Disclaimer:
Due to my autism and ADHD, brevity isn't my strong suit. Please bear with me.
I'm very much a novice when it comes to programming, as I'm still waiting to do Computer Science at university next year.
I apologise if any of these ideas seem incoherent.
I'd like to make some suggestions for gameplay features, UI improvements and lighting, which occasionally uses the very, and I mean very, basic programming knowledge that I have
Gameplay:
• Burrows that are set to activate only at certain times of the year (e.g., right before the Full Moon) as players like myself would often forget to do this manually
• Option for making doors with food tray slots, to allow for food to be delivered to prison cells without opening the door
UI:
• A back button for the 'Embark' menu that sends you back to the map, so players don't have to spend several minutes reloading their save when they want to choose a different location to embark
• Option to toggle between the pre-50.01 soundtrack and post-50.01 soundtrack
• Hotkeys visible on icons as a separate sprite on a separate layer to their respective icons (an ASCII character, maybe); changes depending on what it's bound to.
There's currently a mod for the game on Steam that implements a similar feature, but it instead takes a less ideal approach by changing the icon itself, which renders it inaccurate as soon as a
hotkey is reassigned
• A way to disable anti-aliasing when zooming in on sprites
• If it's not too much trouble; re-implementing the ability to not only play the game with true ASCII graphics, but in a Linux terminal or Windows command prompt instead of a window, similar to
versions before 50.01. No strong reason for wanting this option, other than performance and nostalgia.
• For the above, I can understand why this might be difficult or impossible to implement, mostly because the ASCII terminal UI would need to be maintained separately with each update to the Steam
version's UI
• Switch priority of areas designated for mining without changing the shape of the mining designation
Lighting:
If the current devs are interested in implementing any of the features in this section, I suggest doing performance tests with and without the feature to determine whether or not it's worth doing so. I've heard that lighting checks might make the game too performance-heavy to be acceptable, which is why I'm suggesting multiple compromises
Lighting Idea A:
• Add a bioluminescent material that the player could order to be painted or smeared on the walls of their fortress. This only benefits non-dwarven races,
as it'd make sense for dwarves to see in total darkness, meaning it's completely optional to the player. At the cost of harming trade, diplomacy, and influxes of monster
hunters, there may even be an advantage to having no light sources in your fortress whatsoever, as invaders from the surface would struggle to find their way around.
Some measures that could be taken to lessen the performance impact of lighting calculations include making the light check apply exclusively to non-dwarven, non-cavern-
dwelling creatures, or categorising the light levels into a boolean; either 'no light' (0) or 'light' (1). I suggest making all light levels invisible to the player in
Fortress Mode unless toggled; similar to how water depth is displayed.
Shadows would be placed behind areas obstructing a light source unless open to the sky
Lighting Idea B:
• If you don't want to skip light checks, and you want to add a third level for shaded outdoor areas as well as the edges of bright sources of light ('1'), this would make
it so that humans aren't blinded by otherwise-minor variations in light on the surface. This makes the highest light level '2'. Light levels would be '0', '1' and '2',
respectively. Where '0' and '2' meet, have a transitional zone with a value of '1' which only appears on the side of the transitional zone that'd otherwise be '0'. There
could be a fourth value too if you absolutely want there to be one (with values ranging from '00' in binary to '11')
Lighting Idea C:
• Light levels stored using a 2-bit integer (ranging from 0 to 3) and updated whenever a light source is placed or obstructed;
'0' for 'no light' (visible only to cavern-dwelling species and dwarves), '1' for 'extremely low light' (lowest visible to non-cave-adapted races and species with adaptation), '2' for 'low light'
(lowest visible to humans without adjustment), '3' for 'high' (visible by any race). If this can be implemented without significantly harming performance, try a 4-bit integer.
Best to assume that it doesn't change angle with the time of day and instead changes with the season, since time runs very fast in Fortress Mode.
Glass blocks could make the brightness of light passing through go down by a value of '1' for every second or third layer of glass, as glass in real life isn't perfectly
transparent; the amount of floors it can pass through before totally blocking light would depend on the type of glass
Lighting Idea D (most likely to be performant and avoids lighting checks, too):
• Humans and other non-dwarven, humanoid races could carry lanterns when visiting your fort,
without which they couldn't see in areas that have never been open to the sky or are, more specifically, underground.
They'd only be able to see a certain radius around themselves in the dark, unlike dwarves.
Someone carrying a lantern could be seen in the dark by someone who isn't carrying one, regardless of distance.
Caverns with (glowing) fungi could, as a whole, be defined by the game as places where anyone can see, much like the surface.
I'd like to note a potential caveat, which is that pets from the surface wouldn't be able to see underground unless Idea C is implemented in a way that allows them to do
so under certain conditions.
As for how the pets of dwarves would be accounted for under such a system, one idea involves pet food that allows them to better sense their surroundings underground
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Topic: Suggestions for gameplay, UI, and lighting (Read 55 times)