Hello! I have over the last 2 years read many of the noteworthy dwarf fortress lets plays, and the importance of the environment has just struck me. Unique bulding / pathing problems across scenarios are one of biggest !!fun!! factors in the game. Please oh please put extreme environments into the game! ideas: glacier (freeze) larva field (burning / melting) necromancers graveyard (zombified townfolk) acid swamp (water supply) hostile tree forest fighting ant infested plain (potenial army or danger) paradise location (not extreme in any way, but didn't seem like an enitre threadworth of idea.)
I like this idea On a related note, In addition to extreme environments I would like to see environments, elements, etc. with American West, and Ancient Greek motifs, due to the fact that I have occasionally encountered good Steampunk works set in these type of locations rather than settings resembling Victorian England
Cool environments sound nice, but they should make sense within the game, by sticking to the genre and art style. But yeah, I agree. I take alot of time deciding where to embark, because I feel that the environment is most important variable in a fun DF outing (volcanoes were always my favourite). I support evil mystic towers of some fashion, indigenous tribes, larva fields with big squirming larvae, and I dunno, clockwork zombie pits.
The glacier environment suggestion definitely fits with the Lovecraftian motif. Ever read At the Mountains of Madness
...or the anthropomorphic spear-wielding bipedal Giant Voodoo Frogs of the next rainforest the Empire has its sights on... (...it is entirely possible I have had less sleep than Essence has just now.)
One thing I'd like to see are bizarre landmarks. Top of that that list is a sheer cliff filled with long winding holes, like the Far Lands from Minecraft or the Amigara Fault. http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Far_Lands http://www.justmegawatt.com/comics/enigmaofamigarafault.html
hey now the first reply finally makes sense! And I agree with it! spelling doesn't matter when you need more cogs!
Oh, just thought of something! If we do extreme environments then given the Lovecraftian theme one of the environments should be an area where an alien world or dimension is impinging on the material plane (like in From Beyond, Dreams in the Witch House, Half-Life, Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters: The Videogame, the end of the Super Mario Brothers movie, the Madwood Forest and Nightwood and Shadow Marches in Dungeons & Dragons' "Eberron" setting, the movie "Psyclops", etc.)
Yeah I don't think extra-planetary environments would be cool, unless you mean like demonic/mad realms full of larva fields and creatures of the largoon. I support different planes of reality where bad/good/cute and harmless stuff seeps through, maybe corrupting the landscape. Also, I don't think all daemon skulled coffins and flaming, screaming phantoms of ancient witches should be unnecessarily malignant. And maybe cults are socially repulsive, but they shouldn't all be evil, maybe some are cultist-lite, and swear blood oaths to fancy hats and fancy hats.
Or random giant columns of precious metals like that glitch that kept popping up in the previous version of Dwarf Fortress.
So in the light of the recent update, shall we henceforth consider the Larva fields as an Official Feature ?
At the very least, we should be able to colonize the frozen wastelands of Kanada and struggle to stop our people turning into wendigos when famine hits.