Bay 12 Games Forum

Presumably, you'd need to set them to a civ.  It's possible you'll also have to specify how they can be made.

I cannot imagine a human being that could survive 100 lashes.

Dwarf Fortress doesn't do "random".  It does "procedural (with arbitrary/manipulable seeds)".  There's a huge difference.  Thus, Toady would need to simulate animal migrations.  He'd need to simulate volcanic activity (which I think would be neat anyway).

Woohoo!  Now I'm just hoping for the ability to have a side-view, like at DFMA.

Presumably, criminals would be based on the ethic tags of a civilisation.

I'm imagining elf prisoners who cut down trees...

Basically, anything forbidden by the ethics could cause someone to be in the dungeons.  Even if it only showed up in Worldgen/Legends and perhaps the speech "What are you in for? Cutting down trees" it would be cool.

This is over 3 years old...   Necro much?

Don't do this.  We like necro here, as long as there's something to contribute.

I, too, think all the problems with this concept could be overcome by making it simply an extension of the current system of walls, and not necessarily making any new rules.  I guess what I'm thinking of is just more of an 'elfier' (read "wimpier") version of current walls - more like a sort of fence.  For the half-height walls I envision, I'd be satisfied if it were some arbitrary height around 3 or 4 (in regards to containing fluids), non-walkable on top of the tiles, obstructive to all movement through, represented by a slightly different tile from full-height walls, and fit somewhere into the current system of different types of fortifications (i.e. somewhere between crenelations and walls).  I'm not too familiar with all the specifics, but it seems like something that could be easily added into the current set of building options.  It's also exciting to think of what could be done with something like this in place in the future, as the game develops more (what with things like climbing, defending barriers, and throwing objects as a part of everyday life).

The problem with just tacking it on for cover without doing anything else is twofold.

1) Toady doesn't do things halfway.  If he's changing / adding something, it will support everything that should logically come from that, or at the least support coding framework to make it possible later.

2) Fans would ask why they can't climb over 1-height walls.  Because not being able to do so would be INFURIATING in a very specific way.  Basically, many many many other videogames treat obstacles of any height as being insurmountable for stupid level design reasons, and we resent that in those games.  DF strives to be a simulator.  Putting chest high wall barriers (and 1 height would be even less than that!) as insurmountable obstacles would call to mind everything wrong about those other games, and highlight it even more by the fact that this is DF.

There are also other desired mechanics and things that would require 7 high walls to be done right-- see, sand flow mechanic threads and such. And Toady has on occasion even expressed interest in them.

So the trick is that if you do them, you need to do it right.  And doing it right will basically require pathfinding changes.  And pathfinding changes are... hard. And complicated.

Basically, if you can have a pathfinding system that is fast and thoroughly robust, there are hundreds of awesome new features that could be added, like this one, at very little additional overhead cost.  The problem with movement on multi-level walls is similar to the problem of mult-tile creatures, for instance.  If the multitile creature pathfinding problem is solved, this problem is pretty much solved too.  Who gets to path where, when.  It's not trivial, it's not easy, but hopefully we can get there.

See: This Thread.  Long, but likely very useful for you.

Two Ideas/Suggestions based off the talk:

Couldn't there be a variable effect to undead, that the older the corpse, the more powerful certain stats are?  Like speed for instance?  Perhaps the magic could even harden the bones as it gets older too...

For curing curses, it would be awesome if you had to change your role to do it.  This would obviously require different roles to be fleshed out, but we're getting there.  For instance... if you have the grave-robber role, perhaps to cure the curse you would have to start slaying night creatures.  If you were slaying night creatures, perhaps you would have to fall in love.  If you were cursed while falling in love, perhaps you'd have to become a wealthy merchant.  That sort of thing.