Underground dwarf cities

So there's a part in Final Fantasy 4 where you go underground and discover a dwarf kingdom in massive cavern with lava lakes. The dwarf realm has its own dwarf castle, village, dungeons, and unique animals like any above-ground world. With dungeons and NPCs just around the corner, I'd like to bring this up. now. Also this is a chance to re-visit my suggestion from earlier this year about lava tubes (active or inactive) branching from hell and also water (and maybe eventually oil) cavities underground. Red51 seemed interested in this idea of the lava tubes and admitted that with water now in place, it can be expanded on to make any other type of fluid that we want.

The original Discussion of Lava Tubes

lava tubes

Here is what I would like to see for underground cities:

• Lava tubes piping lava from hell to underground lava pockets and some to the surface
• Dwarves living in uderground cities (possibly in massive caverns like the ones that open up just above Hell)
• Underground wildlife that could be a source of food
• Underground water lakes and underground lava pits (in the open caverns) as a source
• Underground vegetation such as moss and mushrooms which could be a food source.
• Some kind of village architecture similar to dungeon architecture that would hint that the dungeons are build by the same race of dwarves living "under the mountain" (like in Lord of the Rings)
• Must be possible to survive exclusively under ground.
• Alternative to trees as a wood source. Perhaps giant mushrooms

And now some visual inspiration for underground worlds

Cities

• http://anndr.deviantart.com/art/Underground-city-356714492
• http://jas-tham.deviantart.com…nderground-City-263004194
• http://martanael.deviantart.co…nderground-city-200322579

The great underground city of Dn'i from the Myst Franchise. This was built around a massive underground lake:

• http://www.florestica.com/hpotd/caverns.html

The next one looks like a factory. Peraps harvesting the heat from Hell. I can picture this hanging from the ceiling of the hell cave in Rising World. Perhaps the bottom of some one of these massive dungeons stretching from the surface which Red51 was suggesting.

• http://molybdenumgp03.devianta…rground-factory-138761501

And for something more practical, let's look at real life. Simply do an image search for Derinkuyu and you'll see an impressive underground city in Turkey. It's a massive network of tunnels and rooms. No grand cavernous spaces from what I can tell however.

Note: the youtube video is from the Ancient Alien shows so it gets kinda weird and highly speculative, but the city itself is very impressive.

• http://sometimes-interesting.c…und-cities-of-cappadocia/

There should be a species of petite creatures who live deep underground and love to mine but let's not call them dwarves dwarves.
There should be a species of mutated/infected villagers whose higher cognitive functions have been replaced with a lust for raw human flesh, but lets not call them zombies. They can look like zombies but they aren't zombies.

Seriously though, I'm fine with any name given to them. I don't care what they are called really but I suppose a unique name would be a good idea so we don't just follow the well established fantasy species. I just think the idea in general of NPCs and villages not being limited to above ground only. I mean, the world is a very tall space and there is so much potential for the space between hell and the surface.

One additional point. Biomes need to have vertical boundaries. We already verified this morining that biomes do not have any vertical boundaries. So you can fly straight down from a snowy biome to hell and its still the same temperature and biome info on the F3 screen. Underground should be cooler in many places or really hot in others (especially in Hell where special thermal armor would be needed to reach the Hell cavern. Once the biome generation is modified, we could have some various underground biomes such as the "dwarf village" or "mega mushroom" or even the "crystal cavern" idea. Hell ofcourse should be a biome in its own and I guess without any horizontal boundaries.

There are lots of other world changes probably that need to be done. I know we still are waiting on streams and swamps and then there was something I heard about improving ocean biomes and even making the world an ocean biome with other biomes being like continents (some separated by streams).

So to expand on my thoughts on vertical biome limits, here's how I see it being implemented along with other global changes. Some of this incorporates other rumors i've heard such as the world being a giant ocean with continents within it.

My vision of biome organization

• Sky
  
  • Area reserved for fantasy stuff like floating islands
• Ocean (0 to mountain tops)
  
  • Continents have enormous horizontal limitations
    
    • Biomes (pretty much everything under continents would generate the way it does now)
      
      • Tundra
      • Taiga
      • Desert
      • Mesa
      • Forest
      • Forest with Lake
      • Lakes with beaches
      • Meadow
      • Jungle
    • Transitional biomes
      
      
      • River
      • Stream
      • Swamp
      • Lake
      • Waterfall
      • Beach (only touches oceans)
      • Mediterranean (transitions to savanah and has lots of poplar trees and hemp)
  • Islands
    
    • Whatever Red51 had planned for islands ( i guess any existing biome type might generate here (like continents but much smaller and one biome per continent)
  • Icecaps (possibly only two per world generator)
    
    • Biomes
      
      • Frozen lake
      • Snowy plains
      • Ice Mountains
    • Transitional biome
      
      
      • lake with floating ice chunks (can be walked on)
      • lakes with floating icebergs
  • Open ocean
    
    • should be wavey (maybe generate a lost city of atlantis out here)
• Underground (-700 to 0)
  
  • Biomes
    
    • Mushroom cave
    • dwarf city
    • crystal cave
    • massive underground lake (like in Journey to the center of the earth)
  • Biome Separators
    
    • Chasms several hundred meters high (like Minecraft chasms but much much taller)
    • no separator (this should be just like normal stone and the transition not very obvious)
• Hell (below -700 or whatever the transitional point is)
  
  
  • No ideas for what to be nested here, if anything. I'd imagine that hell fortresses would fall under dungeons therefore out of scope with world generation
  • Occasional massive hellstone pillars that act as the bases of lava tubes and also connect the upper and lower parts of the hell cave. Example: http://seanhillart.deviantart.com/art/Fiery-chasm-355638407

So the toplevels of ocean, underground, and hell have no horizontal limits so they stretch forever. However each can have objects nested in them with various individual properties. Dungeon and Cave generators should still do their normal thing and generate into the existing rock. Nothing new here. Lava tubes will be like the cave tunnels but filled with lava. The walls of active or inactive lava tubes will be the best spot to mine rare diamonds and such. More details are in my link earlier in this thread for the lava tubes discussion.

I think Red51 mentioned that Islands would be a world type in its own, along with regular, superflat, surreal. I'm ok with this but I think overall a world biome structure like i outlined above should be implemented. The island worldtype should still be a nested option and the selection of the island worldtype should simply limit what is generated to anything below that node. this should cut out any repeated code.