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[CunningAllusionment]

It's been a few years since anyone has suggested it, but the realism of the world could be enormously improved by running world gen on a sphere and incorporating known plate tectonic models. Running a few billion years of mountain building and erosion, continental drift, collisions, uplifts, etc, would be amazing.

[KittyTac]

It's been a few years since anyone has suggested it, but the realism of the world could be enormously improved by running world gen on a sphere and incorporating known plate tectonic models. Running a few billion years of mountain building and erosion, continental drift, collisions, uplifts, etc, would be amazing.

I don't know about other poeople, but personally I don't want to spend 3 hours on world generation just for mildly improved results. And sphere worldgen... I think there either was a FotF reply about it, or the idea was bashed. IMO also not worth it.

[PatrikLundell]

Sphere worlds were discussed a few months ago (check back on the FotF). It was basically ruled out due to being a pain to deal with both for Toady and the player (you'd have to give up X/Y/Z coordinates and nice logical relations between coordinates).

Like KittyTac, I'm not convinced the efforts would be justified by the gains of plate tectonics.
What do you get, from a game play perspective, from plate tectonics that you don't get now, and can you get those same benefits through a cheaper process?
- One thing you don't have currently is wrinkled and slanted geo layers, and, as a result, you don't get pockets for petroluem/gas (although that could be added with the current mechanics).
- DF already has metamorphic etc. mineral types, so what you'd get is to have them placed "logically", but does "logic" placement add much in the way of immersion?

[IndigoFenix]

I think it would be more fitting for DF if regional geography was based on supernatural events instead, like conflicts between the gods.  That would help with immersion in ways that realistic plate tectonics would not, and probably be easier to program.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I think it would be more fitting for DF if regional geography was based on supernatural events instead, like conflicts between the gods.  That would help with immersion in ways that realistic plate tectonics would not, and probably be easier to program.

That's one of the key features of mythgen, apparently.