Bay 12 Games Forum

So I could carve another 1 high wall behind that wall.  And I could keep doing that, until I have a 1 high floor.

And if you're standing on a 1 high floor, you can step onto a 2 high floor.  In fact, you could make a gradual staircase up to 7 high.  At what point do the dwarves hit their head on the ceiling here?  We'll have to add ceiling height carving too.  And you'll have to be able to place doors on walls, and do that with all the other buildings.

The idea makes sense, and it seems like something you should be able to do.  But, I can't see how it wouldn't end up with the same effect as multiplying the number of Z levels by 7.  Which is too much.  Navigating fortresses, alone, would be a pain.

I agree that such a skill is needed.  In addition to, as already suggested, increasing how much a dwarf can carry at once, I think that, while hauling large objects, turning corners and moving through small corridors should slow dwarves down.  Having a high hauling skill should decrease how much these conditions slow the dwarf down.

Finally, a porter who gets a strange mood should walk off the edge of the map.  Eventually they will come back carrying an artifact.  Said artifact can be anything, but should lean towards heaviness.  They could demand a large portion of food before they leave, so they have a chance of snapping like all the other dwarves.

Rare.  Making magic rare is really easy, thankfully.  The dev notes mention being able to change this at world generation, which is good enough for me.

Hard to Control.  Making magic hard to control in Fortress mode is very simple.  Dwarves are already somewhat hard to control, and Dwarves who get enough magical power can become semi-noble.  Their labors list changes to a bunch of magic-related ones, and they stop performing other labors.  However, they get weird moods very frequently, for any skill.  Your mage might commandeer  the carpenter's workshop, create a strange artifact, and leave without becoming a carpenter of any kind.  These artifacts have all the random attributes of normal artifacts, none of the quality, and only a small chance of having magical properties.  When magic users aren't busy being somewhat of a nuisance, they spend most of their time contemplating in whatever profound locations your fortress offers.  Occasionally, they go perform the task their labors tell them they should be doing.  Occasionally.

Weird.  You need side effects.  Tons of them.  One fun method of doing this is a subject/verb/object matrix.  Subjects and objects would be any objects in the game.  Verb would be things like "becomes" and "floats to" and "repels".  Each magic user has one random subject, verb, or object that is constant for them.  Each task for that magic user has another one of the three chosen randomly as constant.  Every time a magic user does something magical, the last of the three is chosen randomly, and the effect happens to the nearest two of the appropriate object.  Maybe you got a healer who got "Dwarf repels x".  Sometimes his patients start repelling arrows, and that's great.  Other times his patients start repelling water, and that's not so great.  If he starts casting some other kind of spell, all bets are off: is it "dwarf" or "repels" that's constant for him?

Mysterious.  Those side effects don't have to be instant.  They might have an onset delay of years.  If you use lots of magic, some side effects might happen for no apparent reason at all.

Consequences.  Generally, I'm an advocate of magic annoying some supernatural entity or another.  Maybe nature hates magic, and using too much will make the trees march to your fortress and try to tear it down.  Maybe demons think magic is theirs, and they'll climb out of hell to get to your magic users.  Or maybe the side effect system you use is bad enough on its own.

[ December 05, 2007: Message edited by: SquashMonster ]

According to the wiki, the DF world is made up of 256x256 regions. Each region is composed of 16x16 blocks 48x48 tiles each.  That makes for 256*48*16 = 196608 tiles from top to bottom.

This is enough map for DF to go from pole to equator once.  That's one fourth the circumference of the earth.  Divide one fourth the circumference of the earth by the number of tiles in that distance, and we get tiles that are about 51 meters across.

No wonder you can fit so many dragons.

(I always assumed they were about two meters in every direction, myself.)

On the other hand, goat's milk is not as bad, due to lower lactose content, and Kumis is fantastic, due to lactose being turned into alcohol, which replaces a poison with a vital part of dwarf nutrition*.  I think you should be able to milk cows, goats, and horses.  You can drink goat milk, ferment horse milk, or add sugar to cow milk and ferment that.

* Presumably, the lower air-content of mines has lead to dwarves farther developing anaerobic respiration, so their bodies naturally produce alcohol.  This adaptation naturally leads to another one: a much more robust liver, which coincidentally means consuming alcohol from other sources has less adverse consequences.  Thus dwarves can safely get the nutritional benefits of alcohol, and, more importantly, don't need to drink water.  Water, of course, is very bad for men and dwarves alike without proper treatment.