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v0.31:World generation
| This article is about an older version of DF. |
To begin playing Dwarf Fortress, you must first create a world to play in. At the game's main menu, you can choose to either Create New World! or Design New World With Advanced Parameters.
This article will cover basic world generation using the first option.
- For information on advanced parameters, see Template:L.
Basic World Generation Menu
The basic world generation menu looks like this.
Parameters
Each of the parameters is described below.
World Size
"This controls the size of the world map" as it says at the bottom of the screen when this option is highlighted. Also at the bottom of the screen is shown the dimensions of the world that will be generated given the currently selected size.
History
"This is the length of pre-generated history." The number of years for the currently selected length will be shown in the lower right. Essentially this means the amount of time that civilizations will have to grow, attack each other, and starve to death. It also determines the amount of time that megabeasts will have to roam and kill things, get killed, etc. The longer the history, the more historical events will be generated.
Setting this parameter to a higher value will cause world generation to take longer as more events need to be determined. Setting it to a very low value is ok, but will reduce the size of civilizations.
Higher values will also increase the number of abandoned (sacked) towns and fortresses which can matter for adventure mode, but doesn't matter that much for fortress mode. Recommend value for worlds you plan to use for adventure mode are Short or Medium.
Maximum Number of Sites
(Need detailed information.)
Number of Beasts
This controls the number of megabeasts such as dragons, titans, etc, that exist at the beginning of the world. They can later die (get killed) due to historical events, so the longer the history the more likely some of these will die.
The number of beasts does not appear to impact how often your fortress will be attacked by beasts in fortress mode. In adventure mode it means it will be easier to find more megabeasts. If set very low then you may actually run out of beasts during a game.
Since beasts can attack civilizations, more beasts may reduce the population of the world a little bit.
Natural Savagery
Increasing this value increases the number of Template:L Template:L in the world. In short, this means that more areas are likely to have aggressive animals which may try to kill dwarves immediately upon embark and attack adventurers more often while traveling.
New people may want to just leave this at the Medium setting (which isn't that hard) or set it lower. Turn this up to make the game more Template:L.
Mineral Occurrence
This is a rather important parameter for fortress mode. Sparse means that many areas will only have one or two types of metal ore, if any, which can be very annoying to people until the economy is fully implemented and other metals can more easily be obtained via trade. New players should probably turn this up to Frequent.
In adventure mode this can impact the types of metals that civilizations have access to, which can affect the types of items that are available in shops. Therefore it may not be a bad idea to turn this up for worlds in which you plan to play adventure mode games.
The Generation Process
Once your satisfied with your parameter selections, hit y to proceed.
The screen will show something like this:
The name of the world will be random in basic world generation mode.
Rejections
You may notice that during various phases of the world generation process worlds will be rejected, leading to the rejection count going up and the process starting over. This happens because certain factors such as number of mountain tiles can't be determined ahead of time by the generation process. Instead worlds are generated with parameters which are likely to produce worlds that can support a required number of mountains, and are then checked to make sure they meet the criteria. For example, the random generation of the topography of the land may result in too few high elevation areas to place mountains.
In practice you don't need to worry about this for basic world generation because the preset hidden values that determine acceptable criteria are designed to decrease the chance of rejections, but certain combinations of basic parameters (especially with very large worlds) may make it harder for the process to generate "acceptable" worlds. Basically what this amounts to is that world generation will just take longer for certain parameter selections that are more difficult for the generator to satisfy.
History
Once the world itself has been generated, the process of generating historical events will begin. This can take a very long time for large, heavily populated, worlds with very long 2,000 year histories.
Finishing
Once everything is complete, you can take a look around using the directional keys. (Using Shift+directional key will make this faster.) If you find yourself confused about what all the characters actually mean, you are not alone. Check out the Template:L. At this point you can either abort the process or hit Enter to save the world to disk.
Unfortunately the post-generation-process viewer doesn't give you a way to view much information about the world, so unless you really hate the look of the map or something you probably want to just save the world and load it up in Template:L mode to view more information.
Getting More Advanced
At first you will probably be satisfied with basic world generation, but later you may find that you want to create worlds with specific more extreme conditions. Check out the documentation on Template:L for help with this.
Exceptions on World Gen
(needs formatting, but this can help determine how to get the terrain types you want)
The World Generator is having trouble placing...
Mountain peaks
rejection log example: Not enough peaks: 1<3 Check your maximum elevation parameters.
- Can the elevation 400 be placed enough times to provide space for your peaks?
- Check your preset elevations for the elevation 400.
- You must have at least as many of these highest elevation points as you are requiring peaks.
Alternatively, reduce the number of peaks required by the parameters.
Mid-level elevations.
- Your worldgen parameters must allow elevations between 100 and 299 for this.
- Check the parameters governing elevation frequencies.
- Or simply reduce the number of mid-level elevation squares required.
- Check the parameters governing elevation frequencies.
Low elevations
Your worldgen parameters must allow for enough elevations between 0 and 99 for this.
High elevations
Your worldgen parameters must allow for enough elevations between 300 and 400 for this.
Ocean squares along the edges
Your worldgen parameters must allow for enough elevations between 0 and 99 for this.
- If that doesn't work, simply reduce the number of edge oceans required.
rainfall/drainage/savagery/volcanism in the manner specified by the parameters
Check the parameters governing these features. Reduce the number of high, medium or low squares required.
Volcanoes
Check your maximum volcanism value.
- Volcanoes can only form in areas with 100 volcanism.
- As such, you must have at least as many areas with 100 volcanism as you do desired volcanoes.
If all else fails, reduce the number of volcanoes required by the parameters.
Swamps and marshes
Make sure your parameters and presets can support mid-elevation, mid-to-high rainfall, low drainage, non-freezing areas.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of swamp squares and regions required by the parameters.
Deserts and badlands
Make sure your parameters and presets can support mid-elevation, very low rainfall, non-freezing areas.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of desert squares and regions required by the parameters.
Forests
Make sure your parameters and presets can support mid-elevation, high rainfall, high drainage, non-freezing areas.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of forest squares and regions required by the parameters.
Mountains
Make sure your parameters and presets can support high elevation areas.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of mountain squares and regions required by the parameters.
Oceans
Make sure your parameters and presets can support low elevation areas.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of ocean squares and regions required by the parameters.
Glaciers
Make sure your parameters and presets can support mid-elevation, very high drainage, freezing areas.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of glacial squares and regions required by the parameters.
Tundra regions
Make sure your parameters and presets can support mid-elevation, low-to-mid drainage, freezing areas.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of tundra squares and regions required by the parameters.
Grasslands
Make sure your parameters and presets can support mid-elevation, low-to-mid rainfall, low-to-mid drainage, non-freezing areas.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of grassland squares and regions required by the parameters.
Hills
Make sure your parameters and presets can support mid-elevation, low-to-mid rainfall, high drainage, non-freezing areas.
Rivers
Make sure your parameters and presets allow as many mountain squares as you are requiring river start points.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of rivers required by the parameters.
Too many subregions
Make sure your parameters and presets aren't so variable that biomes change frequently.
- If that doesn't work, increase the number of subregions permitted by the parameters, up to the cap.
Mountain caves
Make sure your parameters and presets allow as many border mountain squares as you are requiring mountain caves.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of mountain caves required by the parameters.
Low-lying caves
Make sure your parameters and presets allow as many mid-elevation squares as you are requiring low-lying caves.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of non-mountain caves required by the parameters.
Civilizations
Make sure your parameters and presets offer enough low-to-mid savagery, evil/good appropriate, biome appropriate squares to establish sites.
- High savagery (66+) blocks civilization placement -- make sure your parameters and presets offer at least small pockets of low-to-mid savagery areas.
- If you have very few biome types and are placing good or evil regions, they'll often crowd out the civilizations as well.
- If that doesn't work, reduce the number of civilizations required by the parameters.
The world generator couldn't find any civilization definitions
This problem cannot be resolved by continuing, so you should either abort or skip all rejects for a legends-only game.
The world generator is having trouble placing a controllable civilization
Make sure your parameters and presets have adequate squares of this kind.
- Dwarves, for example, require non-evil, non-good, unsavage mountain squares that aren't surrounded by the ocean.
- If that doesn't work, remove the requirement of a controllable civilization from the parameters, which will restrict you to adventurers (assuming an appropriate civilization is placed)
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