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Author Topic: Xenosynthesis and magic fields  (Read 53679 times)

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #75 on: February 13, 2011, 05:01:51 pm »

"Clown magic", whatever flavor you want to give it.

Who knows, maybe it could be a procedurally chosen sphere that clowns possess each game. 

Surprise! Sun clowns crack fly up from the pits, beware its nuclear radiation!

Surprise! Nature clowns fly up from the pits, beware its lethal vegan cooking!
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Darvi

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #76 on: February 13, 2011, 05:30:31 pm »

Surprise! Sun clowns crack fly up from the pits, beware its nuclear radiation!
No comment :X

Quote
Surprise! Nature clowns fly up from the pits, beware its lethal vegan cooking!
Like these?
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #77 on: February 13, 2011, 06:28:20 pm »

That can work.

Also, I think I've found some artist's renditions of a three-legged demon raven who eats and spits out suns as a superpower:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
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Gatleos

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #78 on: February 13, 2011, 06:38:17 pm »

Hell is badass, but Touhou characters attacking your fortress is just going too far. We can't repel moe of that magnitude!
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Darvi

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #79 on: February 13, 2011, 06:39:26 pm »

As I said. No comment. :X

Hell is badass, but Touhou characters attacking your fortress is just going too far. We can't repel moe of that magnitude!
Don't worry, as long as it isn't Yuuka or Kogasa we're totally safe from Moe.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #80 on: February 13, 2011, 06:45:47 pm »

Don't worry, as long as it isn't Yuuka or Kogasa we're totally safe from Moe.

Nature sphere (and you thought flowers were weak?), and... umm... umbrella sphere?  (Trickery, maybe?)
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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Darvi

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #81 on: February 13, 2011, 06:49:29 pm »

Rain.

And now I'm trying to describe a Karakasa as a FB >_>
« Last Edit: February 13, 2011, 06:51:09 pm by Darvi »
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #82 on: February 15, 2011, 04:06:41 pm »

OK... as much fan as we've been having, let's re-rail this topic for a second, since I'm getting closer to the part where I will need to make a decision on the way the suggestion thread goes on this...

I'm worried that we won't have enough meaningful ways to impact "magic energy fields" in the game right now to base underground farming off of it alone.  Sure, there can be a reduction in the number of spheres, and a use of the completely sight-unseen religion system might be able to sway it, plus use of artifacts, use of Digging Too Deep and just plain environmental/static energy fields can work, but I'm thinking that maybe we can move towards something that fits the farming necessity to generate and exploit magic energy fields to the actual farming system...

Basically, what if we just plain made some of the plants (and sure, why not, animals) that can grow in the environment either magic-fountains or magic-sinks?

We could have, for example, skull berries that generate "evil" or "undead" sphere magic in the area, while "death stiller blooms" might be flowers that drain away undead sphere magic, and can gradually change a biome from "evil" or "undead sphere dominant" to something more neutral.

Alternately, it could be even more vague, and some sort of pest might carry the magic with it.  Ghast flies might cause evil/undead spheres and certain plants and animals attract them, while other plants and animals repel the creatures.  If enough visit, the area becomes undead sphere-dominant, while if enough leave, the area loses that effect.
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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Solace

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #83 on: February 15, 2011, 11:53:00 pm »

Plants or some animals would make a good magic sink, since we do need a sink if we're gonna stop sources of magic from ending up infecting the entire map like low-grade radiation. There could even be "blank template" things that grow differently depending on what magic they absorb... for that matter, all the currently randomly-generated nightmare creatures could be the magic sinks, if given a few centuries to grow. They could even reproduce, maybe starting off as little grubby things (purring maggots or fluffy wamblers?), that grow in various ways as they absorb stuff. In fact, if the center of the planet could be the overall magic-sink of the game, HFS itself could just be the mutant offspring of all the magical waste being produced.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #84 on: February 16, 2011, 12:03:34 am »

In fact, if the center of the planet could be the overall magic-sink of the game, HFS itself could just be the mutant offspring of all the magical waste being produced.

That's a fun idea...

Slade is dense because of all the depleted magic it stores...
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
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Tristan Alkai

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #85 on: September 13, 2014, 07:23:31 pm »

Hi everyone.  I’m fairly new to DF (started my first fort a month or two before the v0.40.01 release, after extensive study of the wiki) so this is going to be big, and answer lots of people at once. 

I have also considered this issue, and independently arrived at the xenosynthesis conclusion (though not the word) before I found the forums. 

The basis comes back to Conservation of Energy, which NW_Kohaku made brief reference to in the original post, and somewhat more extensive reference to in the parent “Improved Farming” thread.  The basic issue is that hard science methods of energy transfer do not supply nearly enough input to the caverns to support the abundant and diverse flora and fauna observed.  There must be something else going on.  The proposed solution was a magical “xenosynthesis energy” (XE) that cavern plants can use instead of light. 

As described, XE is sphere-aligned, and most things that use it can only use certain spheres.  It is also ambient in the environment: plants and animals put into and draw from a common “pool” of XE associated with the location itself, rather than any particular object in it. 

I actually arrived at the magical energy source by way of [NO_EAT] creatures like undead.  To respect Conservation of Energy, such creatures need to consume something to support their activities.  Cavern plants using the same energy source was a development from that. 

As I understand it, xenosynthesis is a way of supporting and enforcing Conservation of Energy.  This description has implications for how it should be implemented. 
1. Cavern plants consume XE as they grow.  This isn’t to say that cavern plants can’t generate XE, but, to respect Conservation of Energy, they must consume (much) more than they produce.  When they do produce XE, it may often be of a different sphere than what they consumed (for example, nether caps might consume XE of sphere Volcanoes and produce XE of sphere Frost or Caverns). 
2. More precisely, xeno plants consume XE.  Xeno plants have the distinction of being able to grow without light (underground in the caverns), but its presence will not necessarily interfere.  In other words, cavern plants are xeno, but the reverse is not necessarily true.  On the other hand, “light” also serves as a proxy for outside weather, which includes wide variations in temperature and humidity, much stronger wind, precipitation impacts (rain, snow, and hail) and other effects that xeno plants, adapted to the gentler conditions underground, may find overly hostile. 
3. Certain creatures (including, but not limited to, [NO_EAT] ones) will also consume XE.  I see a solution involving most of the same code as the current [GRAZER] token: the creature consumes one point of XE from the region to reduce “hunger” by an amount that varies with the creature.  For that matter, the current [CARNIVORE] and [BONECARN] tags could also work with hunger just as easily, but that’s a matter for another thread. 
4. The suggestion has been raised (rather extensively on page 1 of this thread) that certain player (or, more generally, civilization) actions should align the area to relevant spheres (in other words, generate XE of those spheres).  Semi- and megabeasts might also generate XE for their spheres.  Once deities are implemented better, temples and/or sacrifices to a deity might also generate XE for spheres claimed by that deity.  This is all well and good, but nowhere near enough to sustain the cavern biosphere. 
5. On page 6 of the thread, NW_Kohaku raised the idea of making certain plants magic fountains and magic sinks.  This is something I can work with.  Cavern plants and certain creatures are the magic sinks, as described above. 
6. On the other hand, surface plants have access to mundane sunlight.  With this source of energy, they can produce more XE than they consume.  They become the (primary) magic fountain that sustains the caverns. 
7. Cavern life may include fungi, which consume biological material and could also produce more XE than they consume.  Certain animals may similarly help. 
8. With both sources and sinks inherently present, a large amount of XE on the surface will tend to produce or attract a correspondingly large amount of things that consume it: xeno plants will grow more vigorously, and animals will move in (and, over the long term, both will produce more offspring).  This negative feedback means that, as a rule, tilting the ecosystem’s magical alignment is quite difficult, and generally will not occur without a deliberate attempt by the player.  I consider this a good thing: players that don’t want to deal with this usually don’t have to. 
9. With the sources and sinks established, there must be some implementation of how XE gets from the surface to the caverns.  In partial acknowledgement to jseah (page 1), my idea is that each region tile (48x48 game tiles), or possibly a larger area, has a counter for how much XE it contains.  XE is thus tracked by sphere and by (horizontal) region.  One number applies at all z-levels, with no vertical tracking at all. 
10. To permit sphere alignments to spread horizontally and have smooth gradients, plants (and possibly creatures) can draw XE from regions adjacent to the one they are actually in, or possibly even a larger radius.  This avoids the need to figure out how quickly and under what circumstances XE can flow around.  It can simply be produced and consumed in place. 

Having settled on the explanation that XE is (primarily) produced by certain plants, a new question emerges: How is outputting XE beneficial?  This seems like the plant is simply wasting energy it could use.  I do have a suitable chain of events that respects natural selection.  It does not, however, respect mutation.  Since we are dealing with magic anyway, certain events will simply occur “By the Gift of Armok.” 
1. By the Gift of Armok, a plant gains the ability to produce XE.  This plant DOES NOT simply export it to the environment.  The energy is stored within its own tissues.  Like the sugar and other molecules used by mundane plants, XE can be consumed during night (when sunlight is not available) and, for perennials, winter.  Under this system, the XE is only released into the region at large after (that part of) the plant dies. 
2. The plant contains magical energy, and this has implications for herbivores.  Most can’t use the XE.  When mundane herbivores eat the magical plant, the XE is released into their bodies in an uncontrolled way, and causes an unpleasant and possibly dangerous syndrome.  The details obviously vary depending on sphere. 
3. This opens a second, indirect use for XE: selectively remove or release it to steer herbivores to low-value parts of the plant, especially parts that were about to be dropped anyway.  For example, deciduous trees may release XE in fall as their leaves change color. 
4. By the Gift of Armok, an herbivore gains the ability to use the new type of energy.  In addition to the direct benefits of XE as an energy source, this ability enables that herbivore to consume the formerly protected plant parts without any competition from its fellows. 
5. The XE, being magical, has other beneficial effects on the creature, which again vary by sphere.  Fire-aligned XE may allow it to tolerate heat better and possibly use fire attacks; Fae-aligned XE may allow the creature to grow larger.  Regardless of the exact details, creatures that can use XE will out-compete those that can’t, and the ability is presumed to have a genetic basis.  This obsoletes the previous claim that most herbivores can’t use XE. 
6. These effects prompt herbivores to target parts of the plant where XE is stored, which applies a new selective pressure on the plant, opposite that of mundane herbivores.  The plant is prompted to store XE in otherwise low-value parts, and might even store XE in fruit. 

This description has gameplay implications. 
1. I don’t recommend giving each plant an XE counter.  Instead, its XE is released when certain things happen to it.  At the very least, brewing, milling, or threshing the plant will release its XE into the region, as defined in plant and/or reaction raws.  Relevant analogue in the current game: seeds.  The reaction raws define that a seed is produced, and plant raws specify which seed. 
2. Fruit (and possibly other plant parts) can contain XE in portable form.  Intelligent creatures which require XE (such as necromancers) can carry appropriate types of fruit with them.  A player wishing to terraform his/her site can also import and use suitable plants.  This also has implications for alchemy.  It might also open certain exploits with prepared meals. 
3. To permit the “feed the caverns” purpose that started this thread, all (surface) trees will need to drop leaves periodically, and preferably dead branches (gathered as logs and possibly sticks).  Both events release XE, if the plant is of the right type.  Shrubs and crops will also release XE when they wither in the field.  Chopping down a tree will drop a large number of logs (and leaves) at once, which releases a correspondingly large amount of XE. 
4. Tropical regions will, as a rule, produce a steady trickle of XE to the caverns (wet and dry seasons will impact this).  Temperate regions have the fall season, when all the deciduous trees drop all their leaves at once, and the winter when many shrubs die.  Most of the XE release will occur during these times.  This arrangement provides seasons to the caverns (as NW_Kohaku suggested on page 5 of this thread).  The cavern spring season occurs during the surface fall, and the others follow, half a cycle out of phase with the surface. 
5. Going back to the religion comment above, temples and the like will produce XE, generated by certain activities there.  This may simply be released into the region at large, or be retained in a separate pool associated with the temple itself.  I recommend the latter, to save on memory: a temple might plausibly use any of the spheres in the game (I counted 131 in the list on the wiki), but only a small fraction are “ecosystem” spheres likely to be widespread enough to be usable by xeno plants (I wound up with about two dozen; details to follow at some point in the “Organizing the Spheres” thread).  The regions in general only need to track “ecosystem” spheres.  The temple is in a particular region, and intelligent (and possibly non-intelligent) creatures can draw from the temple pool in the same way as that region one. 
6. Certain other workshop tasks might also generate XE, such as a forge generating Metals and Fire (or Volcanoes for a magma forge) XE when used.  As with temples, XE can be either released into the region or kept at the workshop.  While the total list of spheres is quite long, the list relevant to any given temple tops out at a dozen or so, and almost any other building tops out around half that.  A somewhat more programming-intensive but even more memory-saving solution is to release XE of the “ecosystem” spheres and retain the rest. 

Implications part 2: Magical creatures
1. Creatures that can use XE will have a personal XE pool, separate from that of the region.  They can fill it either by eating a plant that contains XE (the [NO_EAT] token may or may not prevent this), or more directly from the ambient pool.  Death of the creature probably releases its energy into the region pool. 
2. A creature that requires XE to avoid hunger can draw from its personal pool, or that of the surrounding region.  The creature’s personal pool probably has a maximum size, and it can release XE into the environment when this fills up. 
3. Wizards (starting with the necromancers already in the game) will use XE to power their spells.  A wizard can draw from the region pool, from his own personal pool, from a sufficiently close (and suitably aligned) temple or other building, or from some inanimate object in his possession which contains XE, such as the fruit described above (this would consume the fruit). 
4. This also opens another parameter in which magical secret types can vary: the size of personal mana pool it gives the wizard.  Necromancers are [NO_EAT], which, given the above and their current sphere alignment, means they consume Death XE and will starve if deprived of it long enough.  A necromancer with a larger personal XE pool, in addition to simply lasting longer, will be able to throw more spells around (animate more dead creatures he finds around your fort) without support from his base.  This makes him a much more dangerous sieger. 

Implications part 3: Magically Altered creatures
1. On the main Bay12 Dwarf Fortress page is a tab for “Threetoe’s Stories.”  One in particular, titled “Forest Befouled” describes an area changing sphere alignment (from Good to Evil).  This has a very curious effect: the satyrs (Good-aligned) living in the area transform to foul blendecs (Evil-aligned). 
2. A different story, titled “Root,” has a scene where a squirrel is transformed by the Forest Spirit into a squirrel man.  These two scenes lead to the question of exactly how to duplicate this behavior in the game. 
3. The game already has the [APPLY_CREATURE_VARIATION] command, found in the raws of certain creatures.  It can accept the arguments “animal person” and “giant” (and various “gaits” that are off this topic).  Duplicating the behavior from “Forest Befouled” and “Root” would involve re-working this tag.  The creature raws would instead say something like “Accept creature variation” and there would be some circumstances in the game under which it could be applied.  To duplicate the events of “Forest Befouled,” Satyr and Foul Blendec would be different variations applied to the same mundane base creature (probably a goat). 
4. Toady One has stated a desire for less-predictable magic, and this system can accommodate that: creature variations can be procedurally generated, and acceptance by creatures can be based on tags attached to the variation, rather than directly by its name. 
5. “Forest Befouled” also requires circumstances under which a creature variation can be removed.  A partial solution is a “hunger” counter associated with the variation, separate from that of the creature it is attached to.  When this runs out, the variation wears off and the creature reverts to its mundane state.  This supports the general “The Magic Goes Away” tone of Dwarf Fortress (Ages of Myth, Legends, and Heroes), but the immediate change described in the story would require different programming, which I don’t know enough to advise about. 
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smjjames

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #86 on: September 13, 2014, 08:06:33 pm »

Nice thread necro there.....
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MDFification

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #87 on: September 14, 2014, 07:36:33 am »

Nice thread necro indeed.
Also, I find it hilarious that nobody in this thread realized chemosynthesis was a thing, and that xenosynthesis is unnecessary to sustain an underground ecosystem. You'd just have to make crop yields abysmal without fertilizer and ensure the fertilizer had the appropriate compounds in it.
Yay, biology!
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Tristan Alkai

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Why Chemosynthesis Won't Work
« Reply #88 on: September 14, 2014, 05:43:03 pm »

Chemosynthesis was considered and rejected elsewhere before this thread even got started. 

This thread is declared (with link) in the first post to be a spin-off from a larger "Improved Farming" thread, which is in turn declared in its first post to be a reboot of a different one. 

You have found this thread.  Scroll to any post by NW_Kohaku.  In that signature line is a link to the reboot Improved Farming thread.  That thread (including all the posts relevant here) is mostly by Kohaku, who frequently writes huge posts and has a habit of using spoiler tags to make them slightly more manageable.  They serve no other purpose, so go ahead and click any of them. 

In "reply #3" of the reboot Improved Farming thread is a heading Xenosynthesis.  That heading contains a link to a different post much farther into the thread (reply #236) which repeats the heading, then describes what Xenosynthesis is and why it is necessary (and some of the same is in the original post of this thread).  This thread is essentially a descendant of that post.  Also, Kohaku, in that post, brings up chemosynthesis by name and rejects it. 

Chemosynthesis does, as you put it, "make crop yields abysmal," but this isn't about crops: it's about all the stuff that grows wild in the caverns of Dwarf Fortress.  Not that I'm an expert on the subject, but my understanding was that, under these circumstances, chemosynthesis would support (something resembling) cave moss at best, and this won't grow back at an acceptable speed, if it even grows at all on a fortress mode time scale.  There simply isn't enough energy in chemosynthesis to support tower-caps, let alone (carnivorous!) cave crocodiles (and cave dragons and giant cave spiders and so on).  And that's BEFORE we start getting into the weird stuff like amethyst men and nether caps (and magma men and hungry heads and . . .). 

There's weird stuff down there.  There's magic stuff down there.  There is no way of getting around that.  Kohaku started Xenosynthesis as a way of assembling all the cavern weirdness into something coherent. 
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GavJ

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Re: Xenosynthesis and magic fields
« Reply #89 on: September 14, 2014, 07:13:13 pm »

(edit: didn't notice this was a 3 year necro lol. But already wrote this so whatever:)


Haven't read all of the replies, but I would generally be against a magic source feeding the plantlife.  If we are changing the game anyway (these are all suggestions for doing so), then there's no reason why you HAVE to make magical plant life to match magical animal life.

Quote
There's magic stuff down there.  There is no way of getting around that.
Except there is.

You could just as easily do the opposite of making magic plantlife to match: you could change the magical animals to be less magical, then make realistic underground plants. I don't think amethyst men etc. really add much to the game anyway that slightly different sensical versions wouldn't, this doesn't seem like a big sacrifice.

So for an underground system I'd suggest:
1) Fewer amethyst men, etc.
2) Plants grow based on:
   2a) Minerals and bacteria originating from thermal vents
   2b) Organic nutrients from aquifers and such filtering through the rock and/or flowing through cavern water depositing sediment, an/or deposited by player irrigation (if player irrigation, you'd have to reflood periodically from the surface for new organic sediment)
   2c) Optional organic waste recycling for extra growth, corpses, rotten plants, manure, all kinds of possible things

Thermal vents based energy and nutrients: Naturally occuring, but also player-made by connecting up magma sources undergroudn to natural or artificial water sources

Sediment based energy and nutrients: Cavern water sources that renew from off the map bring organic sediment, as does water connected to surface rivers. one-time Flooding from other sources gives ~1 season's worth of sediment, then you have to reflood to keep working that way.

Waste based energy and nutrients: Can use any organic materials to make compost of various sorts to allow farming underground plants anywhere, or fertilzing more bountiful growth.

Quote
There simply isn't enough energy in chemosynthesis to support tower-caps, let alone (carnivorous!) cave crocodiles (and cave dragons and giant cave spiders and so on).
95% of players won't know that and even most of those who do would seem unlikely to object about overstating the energy available for helpful gameplay purposes. And it strikes me as rather odd in general too to complain about realism in such a hardcore manner that you're calculating specific kiljoules of energy and whatever you could get from this, and then in the next breath, suggesting magical plantlife ???

"We must have perfect realism or the complete opposite of realism NOTHING IN BETWEEN!"  Mer? Not really.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2014, 11:42:42 pm by GavJ »
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Cauliflower Labs – Geologically realistic world generator devblog

Dwarf fortress in 50 words: You start with seven alcoholic, manic-depressive dwarves. You build a fortress in the wilderness where EVERYTHING tries to kill you, including your own dwarves. Usually, your chief imports are immigrants, beer, and optimism. Your chief exports are misery, limestone violins, forest fires, elf tallow soap, and carved kitten bone.
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