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[Lord Dakoth]

It would be quite amazing if this was to happen. I believe that Toady is making statues actually depict various objects/entities rather than abstract "statues" in the next release.

Paintings would be nice, especially if the Consort formed a grudge with the Mayor because the Mayor's painting was more valuable. This could also be a way for nobles to "suck up" to the King/Queen. The ruler likes hoary marmots, make a painting of hoary marmots.

I like the part you put in about playwriting. If DF had a Random Play Generator - can you imagine the hilarity?

GCS polo, anyone?

[Soulbourne]

Hmm...Perhaps a sport involving stone fans...poles....and armed combat...perhaps requiring you to get the fans onto rings in a certain order to gain points...and the enemy team either beats you or the fan into submission...and throw in sacrificing cats to keep score somehow?

[NW_Kohaku]

I hate to toot my own horn but... I'm getting positive feedback, but the entry for this on the Eternal Voting has only gotten one vote besides my own.  Since it only takes about 5 votes to get halfway up the list, I'm assuming most people's ideas are never even seen by anyone but the people who were commenting in the thread.

[NW_Kohaku]

Hmm...Perhaps a sport involving stone fans...poles....and armed combat...perhaps requiring you to get the fans onto rings in a certain order to gain points...and the enemy team either beats you or the fan into submission...and throw in sacrificing cats to keep score somehow?

Fans?  Like a fan with blades that spins, or one of those fans that is a single panel you wave back and forth?  Or are you talking about something else?  And how do you beat a stone fan into submission?

[Soulbourne]

As in like in a electric fan.  Just came to mind, some sort of disk with lift that can be thrown high and long to land on the poles.  And, you don't beat the fan into submission...you beat the oposing team into submission.  The second part...not sure where I was going with that.  Must have been somewhere, but my mind goes waaaayy out there at times.

[NW_Kohaku]

As in like in a electric fan.  Just came to mind, some sort of disk with lift that can be thrown high and long to land on the poles.  And, you don't beat the fan into submission...you beat the oposing team into submission.  The second part...not sure where I was going with that.  Must have been somewhere, but my mind goes waaaayy out there at times.

So... a frisbee. 

[Soulbourne]

Frisbees are too simple for a distracted addle brained idea?  And done have sharp fan edges causing occasion audience involvement ending with hospital trips?

[NW_Kohaku]

Frisbees are too simple for a distracted addle brained idea?  And done have sharp fan edges causing occasion audience involvement ending with hospital trips?

I didn't say it was a bad thing to play dwarven frisbee... and even without sharp edges, I wouldn't want to get hit with a stone disc... (would a stone frisbee fly properly?  Maybe if it was cut more like a ring or a chakram...) 

Actually, throwing stone chakrams at goal posts sounds like a fine idea...  The stadium would need to be fairly large, but it should work out fairly well.

I'm hoping that a dwarven sports arena might actually be playable in a field that you could actually mess around with.  Playing in a large square stadium is fine and all, but it's just more fun for the player to have a game whose field the player can mess around with. 

(I remember playing golfing games on the Commodore 64 just because I could build my own courses...  And putting trees in the fairway, or making players land balls on tiny islands to bridge the gap between tee and green...)

Something like an ultimate frisbee game on a player-created game area whose terrain could be altered would be interesting.

[darkrider2]

I don't really believe you can make art a job... It's reasonable to make 5 million stone crafts when you order it done but I don't think painting can be gone about the same way.

Maybe make the canvas an item (not furniture), and dwarves who have a high artistic trait and some from free time might once in a while go grab a canvas, easel, and some paint, take it to their room and begin work.

[NW_Kohaku]

I don't really believe you can make art a job... It's reasonable to make 5 million stone crafts when you order it done but I don't think painting can be gone about the same way.

Maybe make the canvas an item (not furniture), and dwarves who have a high artistic trait and some from free time might once in a while go grab a canvas, easel, and some paint, take it to their room and begin work.

Tell it to the Commercial Artists!  er... Sorry, got carried away.

Anyway, I would rather prefer something like that - although I think "public" art studios would be better.  Dwarves in their leisure time might go to a game room and socialize and relax, or they might spend time reading or viewing art or making art of their own.

[neek]

(I voted for this!)

Okay, so I like where this is going, but I need to throw in a few ideas else I'd feel like I'm wasting my time having just read this thread (after all, you put a lot of work on this, and it seems you're wanting good feedback.) Let's start with games.

Mind you, these are suggestions--nothing else, nothing more.

1). Games should be designated in an arena zone; an audience zone is any place that is adjacent (and has visible access) to the arena--this means that you could set an audience zone one z-level higher. This doesn't preclude then the addition of multiple z-level buildings.
2). Games should have their parameters defined in the raws, allowing modders to generate their own fun new games; as well, on world creation, semi-random raws could be generated for games. The raws will contain things like teams, and players; you could specify a range, have a token for equal teams, or set teams at radically different numbers; items with interaction tokens; and goals. This would mean a simple game of soccer would look like:

Code: [Select]

[GAME:SOCCER]
[TEAMS:2][PLAYERS:2:10][EQUAL]
[ITEM:leather ball:1]
[PUSH:leather ball]
[INTO:goal]
[ITEM:stone block:4]
[SCORE:goal:leather ball:1]
[WIN_SCORE:10]

[ARENA:SOCCER]
[AREA:goal:2]
[ITEM:stone block:2]
[ITEM_PARAM:1:3]
[ITEM_LAYOUT:stone block:goal:stone block]
[GOAL_OPPOSITE_LONG]
[ARENA_SIZE]
What this code does is, when it's time to play soccer, two sets of two stone blocks are set on opposite sides of an arena zone (longwise), with a space in between them. The token 'push' means use the body to move the object (a ball) 'into' a predefined space, as defined in the arena, scoring 1 point. . You can then move it around (using distance parameters instead of simple [ITEM_OPPOSITE_LENGTH] use [DISTANCE:10], so the goals are always 10 squares away in the most convenient placement. Instead of playing 10 points, you could instead define [TIME:500] for 500 ticks, and use the token [WINNER_HIGHEST]. The problem is, there will have to be many permutations to the code to permit EVERY game that you can think of; such an idea should be implemented small, then more and more tags added in as the updates roll out.

Once the game ends, the dwarves pack up and clean up the arena. This allows you to run multiple games in one zone, instead of arduously having to build each arena for a specific game.
3). "Vermin games" (as oppposed to "large games" as I demonstrated above) could be done a lot smaller, because they require luck and possibly skill, and aren't so well defined in the RAWS. There wouldn't be a point to adding all the tokens in to make poker or bridge work, it would to be much work; same with jacks or chess or clue--this can be added in with required mats. The only problem is that playing them in adventure mode will get boring, unless each game has randomized "win" and "lose" tags that display whenever you lose.) A game of pool might then end up being a vermin game, instead of a big game.

As for arts (such as bone crafting), I think even idling dwarves might want to go and not just paint, but perhaps widdle on some wood for a while, making a few spare items on his free time--a handcrafted (perharps marked by a single grave accent on each side, ``, would have its value calculated differently. The subject `Launching of Orbs` would have a different cost if it was *`Painting of Launching of Orbs`*, versus an engraving of *Engraving of Launching of Orbs*. Same with `Handcrafted Statue of a Triangle`--they would also qualify differently to dwarves. An artist dwarf might get happy thoughts from `handcrafted` item, while an unartistic dwarf would only get happy thoughts from the manufactured sort.

That's all I can think of at this moment...

[NW_Kohaku]

Raw-ifying everything seems to be quite popular...

I know this is the wrong sort of thing to latch onto  (nitpicking flag has been raised), but "[INTO:goal]" seems kind of backwards.  You're not trying to "into" to get points, you would be trying to [SCORE_BY:ball:goal].  (In fact, you have something pretty similar later on, making it redundant...)

But for that "1." part about zoning, I was thinking something similar, although I would want to be able to manually zone audience areas, as well.  I would also want game arenas to be manually definable in-game, without having to adjust the raws just to make the game fit your current fortress's layout.  If you could manually lay out zones, you could even make funny shapes in the arena, such as making a sport with a "Z" shaped arena in a game where you wanted to get a ball or frisbee or whatever to the opposing team's goal, or a four-teamed game on a big "X", where you got points for getting the ball into the tunnel opposite your home tunnel. The bonus for being able to manually set up your arena is that you could be as devious as you wanted to be in making an irregular arena.  You could make it rain goblin POWs when people hit pressure plates, or have drawbridge "catapults" or similar booby-traps that would allow you to purposefully stack the deck, or just make life more miserable for the players if you felt particularly sadistic that morning. 

Naturally, we need to find a way to get nobles to play on certain teams.

for the point 3., I think the best way to handle it is to make games furniture - players get around a pool table, or card table, or just a patch of floor they can shoot dice over, and "use object" until they have had their fill.  I haven't really considered adventure mode in this, and adding a little miniature blackjack game into the game just so you can gamble manually is definitely bloat.

[neek]

I'm glad you gave as in-depth of a response as I gave, which definitely helps (rather than being wholesale ignored).

The reason I'm up for rawifying the games is because it allows for semi-random games (as there'll be semi-random monsters); it requires less stress on Toady, who has to devise the rules for the games and hardcode them; and lastly, the ideas I project are based on DF as-is. This latter point is important, because it implies no multi z-level buildings (I already had the desire that the Audience zone simply needs to see the Arena zone, and that's the only requirement), or anything that massive.

I'm also suggesting not the end-all formation of this idea, but a middle point--a place where we can see it go then move onward from there, because if this game can do what you're suggesting without limitation, then the Dwarf Fortress will become infinitely better.

[Chicken Launcher]

I like this idea. Not so much the wider variety of furniture, but more dwarven activities like board games, schools, and sports. It would definitely make my fortress feel more like a city than a communist labor camp.

The sports I can suggest are axe throwing and a tournament, where dwarves that choose to join in fight each other (with sparring weapons, of course) to become the champion. I guess if your soldiers are allowed to join in it would provide a more entertaining way to choose your military champion. Either way it would provide entertainment for those watching and something to bet on for the dwarves that enjoy it.

[NW_Kohaku]

I think I've come up with some new Dwarfy hobbies for dwarves...

Mushroom sculpting.  It's sort of like some kind of bonzai tree scuplting, but instead, they're mushrooms, because that's more dwarfy.  Maybe they could be a kind of tower cap, or another mushroom, but they could relentlessly bind or prune or selectively feed the mushroom minerals or remains to make the mushroom grow in certain shapes and colors.  A hobby for patient, less violent dwarves.

When I started thinking of Japanese hobbies, though, I also remembered that one Mythbusters where Jamie and Adam were trying to find a way to literally "polish a turd", and wound up doing some odd kind of Japanese ball making hobby, where mud is packed into a perfectly spherical, polished ball.  Possibly dwarves could start with regular rocks or stones, and whittle and work them down into perfectly smooth and spherical balls by hand...