Bay 12 Games Forum

Will that mean that a huge, extremely detailed world could be made by someone allowing huge amounts of virtual memory to be used then letting the computer run for a week?

It'd be pretty neat if someone made one and uploaded it.

Dwarf Fortress is a wonder of content generalisation in gaming, so it does seem very odd that it runs on a tile based system.
Using rudimentary meshes instead would open up so many possibilities!
Obviously, the game would be confusing and unfamiliar if it abandoned the tile system together, but it's easy enough to have it so that designations are still tile based, and tiles render based on what meshes are inside them.

Here are the things that I think become better:
-Creature behaviour becomes much more realistic, as diagonal and orthagonal movement can be made perfectly identical in terms of real distance travelled, and by giving each creature a particular position with a tile it's no longer possible to have a dozen attackers standing in one tile. With animation of creature meshes, it becomes possible to make more accurate calculations of hits in combat; so it won't be so easy to kick a standing person in the face anymore, and if you aim for someone's fourth right finger and miss you might hit something else.
-Multi-tile creatures and constructions will handle their own visual appearance, they only require meshes (Which mostly exist already) and animations.
-Mechanical stress to constructions and natural structures become possibly easier to calculate as terrain shapes can be simplified; not to mention that meshes can collapse in swinging motions as well as straight down.
-Open space can be extended enormously without hitting performance.
-Adds the possibility of dropping tile rendering altogether, which modders would really like.
-Gases such as mist and miasma no longer have to be so taxing to simulate, they can be replaced with moving points that say "at distance x from me, the density of gas y is z".

The things that would become harder would be pathfinding and water flow, but if they were made to work they would be better than they were before; the currently clear-cut definition of what movements are trivial for a dwarf and which are difficult would become blurred, so the game has to be programmed so that a dwarf will consider leaping and climbing outside of combat; as for water flow, the amount of simulation required could end up decreasing for large volumes, and simulating objects in the water being pushed by the flow could become more realistic (an object no longer has to be pushed a whole tile suddenly to be pushed by water).

Adventurer mode would probably become weird and difficult though, since only AI creatures would be able to see and navigate the mesh-based world.

Thoughts? Accusations of heresy?

After collapsing a structure (which somehow had a now-deceased child on it even though I checked to see that all the dwarf bodies on it were dead), I noticed that there was a suspended fortification hovering in the air which had almost finished building. I cancelled it, and that caused the construction material to fall away.
Falling construction materials can be very dangerous; the thing that killed that child was having his head exploded by a log, which is relatively light. What's the heaviest item this trick could be done with? Magicking gold blocks onto your enemies sounds like fun.
Also, is it possible to put a caged giant sperm whale (or just a corpse) in a minecart? If you got a gold minecart with a weight in the bajillions to collide with a lightweight wooden minecart, you would have a minecart travelling so fast it's pretty much a magic barrier around your fortress. 10k deceleration per tile doesn't mean much if the cart refreshes its speed with each circuit of your fort and is travelling so fast anyway that the cart isn't seen coming due to being blueshifted into ultraviolet.

How can dwarvern engineering fix this?

The hardcoded workings of ghosts(Always occur if not memorialized, specific condition gives specific personality) seems totally out of place, ghosts could do with a rework.

I think that whether a ghost is existent or not should depend on whether the aspiration of the ghost is currently satisfied.
The aspiration of a dwarf should be rechecked when they die, allowing malevolent aspirations (Highly dependent on the happiness of the dwarf in life), and a higher chance of there being no aspiration.
If it doesn't look like they're getting a grave, that's checked for too, taking personality into account (Highest weight would probably be tradition).
Aspirations are rechecked if something pertaining to the ghost happens, for example a loss of their memorial.
Also, multiple aspirations should be allowed:
So if an especially violent and unforgiving ghost has something against several dwarves and then gets eaten by an Elf (All the stoneworkers are busy, no memorial for you), their aspiration list could look like:
1. Haunt Urist Mcnotsobadbutnotsogood (Topple a few things around them or something)
2. Maim Urist Ihatethisguy
3. Traumatize the Elf that killed me. (KILL HIS FAMILY HAHAHA)
4. Hell, kill them too.
5. And their entire civilization.
6. A masterwork of my own creation would be nice for the job. (They might have had this one unsatisfied in life, and gotten it again due to personality traits)
7. Oh, yeah, and I want to be memorialized. (Float by the gravestones with puppy eyes)
8. Hey, I almost forgot about the Hammerer. I want to drive him to suicide.
9. And I want to meet my wife one last time.

Obviously it's pretty much impossible to do all of these, 5 in particular.
And it'd be hilarious but ridiculous if there were a hundred ghosts from a range of centuries all ripping apart elves.
So, ghosts should be able to tire(Speed of tire depending on perserverance and the number of aspirations) of an aspiration while attempting it without success, automatically halting the job and moving onto another; or forget the aspiration if they're really tired of the aspiration.

There could be aspirations where tiring only occurs if the ghost has little acknowledgement (of the kind they like, depends on their intent) from other dwarves, such as the aspiration to help (Doing any job that the skill for exists) or bother everyone.



Why did I make this whole thread about something as minor as ghosts?
Because it'd be hilarious if you melted a masterwork copper sword and found your furnace operator dead the next day.
Or a very mistreated dwarf died, and brought chaos to your fort.
Maybe even a legendary miner leaving their body behind when they get up for work.

I'm going to have a go at predicting significant updates in order, based on the concept that some updates will make others much easier, and that an efficiency update will come soon.
Although it's not really a prediction by scientific standards if Toady reads it.

Improving conversation to make it less hivemindish (It is terrific/I find that fantastic/Brilliant, I say) as the conversation system seems to have been designed to be upgraded to randomised phrases dependent on keywords, as well as making conversation deeper and more varied in terms of opinion and world-view.
It would come packaged with plenty of other hard-to-guess stuff.

Increased efficiency (Allowing DF to run with more than one thread and more than 4GB of RAM) comes next, because it would help greatly with that which follows (In particular, the following update in this list), and is easier if done sooner.
It would probably come as the main part of a relatively small update.

Economy fixed and readded, labour made to require less micromanagement and scrutinizing of attributes, increase to max population, migration more varied and able to go both ways, visitors more varied and able to go both ways.

*Large influx of players as Dwarf Fortress just became a whole lot easier*

Having ingame world simulation and initial worldgen behave in the same manner, because it's only going to become more of a problem as the world becomes more diverse; allowing various embarks (Raids) to be made from your fort; sorting out the behaviours and encounters of armies; and fixing military bugs.

*Large influx of players as Dwarf Fortress mode is now more than just a survival/suicidalmachoism/screwingaround game; and Adventurer mode may be adjusted to take advantage of this by having the option of placing you in a scenario of conflict, thus making both modes much more fun, fun, and impressive.*

By now, the player base would be large enough that there should almost certainly be one or more Legendary Graphics Programmer(s) willing to take on the challenge of somehow turning RAWs (Which would require elaboration on shapes, sizes, textures and placements) into good 3D models. If none are available or willing, there may now be enough money for a commissioning to be viable.

And check for an alternate download before you use conventional.