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Messages - daveybaby

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1
DF Suggestions / Re: Dwarf Fortress Online Multiplayer
« on: August 17, 2010, 10:42:34 am »
Quote from: Daetrin on August 17, 2010, 08:33:42 am
Spore-esque asynchronous multiplayer
Agree with this. I really like the idea of being able to having shared access to a generated world stored on a server.
Players pick embarkation points or get allocated them at random and upload their progress to the server.
Then you could explore the world in adventure mode containing hundreds of fortresses from different players.

To be honest i doubt toady would have to have much to do with this, just provide some way to merge savegames/generated worlds together. Let the community handle the rest.

2
DF Suggestions / Re: Dwarf Mode: Retirement
« on: August 06, 2010, 06:21:18 am »
Or have a new room designation: schoolroom. Then you could assign highly skilled dwarves there as teachers, and unskilled dwarves as pupils.

Another thing that occurs to me, is writing books. Old dwarves could write down their experiences (useful or otherwise) for storage in a central library. Dwarves could also be taken by moods and shut themselves away to create a work of literary genius (or possibly just the scribblings of a deranged madman).
Not sure how this conflicts with the dwarves current artistic/historical medium though: i.e. carving stuff onto other stuff.

3
DF Suggestions / Re: Full graphics support details
« on: June 22, 2010, 08:39:39 am »
Quote from: fanatic on June 22, 2010, 05:09:46 am
However passing this on to the community means he will not be able to do a full release "on his own"(he will no longer be able to update the UI for new features), which is apparently a showstopper for him.
I'd expect him to continue to develop the current UI as he does now, but as a separate module from the engine, using the same API that the community would use.

IMO it's good practice to keep as much separation between the UI and the engine as possible, regardless.

Edit:
Just spotted that there's already a suggestion for this in the eternal suggestion voting poll: 'Abstract the Interface', although there doesnt seem to be a thread associated with it.

4
DF Suggestions / Re: Full graphics support details
« on: June 22, 2010, 04:34:20 am »
IMO the best thing toady could do w.r.t. graphics is to completely decouple the UI from the game engine, and provide an open API for communication between the two.

e.g.
engine->UI: "a game tick occurred. here's a list of the notable events"
(UI displays events)
UI->engine: "give me a list of the contents of tiles [x,y,z...]"
engine->UI: "here ya go"
(UI displays tiles)
UI->engine: "pause the game please"
(engine pauses)
UI->engine: "command dwarves to dig the following tiles [...]"
UI->engine: "command workshop x to build item y"
UI->engine: "unpause the game please"
(game resumes)
engine->UI: "a game tick occurred....."
etc
note to non-programmers: this is how computer programs actually talk to each other, honest. All that stuff about 1's and 0's? We lied to make ourselves seem clever.

This way, once toady has decoupled the standard UI from the game engine, he can still continue to develop the game (both the engine and the default UI) as he sees fit, and the modding community can go hogwild with graphics and command input variations (presumably even up to a full 3d realtime implementation).

Obviously there is a significant amount of work to get this done, but after that initial effort the only extra work for toady would be to provide up-to-date documentation for the API.

5
DF Bug Reports / Re: Permanent scrolling
« on: September 28, 2006, 11:16:00 am »
Yeah, its just checked and its numlock that does it. Nasty - cant seem to regain control in any way.

6
DF Bug Reports / Permanent scrolling
« on: September 28, 2006, 08:47:00 am »
Had a weird one today, was scrolling around examining dwarves when the game got stuck scrolling left. It seemed to be scrolling at about the same rate as when you have nothing selected, i.e. fast, but not as fast as, say, fast scrolling on the squad menu. Ended up scrolling through lots of wilderness. Hitting the key to go back to the main gate still worked but the scrolling just carried on again from there.

I think what probably happened is that i hit or released 2 keys at once, and theres a bug somewhere in your keyboard handling code, and scrolling got stuck on.

Didnt want to save and risk it coming back, so killed the task. When i reloaded everything was fine.


7
DF Suggestions / Re: Top 5 complaints
« on: September 28, 2006, 08:58:00 am »
quote:
Originally posted by Maximus:
<STRONG>"Complained about the draft", it turns out, is a complaint about being being drafted.  It only happens when you activate a dwarf without weapon skills (a Recruit).

That one should probably be changed to read "complained about being drafted".  I believe "not having a proper room" is the complaint issued when they sleep in a bed which isn't resized to be completely enclosed by walls or doors.</STRONG>

If they were complaining unenclosed rooms then they would be complaining about the draught. If the were english dwarves, that is.   :p


8
DF Suggestions / Re: Immigration control
« on: September 26, 2006, 03:44:00 am »
quote:
Originally posted by Majestic7:
<STRONG>Thus some sort of less violent control method might be in order.</STRONG>

Lethal injection?

9
DF Suggestions / Improve the unit list menu
« on: September 20, 2006, 09:51:00 am »
I use the unit list screen a lot to help me find where my masons etc have got to and figure out why nothing is getting done. However, this screen could do with one simple improvement: let us open the 'view units' menu on top of it.

This way we could easily scroll through the list and figure out, say, which of our soldiers has what weapon, instead of either having to scroll around the map trying to find them all or using the unit list to go to each one in turn (currently this involves lots of entering and exiting menus, and lots of scrolling down the menu from the top for each dwarf).

So it would look something like this:
(oh the irony that i have to bodge an ascii representation of what the screen looks like     ;) )

code:
  
#############################Dwarf Fortress##################################
#                                               # blah blah blah, Carpenter #
# blah blah blah, miner                         # "bleh bleh bleh"          #
# blah blah blah, miner                         #                           #
# blah blah blah, miner                         #                           #
#=blah=blah=blah,=carpenter=====================# Sleep                     #
# blah blah blah, carpenter                     #                           #
# blah blah blah, mason                         # Novice Woodcutter         #
# blah blah blah, mason                         # Talented Carpenter        #
# blah blah blah, mason                         # Dabbling Grower           #
# blah blah blah, mason                         #                           #
# blah blah blah, metalsmith                    #                           #
# blah blah blah, metalsmith                    #                           #
# blah blah blah, craftsdwarf                   #                           #
# blah blah blah, craftsdwarf                   #                           #
# blah blah blah, craftsdwarf                   #                           #
#                                               # g:Gen i:Inv p:Pref w:Wnd  #
# z = Zoom-Cre b etc etc                        # space: Done               #
#############################################################################

We could then easily scroll through dwarves comparing and editing preferences etc. This would be a real time saver.

[ September 20, 2006: Message edited by: daveybaby ]


10
DF Suggestions / Re: Build menu addition: sub-menus
« on: September 20, 2006, 06:00:00 am »
Some other possible categories:

Kennels, IMHO, should be under workshops.

Furniture could include chairs, tables, beds, cabinets, and possibly armour and weapon racks.

Possibly group roads, bridges, aqueducts and channels together (since theyre all build the same way).

Or maybe group water elements together, i.e. channels, floodgates, wells, aqueducts.

Maybe add rename 'container' submenu to the more general 'storage', and add cabinets

Or weaponry: armour rack, weapon rack, archery target, siege engines.

Lots of possibilities for tidying things up - there arent really any perfect schemes, but its not like the UI is perfectly consistent as it is.


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