Dwarf Fortress > DF Suggestions

More underground features and biomes

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Abyssal Squid:
This has been brought up before, but I think it would be good to bring up again now that we know what the new underground environment looks like.Caverns: Pretty simple, just a mess of empty space underground, not naturally connected to the surface.  They can be fairly big, maybe up to 3x3 "region" tiles and 2 or 3 levels deep, with the deeper ones holding small pools of water.  Also common, maybe a 50% chance of generation  on every single world tile.  No inhabitants, they're just around to break up the monotony of the underground somewhat, and maybe give a source of water to anybody goofy enough to rely on them.Underground swamps: Tons of murky pools, a bunch of shrubs, and a handful of towercaps, all growing on tiles made of mud, in an area somewhat bigger than an underground lake.  Similar wildlife to an underground lake, river, or glade, but maybe with a hydra or something sometimes.Underground glade: Tons of towercaps, some shrubs, and a handful of murky pools, all growing on fungus grass tiles, in an area about the same size as an underground swamp.  Wildlife is generally of a drier sort than swamp/lake/river creatures, so few if any mud- and amphibianmen.  Maybe some sort of underground deer-equivalent would be appropriate.Underground forest: Like an underground glade, but really big.  Comprises a web of narrow fingers, maybe 2 region tiles thick and 5 apart, that ultimately spans something like 4x4 world map tiles.  Wildlife can come and go from the map edges, and can magically repopulate the way surface wild animals do.  Also, it's got shelves, like this:code:############
#  __   ####
###  \     #
############and so many variants that I could go on all day drawing them.  They'd be somewhat uncommon; maybe half of mountain tiles on the world map would have one, and the only way a non-mountain world tile could get one is if it runs into one from a mountain tile.
Underground lakes would be edged with a bit of underground swamp material, and underground rivers would be edged with a little of either swamp or glade.  Every world map tile has one of lake/swamp/glade, and every mountain tile has two of them, though not two of the same.

THLawrence:
Love the idea of more features. Anything to make digging more interesting then:
Oh, I hit more magnetite. Isn't that wonderful.Although the exact size, placement and features need to be determined before it should be added to the game. I love the idea of the underground cave system. Not all cave have to be habited, or connect to anything. The cave forests, swamps and glades seem to be just variations of each other but implementing any of them could be lots of fun.
As well the cave river should be more interesting. It is currently just a short river followed by a chasm. No off shoots or tributaries. This could be used to make them more interesting. Perhaps even create smaller underground waterways that connect lakes, ponds swamps, rivers and forests. I second the Idea for more cave features.

Abyssal Squid:
Of course glades and swamps are just variations on lakes, a glade is just a dried-up swamp, which is just a dried-up lake.  I just think it'd be neat to have features at various stages in their evolution, also to simply have more stuff underground, so that it's more likely to be run into.One of the problem with having huge cave systems is LOS in fortress mode.  I think underground forests can get away with being completely revealed (in your fortress area) because they'd be relatively open spaces, but a tortuous cave with tons of narrow squeezes and sumps would be hard to map.  Something I considered to help with that is having cavern systems be a bunch of separate caverns blocked off from each other by 1 tile, but that doesn't allow wildlife movement, or hint at where you should dig next.  Maybe a "crevice" tile type, which lets naked creatures through, but can't be seen through.Also, I agree that cave rivers should be a lot more interesting, maybe starting out from a ton of tiny tributaries like a brook underground, or starting off aboveground but being blocked off at intervals by walls of conglomerate or other aquifer rock.  Many of them should break out onto the surface again to form surface streams, blocked off by permiable rock at this end as at the front.  To keep people from just tracing a stream to its underground source and getting towercaps immediately, tie towercap and shrub growth to the discovery of a swamp or glade, including those bordering a river or lake.  They'd be found in the deepest areas of an underground stream, past several blockages and families of monsters.

SquashMonster:
I like the idea of more underground features, even though the existing ones largely only succeed in messing up my plans.A few random ideas:
- small and large caverns
- giant fungal growths.  Imagine a twisted tower of towercap wood complete with empty areas and giant parasitic beetles
- giant mole dens.  Or any other burrowing creature
- old tombs
- old fortresses.  These would be a random collection of rooms in 3D space, with some hint of why nobody lives there anymore.  Maybe it's crawling with undead, maybe demons.  Maybe all the rooms are submerged.  Maybe there's no fortress left, just room-shaped obsidian squares.
- golems.  These would be single empty squares with a scary creature inside of them, which wakes up as soon as you mine it out.

Armok:
Seconded.

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