Bay 12 Games Forum

It does affect the world gen script.
Though noticing it can be rather hard to do. A good way to see how it works is set the 0-20 elevation range as high as it can go, and the 80-100 as high as it can go, with a larger mesh size. What happens is you get mountains located a short distance away from oceans all over the map with a large mesh area.

What the weight does is tell the game what is desired to be clumped together in one area, and the mesh size determins how big of an area to clump things in. And for those looking for magma with sedimentary layers you would set the volcanism mesh weightings the same as the ocean example above. Though if you want cliff like areas, the elevation weights needs to be the 20-40 and 80-100 that are as high as possible.

Thinking about how mesh weights work, you can cause some really bizzare areas to spawn, like an evil desert right in the middle of a Good forrest, thats next to a glaicer. Think of the possibilities as to what you can create. Just make sure to set desired tiles of stuff you don't want to 0 otherwise might get a lot of rejections.

I beg to differ on needing an older version to do it. As I use 40d and I have gotten quite good at getting cliffs to show up. The problem with most of the cliffs are ramps all over the place. Which is what most people don't like. Canyons can be a bit harder to run across due to how they get formed, but I think with the right settings, could get them to show up more.

Try setting your world gen paramaters with low elevation variance, like around 100. Set elevation mesh to as large as you can, and weight the 0-20 to as high as possible, and the 80-100 as high as possible, leaving the rest at 1. Make sure your erosion counts are low, and periodic erosion of steep cliffs is off. Just applied this elevation change to a freshly genned world, and found a spot with 100 some odd z levels, with a brook on the bottom of a upside down u shaped area, the sides of the u do not go up high, but the top of the thing is way up there.

*New discovery*Setting 20-40 as high as possible, and leaving 0-20 at 1, creates bigger rivers and is more in tune with what you are looking for. While doing 0-20 creates more oceans. The 20-40 tends to have nice river canyons along any river, the fun is finding one that has everything else you would be looking for. Always nice coming across 5-7 z-levels of a sheer cliff right above carp infested waters.

Then adjust river start locations based off of preferences, high number of start locations followed by a less amount of rivers tends to cause some nice spots as well.Though how the rivers works, has got me to thinking that a high erosion count, with the periodic erosion of steep cliffs off, would cause some interesting ravines. As it will run how ever many rivers you tell it to up till erosion is done, then cut them back to your desired amount. And the ones that get cut back tend to end up as brooks I have noticed.

Then after the world is generated, you need to know where to look for them. The Cliff indicator on the embark screen is rather mis-leading, I have found. What it tells you is how much the elevation on that one tile changes. For some of the more interesting cliffs I have come across, the cliff screen has showed ones or 2's. The key lies in the relative elevation screen. You want large changes in the relative elevation screen, along with a low cliff indicator.

I run a moddified version of DF most of the time now, but I could go and find a good world in vanilla, if people really wanted.

Try looking for areas with multiple branches on the biggest river you can find.  As the branches tend to come in at different heights, which can result in a nice cliff. If it happens to be next to a major river, even better.

I have run across a few spots that have about a 3-4 z level drop right into a fish infested river, that is 30-40 tiles across itself.

And the extreme cliffs does not always reveal good cliffs. Also look at relative elevations, they can reveal some otherwise missed cliffs.

Rock crystal's can show up about anywhere, but they do compete with every other gem out there. Best thing to do is cross your fingers and pray to find them.

Something I just stumbled on is magma pipes can cause some rather interesting cliffs as well. As found a 5z-level sheer cliff area that looks similar to Pac-man, located right above a hidden magma pipe. Though since this is in a DF folder I am toying round with modding in, wont be able to really share it.

As the game can create a sheer wall all the way up from the magma pipe, even if the pipe is hidden underground. So there is something else to keep in mind when looking for those elusive sheer cliffs. Look for magma pipes on tiles with steep cliffs, and an in an area with changing relative elevation. As they can result in odd cliffs.

Hmm... Looks like I am going to have to try a couple of mini-hourglasses first to see how to get the flow rate I want. All thanks to pressure, disruptive diagonals, and number of flow openings at the bottle neck part.

As I imagine a designs of(W= floor space water can flow, x = wall,)

WxW  Wxx
xWx   xWx
WxW  xxx

would have much different fill speeds, not to mention just letting it drop as well.

This should prove interesting when the constructions start.

I can say this will certainly be fun to build, of course gonna start with a small water one, then set about finding a map to build a huge one on. After all may as well take my time building the real one and have things worked out so I don't flood the area with magma on accident, though not above letting a troll or something else cause that...