the map. If, say, 5% of the ocean's tiles are off-map, then it's a partial ocean. If half of it is off-map, then it's a complete ocean.
Minimum initial/final X region count - What exactly is a region or subregion and how does it differ from a biome?
A region is an area that has the same designation (temp, rainfall, volcanism, etc.) Sub-regions are probably where each region overlaps other regions.
Erosion Cycle Count - Does anyone know of any guidelines on what values of this result in what effects?
Natural erosion on the world, before rivers and lakes and the like. I'm pretty sure that longer erosion cycle means flatter/smoother worlds. I've watched mountain ranges wither into forests (especially when the value is jacked up beyond the max.)
Max number of subregions - What's a subregion and whats the practical impact of changing this?
More sub-regions means more allowed diversity between areas and their resources.

Temperature is really, really weird. I've set my worlds to generate at exactly 75 for awhile now, but I still get tundra and cold environs.

[white_darkness]

Thanks for the help.

Temperature ~ Units are degrees Urist.

This can't be right though, because the parameter defaults to something like 25 to 75 and the full allowed range is -1000 to 1000..... Everything would always be way below absolute zero....

I remember seeing something somewhere else about there being a shift or the calculations not starting at 0U but some other number like 9960 and the variance setting the range.  Unfortunately, I don't remember where I saw that.

[ral]

Ok, I have attempted to document all parameters to the best of my knowledge:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Advanced_world_generation

I will update with information based on answers to questions as they come in. If you see anything marked "Verify" please let me know if you can verify the claim one way or the other.

[TolyK]

this looks mostly correct.
I thank you very much.

[ral]

Ok, massive updates including an image to illustrate mesh size and a graph to show mineral scarcity results:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Advanced_world_generation

Also, this page was merged into the above page and replaced with an index of tokens into the page above:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:World_token

World rejection troubleshooting was moved to here:
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:World_rejection

These could use some spelling/grammar checks and checks for bogus redlinks and such so please volunteer if you have any interest in adv wold generation. Also please verify anything marked and add any additional detail you can think of.

[RiderofDark]

For some info regarding Cavern Openness and Cavern Layer Density, this link has some !!SCIENCE!! I've done on it, since your writing is better than mine.

Also: Huh, I was wrong about some stuff. What is !SCIENCE! without failure and mistakes, eh?

[ral]

Awesome! I added your screenshots.
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Advanced_world_generation#Cavern_Parameters

I wouldn't be sure that you were wrong about anything because, at this stage, a lot of information is still unverified and I wouldn't consider the article to be 100% accurate.

Keep the info coming folks....

[Untelligent]

The reason the temperature defaults to between 25 and 75 degrees is that this is not the temperature value the region will get, but rather local variation. The "base" temperature for an area is derived from its latitude (and maybe elevation), and then the worldgen temperature parameter is applied to it to make it vary a bit. The local variation is fairly small compared to the base temperature, and the base temperature appears to be hardcoded, so changing the worldgen temperature parameter won't make a whole lot of a difference (unless you edit the worldgen param file directly and make it go way outside the 25-75 bound).

Minimum mountain peak number - What's the point of this parameter? I mean why does anyone care about peaks?

If you fiddle with worldgen parameters to get huge elevation differences, there seems to normally be a cap of about 100 z-levels between the highest and lowest section of ground on any given embark site (in my experience), resulting in a plateau if your mountain would otherwise be even higher. Peaks seem to ignore this cap; the game seems to want to force the mountain to be pointy.

[RiderofDark]

The reason the temperature defaults to between 25 and 75 degrees is that this is not the temperature value the region will get, but rather local variation. The "base" temperature for an area is derived from its latitude (and maybe elevation), and then the worldgen temperature parameter is applied to it to make it vary a bit. The local variation is fairly small compared to the base temperature, and the base temperature appears to be hardcoded, so changing the worldgen temperature parameter won't make a whole lot of a difference (unless you edit the worldgen param file directly and make it go way outside the 25-75 bound).

I've noticed that the temperature is always (?) a horizontal gradient; frozen north and scorching south. Like I said earlier, I set it to 75 min and max, I'll get four-tile-high tundra across the map (elevation is at 100 so I don't get oceans), but I'll still get everything from freezing to scorching. Given that, I've no idea how to approach testing temperature.