PC Is it technically possible to autogenerate an "all underground" map?

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doughphunghus

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Preface: I have not messed with Nitrogen or the XML biome stuff to actually try this. I'm at the "pondering" stage ;)

I have been wondering what a game would look like if there were no "above ground".  I know caves have been removed but "cave POI's" exist.  Would it be possible to fill up the map from top to bottom with "earth/rock/etc" and not have any "topside", then load only cave POI's and somehow put them all deep underground, and when you spawn, you're underground? I'm not sure how you'd connect the POI's, so also having "whatever builds roads" would also have to make the roads underground. If the connections between POIs could be made underground...then I would assume you could just load the normal POI's and have "underground cities" connected with underground roads but I'm betting that putting a POI down always loads "air" above it?

Anyway, Just curious if anyone has tried this or its an obvious "nope, won't work" with a random map generator.

Also: "what's the point"?  Well, if you could add POIs underground and connect them, then you could manually a lot of cave POI's (yeah, a massive amount of work which will not happen so "regular POI's" might be good enough) and get a "dungeon crawler look/feel".  If the sun were "turned off" (by making daylight 0 hours) it might be an interesting dynamic...not easily being able to get on top of POI's to hide, solar panels would be useless, gyrocopter possibly useless, etc. zombies can spawn above and below you. Maybe make a 10 block high "topside" for solar so you can't easily make a base there, etc. Open spaces would not exist so trees/yucca/etc would be only findable if they were built into a POI, so some bizarre resource scarcity.

 
You could make a procedural underground cave using a lot of (prefab) segments, that then get spawned in a way to connect them, and thus form a cave.

But the terrain above it could only be defined by the prefabs, as the normal terrain is "stamped out" in the area of the POI.

For example 16x32x16 sized cave-prefabs that are meaningfully arranged in a grid.

Basically such caves would have to be in a fixed depth, and the terrain above it one flat plane.

It would really just be a workaround in the end.

Doing this kind of stuff directly in the games code would be a cleaner and more flexible solution.

 
7d2d uses a structural integrity system, so caves will collapse if their material is to far unsupported. That's afaik also the main reason why the natural caves have been removed.

So i guess what you expect is not possible, you can not have large caves with whole POIs and roads inside.

 
I think it's possible as I don't see any not circumventable obstacles.

 
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The most work would be create interesting prefab-tiles.

The structural integrity can be managed as in any POI by not building crazy. Its pretty predicable if every tile is statically intact by itself, ad uses support beams where needed.

 
It would certainly be interesting to play on such a map, especially seeing how one city can be above another city with no road between them (unless you dug one).

Placing cities in large caverns would require some changes to how S.I works in the game I guess - there are limits on the maximum length that can be spanned without any supports.  But a city with some stalactite-towers holding up the roof ... interesting.  Knocking out the pillars to deal with the horde ... also interesting.

 
Damocles said:
You could make a procedural underground cave using a lot of (prefab) segments, that then get spawned in a way to connect them, and thus form a cave.

But the terrain above it could only be defined by the prefabs, as the normal terrain is "stamped out" in the area of the POI.

For example 16x32x16 sized cave-prefabs that are meaningfully arranged in a grid.

Basically such caves would have to be in a fixed depth, and the terrain above it one flat plane.

It would really just be a workaround in the end.

Doing this kind of stuff directly in the games code would be a cleaner and more flexible solution.
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"You could make a procedural underground cave using a lot of (prefab) segments": I've put some thought into it, and did a little research (not done yet) and I think this is likely the best solution for a super cool "cave map generator"...but making a lot of "cave" prefabs though is not likely to happen by me as It would have to be a *lot* to make it worthwhile (and not a boring cave adventure). I can't imagine burning this much time making cave segment after cave segment, and making them "good" (with spawning, loot boxes, etc.) and not just "a craggly hole".

Another "solution" appears where you might be able to use standard prefabs and join them (either side by side or with little cave-ish segments).  This might look weird ( houses and gas stations underground?) but it might at least solve the massive hand building of POI's effort.

But, in the end, its likely too much work trying to get something to autogenerate "caves" in this fashion, as you'd need to basically string everything together in some logical fashion.  Even if you got that to work, it might still suck and you'd have to go in and manually "make it interesting" by carving out larger areas, side trails, etc.

Another dilemma is you can always dig straight up and ruin the "unique adventure".

The only thing I can come up with to make this do-able (without spending a ton of time) is to generate a map, find (or make) a mountain, then manually go under it and dig some fun caves (rather deep, but maybe not bedrock) and place some items/challenges/POI's (like the old timey ones, or make a few custom ones that look ancient, whatever) and give you just enough stuff (and maybe a small shallow underground pool) to allow you to break down everything, make a forge, and craft some pickaxes and "escape". then make the spawn point only in the cave, then begin the game :) . If you wait too long (or get super unlucky...so maybe you make some special loot containers to use that have food)  you die underground for lack of food.  By putting it under a mountain you gain "building depth" and some challenge of not knowing where to start digging "up", as well as likely making that chunk only have the caves/POI's you made in it (and it wouldn't be visited often after escaping) so it wouldn't have rendering issues, if any still exist from having large underground stuff.

Liesel Weppen said:
7d2d uses a structural integrity system, so caves will collapse if their material is to far unsupported. That's afaik also the main reason why the natural caves have been removed.

So i guess what you expect is not possible, you can not have large caves with whole POIs and roads inside.
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Yeah, this makes sense.  But also, if there was some "natural collapsing" it might be ok as that adds to the look and feel.. as long as things do not collapse in general.  It also might be something you'd have to modify the stone material to have more "holding strength" so at least a medium large house POI could be spawned in... and this would allow for some impressive "really tall and deep" cave structures, like you only see into darkness when using a flashlight. 

Additionally, with some collapsing occurring ( or made easy by things being almost ready to collapse) you might get a semi occurring collapse and have to listen to it, adding some nice "ambiance"

 
Roland said:
Digdug 2020?
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yep (and I loved that game.  Burned a lot of quarters as a kid at a place called "Casa Bonita" on Dig Dug and Q-Bert)!  but also... if you didn't spawn in POI's and did a smaller cave structure manually, it would be a really eerie and quiet "one time only, pre-early-game" that might make a nice storyline to explain why you survived the disaster (you were an archaeologist or spelunker something) vs waking up naked by the side of the road. Maybe by the time you dug out it would be day 7 and you'd have to go hide in the caves you just escaped ;) AND THEN the game begins.  Originally I was thinking "underground 7 days to die" as it takes away some of the normal survival aspects... but now I'm leaning towards "you're underground and there's no zeds.  You know if you dig 'up' you can get out....but you likely don't ahve time to dig up using only stone axes....and you're running out of fresh water to drink to keep up your stamina".

Even if you cheat and go into god mode to see the best place to "dig up" or whatever, you still have to do all the work to get out ( unless you cheat with god mode...making it pointless to use that custom map anyway)

 
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There was an all winter mod that covered everything in snow blocks. You had to dig down to POIs and tunnel between them. With snow such an easy block to break it was pretty fun. 

 
Roland said:
There was an all winter mod that covered everything in snow blocks. You had to dig down to POIs and tunnel between them. With snow such an easy block to break it was pretty fun. 
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Is that still available?  I know you can create all winter maps with a simple mod and other map generators but I wasn't aware of a way to cover every POI with snow.

 
Maharin said:
Is that still available?  I know you can create all winter maps with a simple mod and other map generators but I wasn't aware of a way to cover every POI with snow.
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Checked mod launcher real quick, and doesn't seem like its been updated to A19.

 
Has anyone ever attempted to destroy an entire world, to where it was nothing but bedrock? Obviously except for traders of course.

This would look rather odd but I've wondered if anyone ever tried this.

 
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Outlaw_187 said:
Has anyone ever attempted to destroy an entire world, to where it was nothing but bedrock? Obviously except for traders of course.

This would look rather odd but I've wondered if anyone ever tried this.
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Even on a 4k map that would take a LONG time.  Even if you started at bedrock and hollowed out a layer or two to start everything falling.   And good luck having your computer handle that collapse.  :p

 
Well, it is definitely possible to make terrain blocks not collapse.

It may be possible to move original player spawn points underground (not sure if that actually works) but features like "spawn near your bedroll" would require code changes to allow spawning underground for sure.

What I am wondering is... how interesting would the game be without the 7 day horde, without wandering hordes, without biome spawns.

All of these spawn "on the surface".

More of an Ark-style theme park game?

 
Gazz said:
Well, it is definitely possible to make terrain blocks not collapse.

It may be possible to move original player spawn points underground (not sure if that actually works) but features like "spawn near your bedroll" would require code changes to allow spawning underground for sure.

What I am wondering is... how interesting would the game be without the 7 day horde, without wandering hordes, without biome spawns.

All of these spawn "on the surface".

More of an Ark-style theme park game?
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Yep without the 7 day horde and the story/quests implemented a lot of the motivation/tension/progression is removed.  Some are fine with that though as it makes the game more of an open sand box style of game like Minecraft.

 
Gazz said:
Well, it is definitely possible to make terrain blocks not collapse.

It may be possible to move original player spawn points underground (not sure if that actually works) but features like "spawn near your bedroll" would require code changes to allow spawning underground for sure.

What I am wondering is... how interesting would the game be without the 7 day horde, without wandering hordes, without biome spawns.

All of these spawn "on the surface".

More of an Ark-style theme park game?
Click to expand...


Laz Man said:
Yep without the 7 day horde and the story/quests implemented a lot of the motivation/tension/progression is removed.  Some are fine with that though as it makes the game more of an open sand box style of game like Minecraft.
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Yeah, i didn't think about that zeds wouldn't spawn underground, which ruins the feel I was going for.  However, having said that, starting out "underground" (and yeah, the "spawn near bedroll" would be an issue) but having almost 0 resources, in total darkness, and having to run around (in custom built caves)  to find a few carefully placed custom built POI's to slowly tear them down and grind up from stone ax to pickaxe ( and find the water/food) to finally dig yourself out to finally start the game might be the best "solution", in terms of just being able to play with the dynamic.  It would be quiet down there, and dark, and by the time you got out your gamestage goes up a little and (if designed well) you might have 1-2 days? before the horde appears.  Being so far underground would be a pain and you'd not want to use it for a base as (if you're generating the special map to have the underground cave area) you can place it under a mountain far away from a city.  Maybe you mark a "this was the entrance" underground ( as something to maybe run across) and if you dig up there you get a mini camp with some starting supplies, a vehicle, etc. "that you left"

 
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