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[Sphalerite]

I suspect that figuring out how to edit the save game files well enough to change the sky height will take much, much longer than genning a new site and starting over than scratch.  But if you want to do it that way, by all means do so!  Just be sure to tell us how to do it when you're done.  There are a lot of people who'd like to understand the structure of DF save game files.

[Berserkenstein]

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

"Above Ground    [LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:<number>]    The number of Z-Levels of air above the highest surface level."

[DrKillPatient]

You can just get your current world's seed and increase the sky level for that, then regen it, I've done such a thing and the world gen doesn't change aside from height.

[tolkafox]

Make the rest of the pyramid out of the ground. That's a bit more impressive than glass, isn't it?

This and the above, making things go up is one thing but carving things out of natural ground allows more freedom. I like to carve upside down towers (with the entrance at the top of the tower) and excavate the rest of the world down. You could just mine each wall out and replace it with glass after your done, and dedicate whole floors to tree farms. You can also import wood when you run out, caravans bring anywhere from 10-90 logs depending on how many logs you have.

[Valdrax]

Make the rest of the pyramid out of the ground. That's a bit more impressive than glass, isn't it?

This and the above, making things go up is one thing but carving things out of natural ground allows more freedom. I like to carve upside down towers (with the entrance at the top of the tower) and excavate the rest of the world down. You could just mine each wall out and replace it with glass after your done, and dedicate whole floors to tree farms. You can also import wood when you run out, caravans bring anywhere from 10-90 logs depending on how many logs you have.

See, scouring off 34 z-levels, killing my ocean and eliminating all my sand & clay, would make this project a massive nightmare.  Plus, the cavern layers 1 & 2 are less than 34 levels down, as is my main source of magma.

You can just get your current world's seed and increase the sky level for that, then regen it, I've done such a thing and the world gen doesn't change aside from height.

If this is true, then I lose a lot of work, but not the site itself.  I can live with that.
(Edit:  Any ideas for how to recapture that seed number if it isn't visible in the advanced worldgen pane anymore?)
(Edit 2:  Found it.  It's in gamelog.txt.)


So digging into site-##.dat is daunting with no experience at reverse engineering file formats.  It seems to be 100% binary, with no easy to parse text.  That surprises me; I guess unit data, like names and nicknames, is held elsewhere.  So far, I'm looking for large uniform areas of data to represent the existing 16 sky levels, reasoning that as empty space, they should be relatively uniform.  Unfortunately, no such luck.  For all I know z-levels aren't grouped together; it might be groups by x-planes or y-planes.  Or some other, alien, voxel-like schema.

OTOH, I just found where my various uninvited guests are saved in "world.sav" and what their poisons do.  Turns out I've got a pretty care-bear world -- only one creature is made of tough materials (chromite), and only one has a necrotic poison.  The rest are all flesh and weak materials with poisons that do no long-term damage.  This makes me want to keep the world even more...

I think I'm going to test the seed + extra z-levels idea.  Reading the local region data is so far an exercise in futility.

[Oliolli]

See, scouring off 34 z-levels, killing my ocean and eliminating all my sand & clay, would make this project a massive nightmare.

Not only that, it would also earn you the immediate approval of the entire community.

[Valdrax]

See, scouring off 34 z-levels, killing my ocean and eliminating all my sand & clay, would make this project a massive nightmare.

Not only that, it would also earn you the immediate approval of the entire community.

The temptation is kind of overwhelming when you put it that way, but I will resist for now.  Sanity demands it.

I've found the seed, proven that I can find the site again (this time with adequate z-levels), and now I'm messing about with megabeast populations in the hopes of tacking a roc-breeding project on top of everything else.  Then I may spend time experimenting with what else I can change without breaking the site.

...Damnation, you people really are going to actually try to tempt me to somehow cut off the ocean, shave down past two whole cavern layers, including a magma pipe, and somehow preserve my soil layers...  This is pointless, senseless, and literally weeks or a month of effort for no measurable gain over just starting fresh with a new site.

...

...Fine.  I'll keep the old save around for round 2 later.  I'd miss the old goblin drunk king anyway.

[Oliolli]

Sanity demands it.

Sanity? What is this, I don't even...

[Draco18s]

somehow preserve my soil layers...

Collapse them.  World-blocks (tiles?) that were there when you embarked will collapse downward if not supported and retain their material type and useability.

[magic dwarf]

just put a flat roof on it like the aztec pyramids, and then claim that that was what you were going for all along 

[Armok]

or claim tiles are higher than they are wide, and make it two steps inwards slope for evry level upwards.