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I am a climate scientist and geologist and think that climate, geology, and geography are incredibly interesting fields that people deserve to know more about. If you have any questions that you’ve sat with for a while, are just curious, want to know more about future or past scenarios, or even have worldbuilding questions, feel free to ask!
What changes would you make to modern video games (e.g. Minecraft) to make their worlds more geologically accurate?
One of my biggest pet peeves is games like Civilization series not having realistic climate zones based on the geography of the generated world. For example, a desert where you would assume that warm water currents and prevailing winds would produce enough moisture to not be a desert. I’m not a programmer, but I know that it actually wouldn’t be too hard to set a few conditions that help the map generation know where to place certain climates much more accurately.
As for games like Minecraft or maybe the recent Legend of Zelda games, I think that the inaccuracies are part of what makes it fun and interesting. Minecraft has come a long way as well, for example in certain cold mountain biomes they have implemented world generation that produces wide, rounded, deep valleys that indicate prior glaciation.
How do you feel about Dwarf Fortress world generation in regard to geology?
I’m not familiar with the game so I’m not sure!
If you want some context
Just after giving it a cursory glance, I can see that they included many types of rock and have gone as far as including rocks that form in very specific contexts, so I am pretty sure they did their research! You don’t accidentally include igneous intrusions in your game when most people do not know they exist.