I'm not sure what you are confused about, but ramps *are* confusing, so I'll try to explain them generally. One thing I found to help me understand ramps was to realise that there is no such thing in DF as a "down ramp". There are up ramps on the same level as you (shown as ▲) and there are up ramps on the level below you (shown as ▼). I actually changed my font to turn downward facing triangles into small upward facing triangles because it helped me understand the situation.
You can not stand on a tile with a ▼ -- that's because it is open space (or water, perhaps). The ramp is one level below. When you move to a tile with a downward facing triangle (▼), you fall one level onto the ramp below. Because it is a ramp, you don't take damage from the fall -- however, if it is in water, there is a chance you will slip, which is why you should "move carefully" (alt-direction) falling on to ramps that are in water in adventure mode. Again, just in case it is not clear -- there is *nothing* in a tile with a ▼. It's just a UI "convenience" to show you that there is a ramp below that tile.
When you stand on a tile with a ▲, you are standing on a ramp. You are still on the same level as you were before. A ramp needs to connect to an open square (no walls, etc) on the level above if you want to go up. In other words you need an empty space directly above the up stairs and a floor (or something similar) one level up and one square beside. You move in the direction of the floor tile (on the level above) and you will go up the ramp and on to the next level. One thing that is potentially confusing (and disasterous) is that you can build a ramp, but if there is no empty space on the level above, nobody can climb the ramp. I've unintentionally cut off ramps that way in the past...
Stairs are different from ramps. A ">" denotes a "down stairs". Unlike a ▼, it actually exists on this level. You can go down the stairs to get to the level below. A "<" denotes an "up stairs". It also exists on this level. You can go up to get to the level above. Unlike ramps, an up stairs needs a down stairs directly above it in order to go up. A down stairs likewise needs an up stairs directly below it in order to go down. A "X" denotes an "up/down stairs" which has an up stairs and a down stairs in the same tile.
Luriant's diagram is useful, but the ramps are a little bit confusing. The ▼, as I said denotes an empty space with a ramp below it. The ▲ is the ramp (you can see they are directly under the ▼s). As far as you can tell in the diagram, only the right most and left most ramps are actually connected to the floor above -- there is a _ up and to the right of the right most ▲ and there is a _ up and to the left of the left most ▲. If you are standing on the right most ▲ and go right, you will go up and stand on the floor above. If you are standing on the floor and go left, you will be on the ▼ -- which, remember, is open space. You will then fall down to the ramp below (and since it is a ramp, you will take no damage). The middle ▲ is not connected to the level above because there is no floor in an adjacent tile. So if you move left from the middle ▲ you will just move to the left most ▲. There is no reason to have that middle ramp.
One of the confusing things (for me) in this diagram is what happens when you move left from the left most ▲. I want to say that you go up to the floor on the left, but I actually think you end up skipping the ramp. That's because I *think* in order to go up you need to have a solid wall for the ramp to rest against. It's been a while since I did that. So I think moving from left to right on the top level, you can still fall down on to the left most ramp, but you can never go up on that ramp -- you should try it to verify or not, instead of taking my word for it :-)
Ramps are super confusing and it is easy to have them not work, but there are some advantages (mine carts can go up and down, caravans can go up and down, if you fall on a stairway you will fall to the bottom and take damage, but with ramps it doesn't happen, etc).
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Topic: So what method is he using to get underground the stairs or the ramps? (Read 580 times)