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[CL3AR]

If you were to place that next to another workshop, it would be difficult to spot where one workshop ends and another begins. There needs to be some outline because the workshop is a single unit.

[Marcus Aseth]

you can keep the edge outline still without having a floor, I can paint that back in if you want to see
Actually is not even needed, the framing could appear when you select the building, showing which one is, is really not a thing that should be "baked" into the sprite to begin with

[Manveru Taurënér]

Think I maybe said it before, but think workshop/stockpile floors/outlines would be the perfect case if anything for an in-game setting to choose whether they want the more user-friendly clearly marked option or transparency for those that want to customise their fortress aesthetic.

[Marcus Aseth]

Think I maybe said it before, but think workshop/stockpile floors/outlines would be the perfect case if anything for an in-game setting to choose whether they want the more user-friendly clearly marked option or transparency for those that want to customise their fortress aesthetic.

you did? There was a reply to it from the people working on it? I would be curious to know what they think about this.
To me personally fortress aesthetics matters a lot, today I've abandoned the game (temporarily) because playing with Meph tileset, after acidentally digging a piece of smoothed marble I couldn't fix it anymore, even building a marble wall the tileset would mismatch so I had this glaring imperfection in my marble palace which is enough to drive me crazy and short circuit my brain, the architect/designer part of it xD
I hope they will take into consideration this things, for some of us the aesthetics of the fortress come before anything, even before playing the game itself

[Manveru Taurënér]

you did? There was a reply to it from the people working on it? I would be curious to know what they think about this.
To me personally fortress aesthetics matters a lot, today I've abandoned the game (temporarily) because playing with Meph tileset, after acidentally digging a piece of smoothed marble I couldn't fix it anymore, even building a marble wall the tileset would mismatch so I had this glaring imperfection in my marble palace which is enough to drive me crazy and short circuit my brain, the architect/designer part of it xD
I hope they will take into consideration this things, for some of us the aesthetics of the fortress come before anything, even before playing the game itself

Not sure, hence why I wrote "think" (I frequently write answers to something but delete them rather than posting, so hard to keep track of what I've actually written out or just thought).

DFhack is great for saving oneself from such disasters though, it's the only thing I use it for myself, filling in accidentally dug holes and whatnot (until we can actually do it in-game, I only use it for stuff where I feel dwarves would reasonably be able to to it if not for game mechanics).

[Starver]

In heritage workshop buildings, it is not uncommon for a workshop space in a larger area to be tiled/whatever, in contrast to the flooring  in the rest of the space. In workspaces 'depopulated' of some/all of their workstations - as we might call them today - the footprints can be seen conspicuously there, and later reuse of the space without persuasive reasons to relay the floor might leave mismatched historical footprints to modern use.

However, the reason for the patchworking is often obvious (if not current). Heat-based craftsmanship may he performed best above a ceramic surface, rather than the cheaper wooden floor beyond the nominal bound, or something more resistant to dropped items that are heavy (that would dent some things, crack others - maybe replacing a single tile that is badly cracked is easier than other possible damage) or small (gaps between floorboards 'eat' screws) or otherwise can cause problems (embers, liquids like acids or blood (or acid-blood?), shavings of recoverable precious metals, etc - recently I heard of a silversmith who has a 'dustbuster' for their workshop, who every month pops the dust-bag into a furnace/melter to recover a significant quantity of their working material).

Obviously more useful to do in the corner of the packed-earth barn used for blacksmithery, the areas of the warehouse needing non-slip walkways rather than harder-wearing runs for forklifts or whatever. Could also be a remnant of previous partitioning where a 'room' (whether full-height in its walls, open-topped to the 'virtual' height of one storey within a cavernous space or more akin to modern cubicle partition or even counter-height boundaries such as a food-stall 'unit' in a market space) was effectively given wall-to-wall surfacing (stuck-down lino?) but in reality is just a 'temporary' enclave that might outlast its prior utility if it doesn't create more problems keeping it than removing/re-resurfacing later might.


TL;DR; - I can imagine that, via the mysterious magic amorphism of building materials needed for construction, a form of paved(/tiled/boarded/sawdusted/whatevered) flooring appears under the assorted work-benches, tool-tables, material-racks and/or kennelling-cages. Naturally, being work-proud, a deconstructing dwarf will revert the floor to (best guess) original surface texture, whether that be raw, smoothed, built-floor, etc.

 

[Marcus Aseth]

Sorry, I'm not native english so I didn't understood many parts of what you said, but I'm getting the overall impression you are rationalizing it with a real world comparision to justify the presence of fixed floor, which I personally think doesn't make much sense because we are not only talking about another race which as far as we know could be quite heat resistant, but also about a world that soon will include magics, so maybe one could say the flooring of the area is magically threated with a basic heat resistance enchantment, or a transparent floor coating/treatment upon building the workshop easily obtainable from the substances in that world.

Basically you can justify wathever you want/feel to justify in a world that already filled with mytical creatures and so different from ours and not to mention the correlation between "identical to reality == better" never existed in games (otherwise DF wouldn't have magic or mythical creatures, don't you think?), that correlation is only useful for elements in which a gamer starts the game with some preconceptions, for instance we all start with the preconceptions that water solidify lava and that lava kills living and that a killed creature could be eaten (as opposed to a rock), but noone of us or maybe an insignificant minority would start with a preconception about workshop and "brick flooring requirements" VS "wathever flooring is ok", so to try and justify it with real world example serves no purpose from a gamer and game design perspective - the only sure thing at the end of the day is that after all the workshops are placed down, we will all end up with the same gray looking place, so if someone wanted to go for creativity and decoration, has better sticking to Terraria and Minecraft.
This game really has a big chance to compete with those 2, and I would hate to see it wasted.

Consider that (and correct me if I'm wrong here) wathever material you use for building the workshop you'll end up with the same appearance because it would be insane to expect they do a work of that quality within timelines for each individual construction material, so a lot of the creative component that you can imagine while playing the Ascii version is already washed away...

[Marcus Aseth]

by the way, I went back on the first page to look this image:



And this already kind of shows what I'm saying, the only reason this is not glaring right now is because the gray brick is blending reasonably well with the gray rock of the cave, but as soon as you place this on a smoothed marble floor of your marble fortress, I believe this would be much more noticeable.
The same could be said for stockpiles btw, personally I think the visibility of the checkered pattern should be optional or clearly visible only when you select it
Nothing wrong with a bunch of wood and crates in a room with a rocky surface

[Starver]

Basically you can justify wathever you want/feel to justify in a world that already filled with mytical creatures and so different from ours[...]

Yes, that is true. I'm just justifying something that doesn't need magical thinking[1] to imagine.  Well, except for a more scrupulously precise kind of dwarf than any human, in both construction and deconstruction.

(Sorry, loads of words there, and here. A lot of thoughts. It might have been shorter if I had more time. )

[1] Well, except for how the same block/log/bar of material can be used to make space-filling wall, space-sparing floor, a body of a well, a staircase or the entirety of most workshops, etc, and yet however it serves the required purpose of construction it is recovered back to similar omnipotency again upon deconstruction, ready to become a different wall/floor/well/stairway/workshop...  So there's something distinctly plastic about materials. See also the fate of logs in windmills, especially, each component supposedly shaped to catch the wind perfectly capable of rebecoming a single regular axle, or of being carved down into very small items of jewellry without obvious surfeit of wood shavings.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Yes, that is true. I'm just justifying something that doesn't need magical thinking[1] to imagine.  Well, except for a more scrupulously precise kind of dwarf than any human, in both construction and deconstruction.

(Sorry, loads of words there, and here. A lot of thoughts. It might have been shorter if I had more time. )

[1] Well, except for how the same block/log/bar of material can be used to make space-filling wall, space-sparing floor, a body of a well, a staircase or the entirety of most workshops, etc, and yet however it serves the required purpose of construction it is recovered back to similar omnipotency again upon deconstruction, ready to become a different wall/floor/well/stairway/workshop...  So there's something distinctly plastic about materials. See also the fate of logs in windmills, especially, each component supposedly shaped to catch the wind perfectly capable of rebecoming a single regular axle, or of being carved down into very small items of jewellry without obvious surfeit of wood shavings.

It's not really a realism thing at all anyhow, so justified or not doesn't matter much. It's simply a gameplay thing, either giving creative control to the player to customise as they wish, or hardcoding set designs to make things easier and more obvious for those who are new to the game or don't care as much about the esthetics of things ^^

[MoltenIdol]

Transparency! Transparency! Transparency!

I thought we already clarified this?

Why on eeeeeearth would a butchers table come with prebuilt floor? It dont make any sense. And it looks... weird to put it mildly. And yes, just put some slight shading underneath tables and chairs.

And yes, i want to be able to make carpet under my workshops for that bazar look.

Yes i want wooden floor underneath the carpenters tools.
Yes yes yes. Transparency yes.

Prebuilt brickfloor everywhere?.. nnnnno thank you.

Doesnt really fit the design pilosophies of the game now does it?

Please consider this: this graphical release has a purpose. But! I Hope that purpose isnt only to make the game appeal to all those people out there who wont understand workshops if they dont have a fat Square line around them.

[Dishmab]

I notice in some pictures that single tile walls appear to have lots of black/hidden area in the middle. When i play i like the aesthetics of single walled buildings but i dont know if all that black would make sense in that case. also i dont think pillars will be as grand with all the empty space.

[Starver]

How about this: Whatever the form of the material (block, rock, log, bar) used to construct the workshop, that influences (style by MAT class, hue by actual MAT) the look of the workshop surfaces and logical workshop-specific flooring.

(e.g. whatever else you do, a butchering slab/tressle aint going to set up directly on 'carpet', in any sensible situation. Maybe allow original floor to be seen in areas not beneath/immediately around the key worksurfaces, but have an appropriate treatment where blood'n'guts could be spilt. Hey, if the artists want to get Toady to add the appropriate flag so they can draw the extra graphics, have "blood'n'gutted" overlay available for any non-virgin/not-yet-idle[1] butchers, scraps of cloth where a tailor has just worked, whisps of smoke from an active furnace, etc.)

Generic 'brick' floor makes more sense than no attempt at all to floor/pave/line the area. And I already mentioned the suspension of disbelief of forming avworkshop out of a unit building material (which in vanilla dictates the colour of most constructions it can make, so I imagine that's going to continue at least with hint-/tint-highlighting of the however-otherwise-generic graphics. Not that I know, of course (haven't noted yet any proto-Artwork specificallt meant to depict two or more (e.g.) Masonry shops, one marble, one olivine, one nethercap, etc...) but I'm sure it's been discussed, even if it's shelved for the time-bein?).


For future expansion, at least, the more complex constructions can be mutli-partite in build. A paved road can be represented as first selected material at the (long/non-adjacent-to-prior-paved-road) edges through to the last material in the centre, or reversed, for the player to create proper roads, or else something like the Adam7 interlacing (see PNG image specification) from the queued-up materials provided, so the clever player can draw their road-art just how they want. The bucket in the well will be hued seperately (and approoriately) to the basic block-derived element, the mechanism 'winder' and the approoriate rope/chain upon it. Dyers' dedicated bucket-tubs will reflect the actual pails provided (and maybe, inside, hints of what is - or most recently was - the dye being processed). Your Depot will clearly be formed of three materials, the perimeter features, the trading floor and whatever internal features (equiv to vanilla-layout of corner pillars, field and centre pillar?).

Those of us already OCD enough to try to colour-match everything, plus material-match (my permanent walls are always stone blocks, of the identical stone, no cheating on this point, even if only I would know if I substituted a similar grey/white/cyan for the intended one, occasionalky) will be finally justified. Those who were never bothered need continue to be never bothered. Half-arsedely picky people will be forced to get off the fence on this issue, for once and for all.


Of course, this is a lot of potential work for the Mephday team (and Tarn, but he's not going to ask to renegotiate the contract over this issue) and I imagine it'll stay simple or at least fairly unexpanded in the initial Steam releases due to other things (but a handy project to then tie to a "Feature Drive" poll of what to update for Steam Release v1.1?).

In the meantime, I vote for generic-floor where it makes sense, transparency where it doesn't necessarily.

And/or a feature under (perhaps) the Workshop Manager section or original build-designation that allows player-choice as to full-floor, transparent-floor or the suggested centre-ground. 


[1] While process-output items still remain? Additional version (for foodie locations) justifying/reinforcing the miasma cloudbby showing rotten versions of the indicative signs of use?

[Marcus Aseth]

e.g. whatever else you do, a butchering slab/tressle aint going to set up directly on 'carpet', in any sensible situation.

Sorry your arguments make little sense to me, but since you want to argue on the realism plane, let's do it your way:
imagine if in my fortress with marble floors I would order "I don't want any of your butchery gore to soil the pavements, and do not dare to dig or alter the marble pavement", then he better place some damn extra layers of carpets under his shop or I would have his head removed from his body.

Or what about the fact not all dorfs are created equal? Some are really dumb, or marked as "Not a Butcher" so they wouldn't even know the optimal setup for butchering (which seems to be a constant in your arguments, this "elusive" optimal working setup), it is perfectly reasonable if they where to attempt a carpet under their shop, and maybe get rid of it when they get a bit wiser, after some experimentation.

What about the fact you need a mason or someone with a minimum of skills to make the gray bricks under the current workshops?! If I today make a random unskilled person a butcher, how many of them would you think have the skill to make bricks for the floor given tools only available to dwarves, and would go to that lenght? Your all argument is based on the 0.00000001% of people that would go as far as to crafting bricks in order to get to butchering since each dwarf is responsible to setting up its own workshop, so why are you arguing for the realistically EXTREMELY less likely scenario? People do stuff comparable to their skill. An unskilled dwarf cannot be expected to know how to setup a nice paving and shop.

What about a player that starts in a biome with only ice and ice blocks? He would be magically turning the ice into stone material for the fixed gray stone floor?
Is funny how in your push for realism and optimal shop setup you're proposing something completely detached from reality itself...

And this are only some of the inconsistencies in your argument that come to mind on the fly.

Also I'm sorry but I didn't quite understood for what purpose you are arguing with those opinions...
In my case, I am arguing for leaving the player the creative freedom on the fortress look.
What is your motivation?
You don't like people doubting on the team's work?
You simply like gray bricks better and try to justify your preference trough realism?
I really don't understand your motivations, can you explain them? To help me make sense of your opinions

[Starver]

You can clean marble floors easier than carpet (IRL), and carpets don't even exist in DF (so you're emulating them with something else). Except carpets of blood, spreading out from a scene of combat.

Dwarves who build a butcher's shop are deemed to be butchers. They can be no-skilled ones, but the shop never turns out not to have a cutting block (shall we assume, or else we'd have effective job-cancellation as soon as any dwarf of experience arrived and discovered this) so why would it be improperly set up in another important aspect of "being a butcher's shop"?

Except for Architects, in certain circumstances, there tends to be no secondary skill needed. Carpentry, masonry, metalworking, etc, is not relevent to the workshop material used, if not already relevent for other reasons.

I did actually suggest that, down the line, if ice (taking your example) is the building material then ice worktables, ice chopping blocks, etc, should be shown. For the present, I'm not entirely sure if there's any concession to this in the graphics (such that a gold block used to create the carpentry workshop makes it look at least a different colour than if it's created from microcline or willow log or... soap..? - with different fundemental differences between metal, stone, wood or whatever secondary but also should be considered) so why should your ire be aimed at a genericly illustrative brick/tile/cobble floor that serves just as much purpose to suggest purposeful construction as the furniture atop of it?

Also I'm sorry but I didn't quite understood for what purpose you are arguing with those opinions... No, I obviously did not make kyself clear in many ways.
In my case, I am arguing for leaving the player the creative freedom on the fortress look. As did I, you'll note if you read again.
What is your motivation? "Something is wrong on the internet"? No, not really, but I find this issue interesting and I thought I had some valid interpretations, even if they are too complex to be incorporated this time round.
You don't like people doubting on the team's work? I just thought it was worth discussing the premise.
You simply like gray bricks better and try to justify your preference trough realism? I have real-world examples to give, so I gave them. And I never outright specified grey bricks, that'd be up to what works artistically.
I really don't understand your motivations, can you explain them? To help me make sense of your opinions Does this help?

If I seem overly adamant, I apologise, but it would probably be a reflection of any steadfastness of your own. I'm sure we're both aware how much influence we have on the end-product - i.e. minor and suggestive amounts at best. Probably ebbing the more we waffle on about our own individual fancies and bore the People Who Matter to death when they've just been so good as to show the current version of mock-ups. That said, I could not begrudge the carpet idea being implemented. It would not be the most strange thing to go in-game.