Bay 12 Games Forum

I don't see no dead dwarfs!

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/check-out-how-scientists-collect-spiders-silk

I have *always* maintained that kitchens should need lava or coal to create meals..

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/how-cook-steak-lava

Now that's what I call a legendary meal!

... random useful stuff...

So what sort of Roman technology was lost when Rome fell? Well living standards of everyone who wasnt a Roman noble didnt lower substantially, and the living standards of the goths and vandals increased due to the loot. So its pretty hard to say that technology the Romans had researched was lost, like Andeerz seems to imply. So what WAS lost? Well, alot of Roman 'technology', for instance, was the desire to build aquaducts, or the foresight to plant trees alongside roads to provide shelter for troops. And sewers. And military tactics - stuff that we just stopped doing for a while after the Romans. So unless your Dwarf physics workshop is going to output discoveries like 'you have learnt to build walls next to a floor in order to channel water over an open space', or 'you have learnt how to plant trees next to roads', I dont see Dwarven tech trees working very well either.

Enough of that. Heres what I'D like to see. I think it would be pretty sweet if every buildable object in vanilla had a date < 1000 in which it was "invented", moddable workshops could have this property as well. So, for instance, the floor may have been invented a few years after world gen, and the mechanism perhaps ~500 AWG. Metal forging was probably invented ~50 (10 years after the kiln, the charcoal, and the axe) since theyre dwarves but perhaps magma forging is a relatively recent idea, maybe only invented in ~700. Hammers? 10 AGW. Long swords? 100 AGW. The purpose of all of this is for challenge games and successions: in vanilla DF, the player starts at > 1050 AGW. Pressing the spacebar before worldgen is complete allows for play in an earlier year, which could make for some awesome challenge games - wanna defend against goblins in a world before doors or bridges were invented? See how long you last!

Daniel

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Could you post the entirety of your world gen parameters?

The last-but-one world I genned I didn't get any goblins at all. (Though I was playing with Civ Forge, which I found ridiculously, over-poweringly bugged. I don't use civ forge anymore.) The last world I genned didn't give me a single seige, ambush or thief. I'm now at >100 dwarves on an awesomely-defended volcano, still waiting gamely for my first opponents. I've looked at legends at the world does *have* several goblin civs, but maybe they're not close enough or something - I'm in the middle of the map on a *massive* island surrounded by sea; the island has another Elven civ on it and is connected to the mainland by a tiny straight of land - but it is connected. As a result I have tons of caravans; several arrive together in many cases! But no invaders. (Tho its not vanilla, it's 'Dwarven Chocolate' mod. Lesson learnt: I'm never ever again going to use a mod that changes the races in any significant way - world gen is just to damn fragile for that.)

In any case, all of your other world features seem exactly what I look for in a world - I love waterfalls and volcanos, and I hate aquifers and I'm fairly saddened by how hard the former are to find compared to the latter. I also like straight cliffs.

Thanks in advance!

Daniel

I propose the best of both worlds. A stable is built from some blocks and some doors and some buckets and is the same size as a trade depot. It is a workshop which can be used by multiple dwarves at the same time and is used to temporarily confine an animal for milking, and in future will store animal armour and be where rideable animals are assigned to riders. It does not, however, store animals indefinately like a cage.

From a stable a pasture can be designated in the same way a dining room can be designated from a table. Animals can then be assigned to the pasture in the same way they are assigned to a cage. When an animal is assigned to the pasture the game generates some number of movements, for instance it finds a path equal to the size of the pasture, or some multiple of these numbers. For example, with a regularly-shaped pasture 50x100 tiles large the game pathfinds the animal's movement for the next 500 (50 x 100 x arbitrary number) ticks, being sure to only choose from tiles within the pasture's boundary. At the end of this, it pathfinds from the animal's location back to the stable and caches this path for future. Now the animal loops through this path until it is removed from the pasture - to the player, the animal appears to be moving randomly, but the pathfinding algorithm is not called entailing only a minimal amount of processor usage while still allowing free-form designation of animal enclosures by the player.

Daniel

Quote from: jonharson on May 19, 2010, 05:20:29 pm

Quote from: DoX on May 19, 2010, 05:09:17 pm

Quote from: jonharson on May 19, 2010, 04:57:58 pm

There you go http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2379

So, this is Linux only? Or can I use it for the Windows release. If so, where do I place the files?

It's Linux only, if Baughn or Toady don't release a fixed version soon i could probably crack my way through a windows version too later tonight.

And here it is, http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=2382

For those scared about using a executable from a random stranger and know their way around an Hex editor you can replace code at virtual address 0x00917C33 to 0x00917C9F (binary address 0x00517033 to 0x0051709F, 109 bytes) with NOP instruction (0x90 in hex)

Without meaning to give you to much to work, is it possible to get an OSX too? Presumably the hex-edit won't work for the OSX version?

Daniel

There has been alot of talk before of minecarts, carts and wheelbarrows of various kinds, and trains. However to my incredible suprise no one has used that magic word that fills my heart with joy: F U N I C U L A R



Whats the hells that? A funicular is one of the oldest types of train around - at least some of the oldest were built by monks so they wouldnt have to walk to monasteries that were on massive mountaintops the-better-to-be-closer-to-god. Nowadays when we're not driving around in satan-spawn-automobiles we power funiculars with diesel and gasoline and post-1600 they powered them with steam, but these guys? They used water or sewage. Now thats dwarvenly!

A funicular is a type of car or cart attached to rails that goes up and down a steep mountainside or mine shaft. Its attached to a rope which is attached to a pulley at the top and the other end of the rope is attached to another cart. Now the carts are roughly equal, all you need is a heavier load at the top and you have a working system. Often this was provided by a mountain spring, sometimes a horse or other animal, or even sewage.

The suggestion:
-A cart is an inventory-item that allows a dwarf to carry more inventory items than otherwise. For instance, 5. Its pushed by a dwarf and makes them move slower.
-A funicular can be built on top of a slope. Its made from two carts, two chains or ropes, a mechanism and two levers. The pathfinder treats it as a path with an, e.g., +25 pathfinding bias. A dwarf who takes this path (the slope) moves to the same square as the cart and a tick or two later is at the other end of the slope, having swapped places with the other cart. The dwarf goes on their way.
-It should be possible to make rails at a forge. Rails can be 'built' next to a funicular and join to adjacent rails like walls. They require mechanisms (to thread the rope through) and cause funiculars to change direction - as long as they continue to travel down.
-Cablecars using the same principle, but using rope and built in the air, would also be quite cool and in keeping with the time period. But unlike funiculars, theyre not very dwavenly.
-It should also be possible to make horizontal - not vertical - funiculars, though these require mechanisms at both ends and the mechanisms must be powered. Hey presto - we have a functional, non-steam-based, non-steampunk, way-pre-1400 train system!
-Finally, I had a random idea about using them for automated transport of items. It would be quite cool if you could also build an 'item drop' out of a mechanism. When placed on top of a hole in the path a funicular takes, these cause a trap door in the cart to open, depositing the contents of cart onto the z-level below. Funiculars could be designated in the same way as piles as an alternative to being used to convey dwarves. Thus, when Dwarfy McStonehauler realises a funicular station is just a few tiles away from the stone he's hauling he'll drop the stone into the cart and send it on its merry way. It'll climb back up the mountain and when it passes over the stone depot the stone will be automaticly dropped into the waiting stone pile below.

So whaddya think? Its a much simpler way of adding vehicles than many other suggestions, its easy to implement, and its wayyy pre-1400 tech.

Daniel