40d Talk:Biome

How do the stuff you can search for (rainfall, drainage, etc) interact with what biomes form in a region? Random832 01:46, 21 November 2008 (EST)

Very good question. I want lots and lots of forests in my worlds because I like elephants for their big droopy asses.--Maximus 04:22, 21 November 2008 (EST)

Apparently, every biome has some combintions of parameters valis. For example: low rainfall + high drainage = desert, and so on... But we need to gather complete list. Worldgen cookbook is a good place to search for info already known. and we can ask Toady--Dorten 06:45, 21 November 2008 (EST)

From the forums

Hello again.

Since it took me some time to figure these out, im posting them for everyone to save their time. Biome names are taken from wiki by comparing with map legend from here: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Map_legend , although there seem to be some discrepancies.

Sav and Volc are irrelevant to biomes in world editor.

By elevation:

 Water

Elevation: 1 - 99

 Low Mountain

Elevation: 300 - 332

 Mountain

Elevation: 333 - 365

 High mountain

Elevation: 366 - 400

Everything else Elevation: 100 - 299

By rain/drain:

 Hill

Rain: 10 - 66 Drain: 50 - 100

 Sand Desert

Rain: 0-9 Drain: 0-32

 Rock Desert

Rain: 0-9 Drain: 33-49

 Desert Badlands A

Rain: 0-9 Drain: 50 - 65

 Desert Badlands B

Rain: 0-9 Drain: 66 - 100

Second Desert Badlands biome (per wiki), occupying higher drain areas

 Grassland

Rain: 10-19 Drain: 0-49

 Savanna

Rain: 20-32 Drain: 0-49

 Marsh

Rain: 33-65 Drain: 0-32

The character is darker than marsh in wiki map legend and matches that of a swamp instead, but on wiki both marsh and savanna have the same characters, so im guessing this one actually is marsh.

 Shrubland

Rain: 33-65 Drain: 33-49

 Swamp

Rain: 66-100 Drain: 0-32

 Forest

(conifer icon, probably means temperate) Rain: 66-100 Drain: 33-100

Forest becomes Broadleaf in high temperatures, which makes it the only biome in world editor that is dependant on temperature. Im guessing that the character for Conifer actually serves for temperate conifer and broadleaf, and the broadleaf icon means tropical broadleaf forest, because thats what the rain/temp/drain stats suggest, and otherwise there would be no differentiation between temperate and tropical.

 Forest

(broadleaf icon, probably means tropical) Temperature: ~ 60-75 (varies a bit for different drain values) --Dorten 07:34, 21 November 2008 (EST)

I added this info to the page, but I notice there seem to be missing ranges; what happens if rainfall is 0-65 and drainage is 50-100? --FunkyWaltDogg 22:07, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

You missed the first rain/drain listing, Hill - I've added it. Darekun 05:07, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Biomes and stone layers

Biomes have no relation to the stone layer(s) that lie below them, beyond 
the first (which is often a type of soil.

How sure are we about this? VengefulDonut 12:26, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I haven't seen any correlation between rock layers and biomes. Other than granite which is often the base of mountains and is more common there. There are a few soil types that are found only in the ocean, but those are normally never encountered unless you extend your embarkation zone way out to sea.--Smjjames 14:10, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

No, VD is right - it's "apparent", it's intuitive, it's logical, it's that way in RL, but it's not conclusive nor is there any concrete supporting evidence (proving the absence of something - never easy). It was my post - I'll edit to reflect that.--Albedo 17:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, now that I think about it, diorite is often found in mountains, sometimes even as two layers on top of each other. According to Wiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diorite ), it is associated with mountain building and volcanism. I also find it associated with other igneous rocks in biomes and I rarely see diorite outside of either mountains or volcanic areas. This is going to require quite a bit of observation and note taking.--Smjjames 18:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Tropical

So is there a way to influence worldgen so that it produces more tropical biomes? Cos i have a hard time finding any on my worlds :( Or search tips? --Confused 02:09, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Tropical is a temperature band, so increase the temperatures, especially the min. You may also want to reduce the X and Y variance of temperatures, to get a steady Tropical throughout.

However, this kind of "uniformity tweak" often results in infinite map rejections - turn on map rejection logging, and if you get a bunch of rejections see what they are, and zero out the demands for the listed biomes or traits. The defaults don't seem to demand any glacier or tundra, so I don't think all-tropical will be a problem.

Searching for High Temperature should find any tropical biomes that did gen. Darekun 03:46, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Map rejections are most always easily dealt with simply by turning off the minimum/maximum of most of the "total # of x" options (only thing that I can't get around is having to make mountains for dwarven civs). As for tropical I'm honestly not sure if it's temperature dependent. It should be, but I'd need to test it. Edit: in fact, upon looking up "tropical" you can apparently have freezing tropical areas. Greep 08:18, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, the minimum/maximum entries is what I meant by "demands".

To get around needing mountains for dwarves, change their [START_BIOME:] in the entity def.

If you keep looking, you'll find conflicting data on "tropical". I couldn't figure it out from the wiki, so I genned a world and looked around it; it seems to be tightly-bound to temperature, and not latitude or anything. Darekun 04:01, 16 July 2009 (UTC)