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Topics - Pie

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1
DF Suggestions / A "mark all for trade" option within trade depots.
« on: August 15, 2013, 09:00:07 am »
This seems like an idea that would substantially improve the gameplay experience of Vanilla Dwarf Fortress for relatively little coding difficulty.

I spend disproportionate amounts of time marking things to buy off traders. At a certain point, I'd just like to be able to press a button and everything that they have brought gets marked, and I'll just take the cost hit of the useless items (or I can manually deselect things I don't want).

Obviously you could later make this more sophisticated, so that you could "mark all of this type": buy all the food, or all the weapons, or all the cloth bins, or all the toys, but that might make this idea too difficult to implement, and too tied into the way trading currently works (which I understand is a temporary system, and so Toady might be unwilling to invest any time at all into improving it).

I'm sure there are mods for this kind of thing, but it should be in vanilla as a priority, given how straightforward it would be to implement, and how much more pleasant it would make the game.

It also enriches the simulation: I can imagine a broker who was really concerned about the specifics of what was being bought or sold, but I can also imagine a broker who just took a general look over the items, said "yeah that's about right" and just paid up.

Apologies if this has been suggested before; I searched for this idea and didn't see anything.

2
DF Suggestions / Combat preferences
« on: April 09, 2010, 11:01:54 am »
Now I don't know if this has been suggested before, but I was thinking about ways to make combat more interesting overall, but especially for the adventurer/arena mode combat player. This is basically a way of showing the player a bit of personality, rather than the usual approach of telling the player that these creatures have personality. Essentially, in much the same way as we have normal distributions for heights etc, we would have weighted distributions for combat styles. Under the current system, I can think of a few:
Dirty Fighter - uses gouges, pinches, has a preference for knives, backstabs, poison use etc
Show off/efficiency fighter - tries to finish every fight quickly by going for lethal hits (towards head usually), prefers weapons like the spear or sword
Psycho - will attempt to break every bone in your body and tear off limbs etc
Boxer - will use punches more than normal
Thrower - usually large or flying creatures that use the environment to kill their enemies
Defensive - usually heavily armoured, waits for the right moment to strike
Offensive - takes massive risks, is less armoured etc.

Those aren't concrete or anything, but that is the sort of thing you would have. Then somewhere in the raws, it would look like this:
[Offensive][Thrower][Psycho]
5:15:0.5

Indicating that about 5% of the pop will have offensive characteristics, 15% thrower characteristics and 0.5% psycho characteristics. Some could potentially have a mix of these, and some contradictory mixes would just cancel out, but overall I think this would add quite a bit of character to the game. I see the main problem being the combination of two things.

What do you guys think? Any ideas?

3
DF Suggestions / How I think the user interface should work (Update with new mock up!)
« on: December 27, 2009, 12:55:13 pm »
Right, well obviously this is not an immediate goal, but I am sure that there will be a time when it is, and having discussed it beforehand I think would help significantly. So I've tried to come up with an initial plan for how this could work. Bear in mind that I have assumed that we'll have mouse support and that all features such as 'k' to view a unit are replaced with 'mouse over' to view a pop-up box with info about what you are mousing over. So, without further ado, here is my idea:

Structure:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Mock up to show the idea of consistent tabs (they would each have different stuff underneath them):
Here
I will add more stuff to this later, but I think it conveys at least some of the idea.

I am going to do a full mock-up in flash, but I wanted to check if I'd missed any key functionality before I did/if there are any major changes. Also note that the major titles (Pause, Resource/Population, Announcements and Planning/Construction) are always on screen, as tabs that you can immediately switch to. Therefore the largest number of clicks to get something done is (by my calculation) 5 (to get to a magma glass smelter from, say, the announcements tab). Some elements appear multiple times, because they are related to multiple things. I designed this to try to reduce the need for reference to the wiki or tutorials.

Give me some constructive criticism please, along with your ideas.

4
DF Suggestions / A couple of my ideas regarding magic...
« on: August 14, 2009, 11:11:24 am »
Yes, I do understand that magic is post-version 1, but I just felt like writing down some ideas... I've tried to work from the basic principle that magic should be special and interesting.
Here are my ideas about what magic should be, in order to fit with DF:

  • It should be derived from the environment - this means that some areas will be relatively saturated in raw magical power, and other areas almost completely devoid of it. Certain areas may be filled with different types of energy, so you could be in a volcanoe and magma-based magic is particularly strong.
  • The skills and knowledge of the magic user should be about the control of this energy - a skilled magic user should be able to scrape together a reasonable spell in a low magic area, and should be almost god-like in a high magic area. An unskilled magic user should barely be able to do anything in a low magic area, but if they try to do stuff in a high magic area they could get effects (though they are likely to be unintended or extremely damaging to the user or people around)
  • Magic users should be highly specialist - just as an axe weilder isn't be very good with a crossbow, so should a guy who can posses others not be very good at setting stuff on fire or controlling nature.
  • There should probably be a type of inverse bell curve for the effectiveness and danger of a spell - so more often than not, it works too well or not well enough and is more often dangerous than not.
  • Catalysts are important and perhaps should have an effect on the magic. So if you choose the blood of an innocent to cause the rains to come early, the water may taste of blood (or be blood)
  • More "interesting" catalysts should have larger/more interesting effects. So if you use an artifact sword in your ritual or imbue it with special powers, it should be more significant than a masterwork sword. If blood or a severed body part gets used, it should be important to whom it belonged to. Some issues arise where if you are using a normal dragon's claw for a fire-breath ritual it should be more effective than using the hair of the most awesome dwarven champion ever to walk the face of the earth.
  • If someone uses magic regularly/uses very strong magic, there should be a fairly high chance of going crazy. Tapping into raw power should not be healthy (this would mean that magic can be quite powerful, without being able to be overused). Few characters should consider using magic regularly.
  • Emotional effects - a depressed wizard should struggle to create life, or an angry wizard while trying to start a fire to cook some meat should instead cause a massive inferno, or instantly explode into flame.
  • Magic could be linked to body parts - if you cut off a wizard's hands, should he be able to cast as effectively?
  • Magic should be selected by theme rather than specifics. If you use a "life" spell on a dead tree, it might grow leaves, or it might grow taller, or it might come alive and attack you, or the man buried beneath it might come back to life. Only very skilled wizards should be able to control exactly what they want to happen. The gameplay idea of themes is to prevent people just repeating "shoot fireball" 10 times in a row. If they just selected "fire" 10 times in a row, likely hood is that one of those selections would result in something crazy or unexpected (like the wizard's gown catching fire).
  • Emphasis on manipulation rather than outright creation. You shouldn't be able to just "poof" a troll into existance, you should have to summon it from the earth.

The main 'themes' of magic could be (and some of their more powerful effects):
  • Life
    • Reincarnation (zombies or the original person)
    • Bringing dwarf-made objects to life
  • Death
    • Draining life (perhaps enabling wizards to not die after using too much magic)
    • Demons (via sacrifices etc)
  • Earth
    • Causing mud to rise up and swallow someone
    • Turning parts of the wizard into earth (for better protection, healing or harder hits)
  • Air
    • Akin to telekenesis, ability to manipulate objects from afar
    • Tornadoes etc
  • Fire
    • Ability to heat up objects quickly (e.g. the enemy's helmet)
    • Ability to direct existing fires (possibly an Air ability (wind)
  • Water
    • Creating rain etc
    • Parting the seas (:P)
  • Blood
    • Manipulation of life-forms (possibly intelligent)
    • Calling on the power of ArmOK

And then these could be combined (e.g summoning a magma man by selecting Fire + Life and then aiming at some magma, or selecting Air and Death to kill a field of crops/children). Please post if you agree/disagree/have other new ideas.

5
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / A couple of ideas/interesting mechanisms to possibly exploit...
« on: July 23, 2009, 04:13:42 pm »
I've been thinking about defence mechanisms. Please point out if I have overlooked something in my plan. I call this kitten arrow slits.
Code: [Select]
W = Wall
. = Floor
X = Floodgate
_ = channel
F = Fortifications
m = Marksdwarves
k = kitten on top of pressure plate which opens floodgates and hatches when inactive
H = hatches with kittens on top

z=0
   Your defences against melee soldiers
                 ^
                 |
                 |
           WWWWWW.WWW
Entrance-->......._kW
           WXXXXXXWWW
           W______W
           W......W
           WFFFFFFW
           WmmmmmmW

z=1



           WWWWWWWW
           WHHHHHHW
           WWWWWWWW

So essentially, when an enemy archer enters the corridor, he shoots the kitten, which causes the fortifications with marksdwarves behind them to come in to play, but because half decent enemy archers will shoot through fortifications fairly easily, a number of kittens are dropped in front to absorb the enemy arrows. This allows your marksdwarves to quickly and efficiently deal with enemy archers. Alternatively, you could have that kitten linked up to a system which takes the archers a different route, that has many corners for your melee defence to hide behind, but might not be the best system for preventing lag (so it is only used when needed).

My second idea relies upon the cowardliness of dwarven siege operators. I call it cowardly ownage.
Code: [Select]
W = Wall
. = Floor
_ = Channel
F = Fortification
B = Ballista
X = Floodgate
x = Floodgate
p = pressure plate which when stepped on by the dwarf, opens up floodgate x and closes floodgate X and when not, does the reverse.


       W.W                  W.W
 WWWWWWWXWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWxWWWWWWW
WWBBBF_......................._FBBBWW
pDBBBF_......................._FBBBD.
WWBBBF_......................._FBBBWW
 WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
(This one would take quite a bit of extra machinery to work methinks). The basic idea is that as the enemy gets near to one end, they cause the operator to run away, causing them to repath to the other end of the hall. The operator then returns (to continue firing) and causes them to path back and forth, between the two ballistae.

6
DF Suggestions / Different Digging styles
« on: June 10, 2009, 04:42:40 am »
Well, at the moment, Dwarves dig in a pre-defined manner. I was thinking that it would be cool to have different digging styles (which could possibly be different between races. You could have, for example, a straight line approach, which takes time to change lines, but can dig straight lines much faster than normal. You could have dwarves with different digging direction preferences too, aside from the standard. You could have dwarves that dig out from central point, or dwarves that dig diagonally.  Perhaps even dwarves who like squares and thus will select a block that creates the least squares. For other digging critters, perhaps a sort of zig-zag method, or a method that favours going up or down z-levels. I dunno.

I think that this could add a nice variety to dwarf mode (obviously the problems about digging from the wrong direction would still be there, but for that I would suggest a digging "priorities" thing, which allows you to designate an area of stone "high priority" and thus will recieve a highly skilled miner only, and will always be dug out in preference to anything else, with digging direction set manually for each batch).

So what do you think?

7
DF Suggestions / A way to deal with randomisation?
« on: May 31, 2009, 08:03:48 am »
I was looking through the dev notes and I noticed the large amount of randomisation involved and this got me thinking. Which is better: experiencing similar variations on a theme and then occasionally seeing something really cool and unusual, or seeing consistently strange worlds. My conclusion was the former.

I think that the rarity of exceptional events makes them more special. Think of it this way: how special is a legendary stonecrafter compared with a legendary armoursmith? I'd say a significant difference is their rarity (though the utility of armour is also a factor). I don't want thousands and thousands of creatures with interesting quirks, I want legends and heroes, which requires events which are normal and unexceptional events. I want the freaks to be rare, but by the same token, special.

It is therefore my conclusion to make every single randomised characteristic of the game normally distributed (except for things which are dependent on that dwarf's history). So Toady would set a mean height for dwarves, say, and a standard deviation. From this, you could calculate the likely heights of all the dwarves in an area. The same could be done for things like vision (a few rare people having hawk-like vision or some being blind), hair colour, skill, sanity, wisdom, number of arms, aggression and the like. This could also be applied to the world, with evil or magma proliferation being normally distributed.

A slightly more advanced variation on this theme would be culture specific normal distribution for the MEANS and STANDARD DEVIATIONS of certain characteristics, so some groups would be very similar and others vastly different in different characteristics. Northern dwarves, for example, could be taller than Southern dwarves but not as tall as the freaks up in the mountains who all grow to the height of humans.

8
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Scary, insane child.
« on: March 05, 2009, 03:46:45 pm »
Oh god. I dropped her and her immigrant parents into a small room without food, water or light, with dwarf bones piled high and then left her. Then she made one friend. Then her dad died. Then her friend died. And then I checked her status:

I mean, WHAT THE HELL? ECSTATIC?!? The only positive things that I can see are that she talked with her brother and made a friend. Both the friend and the brother are now dead. Oh, and she saw a nice looking door. Looking at her stats: "She is not affected by the suffering of others" - this girl sounds like a freakin' psychopath, what do you guys think? Has this happened to you guys before?

Also, a few moments ago she became starving and only dropped to "happy". Jesus Christ, if I weren't working on a "7 dwarves only" challenge I would definitely recruit this nutcase into the military...

Some time later, when I had smoothed every inch of my fort, my lone legendary engraver's first engraving was this:

I wonder who he was referring to? It seems her ecstatic laughter echoed throughout the fort...

9
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / A sustainable fort...
« on: March 02, 2009, 01:40:10 pm »
Well, I've been thinking about this since Toady mentionned about being able to run the game without announcements (or thereabouts), continuously. So I was wondering how easy it would be to create a sustainable fort. I am going to limit myself with the following constraints:
1) No traditional traps (stone-fall, weapon etc)
2) Fortress must go up in value for as long as possible
3) No modifications can be made to the game
4) The faster it can be set up, the better
5) Only the starting 7 allowed

One of the main initial problems is food shortages, which lead me to the conclusion that either immigrants will have to be killed or excess food must be produced from the start (to sustainably cope with 200 odd dwarves). I think that the first is probably the best way to go, and I think I have come up with a cool way of dealing with them: effectively have a retracting bridge as the entrance, with a pressure plate just before it. Something like:
Code: [Select]
p = Pressure Plates linked to doors and bridge
B = Bridge (not retracted)
o = Bridge (retracted - open space)
. = Floor
D = Door (shut
d = Door (open)

Stage 1:          Stage 2:
WWWWWWWWWWWWW     WWWWWWWWWWWWW
WWWBBBBBBBBBW     WWWoooooooooW
dpdBBBBBBBBBd     DpDoooooooooD
WWWBBBBBBBBBW     WWWoooooooooW
WWWWWWWWWWWWW     WWWWWWWWWWWWW
And then below it have a room with a small farm with seeds and a water supply based on a river. First immigrants would fall into the room, but then invaders and the suchlike... could be interesting how 30 crappy immigrants deal with 1 elite goblin swordsmaster... There would also have to be a repeater using river water, to reset this. My only concern is about units staying in the square with the pressure plate on, for one reason or another. Then when the doors opened, they could just waltz over the bridge... anyone got any ideas? Perhaps I could have a pressure plate activated drowning chamber after that, to be sure that the person was killed. Also, how would I stop my dwarves on the inside wandering into this death trap?

Another issue is food. As my farmer (I don't think I would need more than one, as I would probably only be dealing with a few dwarves) will get more skilled after I leave the game, will produce a surplus, using the same farm. Perhaps I could build up a large stock of food beforehand, large enough that the dwarves survive long enough for the farmer to get to a sustainable level. And how many barrels would I need to construct?

The final issue that I need resolution to is the increasing value required. I was thinking that I could have a system where the dwarves constantly build rock crafts, and when they are all in their bedrooms, it would release some stored water, which would carry the rock crafts onto a lower level. I think it would work like this:

Code: [Select]
d = Door leading to workshops, linked to pressure plates in dwarves' rooms (open)
S = Water source
~ = Water
W = Wall
C = Craft Stockpile
F = Floodgate linked to pressure plate in dwarves' rooms. (closed)

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
WWWWWWWWWWWCCCCCCCCCCCC_W
S~~FFFFFFF.CCCCCCCCCCCC_W
WWWWWWWWWWWCCCCCCCCCCCC_W
WWWWWWWWWWWdWdWdDWdWdWdWW

So can you guys see any problems/answer any of my questions/suggest better solutions?

10
DF Suggestions / More realistic (and balanced) projectiles.
« on: November 12, 2008, 12:00:17 pm »
I'm not sure how much of this is already implemented/will be implemented but I thought that this would be a good system:
If the arrow/bolt lands on the square of a creature, the computer randomly selects a number from 1 to 7. Depending on the outcome, it would do the following:

7 - 100% miss - flies straight over the creature's head
6 - 10% chance to hit head
5 - 30% chance to hit head, 30% chance to hit the upper body
4 - 50% chance to hit body, 50% chance to hit organs - solid hit
3 - 30% chance to hit legs, 30% chance to hit the lower body
2 - 10% chance to hit feet
1 - 100% miss - thuds into the ground beneath the creature's feet

As you can see the numbers are akin to height above the ground. And when I say upper body, I mean it will select a random part of the upper body to damage, and with organs, it will select a random organ to hit etc. This system would go on top of the current system, so things which affect damage done would still affect it now.

And as dwarves reach certain skill levels, the end results are more and more limited. So a newbie gets all 7, but a legendary crossbow dwarf can only get 3, 4 or 5 per bolt that is there. Although this system is fairly complex, I think it would add a little bit of balance to crossbows as well as some realism.

A more complicated version would be that when the dwarf fires the arrow, it starts at number 4, then after a square or something goes up to 5 and then 6, then 7, then 6 and then down to 1, sort of simulating an arrow's arc. This would mean that at point blank range, almost anyone could score a decent hit, but over longer distances, only legendary crossbow dwarves would be able to get a 4 (as their arc would effectively go 4, 5, 4, 3.

What do you think?

11
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Draining an ocean.
« on: November 09, 2008, 05:39:09 am »
I was thinking of doing it like this. It needs magma.

Ok, so 1 level above the ocean, I have a sort of hollow square which goes from the edge of the coast, out to the ocean, which basically is 5 tiles wide, with the 3 central tiles being covered with a bridge. I then pour magma into this. I then pull the lever, causing the bridges to release the magma which will hopefully form obsidian on the surface of the ocean and then collapse to the bottom. I then repeat, building up a wall of obsidian, sealing off the square from the rest of the ocean. I then pump the water out and can commence construction of my base. Any flaws in this plan?

12
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Hardest way to play Dwarf Fortress
« on: October 15, 2008, 11:15:06 am »
Ok, so I am looking for the most challenging possible conditions to build a successful fort, without it being impossible (as in PHYSICALLY impossible).
I am not sure whether only having one dwarf and killing off everyone else (including immigrants) is harder than having lots of dwarves...
Presumably a terrifying biome (but which type is the hardest?) With no magma, trees or water (unless it is an aquifer or salt water).
I am thinking that avoiding going underground would be pretty hard, starting with unskilled dwarves, and a few animals to make soap walls... farming would also be prohibited, but then wouldn't I need water?
Also, I would kill off every trader who came near and not use any traps.

So, to summarise:
  • Terrifying biome
  • All constructions to be made of soap
  • Kill every living thing that enters the area
  • No trees
  • No magma
  • No farming
  • No traps
  • No mining
  • No skilled dwarves
  • No starting objects apart from animals and perhaps 3 stone

Anything that could make it harder?

13
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Interesting ways of deal with immigrants.
« on: September 22, 2008, 09:56:25 am »
Seriously, guys. I've read a hell of a lot of posts where people state that they "set the pop cap to x". I ALWAYS find a way to lower my pop to what I want it to be. Drowning chambers, magma pits, atom smashers, unbeatable enemies... there are so many ways to kill them, so why stop it? At the moment I have a fort with 9 people in. Approximately 60 immigrants have come overall. So I propose everyone stop setting pop caps unnaturally!
Some ideas:
  • Lock all of you immigrants in a sealed barracks, give one a sword or an axe and give no-one armour. Get them to train for several years. Provide access to a nearby well, so that people can off themselves when they feel like it. If the guy with the axe does not go insane, send him alone as the defence of your fort against a siege.
  • Create a bridge 100 z levels up. Put all of your immigrants on said bridge. Pull the Lever. See who's body part goes the furthest. Maybe even try to funnel the gore out through a hole.
  • Create a big booze party in one large room. Invite all of the immigrants. Bring in a Dragon. Lock the room.
  • Capture a bunch of goblin crossbowmen. Place the cages in a long line across a long room. Put crossbows and ammo in front of them. Place your immigrants as unarmoured wrestlers at the other end of the room. Open the cages.

Anyone else agree/disagree with me? Anyone got any really cool ways to use/abuse immigrants?

14
DF Suggestions / Liquid lag solution?
« on: September 21, 2008, 04:17:10 am »
I searched for this, but didn't come up with anything... also, this is my first post on these forums, so hey everybody!

I recently embarked on a 4x4 map with a magma pipe (volcano) in it. There were a fair few z-levels in use but it seemed that the greatest hit to my FPS was from the magma. Now I am not sure if this is already implemented, but surely a solution to the lag could be to do what they do in quite a few physics engines: only simulate the magma when something affects it, like if you dig a channel, it should only simulate the magma's movement until it comes to a stop. Likewise, it should only simulate the temperature of the magma when something new is introduced to it, until it reaches a point of equilibrium (so it may heat up a wall adjacent to it, but once it is "warm" it should stop simulating the temperature.

I think that this should also work for large volumes of liquid, but I don't think that they give such a performance hit... oh, and of course feel free to flame if I am being n00bish.

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