Cave Improvement Concept

[Balduranne]

Caves are really dull right now. It's just endless stone, darkness and angry jerks.

There's a few things that could make it more interesting:

 

For one, I think caves should have more than just stone. I'd be happy to see some dirt underground. Whenever I have to landscape an area, I need to take the dirt from somewhere else, which usually means a hole somewhere, or flattening the terrain. Now, I know Minecraft has this, but I'd like the ability to dig out dirt for landscaping under the surface. 

Besides that:

SHINIES. Past a certain depth, caves could have glow worms attached to the ceilings to add some nice detail and potentially make navigating easier. It could also be some very inedible bio-luminescent mushrooms (Potentially an alchemy ingredient?). Besides looking pretty, Red Ram pointed out on Discord that Locusts give themselves away too easily with their glow. There could also be a crystal that emits a faint glow (Uranium?).

With so many ravines and shafts opening to the surface, we could have bats coming out at night and chillin' in the caves during the day. 

Now this one is more tricky, but it would be awesome if caves could have some nice formations - stalactites, stalagmites and connected columns. Maybe even quartz, salt or limestone crystal formations. 

And finally - Flooded caves and underground rivers/lakes. Again, having some bio-luminescence in those would look great. Hell, maybe you could even catch some rare fish or other animals in those. I'm sure we can all come up with details for that.

[Tatazaki]

I said it in discord, I'll say it here  Uranium in it's raw unrefined form gives out light. It looks like this irl.

[Tyron]

A simple tweak i thought of: Mossy Rock and Bony rock

[Balduranne]

6 hours ago, Tyron said:

A simple tweak i thought of: Mossy Rock and Bony rock

That. I forgot to mention moss

[Stroam]

some rocks naturally glow, learn all about it.

 

[redram]

Those rocks aren't 'naturally' glowing (or maybe I should say, 'innately').  They're being hit with specific wavelengths of ultraviolet light, which causes them to fluoresce.  Without those specific wavelengths, and the occlusion of all visible light, you would not see anything unusual.  Now of course the game can do whatever it wants, but from a realism standpoint this wouldn't make sense unless the player can make light sources that give off only UV light.  Now it does so happen that the filters they use to let through only specific UV wavelengths are made of a very expensive quartz glass (as I understand it).  And I would absolutely be first in line for the player to be able to collect minerals and make a fluorescing mineral display room.  Some day.

[Sparkle Kitti]

I love your ideas Balduranne . Especially the glows and underground lakes.

On 8/15/2018 at 8:09 AM, redram said:

 And I would absolutely be first in line for the player to be able to collect minerals and make a fluorescing mineral display room.  Some day.

oh yes!

[ruggbean]

Hello!

So, I was doing some cave exploration and I was very concerned and confused by the bioluminescent light that I found in one of my caves. Turns out that this light was one of the coolest concepts that I had the pleasure of learning about today. 

Super happy to see touches like this in VS.