Bay 12 Games Forum

It's on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/688060/Odd_Realm/
Seriously, this game seems to be a study what DF could be with a proper GUI and graphics. Unlike games like RimWorld and Prison Architect it also seems to be 3d (though still with 2d graphics, just like DF), i.e. you can dig down or build up. Seems really cool and IMO even Toady could benefit from checking it out to see how the GUI (and from what I can see, early game as well) could be improved before the Steam release.

Toady please check it out.

Well, my video just got claimed because of it (I wasn't using any other music and only used the default pack):
Providing the notice info so that the offending song can be removed from future versions of sound sense. It was some kind of organ/choir track if the name doesn't sound like anything to you.
Wasn't able to find a thread dedicated to sound sense so posted it here. Again, youtubers who do DF series (if you are a youtuber that doesn't do a DF series, why are you browsing bay12 anyway ) needs to be aware of this issue. I have no idea if the claim is legit or if it's some claim troll (could be, happened in the past), but I know how to sidestep it and claim it back, so to speak which is something I've been preparing for. Other youtubers may not know how to do that though so it's better if the song in question is removed from future versions of sound sense.

Would it even be possible to build one (I'd imagine from water and magma)? If so, how would we make it to create appropriately shaped layers?

Not taking about full-blown 3d like Armok Vision or even an isometric one like Stonesense, but more akin to something like Doom, Duke3d and Wolfenstein (raycasting). Would something like this work with DF? I know that renderer itself wouldn't be a huge drain on hardware, since even computers incapable of running DF can run Wolf3d, Duke3d or Doom, but not sure about actual visualizing (generating map for raycasting/bsp in real time based on what's in DF). Good think that you wouldn't really need models for it since you could just billboard sprites like in the good old days (and in case sprite for something is missing, render ASCII character to a texture and billboard that).

We all know that pathing is one of the biggest performance sinks in DF. But what if we wouldn't do path finding, but instead obstacle avoidance and steering (warning, sciency stuff, brain may hurt)?
From my (quite limited but good enough) understanding of it this would cause these things to happen:

- AI entities would behave in more natural way (i.e. could get lost or not necessarily take the most optimal path to the target) which would make them feel more like real people rather than robots.- It has much less performance requirements as the algorithms are simpler than popular pathfinding algorithms (such as A*), which would do wonders for big forts.
- Unless specifically programmed, the AI entities won't know the location of things which would allow invader forces to (literally) get lost if you mask entrance to your fort well enough and leave after a while of not finding it.Of course there are potential problems with that, but I think I have solutions for most of those.


Problem: Urist McChildinthefog lost himself in the fortress and can't get to the building site
Solution: Allow for building a "mental map" of the places the AI agent in question visit most often, then steer towards the closest tile of that map, then replay it (very limited pathfinding that wouldn't be recalculated every tick, only if something unexpected would be in the way, and then it would just navigate around it using obstacle avoidance and record the "new" way for future reference).

Problem: Invaders can't get to the fortress, no matter how many scouts they send and no matter if they successfully find the fortress and return.
Solution: Allow for sharing of "mental maps" of places between creatures. This would also help the migrants learn the layout of the fort from dwarves that were already there. Another interesting thing this would allow would be to follow the scout out of the map and then place traps on the route he took to kill most of the invading forces before they even get to the fortress.Also the algorithms involved are much simpler than any "fullblown" pathfinding and would make units move in more natural manner.

What I want to do is to make an auxiliary control room in case fun happens to the first one.

Basic idea is to take what Minecraft is doing and release VERY work in progress builds of DF every week or so (aside of stable updates), even (and possibly even especially) if it's a buggy, crashy mess.

Why? Few reasons:


- People who really can't wait for the new update can try out new features (with the recognition game may be/is broken until a full release)
- Toady can get feedback both on design and bugs so the stable release can be really stable and not require .many fix releases.

This would especially help during the Big Wait, which in this case would be Big Wait for a full, stable release, but people who aren't scared of crashes and bugs that may end up potentially destroying a world (if something nasty such as data corruption would be discovered) could try the new stuff earlier and give feedback as it's being developed to help steer the development that will satisfy both Toady and the community.