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Author Topic: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page  (Read 1551524 times)

NW_Kohaku

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4350 on: April 07, 2011, 12:45:22 pm »

It seems to me that a compromise may be to define large scale building types and uses and let the hard code fill the out. So one could say "this civ uses [BUILDING_PLAN:TEMPLE] buildings that have [BUILDING_SPHERE:METAL] and [BUILDING_SPHERE:BY_CIV_PREFRENCE], and it uses them to [BUILDING_USE:MEETING_AREA:ALL], [BUILDING_USE:WORKSHOP:METALWORKING], and [BUILDING_USE:RELIGION:ALL]. Perhaps you might also say [SELECT_CONSTRUCTION_MAT:FLOOR:LOCAL_STONE] and [SELECT_CONSTRUCTION_MAT:WALLS:ANY_METAL].

With enough basic Building plans- they could be anything from sphere-sensitive temples to generic hovels or a variety of workshop plans or castle designs. Then you're free to do anything from making a civ that builds everything with low, adobe buildings to a techie civ with everything made of metal and glass in shiny towers.

Well, that's where I tried to go with a follow-up question:

Spoiler: Long quote (click to show/hide)

You can make a fairly flexible system by having the furniture procedurally placeable inside of the buildings as a separate chunk of code, having the wall and furniture materials be a separate chunk of code, making the amount of space around the building or ways to access it be another chunk of code, and then making the actual shape of one or more chunks of a building be a chunk of code.

For example, you can make a "downstairs" zone of 4x8, and have a stairwell somewhere in that building, which allows you to stick any raw-defined "upstairs" that fits into the 4x8 area allotted to it, and maybe a basement in the same area.  If it's supposed to be a really crowded city, you could force only 4x8 or at least only 4xwhatever building shapes to take up the space in the upstairs. 

You can make a temple's each room, or even portions of rooms, be defined in different pieces of the raws if you want to.

Having 30 different versions of just one building will only lead to 30 different buildings, but having 5 different versions of 6 different assembleable pieces of a building will lead to 15,625 different buildings (albiet potentially only "different" in minor ways).
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Neonivek

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4351 on: April 07, 2011, 05:41:17 pm »

I mean... meat eating societies existed and have been quite dangerous (The Mongols)

Ohh well... odd.

I guess they are going to be like Trolls in the Majesty Universe where they are born from slime.
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Mel_Vixen

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4352 on: April 07, 2011, 05:48:57 pm »

Hey the not eating goblins will not turn into our new cliffs ;) i bet at some point they are back to eating meat which will be when proper herding job assignments etc. are in.
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Dradym

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4353 on: April 07, 2011, 08:33:10 pm »

well, in most folklore, goblins are faeries of a sort...and thus, nature spirits...i could see this idea as what goblins are more like in dwarf fortress...though, then, they couldnt reproduce...except by "assimilating" others, without technology, more like pod-people, which would explain why they need to abduct people
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4354 on: April 07, 2011, 09:28:14 pm »

well, in most folklore, goblins are faeries of a sort...and thus, nature spirits...i could see this idea as what goblins are more like in dwarf fortress...though, then, they couldnt reproduce...except by "assimilating" others, without technology, more like pod-people, which would explain why they need to abduct people

In most folklore, dwarves and elves are just as much fae creatures as goblins are.  In fact, much of folklore uses "elves" and "dwarves" and "gnomes" pretty much interchangably, and only refers to goblins in terms of being a malicious elf.  (And they are all Keebler Elf-sized elves, at that.)  So it's not like we're being particularly faithful to the source material, here.

I'm pretty sure that whatever choice Toady is making regarding goblins, it's something he's come up with, himself.
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
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Neonivek

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4355 on: April 07, 2011, 09:38:34 pm »

Well right now we are just asking for clarification Kohaku.

Because it is a rather large jump for how we understand Dwarf Fortress now.
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Rexfelum

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4356 on: April 07, 2011, 10:14:48 pm »

Because it is a rather large jump for how we understand Dwarf Fortress now.

I dunno, actually.  I wonder if that "Goblins are not going to need to eat" thing relates to how goblins already function: if you capture a goblin, you don't need to feed it.  Sure, sure, the same holds true for other sentient creatures on your map (except for your dwarves), and we know that the Toady One intends for (say) human civilizations off your map to need food.  But maybe he's thinking of a similar dynamic.

--Rexfelum
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nil

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4357 on: April 08, 2011, 02:57:24 am »

in my opinion there's absolutely nothing wrong with citing folklore and tolkien and the like.  it's almost never done in a "we must do things in X way because Y did" manner--which obviously would be problematic, DF is its own thing after all.  instead, usually folks just draw on other sources for examples and to show the limits of what it possible or plausible.  there's literally no reason goblins couldn't be somewhat supernatural (it would certainly explain the demon thing).

zwei

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4358 on: April 08, 2011, 02:59:11 am »

While we are talking about composites and content generation: http://designfestival.com/the-cicada-principle-and-why-it-matters-to-web-designers/

Prime numbers beat fractals!

Knigel

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4359 on: April 08, 2011, 07:55:41 am »

interresting city you have there, would be cool if it weas built on a hill. :)

Sounds like Ba Sing Se.
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4360 on: April 08, 2011, 10:16:44 am »

While we are talking about composites and content generation: http://designfestival.com/the-cicada-principle-and-why-it-matters-to-web-designers/

Prime numbers beat fractals!

That's a neat idea... Once I digest that, I'll have to start using it.
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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Miuramir

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4361 on: April 08, 2011, 11:17:39 am »

While we are talking about composites and content generation: http://designfestival.com/the-cicada-principle-and-why-it-matters-to-web-designers/

Prime numbers beat fractals!

While that's a decent summary of an interesting technique for creating "stupid" designs, DF is generally using far better procedural designs that are at least partly "smart".  In general, prime-tiled systems are good for making repetitive, unimportant background info look slightly less repetitive; in situations where the material actually matters for gameplay, content-aware procedural generation will give vastly superior results. 

The main improvement I'd like to see in the city generator is a focus around what the city is actually *there* for.  Historically, the majority of early cities (DF is nominally pre-1400 IIRC) were located around a trade-related location; natural harbor, river ford, river portage, trade route crossing, mountain pass, etc.  Of the ones that aren't, the majority of the remainder were organized around defensible locations (mostly hills, islands, or peninsulas).  There are a very few that were located around unusually rich sources of food or mineral wealth (effectively also a trade location, as they became a source node in the network), or in dry climates sources of fresh water.  Offhand I'm having difficulty coming up with any significant cities pre-1400 that didn't form around at least one of the above; the possible exception might be religious sites in the middle of nowhere, and I'm not aware of any that were cities pre-1400 that weren't also trade hubs or the like. 

In other words, the city generator shouldn't generate a city and plunk a river or caravan route through it; the vast majority of cities should pick a location based on one of the above reasons, and then generate the city out from the fortress, river, etc.  The generator can "cheat" a little in some cases; picking a spot along a river that it wants a city, and then putting in a ford / rapids / bridge / island as part of city generation to retroactively explain why the city ended up in that particular spot on the river.  (The default DF river generation doesn't do well at generating mid-river islands, which historically were a popular choice for a citadel around which a city grew.) 

Another useful city-generation trick is that, as several folks have noted, earlier inner city walls tend to get "mined" for stone for buildings or newer, outer walls; this tends to end up with a pattern of roughly ring-shaped larger roads along where the old walls were.  This is why many old-world cities end up with a radial plan; the original major roads were radial from the keep / crossing (or it was placed on existing roads), and as it grew larger, circumferential main roads took the place of successive generations of walls.  If you have a generator for a small city, generate that, then replace the wall with a main road and generate a medium city around that; repeat again to get a large one.  In addition to some of the maps already linked, the early map of Moscow is a pretty clear illustration of how that works out. 
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NW_Kohaku

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4362 on: April 08, 2011, 12:01:58 pm »

While we are talking about composites and content generation: http://designfestival.com/the-cicada-principle-and-why-it-matters-to-web-designers/

Prime numbers beat fractals!

While that's a decent summary of an interesting technique for creating "stupid" designs, DF is generally using far better procedural designs that are at least partly "smart".  In general, prime-tiled systems are good for making repetitive, unimportant background info look slightly less repetitive; in situations where the material actually matters for gameplay, content-aware procedural generation will give vastly superior results. 

It depends upon what you are going for... To a certain extent, if we have a set of 3x3 rooms for various villagers inside of buildings, and each room has a bed, a box, a cabinet, a table, and a chair, and all we want is to have those five items arranged in different ways so that each and every villager bedroom isn't identical, then you could essentially use a more "random" procedural placement code, where all that is important is that there is an empty tile near the door, and the chair is next to the table.

The main improvement I'd like to see in the city generator is a focus around what the city is actually *there* for. [...]

I'm not 100% on this one, but given what Toady said about these cities, the cities are just towns and villages that were started for the purpose of farming, and as they become more populous, they become more urbanized.

In other words, they're there for having some open fields to farm.  But when the city grows, the fields are replaced with ever-more densly packed buildings until all the fields are gone when the city hits its maximum population size. Meaning that the reason they are there is no longer there.

And yes, that's a bit of a problem.
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Personally, I like [DF] because after climbing the damned learning cliff, I'm too elitist to consider not liking it.
"And no Frankenstein-esque body part stitching?"
"Not yet"

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Asmageddon

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4363 on: April 09, 2011, 07:15:58 am »

EDIT: Sorry, these were all asked and answered. Sorry for asking them.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2011, 11:20:02 am by Asmageddon »
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Jiri Petru

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Re: Future of the Fortress: The Development Page
« Reply #4364 on: April 09, 2011, 08:31:25 am »

The towns in the new post are exciting!
But also a bit disappointing at the same time.

It's now clearly visible that all towns simply plop down a circular web of roads on the map and then start filling it up with buildings. All towns are perfectly circular and look all the same. Moreover this system results in illogical outcomes like here:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
There is a sharp line on the north where city blocks suddenly give to landscape... one would expect it would gradually fade into homesteads, and that the cottages would spread further north instead of doing this weird semicircle on the other side of the river.

The village parts on the maps look like American suburbia, but not like a medieval village. Historical villages didn't spread out in a circular cobweb pattern.

Basically, my beef is that the maps seem to lack any logical "simulation" of growth and spreading patterns. It doesn't resemble historical examples of towns and villages. Plopping a circle on the map and filling it with streets and houses feels too unreal and arbitrary. As a result, they don't look believable and they also lack character because they're virtually identical.

(Now, I realise these are all testing towns not implemented in the actual game world yet, so here's hoping it changes! Toady is most probably just testing the street algorithms before going on with more complex shapes. Also, this is a whining of an ungrateful person who has grown accustomed to Toady's high standards and expects him to do better. Even in this phase the generation is better than in any other game.)
« Last Edit: April 09, 2011, 08:33:57 am by Jiri Petru »
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