Bay 12 Games Forum

K. I've been testing this method on and off much of the day, and unfortunately I have to say I am unable to get it to work reliably. Best case scenario, it generates something that is exactly as if the stone had been replaced by clay. Furthermore I've also been able to generate working maps made out of sand. However, the problem is, I am unable to get it to work reliably. About half of the time it either does not generate surface minerals or does not generate deep minerals, which means ores will be 30+ z-levels deep or in the most superficial layers only. It can create massive veins of everything or almost no minerals at all. It occasionally generates bugged, weird soil types that turn into each other when you touch them, such as sand that becomes clay when dug. This may also be due to inconsistency on my part; I just started trying different things out randomly and didn't keep notes, and it is possible what I did initially is not what is below. The below does work for some definition of "work", though.

While I really enjoy the challenge, I'm out of time and my day off is almost gone. I won't work on this anymore. So here's my suggestions:
a) I can generate a fort for you that works, your choice of name, on a biome of your choice, and post a save with an active embark
b) You can try your luck on a few embarks and see what happens
c) Somebody who knows better can maybe make this work every time
d) Back to the vaporstone or some other idea

My notes:
To mimic gem, ore and stone distribution with distribution of different types of usable clay, in inorganic_stone_gem and inorganic_stone_mineral:
1. Replace all "ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:" with "ENVIRONMENT:"
2. Replace all ENVIRONMENT_SPEC arguments with corresponding LAYER (e.g. GRANITE -> IGNEOUS_INTRUSIVE), except when ENVIRONMENT_SPEC argument was a metallic ore, then revert to ENVIRONMENT_SPEC:ORE. Remove doubled tags.

To remove layer and non-ore stones, in inorganic_stone_mineral:
3. Set all not usable ore minerals to DEEP_SURFACE only
In inorganic_stone_layer:
4. Remove all layer tags, set all layer stones to DEEP_SURFACE only

To create a world made only out of clay containing the above defined distribution of ore, in inorganic_stone_soil:
5. Give all clays IS_STONE
6. Fire clay is now IGNEOUS_INTRUSIVE and IGNEOUS_EXTRUSIVE
7. Clay and sandy clay are now SEDIMENTARY
8. Clay loam and silty clay are now METAMORPHIC

In material_tempelate_default
9. Gaseous soil is now "dust clouds" and not "boiling magma"

The only stone available on the embark site is in the form of (usable) metallic ore. Ores follow approximately the same rules of distribution as in vanilla DF: alluvial ores are still found exactly where they were before, and others will be found roughly where they were before, i.e. sedimentary layers have lots of iron, etc. Obsidian still lines magma pipes and can still be made by casting. Cave vegetation should grow everywhere once caverns are breached. So does surface vegetation - clay mountains (mounds?) are not bare, they are covered in trees.
1. Find site and embark. The first thing you'll probably notice is lot of things flash in a psychedelia of colors and they actually are every material in the universe at once. Don't be hypnotized by them, and for the love of Armok don't touch anything, just save and exit immediately.
2. Go to data > save > region folder > raw > objects > inorganic_stone_soil.txt and manually remove both IS_STONE and SOIL tokens (sic!) from the following: fire clay, silty clay, sandy clay, clay loam and clay. Save file. You only need to do this once per embark.*
3. Resume from save and play normally. The world sure looks boring now. If you want to start a new fort, reverse step 2, then go to step 1. If you want to gen a new world, reverse step 2 but only add IS_STONE, copy these raws over your defaults, gen (ignoring the occasional crash), add SOIL tokens to fully reverse step 2, and go to step 1.

Plz advise.