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« on: October 20, 2010, 12:17:29 am »
I've always thought that a single zone system for all rooms, from workshops to dining rooms, from archery ranges to bedrooms, would be the best system.
My thinking has been this:
-Rooms, at their core, contain furniture. "Core" furniture of a room is assigned at the time of designating the room - thus keeping the intuitiveness of defining rooms from core furniture items. The room's possible uses are constrained by the core furniture item assigned - a room assigned a bed will naturally be a bedroom; however, a room simply assigned a workbench could be any of several workshops.
-Different "secondary" furniture items add to the room's usefulness and value, and in some rooms help to define the difference between the rooms - a workbench room given a sawhorse should be a carpenter's shop, while a workbench room given a mill might be a jeweler's shop. Storage and value-adding items are also secondary furniture items, even though they don't change the nature of the room. Workshops would seek to obtain enough storage to store some of their production on-site.
-The dwarves themselves would seek to fulfill their rooms' secondary furniture requirements. When a room with a workbench as core is designated as a carpenter's shop, the carpenter with the first job from the shop will seek to bring a sawhorse to the shop. Secondary items of basic industries should be easily produced - if no sawhorse is available, for example, the carpenter should simply transform a log into one on his own. Secondary items of more advanced industries would require production by more basic industries. The same goes for non-productive rooms - dwarves would seek to have appropriate secondary furniture in their own bedrooms, rather than requiring it to be assigned; secondary furniture could be changed by the player to suit his/her own desires as well.
-Tools may or may not be in. My thinking is that a craftsman owns his tools; craftsmen arrive on the map with the appropriate tools to do their job. My thinking leads me to believe that tools should not be in except for exceptionally large or complex tools which are still not large enough to be furniture items, of which I'm sure there are several but I can't think of any.
-There's no reason why multiple dwarves couldn't work in a zone, and in fact I'd see this as a common occurrence - in multiple independent usage (2 carpenters working on 2 projects), teamwork, and apprenticeship situations (zomg useful kids). A second core furniture item could be required, as well as perhaps more secondary furniture, to accommodate a second (third, fourth) dwarf. Again, rooms with multiple dwarves working/living/etc. in them should be handled in a streamlined manner - perhaps by the player simply choosing how many dwarves the room is designed to handle (with specific assignment of dwarves of course also possible).
-Overlapping rooms share stuff? Overlapping workshops could share storage. If that's the case, production of improved items is streamlined - if the jeweler's shop shares storage with the mason's shop, for example, encrusting furniture becomes easy and intuitive (assuming it's programmed that the jeweler first seeks to encrust furniture inside his shop) - we can assign our legendary mason to the one with the jeweler's shop so we know that it's always good furniture being encrusted. Some sharing is bad; dwarves don't like to share their personal bedroom cabinets (nor their beds, unless they're married). Some portable things could be shared between areas where they are needed, with dwarves carrying them to where they need them. Two masons are working as a team to complete some statues, and have two chairs and one workbench; they finish, and the carpenter's apprentice takes the unused chair to his workshop. Quarrels over workshop equipment; guild involvement; personality conflicts, grudges, fights.
-Rooms aren't only what we have now; rooms/zones exist primarily as a way of assigning space. No reason why they can't be unified with stockpiles either to reduce the complexity there. Combo workshop/stockpiles. Food stockpile affixed to the dining room or kitchen or independent. (Pathing is reduced in these cases as dwarves first have an opportunity to find nearby items within a limited search space. This may already be well-optimized though, and premature optimization is a programming evil anyways.) Further expansion opportunities; chapels, guild halls, clan meeting halls, prisons, generic recreation spaces customizable by the player.
The room-as-zone concept, with the appropriate changes to the flow of the room/zone interface, significantly streamlines organizing the fortress.
