Underground Ecology

[Nidor 23]

After touching on the subject on the "what would you like added to agriculture" I felt the need to make this topic, as it adds more than just underground agriculture, rather touching on the underground "biome" as a whole.

On this topic I want to add some incentives or excitement to choosing to build like a dwarf by carving out a home rather than building on the surface. These are just examples, if you want me to go into more detail on a particular feel free.

Livelihood: As it is now with the temperature penalties to metalcrafting workstations, domesticated animals, and the fruit trees there is less need to be underground save for mining minerals and carting them back. I find this to be a shame, especially now that there is a higher elevation cap making the vast majority of the world underground. What I want to suggest is adding a bit of excitement to choosing to live in the depths. Firstly I rather like the cave-in system and think it adds a bit of much needed 'excitement' to what would normally be rather dull stone mining. These suggestions add a bit of spice to choosing to work away from the harsh glare of the sun

Terrain: Caves are nice and all but would it be possible to find underground rivers and lakes, rather than the occasional 1 block pillar of water. As mentioned in the Air thread, possible hazards could include pockets of gas, or a lack of oxygen. If the piping suggestion thread takes hold, perhaps require pumping air to your underground base/mine. A possible means of coding the hazards in would be to make a block/liquid that emits splash potion like effects, either whenever, or when disturbed, like redstone ore. Smoke as a hazard would mean torches would be a danger the further you go down.

Workstations: I would like to be able to use the metalcrafting things underground, but with hazards related to ventilation and smoke/toxic fumes related to working with metal. To bypass the elevation penalty perhaps you can give bonuses to counteract the penalty by building near lava. Another suggestion could be to have a bell curve on the temperature, where very high or very low elevation gives a bonus.

Food storage hazards: As a few threads have suggested, quite a few people would like storage to be more limited, like with logs/logpiles metals and ingot piles etc. I would like to extend this to food, making meat lockers to hang uncooked meats on hooks (after butchering as per the butchery thread or before, in the kill mobs get corpse thread type carcasses). Barrels for liquids and drinks if distilling and alchohol is added (barrels could behave like those buildcraft tanks perhaps?) but so far these suggestions would be for different threads to flesh out, I bring up these non chest storage ideas to lead in to the storage hazard topic. With a lack of ventilation, rotting food products become more of a hazard than an upset stomach, and would pose a hazard much like miasma from DF. This would make proper preparation or storage a priority in an underground situation, and would still provide an extra bit of variety to topside homes.

Life: I would like to see a full ecology of flora and fauna specific to the deeps that would provide the same means of progress as aboveground, yet to make things different make it harder or more dangerous to do so. Say with underground plants, mushrooms, molds, lichens and mosses they require low/no light environments, and might be toxic unless properly prepared or harvested.

Plants and farming: I think there is plenty of room for underground equivilents for topside plants to make life below comfortable. I think we could mimic the DF requirement of muddy stone, by making flowing water leave behind a small layer of mud, kinda like snowy weather leaves behind layers of snow on top of bocks. Though I am unsure how they would react to planting, as snow dissapears when stuff is placed on it.

Mushrooms

• Glowing mushrooms: could add an organic source of light, similar to a redstone torch, perhaps let them be placed as such? Unsure if it would be possible to implement, but perhaps let them be rendered into a dye or paint that would give off faint light when placed, like powered redstone dust?
• Edible mushrooms: something you could eat straight out of the ground, as filling as a cookie, similar to how brown mushrooms used to be in early versions of the minecraft demo.
• Toxic mushrooms: A weed mushroom that grows on your mushroom farm and takes up valuable space. Not totally useless as a source of poison that would be nice for the alchemy/apothecary suggestions. With a bit of carefull preparation, a possible use in medicine.
• Giant mushrooms: rather than a mushroom pinata as they are in vanilla, giant mushrooms can be a wood analogue. Spores or sporepods can be the sapling equivalent.

Molds

• Bread Mold: Provided the above food storage, accidental or intentional spoilage of bread products.
• Giant molds: A fruit tree equivilent, a giant mold that has fruit like sacs at the top, ok taste, horrible texture Example that explains why they could count as fruit. mold closeup
• Slime molds: Found in damp areas, in MC i would put it on edges of cavern edges as a slipping hazard, properly cared for, collected slime moulds could fruit into giant molds.

Lichen/Moss

• Some types of lichen are edible, quick wiki search shows 3 of them, i think 'rock tripe' and 'reindeer lichen' look the best of the 3 though.
• Mosses - I could picture moss being an alternative to wool in some recipes, or as a pretty nice decoration. I am sure there could be uses in the alchemy/apothecary suggestions too.

I am sure other plants are possible underground or dark areas, but I just wanted to list the more commonly known stuff, certainly lots of room to add more though. The wheat progression topic covers cave wheat so I won't bring it up here.

Animals: Some examples.

• Amphibians would make a solid mob type I think, giant cave toads anyone? could be a source of poisons or an ugly type of warty leather for armor,as leather armor could use some of the metal armor's variety I say.
• Blind, aggressive cave fish. could be a stronger source of light than the glowing mushrooms, and some of those fish have nasty teeth that could have a possible use.
• If you are looking for more fantasy races, demons (dug too deep!) or grues (burst into flame at even low light levels!) could be a fun implementation.
• Large aggressive worms could be a source of meat, and can be aggressive, possibly boring through softer materials to get at you!

This section has potential to be much larger than the plants section, but I wanted to give less fantastic critters (cept demons and grues, that was for fun). In a nutshell I think that while you can survive off of the creatures of the deep, they would make you work harder for it (aggressive, poisonous till cooked right) and give less returns than topside foods (not as tasty or unpleasant textures).

Anyways, I apologize for the rambling, and I am not aware if I have said anything that was already brought up. I just felt that caverns were a bit cramped and lifeless currently.

[RogueHydra 32]

Living underground ftw!

All of that seems like something that'd be awesome for another world (aka: nether, end, etc.) Maybe completely replace nether and end worlds with new custom worlds.

[Nidor 23]

There is a work in progress mod called betweenlands that looks promising, has a swampy theme to it and some of the promised features on that would not be a far stretch to fit in with this. I am making some example textures for this suggestion, in case it takes off, and I am bored .

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

Living underground ftw!

All of that seems like something that'd be awesome for another world (aka: nether, end, etc.) Maybe completely replace nether and end worlds with new custom worlds.

Fuck the end

add underdark

awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww yeahhhhhhhhh

[Lumireaver 101]

If for some reason there isn't enough room underground for everything Nidor mentioned, we should just stick the Underground under the Overworld. Then we can put Hell under that.

[Nidor 23]

here is what I came up with, again this is taking bits and pieces from the current texture pack and tweaking them to make the textures look like they would fit in. Didn't feel like getting into the animal items on this go.

top row is:

Glowing mushroom, edible mushroom, poisonous mushroom, moldy bread, slime mold, giant mold 'fruit'

2nd is the rock tripe and reindeer lichen.

bottom row is just how I'd picture the planting progression of the giant mold, knock off the top to remove the 'fruit' and the majority of the stalk stays. Kinda like the pineapple on tropicraft.

Didn't do much with the edible and toxic mushrooms, as they arent much different from vanilla ones.

Just want to mention that this was done for fun, I don't mean to step on any current artists of the project, I just like making mock screenshots or graphics.

[SeanyGlass 14]

Bioxx has already mentioned why bloomeries aren't as good underground, and it's because while he could add air effects, he couldn't do it without a considerable amount of lag. Therefore, he simply reduced the temperature underground as a good approximation for those people on lower-end computers.

Unfortunately I don't remember where I saw that

[bsb23 303]

It was in the changelog near where he mentioned the dismemberment mod.

[SeanyGlass 14]

It was in the changelog near where he mentioned the dismemberment mod.

Ah yes, thank you. Although I don't see anything about a dismemberment mod....

[Lumireaver 101]

Bioxx has already mentioned why bloomeries aren't as good underground, and it's because while he could add air effects, he couldn't do it without a considerable amount of lag. Therefore, he simply reduced the temperature underground as a good approximation for those people on lower-end computers.

Unfortunately I don't remember where I saw that

What about some kind of clever workaround? Instead of an actual air mechanic, making it so that being under a certain y would start an generously long timer that, stacks a bunch of penalties (stamina loss, hp loss, tunnel vision, ect) until you ultimately die. ...This would kill the idea of an underground life, which is unacceptable, so to sort that out it could be made so that being within a certain proximity to a tree, a sky-viewing block, or something negated this timer. Or maybe just being well fed could keep death at bay.

I don't particularly like those ideas as they're kind of...whimsical, but they might serve as inspiration to someone else.

[SeanyGlass 14]

What about some kind of clever workaround? Instead of an actual air mechanic, making it so that being under a certain y would start an generously long timer that, stacks a bunch of penalties (stamina loss, hp loss, tunnel vision, ect) until you ultimately die. ...This would kill the idea of an underground life, which is unacceptable, so to sort that out it could be made so that being within a certain proximity to a tree, a sky-viewing block, or something negated this timer. Or maybe just being well fed could keep death at bay.

I don't particularly like those ideas as they're kind of...whimsical, but they might serve as inspiration to someone else.

You could simply add the invisible liquid smoke. It would be toxic to breath, be upsidown and have a hard time rounding bends. It would be destroyed above a certain height and could be pumped. it would be finite and created from and source that burns fuel and torches.

[valkupo 17]

I'de like to see Bioxx take as much as he can from this as far as new things to see/do underground. I have seen some amazing areas underground, but it loses its whole attraction fairly quickly due to the whole thing being one rock (ores if you're lucky, but we all know they won't stay in place for long =P).

Not totally on board for the gasses, breathing difficulties and such.

[Lumireaver 101]

You could simply add the invisible liquid smoke. It would be toxic to breath, be upsidown and have a hard time rounding bends. It would be destroyed above a certain height and could be pumped. it would be finite and created from and source that burns fuel and torches.

If I'm not mistaken, that's precisely the method that would cause low end PCs to lag. Something about fluid calculations everywhere, all the time. If not, I agree this would be the best way to implement gasses.

[Peffern 94]

+1! +1 +1 +1!

[dabman10 34]

Great ideas, although if you're disappointed with the lack of reasons for living underground, a lot of these suggestions would make people even less likely to live underground than they were before. Piping air, ravenous giant worms, and toxic vapors? Sounds inhospitable. For me, I would run like hell out of the depths of the earth, as soon as I'm finished mining that is.

[SeanyGlass 14]

Great ideas, although if you're disappointed with the lack of reasons for living underground, a lot of these suggestions would make people even less likely to live underground than they were before. Piping air, ravenous giant worms, and toxic vapors? Sounds inhospitable. For me, I would run like hell out of the depths of the earth, as soon as I'm finished mining that is.

Piping air and toxic vapors are one of the reason people don't live deep underground in real life.

While this is no reason we couldn't add something to filter air without having to pie to the surface, I think that living underground should be an easy but end game thing.

[Boea 6]

Considering you have to go underground for extended periods of time to mine, wouldn't you have to pipe air underground regardless?

Considering that there are a lot of reasonable suggestions that as you dig deeper the stone gets harder to mine-not because of the stone, but because a height-based scaling system-wouldn't you spend more time underground, mining and or caving?

And considering how laggy simulating toxic gas/smoke is, isn't there a possibility that it wouldn't matter, because it wouldn't be implemented?

If I recall, mining operations in the real world pipe to the extremities so that the fresh air piped in pushes older, more toxic air up and out of the extremity tunnel, or floor, up the shaft, and out of the mine entirely. So you only need to extend the pipe as you mine, instead of needing a perfect-equally distributed outlet system.

Anyways underground ecology would be nice, especially if some of the flora is a sort of weak/moderate air filter, deceasing the necessity of piping, especially if you figure out how to make a robust farm of these filtrating flora.

When it comes to fauna, I'd really like a dog-sized blind salamander instead of the cave toad, or the death worm. [since the death worm seems a bit difficult to make without destroying all soft material deposits underground]

[Nidor 23]

Sure, these ideas aren't a package deal, just a collection of related thoughts, I'm not dead set on any particular feature, it is just examples towards livening up things while digging. I hadn't thought about the point that plants would help the air issue, and I like that idea. Adding more mobs, even hostile ones isn't necessarily hell on or under earth, as mo' creatures adds plenty, and the scariest thing in that mod to me is when it looks clear and a rat drops on my head as I pass a doorway. I'd imagine for those that just want to head down to mine wouldn't be as hard pressed to survive as those who wish to set up a homebase down there. Any suggestion really that livens up the place beyond 40 layers of one color of rock, or a cave of the same color of rock if you are lucky.

To look at those air filtering plants suggested earlier, a possible implementation would be some sort of breathing helmet, which would lean towards the folks that like their Rapture like bases Even if the liquid type gasses are out, how resource heavy would be a block that triggers an effect when destroyed or walked on?

[Boea 6]

As a sort of balancing for the breathing helmets, the flora that you put into the helmet has to be occasionally changed because it could overgrown, or start to make spores. If that seems a bit finicky, why not make it that you have to replace the compost you have in the diving helmet because it is depleted by the plant.

If that doesn't work, make it work like a respiration enchant, without the need for the enchant.

Considering that the toxic gas goes up, you'd have to have the filtration farms on top of your base, and pipe the air down, or let it cascade down if your base is that small, if you don't want to pump the air from the surface.

[Nidor 23]

Hmm, I know some people are against having too many ui bits cluttering up the screen, but the thaumcraft2 vis & taint level bars could work as oxygen & gas meters.

Would negate the need to animate any gas bits at least. If it is possible to get the game to 'pathfind' to the surface from the player, the number of paths could determine air and gas levels.

It would make caveins even deadlier, as if your path up is blocked off, the oxy meter will go down as the gas meter goes up (co2). That method runs in to a bit of trouble as it would take just a couple of blocks from a malicious player on a mineshaft to mess with you. Just a couple more random thoughts in that direction.

[Boea 6]

Again, that is if you either have a small entrance to the mine, or a moderate mine just small enough that you don't need pipes.

That being said, piping is important from the shift from open air quarries, or small mines, to exploring the depths, and moderate to larger mines.

Gauges, not really necessary, unless you find some sort of early age apparatus, when it comes to TFC, it'd be fine if you carried around little 'nonaeric gas' cards, or indicators, and if they were in your hot bar, they'd become 'activated indicators' meaning you've hit an area that in unbreathable.

The one thing I'd suggest about these indicators is that they be one time use, so having a stack of these things in your hotbar would be a waste if you do walk through an unbreathable patch as they'd all activate.

[Nidor 23]

Well, I was meaning more of a visual cue for playerrs to tell when air was getting a little thin, I know that isn't too realistic for the gas one though.

From a gameplay standpoint, silently passing out and dying that way isn't very fun, so gas might end up being more active to balance that.

There doesn't necessarily have to be guages either, a visual cue in the same vein as the nausea or entering a portal would be interesting, if it starts out subtle and gets progressively worse.

As for early age cues, there is the classic canary or other small animal. Torches might also help, as you would need air for them to burn, or ignite flammable gasses

If thaumcraft style guages are too much, perhaps a compass/clock style meter could work. There are quite a few ways to make it work, what would you use to make the cards, I'd imagine they would have to be fairly cheap to make for a gameplay perspective.

[Lumireaver 101]

I'm all for tunnel vision/nausea subtlety. Gauges and bars don't make any sense unless you're Samus Aran. Some interesting reading regarding gasses. Certain kinds of gasses pose different risks. Lighting torches in a high-methane environment is an easy way to get killed.

As far as actually implementing those...I came up with something odd. If a coder could tell me if/why it's possible, I'd appreciate that. Basically, if you could, independently from Minecraft, detect certain formations (IE: Exposed coal veins), select those regions (Chunk loads -> Detect coal -> Is coal next to air? Y -> Select all adjacent air blocks, limit 500), and define them as regions filled with WW% XXX gas. Once a player has initially stepped into those defined regions, the gas percentage would drop by .Y% for every in-game day. It could also go down while the player is within the region, however that would most likely end up being harmful to the player. The process could be accelerated with pumps, or nearby trees.

No actual physics-air blocks means less Minecraft lag. Having an external file with gas regions means...maybe lag? If it's possible as is, maybe it's worth considering adding ways for gas pockets to spread, thinning out in the process.

[JDCollie 66]

While the environmental damage element is cool, I'm much more interested in seeing a viable underground ecology developed. There just isn't much down there right now other than a few spawned mobs, which is sad

[RogueHydra 32]

Agreed. I'd like to see both env. damage and ecology - making living underground viable but difficult and very rewarding as well.