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[Servu]

So I have, for the short time I have played Df, seen some of really great fortresses. All of these would have been great to enter in adventure mode and get blown away by the amount of sheer magnifisence that the places held in their time.

The problem however is that even if I had the saves at hand, I don't think I would be as amazed about them as I would have been if I stumbled upon them by accident and actually get to explore them in the adventure mode rather than just go look at them in the map archive. Neither have I ever been able to play a world long enough to produce more than a couple little forts of my own.

So what I am proposing is that DF would get a system that would allow multiple players to work in the same region at the same time, sharing their progress with each other when they start a fort (marking the area of their fort as occupied) and when abandoning (opening said area to other people's adventurers).

For this kind of games pretty much what you need would be a really good (and Fun) world with lots of stuff in it to keep territorial competition to minium. Then share this world with a bunch of people who could all download and play it (informing each other about their fortress locations to avoid overlapping). Whenever a player is finished with his fort, they would proceed to post their save to a game "host". Here is where a single fort export system is needed.

When this is done, all the other parttakers could, when starting a new fort or adventurer just download the latest version of the save and get all the stuff other people have made and even contribute something themselves.

This would not only add a great lot of completely random user made forts to explore in a single map, but could also result in the players getting each other's abandoning dorfs when starting or through migration.

"Some migrants have arrived!"
"Oh, great... what do I get this time? Let's see..."
"Useless peasant, Useless peasant, Soap Maker, uff..."
"Hey, who's that? Urist McAwesome the infinite Elf-killer of Destruction?"

Also, when you complete that all-z-spanning giant tower built entirely out of adamantium, elf tears and kitten traps, some sap can actually stumble upon it in adventure mode and proceed to shit his pants over the awesome.

Now this formula has some problems: Firstly a huge effort from the game manager would be needed, as he would have to import every new fortress manually. Secondly there would propably need be some rules about reclaiming other people's sites as the new players could just go crap all around them, but in other hand sometimes it could be just permitted improval over someting.

Due to this and the obvious world size restrictions a game could only support a relatively small amount of people at a time and some serious commitment from the game manager would be needed.

This is, of course if anyone besides me is intrested in gameplay like this.

Now with online engagement always comes assholishness. So I want to make one thing clear: imho DF is not an mmo and it never should be either. Thus trying to apply any real time online aspects in the future are not what I am looking after here, just the ability to efficiently share forts over the community.

[Hummingbird]

This would really really be awesome if it happened.  In fortress mode, you'd only have to choose an embark zone that doesn't overlap with others', which would be modified every save—simple enough to do, I would think.  I don't know how this would jive with future versions where you would be able to interact with other fortresses outside your embark zone, but maybe that could be just... turned off?  I'm sure there is a more elegant solution than that. 

Anyway, I've been looking at crappy "mountainhomes" in adventurer mode and wishing that I'd be able to stumble upon fortresses of the kind players would actually design. 

I have absolutely no experience in modding or the way world files or save files work, but maybe it's even possible to achieve this through a third-party tool, and save Toady the work of doing this? 

[alfie275]

So basicly a "internet world" that is updated to some central server, merged with other players ones at the next half hour, and redownloaded into the internet folder?

[IHateOutside]

Anyway, I've been looking at crappy "mountainhomes" in adventurer mode and wishing that I'd be able to stumble upon fortresses of the kind players would actually design.

This will be worked on in the future I think.

[Malsqueek]

At the very least, it would be pretty cool to have player forts become "exportable" as blueprints that could be added to the worldgen, so that you could actually get cool building to explore that you didn't build yourself..

All it would take is making some sort of "importer" during the worldgen sequence, and a set of blueprints that could be applied to areas that meet the blueprint "criteria".

[Servu]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This would really really be awesome if it happened.  In fortress mode, you'd only have to choose an embark zone that doesn't overlap with others', which would be modified every save—simple enough to do, I would think.  I don't know how this would jive with future versions where you would be able to interact with other fortresses outside your embark zone, but maybe that could be just... turned off?  I'm sure there is a more elegant solution than that. 

Anyway, I've been looking at crappy "mountainhomes" in adventurer mode and wishing that I'd be able to stumble upon fortresses of the kind players would actually design. 

I have absolutely no experience in modding or the way world files or save files work, but maybe it's even possible to achieve this through a third-party tool, and save Toady the work of doing this? 

Yes, this is exactly what I had in mind! I also have to second the last paragraph.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So basicly a "internet world" that is updated to some central server, merged with other players ones at the next half hour, and redownloaded into the internet folder?

Pretty much yes, even though the updates would propably be handled by people just posting their fort whenever they feel like updating it.

[Bricks]

Biggest problem I see is how to actually distribute the content.  Toady doesn't have access to a Spore-like database server.  Perhaps he will find a way to easily abstract certain designs of rooms and forts/towns/towers/treehouses so we can modify and add to the raws.

More on the original topic, the game doesn't (and probably never will) support playing multiple games on the same world, simultaneously.  Because it's impossible.  Sort of.

[Megaman]

This will never happen. ever.

[Cavalcadeofcats]

Well, actually, there's no reason it couldn't happen. This is just a problem for a garden-variety VCS, applied to Dwarf Fortress saves. Run DF through some thin shell that automatically downloads the latest version on startup and merges the changes on exit/command... the only real problem would be cracking open the save format, but given the ingenuity of the community here (how many memory-hacking utilities are there at present?), I doubt it'd be an obstacle impossible to overcome. You might not even have to - it depends on the structure of the saves, but a simple diff might suffice. Servers are certainly available - we've got the wiki and DFFD, and this would most likely take significantly less bandwidth/space than the latter. The real problem would be conflict resolution - what happens if two people try to reclaim the same site at the same time? Either someone's progress is getting erased, or you need to fork the save - probably the best solution, though it would present difficulties with UI...


TL;DR:
 - It's completely do-able without any intervention on Toady's part. (Though a little help on the saves might be useful.
 - If I weren't about to go to bed, I'd be strongly tempted to try to start setting it up right now.
 - Hooray!

EDIT: I'm essentially agreeing with Hummingbird, I guess.

Also, just realized: I'm wrong, it's not nearly as (currently) doable as I thought. One world, one (running) fort. (Or adventurer.) It could work for something that was updated with each abandon/adventurer death - or as an automation tool for inheritance-style community forts - but not otherwise.

 Pity. Still a good idea, just not as much so as I thought. The OP's suggestion, which I've only tangentially discussed, is a good one. I endorse it with all of my mighty powers.

[darkrider2]

This would be SHWEET. I don't play adventure mode any, but it would be wicked awesome to have other people finding my fort and exploring the design.

[lucusLoC]

@cats

Do you think it could be doable if you just inport the map data? You would not get the history of the fort, but you would get the fortress and traps. I do not know what would happen to things like engravings and artifacts that reference history that did no happen in your world though. Or what happens if a historic figure is present on 2 maps at once (king, megabeast).

[Cavalcadeofcats]

Do you think it could be doable if you just inport the map data? You would not get the history of the fort, but you would get the fortress and traps. I do not know what would happen to things like engravings and artifacts that reference history that did no happen in your world though. Or what happens if a historic figure is present on 2 maps at once (king, megabeast).

I'm not entirely certain what "just importing the map data" would mean. I guess - everything that's not an active adventurer or in an active fort? There's not going to be much change in that while a fort is running, not until the Army Arc really gets moving, or (please, please, please!) the County/etc arc starts - just dying/caged megabeasts and adopted rulers, as you mentioned. I don't know if there's a separation between that and the rest in the saves - and even in there were, I'm not sure it would really add much beyond an update whenever a fortress is abandoned/destroyed.

So... maybe? Maybe.

[Grendus]

While this is doable, there are a few problems with the idea:

1. There has to be a server. If the server is going to host multiple games, it will need to be a BEAST! If the players are going to upload the files, it will need software to make sure everyone is playing on the same map with the same raws. Also, remember that servers are pricey. Toady isn't exactly raking in the dough with DF, certainly not enough to justify renting a server large enough to host the games, so it would have to be player managed, meaning it would require some oversight. Not unworkable, but certainly it'd be a lot of extra code work to set that up.

2. Cheating. Some players like to cheat in their own little ways. Myself, I like to use the trade depot exploit to find magma pipes, and I mod my warhammers to do 1 damage when my dwarves are sparring (though I feel justified because dwarves should have the intelligence to switch to silver for sparring). In a multiplayer scenario, either you have to stop the cheating through in-game security or you end up with fortresses full of Urist McPenis carrying M16 submachine guns that use vagina ammunition. It won't be pretty.

While I honestly think your suggestion is more workable than most MMO style suggestions for DF, I still don't think it's a change I can support. There are just too many loopholes, too many problems I can see springing up to make a mess of things.

As a side note, there is a project going on in one of the forums (I forget if it's in the community games forum or the adventure mode forum) where they're doing just what you suggested - each player takes the map, builds a fort, runs it for a few years, then abandons it. Might be what you're looking for.

[Belteshazzar]

Perhaps allow for importing and exporting goods and peoples to different towns and cities? Build a caravan sent it on it's way to somewhere and then (after an appropriate period of travel time) whenever that other player is on they will receive their good like a standard caravan and then it will return to you.

Perhaps even a PvP server where you can assemble and send armies with a few simple directives (loot x amount or particular object, capture x people or particular person, protect and hold, kill everything, raze and destroy, ect.) These armies would be exported, AI controlled (to follow correctives until morale is broken) and return when successful or not (or not at all.) Perhaps it could even come to pass, where if multiple players are playing, at once they could roll out the battle in real time with multiple sides under the control of players.

[lastofthelight]

While not quite up to the standards of the above suggestion, once you can 'retire' a fortress, which will happen eventually, I strongly suspect there will be some sort of 'community world' where people just make fortresses and retire them and pass the save around, sortof like the current adventurer mode project, except not with modified cheat raws that prevent you from using it in fortress mode. Doing this would be possible with just people on the forum, and would basically achieve most of the same effect.