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« on: December 27, 2008, 12:18:41 pm »
So, there appears to be a pretty large problem: Make your embark region too large, and your FPS plummets, whether or not you interact at all with large parts of it. Also, you're limited by a pretty strict ceiling, floor, and walls.
So, solution: You always start in a single square. A 1x1 embark region, with only a few z-levels of sky and of undergroundness. Being close enough to various things, like an open chasm, a cave, or a goblin fortress, that could interact with you could cause them to either be revealed or added to the map but kept hidden. Of course, you would be capable of exploring on your own, which could lead to weird and irregular map shapes. If you wanted, you could abandon a still, unmoving, and unconnected area, removing it from your map. Of course, it would still have buildings and roads and items and workshops and giant 3D statues of badgers and such.
This would also allow you to build towers as high as your comp will allow (which might actually force you to explore immense surrounding area) and dig deep. But beware of delving too deep, for there lieth a leviathan cavern five miles under the surface inhabited by all manner of demonic and deadly beasts. In the center of it be a lake continents in size, with an icy chill to silence even a Balrog.
