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[Impaler[WrG]]

I don't find the shading you speak of to be sufficient to distinguish between the two, I toggle engravings off and use FlyingMage which has a nice dashed line added around the engraved wall and engraved floor tiles so I can tell everything apart.

[Golgath]

Not sure why you all hate engravings so much..  I normally turn them off after the long term, but after they've been engraved I like to look at them and see if there is anything interesting.  They also make your wealth increase decently considering my engravers are a half dozen or so useless migrants that I assigned the stone detailing job to. 

[LegacyCWAL]

Hi!

The difference between floor and wall is handled via color shades. One is darker than the other, provided both are the same material. Once you have an entire screen full of engraved tiles, you really get used to it and it isn't a problem anymore

Deathworks

I know about the shading difference.  Like Impaler said though, it just isn't really enough for me, especially when two stone types come together.  Even worse is when two stone types with opposite colors come together, making you wind up with light wall + dark floor bordering dark wall + light floor of the same two colors.

[Dr. Von Uristein]

I'm using Mike Mayday's set, and I like the look the set gives to smoothed walls and floors.  I tend to smooth all of the high trafic areas, workshops, bedrooms, dining areas, and special areas like statue gardens.  I really like the idea of engraved walls and floors, but in practice I'm indifferent to their appearance.  My preference would be for walls and floors to be more distinct.  Assuming there is a graphics arc in the future, I'd expect engravings to be given serious consideration.  In practice, at this point, I only really engrave those areas that need a boost to value, while remaining reasonably sized.  Areas for nobles being an obvious example.  I don't spend a lot of time looking at the noble areas so I don't really care how they look, as I don't care about the nobles for the most part.  I do engrave the dining room because it helps with happy dwarves.

For those who's main issue is the blending of walls and floors, leaving a 1 tile, smoothed border, between engraved walls and floors preserves the distinction between the two and doesn't impact the value too much for a moderately sized room, especially if a legendary engraver is involved.

[dabbling noob]

I like to make 'paths' of engravings along the floor where a metal vein or gem cluster used to be. Cinnibar engravings look cool too. I usually only start carving them once my engravers are master rank or above and tombs for my champions/nobles usually get fully engraved but only by legendary engravers. Also fun is to get a bunch of engravers up to a fairly high skill level, fill a hallway with masterful engravings by all of them, flood it with magama and watch the chaos ensue.

[deadlycairn]

I just have engraving because I REALLY hate seeing ANY of my dwarves idling, so when a bunch of dwarves showed up and I didnt have enough weapons for them all to go into the army, I made them engravers. To get round the extremely confusing graphics for the engravings, I just have them engrave my stone quarries, where I don't have to look very often. Otherwise I just hide engravings.

[Awayfarer]

I will only engrave walls, never the floor.  It just irritates me too much, even with the engraving display off. 

Funny thing is I do the opposite. I engrave walls occasionally but I prefer to only engrave floors.

I hate mass engraving too though. I only engrave single tiles in places where it looks tasteful, like in front of a statue. I can tell myself the statue relates to the engraving this way. :-p

I also like to engrave a single section of floor from mines out gem clusters. Masterwork engraved emerald floor anyone?

[betamax]

I like smoothing and engraving. Smoothing is done everywhere in the fortress, and I sometimes train engravers by smoothing the mined-out metal veins*. I generally just engrave the dining room (to keep the people happy) and nobles' rooms (to keep the nobles happy). I have the obscure engravings setting on.

*There were Dwarves once, in these mountains, hundreds of years ago. They lived in great cities carved out of stone, filled with jewels and riches. Little is known what happened to bring their end - some say they still live on, deep underground. Studies of some engravings found show Dwarven halls filled with carp - prehaps they were suffering from starvation, and bred the carp as a last attempt at creating food? Until we find a Dwarf Fortress, we will never know.
Finding a Dwarf Fortress, however, was what the great archaeologist Tunul Ecenkon has set out to do. His expedition had gone high up into the mountains and searched fruitlessly for many days. One morning however, he awoke to cries of delight. Xim Kadiumci, the young student, had found an opening into the ground. The picks were brought out and the whole was widened, and the group, lighting their lanterns, went in.
They were in some kind of tunnel. It was windy and odd-shaped, unlike most tunnels found previously, but still was smoothed out. Small slivers of gold glinted in the rock. The walls and floor were covered in engravings. Tunul looked at them, and saw Dwarves screaming, Dwarves in foetal positions, Dwarves talking and labouring, and a masterfully-engraved image of cheese. They walked on, down the tunnel, until suddenly, it came to an abrupt end, with no sign of a door or sealed passage in sight.
What was this strange passageway, superbly engraved but leading to nowhere? Was it a great construction, abandoned and unfinished? Was it some kind of Dwarven temple, designed to worship the very stone itself? Tunul never did find out. The group packed up their bags and continued into the mountain range. From high above, the cries of a giant eagle rang out, clear and sharp, across the snowy peaks.

[Muz]

I engrave only special walls, and do so in an annual pattern, to represent the history of my fortress.  Thus, everything looks nice, and I actually want all the engravings to show up like that.  It doesn't make sense to me (aside from the value-raising perspective) to engrave everything everywhere, or even anything close to everywhere.

Just my own play-style, though.  I could see how other styles of play could be justified, and could produce ugliness.

Hmmm.. I like that idea. I didn't know they engraved things according to history. I just get things like "there is an engraving of a dwarf here. The dwarf is engraving", "there is an engraving of a goblet, cat, cave spider, etc". I love the idea of engravings, though, it's just that even my master engravers don't have much creativity.

Engraving just a little section of my fortress seems to boost the whole room immensely, my humble treasurer's room with only a chair has become a Royal Throne Room. So, I don't really see any need to engrave the whole place.

I'm really tempted to smooth out my whole fortress right now. Engravings can look a little messy, but smoothed out fortresses always look nice.. and they boost the engravers' skill too.

[TheSpaceMan]

I engave only the outer inside wall of my fortress.
For that to make sense, visualise my fortress as an empty cube underground, where i try to dig roughly one level a year, engraving the far sides of the cube for each floor. I like looking at engravings and as people say, as long as you don't engrave everything there is no problem.

[Mohreb el Yasim]

i like engraving graveyards and some images in public areas ore richer rooms, but the graveyard is fun becouse it makes the history of the fortress (once i had an image of a monster strucking down one of my dwarf in the graveyard, i will maybe move his tomb on that squere ...)

[galmud]

I smooth and engrave with moderation. Rooms of importance and certain hallways gets smoothed and engraved. Normal workshops and bedrooms rarely gets any smoothing at all. I use Mike Maydays mod and unsmoothed floors dont look too bad

I mostly engrave walls and I try to smooth/engrave in simple patterns to make it look less messy. One of my main corridors have the floors smoothed in a specific pattern and wall engravings on both walls every 3 tiles