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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 30, 2010, 03:17:27 pm »Exactly. Its why we don't use 8 bit sound or color anymore.
Yet we still use 8-bit characters to represent everything in the game....
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Yet we still use 8-bit characters to represent everything in the game....
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 20, 2010, 02:16:06 pm »Generally speaking, the Farming Overseer telling the player such-and-such a crop is a light, medium, or heavy feeder. (Along with reccomendations of what fertilizers are appropriate.)
Thanks, I think I got it now:
I want to grow Cave Wheat
* I set the field to grow Cave Wheat in the summer.
* I check with the Overseer on fertilization needs
* I issue orders for light bone meal and heavy lime fertilization, per Overseer
* Dwarf farmers plant the Cave Wheat
* Dwarf farmers spread the fertilizers from the stockpiles and repeat as needed
So the difference between this and Jiri's method is that you want the player to input fertilization commands on one screen based on the values on another screen. Whereas Jiri just wants this to happen automatically. Is that somewhat accurate?
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 20, 2010, 11:31:31 am »It might be best to do something similar with fertilizer... I was thinking of having some sort of bounded range. Something like 1-3 bags might be a little too anal, so I think that just a "light fertilizer" "medium fertilizer" or "heavy fertilizer" scheduling, along with enabling the specific types of fertilizer to use would be most sensical.
Kohaku, I can get on board with NPK if it's done correctly from the player's perspective. The underlying complexity can be done how ever you want. But for the player, it needs to be more than busy work, or not just looking up values in the wiki. For the example above, what information would the player have to decide between light, medium and heavy fertilizer?
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DF General Discussion / Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« on: August 20, 2010, 08:57:53 am »Well time to disregard the current conversion and blurt out a random question.
Will there be any interactions between wanderers and your fort? The ability to set up an inn for them to stay in would be cool. Maybe expand thieves to pretend to be travelers at first?
That sounds slightly amusing... but what will wanderers do at your inns? Do they purchase food and drink? If they "purchase" it, how do they pay, because players may not want coins...
Isn't the purpose of an inn to sell food and drink and a place to sleep, all for coins?
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DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Re: "Using up stone" How does that REALLY work for fps?
« on: August 20, 2010, 08:53:12 am »You might be able to start with the breadth-first search and give up if you don't find anything within 5 or 10 steps, reverting to the old method. That actually sort of makes sense in that a creature should be able to figure out the truly closest item within a short distance of themselves, but will maybe make the wrong decision for stuff further away.
Basically a workshop looks for the closest item using Manhattan xyz distance, ignoring walls. This is why it can pick an item on just above or below on the next z-level, yet have to walk halfway across the map. The current implementation could either:
- Iterate thru each item to find the closest (dx+dy+dz). This is very fast for a small number of items, no matter how far away.
- Check each tile in an expanding radius until one is found. This would be very fast no matter how many items, if there was at least one item relatively close to the workshop.
Your breadth-first is similar to the expanding radius above, but will always find the closest item per walking distance, as it won't ignore walls. And it will also return the path for the item for free. Having it bail out after so many steps is a great optimization.
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 20, 2010, 08:35:07 am »Quote
I said at worst you'd be required to know what pH any given crop needs. Ideally the dwarves would take care of it, but you'd still be required to produce lime or the job will cancel ("cannot fertilize field: no lime bags").
With the NPK model, the player will have the responsibility to have sources of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) on hand in the form of items such as lime and bone meal (the names of the items are not important at the moment). Let's assume that the farmers will correct add the needed nutrients as needed when ordered to plant a crop.
I want to grow Cave Wheat
- I set the field to grow Cave Wheat in the summer.
- At the start of summer, the farmers add the correct nutrients to the field to optimize for Cave Wheat.
- The farmers plant Cave Wheat
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 19, 2010, 03:26:32 pm »And this is why I say you don't really understand what it is you want, Hammurabi: You want your planning and ability to design systems and everything that I'm proposing, but you claim you want it for free, that you don't want to work for something, that you just want it handed to you. You reject it simply because it's *sigh* FARMING, and therefore, it's beneath your notice. It's only noteworthy if it's a tech upgrade you spend 3 turns worth of your Civ's research points on gaining a +50% population growth rate.
Can we limit the discussion to the issues instead of the posters? Ad hominem attacks are not productive
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 19, 2010, 02:52:16 pm »Oh my god, no.
At worst I see a control doodad that allows you to set the desired pH level and that dwarves will add lime (or whatever else) to the farm in order to raise/lower the pH level.
Would this be more accurate:
I want to grow Cave Wheat
- I check the pH level of the field, find it at 5.4
- Wiki says Cave Wheat grows best at a pH level of 3.7
- (q)uery the farm, send desired pH level to 3.7
- DF will assign jobs to spread the correct amount of lime on the field
Why not have the farmers *know* that Cave Wheat is best at 3.7 pH, and spread the lime automatically when planting it? Or do you suggest that looking up the crop in the wiki and adjusting a setting is the type of complexity (or Interesting Choice) that farming needs?
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 19, 2010, 02:01:26 pm »Sure it is, it has everything you've ever argued for in terms of "Interesting Choices", (provided you aren't arbitrarily moving your goalposts at the moment just to keep arguing), it's just that you don't realize it yet. You'll love it as soon as you have it.
Kohaku, you've constantly shown that you don't understand what I mean by an interesting choice. I'm not even trying with you any more on it.
Here's how I see a section of your proposal as it would be in the game. Is this how you see it implemented? Please correct my misconceptions.
I want to grow Plump Helmets
- I check the pH level of the field, find it at 5.4
- Wiki says Plump Helmets grow best at a pH level of 3.7, so I need to reduce pH by 1.7
- Wiki says one sack of lime per 5 tiles will reduce pH level by 1.0
- I have 40 tiles, so I need 13 sacks of lime
- I issue some command to the game to spread 13 sacks of lime on my fields.
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 19, 2010, 01:40:14 pm »Realistic until it imposes on fun.
Having to dedicate two or more entire z-levels of a 4x4 embark is too much. It imposes on the player's ability to have fun, as the entire surface of their fort will be farms with no room for anything else.
The normal solution would be to import your food, like every fortress in history and fantasy fiction does. You could build your own farms to fully support your fortress, but it would be a huge megaproject, which you'd do only if you wanted the challenge.
Keeping the small pots and sole farmers we have now, but adding complexity with pH, rotations, etc is not fun, IMO.
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DF General Discussion / Re: Dwarf fortress: Margionally complex, but mostly just detailed
« on: August 19, 2010, 01:29:55 pm »Socializator, your post made perfect sense. Some people want a Tamagotchi or ant farm. Others want a puzzle game. Some want an economic sim, while others want a sandbox/lego freeform system. DF is only one-third finished, so we are all advocating that our favorite parts get more emphasis.
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 19, 2010, 11:40:51 am »
Currently DF farming is very unrealistic. Tiny plots of land can produce huge amounts of food. And a lone dwarf can grow a huge amount of food. Here are some numbers I found on the internet. Accuracy isn't the important issue here.
--------
At least 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current American dietary standards.
Pre-industrial age, 60-70% of the workforce was dedicated to farming.
--------
Farm size
If a tile is 10ft x 10ft, an acre is approximately 200x200 tiles. Even if the production per tile was increased 100x, each dwarf would need 400 tiles of farms. I think the idea of large underground farms, mined out of solid rock is just ludicrous, even for dwarfs. Are there any fantasy stories that mention giant underground dwarf farms?
Farm Labor
It just doesn't seem dwarfy for over half the fortress to be farmers. I cannot see any fun in the game when half the workforce is managing the farms. DF has never been accurate in the amount of work a dwarf could realistically do. DF isn't a farming simulation.
If farms were made more realistic with labor and farm size, it would make farming much more difficult. Farming would take much more thought to make it successful.
So where does this lead? IMO, the conclusion I come to is that farming just needs to be scrapped. Dwarfs need to import their food. In literature, dwarfs mine metal and gems, convert it to tradegoods, and trade it for food and other items. Farming, if included at all, could be on a very limited scale for some dwarf-only plants. The produce could be used as one of the ingredients in dwarfish alcohol.
PS - I don't expect this to be a popular suggestion. But it does fit in well with the villages that Toady is currently working on. Dwarfs would need to import food from these villages.
--------
At least 1.2 acres per person is required in order to maintain current American dietary standards.
Pre-industrial age, 60-70% of the workforce was dedicated to farming.
--------
Farm size
If a tile is 10ft x 10ft, an acre is approximately 200x200 tiles. Even if the production per tile was increased 100x, each dwarf would need 400 tiles of farms. I think the idea of large underground farms, mined out of solid rock is just ludicrous, even for dwarfs. Are there any fantasy stories that mention giant underground dwarf farms?
Farm Labor
It just doesn't seem dwarfy for over half the fortress to be farmers. I cannot see any fun in the game when half the workforce is managing the farms. DF has never been accurate in the amount of work a dwarf could realistically do. DF isn't a farming simulation.
If farms were made more realistic with labor and farm size, it would make farming much more difficult. Farming would take much more thought to make it successful.
So where does this lead? IMO, the conclusion I come to is that farming just needs to be scrapped. Dwarfs need to import their food. In literature, dwarfs mine metal and gems, convert it to tradegoods, and trade it for food and other items. Farming, if included at all, could be on a very limited scale for some dwarf-only plants. The produce could be used as one of the ingredients in dwarfish alcohol.
PS - I don't expect this to be a popular suggestion. But it does fit in well with the villages that Toady is currently working on. Dwarfs would need to import food from these villages.
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 13, 2010, 04:18:34 pm »So what if it's hard to learn at first? So is everything else in DF, but we wouldn't say that we should strip out the military system to be a simple matter of attrition just so that people don't have to learn how to mine and make metal weapons and armor... We should strive to make the game as deep as possible for those who understand the game first, and then simply work out the best way to explain it to those who don't understand later.
There's a saying: A moment to learn, a lifetime to master ...
Do you agree or disagree with that statement?
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DF General Discussion / Re: Will we ever get to a point where forts don't die FPS deaths?
« on: August 12, 2010, 11:54:42 am »Right, but they aren't "inert"; they have material properties that cause them to respond to changes in the world.Exactly, the temperature model is effecting each of these items every frame which means at very least an N crawl of the item list every frame.
Since the only thing rocks can do is melt in magma, why not just check the squares magma is in (or next to)? Why does the temp of every rock on z-1 need to be checked every frame when the magma is on z-50?
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DF Suggestions / Re: Improved Farming
« on: August 12, 2010, 10:47:09 am »No, what Jiri Petru posted was bad design. Actually it wasn't design at all.
Go read Jiri's post. He already said basically what I said. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1478119#msg1478119