Bay 12 Games Forum

Well as pointed out Toady One doesn't really have any intentions of doing multiplayer but who knows it might change eventually.  Anyway for something simpler an Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom style multiplayer mode could work very well and wouldn't lag since not much network interaction is really needed.

Anyway for those that haven't played it here's how it works.  Each player manages their own city in their own play space at their own game pace within a month of game time.  Once a player finishes their month of game time the game pauses until all other players finish the month at which point the game moves on to the next month and every one continues.  The multiplayer interactions come in with trade, sending messages, and sending military attacks/support.  Trade is handled just by selecting what you'd like to buy/sell and the caravans are managed automatically without direct player control at either side.  Messages are similarly sent using automated NPCs which can take several months of game time depending on how distant the locations of the players are.  For military you just select what you'd like to send, what you'd like them to do(loot, raze, etc) and they do their thing automatically with the survivors returning after a little while.

Since players never actually have to see the other forts very little data ever needs to be synched and since the game time is very lax only synching up at month ends the game never needs to be held back on account of other players except at the month end and can play their own game fluidly.  While this doesn't lead to much direct multiplayer interaction the players can still aid each other through trade, or maybe in the case of a dwarf fortress version allow players to directly send stuff as well as sending military aid.  For military aid the receiving player could manage them like a limited squad with simpler options such as assigning a post or sending them back.  Offensive attacks like in Emperor wouldn't work out as well though in Dwarf Fortress since it's easy for players to design a fortress to completely thwart AI attackers; however by the time Toady One(if ever) does multiplayer this may not be an issue anymore.

This would be a simple means of adding multiplayer, shouldn't require too much effort, and would be neat to be able to exchange unique resources and goods from different locations.

Better yet just have an option to have it figure out the tile size and have as many tiles as will fit without stretching them.  Could also have a sizable window in window mode that way.

I generally go real minimalist when taking stuff including on the skills.  One proficient miner and a proficient clothier/weaver.  I drop everything but one copper pick.  Get enough turtle to last until fall, enough booze for a few drinks to keep full speed for awhile or enough to get until fall if no drinkable water is present on the map, 5 or so of every seed, 2 dogs , 2 cats, about 30 logs.  Then spend the rest of the points on giant cave spider thread.  Any remaining after that goes into pig tail thread or extra logs.

I have the clothier/weaver weave all the thread and make clothing that comes in pairs so I get 2 items for every thread.  The items range from ~1.2k to ~2k generally with a few 4k ones if I'm lucky.  Once fall comes around I can easily afford any axes and anvils and anything I want for the next year off the initial finished goods made from the threads.  Plus with all that value right away I expand my workforce very fast to get the fort moving along quickly.

Since early on you only need 7 beds and a few bins to keep things neat and tidy there is no need for the axe for woodcutting anyway.  You shouldn't really need more wood until after you've had a trade caravan come and some migrants and with the value you get by dropping everything but what you need you can have all you want and more by fall.

Unfortunately it's not very simple to define a tile as inaccessible and maintain pathfinding efficiency.  As far as I know Dwarf Fortress maintains an accessibility map which divides the map into separate accessible regions.  Any tile in one region can access any other tile in the same region.  Whenever any tile that was accessible becomes blocked or the other way around the game updates this map.  So when checking if something is reachable the game just compares the starting tiles region to the ending tile's region if it isn't the same the game already knows there is no path.  If it is the same then it runs A* to find the exact path there.  Without this the game wouldn't be able to know without testing every accessible tile from the start before it realizes there is not path.

Now after a long winded explanation of that the problem arises in that everything uses the same accessibility map including baddies which is why locking your doors and blocking off any targets break them since they have nothing in their region they can attack so they just act dumb.  So to make the idea work the game would have to maintain two accessibility maps one for the dwarves and one for everything else.  Since some things like fluids can cause changes to this frequently you effectively double that work frequently.  This is also a reason flying stuff can't path as well since to make them work right they'd need another accessibility map to be computed to properly tell where they can and can't go.

The simple solution to this problem is to just have dwarves completely ignore tasks which involve things on outside tiles and to suspend those jobs until they are allowed out and instead take other jobs.  That way the dwarves would continue to work on inside jobs or have no job and not dance around at the entrance continually taking tasks that lead them outside and promptly canceling them when they step on an outside tile.  This would fix most cases.  The only case it wouldn't would be if to get to a tile counted as inside the dwarf would have to pass outside and then they'd go stupid again.  But that'd never be an issue for the way I design my forts so good enough for me !

Dwarf Fortress is quite awesome but there are several things I tend to get bogged down a lot with.

First off I find myself turning on and off the hauling jobs a lot for my specialty dwarves.  When they have nothing to do I'd like them to haul and when they do I don't want them wasting time hauling.  So I find myself turning on and off the same jobs over and over.  I know job priorities have already been suggested but this is the major reason I'd want it.  Implementing and setting up the UI stuff for it might take some time so a simpler solution until we have real job priorities would to just take any non hauling job first and if there are non then do any hauling job.

Second melting stuff is a total pain.  I meticulously set up a bunch of stockpiles near my smelters covering exactly the things I always want melted.  At the moment I let it pile up, go through each bin and set each item inside to melt, then set up repeated melt orders in all my smelters.  This is a painful process.  The designate melt will help a lot in the next version but it still requires needless periodic checks.  It would be very awesome if I could set a stockpile to auto melt stuff(not the storage bins though).  Then have an workshop order to auto melt stuff at the smelter if something is tagged for melt.  This way I could set up my stockpiles and just ignore it.

For finished goods stockpiles it'd be nice if we could limit what goes in by price.  I tend to like to sell off all my cheap stuff and in combination with above I could just get rid of cheap metal junk and have it auto melted.

When dwarves are finding stuff to work with they seem to treat a move in the z direction as far as distance goes the same as in other directions.  It would be nice if we could make the z change more expensive and have the value user defined in the init.txt

Right now the quality of goods if determined randomly based on skill level which is annoying if you want low quality furniture for cheap rooms.  It would be real nice if you could profile a building and set the max quality level.  A min quality level could also be nice for when weapons and armor are being made.  If the quality doesn't hit the min it could be destroyed so you don't have to deal with getting rid of the junk you don't want.

And for a more long term suggestion.  Right now when the economy kicks in I tend to have everything I need to keep my dwarves alive with the exception of generating some food now and then.  I already have all my furniture I need for several hundred dwarves covered and more trade goods than I'll ever need to deal with.  So there's no real jobs I could have dwarves be doing.  Furniture like clothing needs to wear down and break so you have to continually have a supply of things for the dwarves to be making and needing.  I know that would be extra annoying however to keep track of and replace yourself so how furniture is placed also needs change.  Rather than picking out specific furniture to place at a location you pick type and quality(or maybe quality range).  Then when a piece of furniture that meets these qualifications is available a dwarf with furniture hauling will go grab it and place it.  If it breaks down then a new one will be built automatically when available.  When the economy kicks in the dwarf living in the room could buy the stuff himself based on his budget.

If there are no items you can move to the depot it'll crash when you try and use the move items to/from depot option.

I haven't tested extensively but while my doors are locked blocking off all my stuff it crashes.  When I unlock them it doesn't.  I repeated the crash about 3 times before it clicked what was causing it.  Then I tested with my doors open and it worked.  I then made one last test with them locked and once again it crashed.