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[mickel]

Most other tasks have to be carried out by dwarfs, but locking and unlocking doors is magically done automatically when you order it. While practical it feels like it goes against the spirit of the game. While fixing that, further enhancements could be done to the doors as well, namely:

Defining the "inside" of the door. A simple choice of west over east, or north over south depending on the orientation of the door. The inside of the door becomes important for later features.

Defining who may or may not pass, and who may or may not open the door. Two selections here: {everyone may pass, military may pass, none may pass} and {everyone may open, military may open, none may open}.

That way you could set it up so that, for example, anyone may pass the door, but only the military may open it.
If a civilian wants to come through, they will generate an "open door" job for the nearest available military unit to pick up. The military unit will come open the door and the civilian goes through.

Also, if anyone may come through and anyone may open it, a civilian coming from the outside (see below) would need to signal someone on the inside, generating an "open door" job for the nearest available dwarf to pick up.

More locking options. Instead of just "lock" vs. "unlock" there would be options like "bolt" (a simple deadbolt applied from the outside that would make the door resist picking attempts) and "bar" (a heavy bar which takes some time to apply and remove, and which makes the door resist being knocked down).

Obviously a deadbolt or a bar would only be operable from one side, this side being the "inside" defined earlier.

[Mikko]

Defining who may or may not pass

I SHALL NOT PASS???

Okay, to be serious, this suggestion is one of the best ones lately!
Btw. Doorguards. NAO

[Mikademus]

a civilian coming from the outside (see below) would need to signal someone on the inside, generating an "open door" job for the nearest available dwarf to pick up.

What about hooking up a lever through a mechanism to the new item "bell"? :p We could call it a... hmmm... "door bell"?

[Draco18s]

What about doors placed on the diagonal?

[Foa]

I say when you define in and out, just select the adjacent squares that are 'in', and you can set Gate Guardians to patrol anywhere around the door.

[Overdose]

I say when you define in and out, just select the adjacent squares that are 'in', and you can set Gate Guardians to patrol anywhere around the door.

or perhaps, maybe set a door as "Guard" mode, so that the fortress guard comes patrols from door to door that you assign. then the fortress guard might actually do something for once

[Faces of Mu]

I tried searching for this but I didn't seem to locate the same idea.

I wonder if there'd be a lot of use for being able to connect doors (as levers in themselves) to other objects? That way you could have dwarf-power generated spike traps and atom smashers and farm irrigators. You could also make it dependent on whether a dwarf opened it or a pet did (and if Toady were to be so generous, all the weight variables given to pressure plates could be applied to doors).

On another note, even having doors be connected to gear assemblies with a mechanism so that the force of the dwarf pushing the door open generates a small amount of power. With this you could maybe power a screwpump with a door leading to the well to pump a very small amount of liquid into your water reservoir and always have it topped up, or have a screw pump flush some dumped debris down the chasm. All without needing to set up a separate pressure plate (which is only useful at a chokepoint, such as a doorway or thin hall).

[Lav]

Re:door should be locked by dwarves instead of player.

I wanted to post the same suggestion but obviously it was already posted.

Hence: bump.

[Aquillion]

As I understand it, many of these are difficult because of the way pathing works.

[Silverionmox]

This would be implemented better as an effect of burrows, rather than as a modification of pathfinding.

[Lav]

Hmm, I don't think burrows have anything to do with door (un)locking, unless I am totally wrong somewhere.

IIRC the idea of burrows is that you can designate a limited area for a dwarf to live and work in. What does this have to do with doors being magically locked and unlocked by the Omnipresent Entity Better Known As Player?

[Silverionmox]

Hmm, I don't think burrows have anything to do with door (un)locking, unless I am totally wrong somewhere.

IIRC the idea of burrows is that you can designate a limited area for a dwarf to live and work in. What does this have to do with doors being magically locked and unlocked by the Omnipresent Entity Better Known As Player?

Because making doors locked and unlocked simultaneously for different dwarves causes trouble with pathfinding, that's not easily solved. By using burrows, dwarves would effectively ignore what's behind that door, without trying to path through it. (I presume burrows would make 1. Dwarves be ignored as candidates for jobs outside their burrow and 2. Make dwarves ignore stuff outside their burrow.)

Also, denying acces to certain dwarves would require an AI that can handle wanting stuff behind that door, but not being allowed to, but still trying to get at it in the long term. That can be tricky.

[LegoLord]

Because making doors locked and unlocked simultaneously for different dwarves causes trouble with pathfinding, that's not easily solved.

Just as a side note, we do have the "military can go outdoors" already, but that does have its own bugs, with dwarves still trying to go out.  I still like the sound of the OP, though, and once whatever framework is done to allow the AI pathing to deal with it effectively, I hope it goes in.

[Silverionmox]

Because making doors locked and unlocked simultaneously for different dwarves causes trouble with pathfinding, that's not easily solved.

Just as a side note, we do have the "military can go outdoors" already, but that does have its own bugs, with dwarves still trying to go out.  I still like the sound of the OP, though, and once whatever framework is done to allow the AI pathing to deal with it effectively, I hope it goes in.

The difficult part is that the pathfinding works with connectivity maps. So a dwarf trying to go through the guarded door would keep trying, since the connectivity map indicates it as passable. Or it might indicate it as unpassable, in which case the dwarf won't try at all. So the atmosphere of the idea is great, but with the way pathfinding works, it's n/a. To make that appropriate, pathfinding needs a complete conceptual overhaul: instead of finding an exact path within a strictly defined space, dwarves would go from landmark to landmark, only realizing underway that the destination is not accessible this way, getting lost, taking another route.

Something that can be done is posting guards who search dwarves who pass for hidden weapons or something like that. But they can't stop them.

A burrows system wouldn't offer the flavour either, but it would allow to keep connected regions where some dwarves go and others don't. It would also stop the entrance dance, since jobs generated on the outside wouldn't call dwarves from the inside burrows.

[Fieari]

This suggestion would also work if my Connectivity Map suggestion was implemented.  *warning, Computer Science details in thread*