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[karnot]

Not only stone, but any resourse in general.
Suppose a mason needs a stone for work - he will look for closest stone, but WILL NOT think about z-depth, and will consider ALL levels as one, for determining the closest. So if you have a stone layng about directly above the mason workshop and another, that is 5 tiles on the same level as the workshop - the dwarf will go get the one above the shop, even if he has to walk 100 steps to get there.

[Zombie]

I've noticed this occasionally, too. It's quite annoying.

[valcon]

my dwarves always seem to go for the most recently mined stone, might be just my perception, but it FEELS annoying

[red glass]

Dwarfs gathering for stockpiles will (and have for a long time now) always grab the most recently created item (stone mined, tree chopped, etc).

However, dwarfs in workshops always gather the closest stone. In the new versions, distances appear to be a simple manhattan distance calculation without looking at where floors exist. So if you happen to be mining bedrooms under your mason's workshop (bad idea since they'll be unhappy about noise), stones right below the mason's shop will be where the mason dwarf will get his stones from rather than the stockpile right next to him.

Though, on the other hand, we don't want a strict penalty for traveling a floor -- I've seen a lot of forts where workshops are all on some level and all stockpiles are one floor above/below it with stairs right next to the workshop.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Actually, this just forces you to better organize your workshops and stockpiles. It's frustrating at initial stages, because you don't usually worry about that early on. In an extreme case, I was prospecting some 5 levels below a mason's workshop, and the mason decided to run 5 levels down (at least two corridors 5 screenwidths long) to take a stone, instead of taking one from a stockpile 7 tiles away...

[Gelmax]

This is actually the first time I've even considered the idea that that might be inconvenient for some - I use staircases and Z-levels extensively in my fort, building most workshops on the top couple of Z-levels and doing much mining deeper down, with plenty of staircases so that dwarves never have to travel far to change Z-levels. As such, whatever materials I need are always a staircase and a very short walk away, regardless of level.

Basically, your problem is that the mason has to walk 100 steps to go up one Z-level in the first place. There's no downsides to building staircases, you know. If you know there's a fair amount of stone a Z-level or two away but otherwise very close to your workshop, just build a staircase.

[ November 24, 2007: Message edited by: Gelmax ]

[Draco18s]

True, there's no downside to building more stairs, however it doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist.  It's merely a way to work with the problem in a less irritating fassion.

[Zombie]

I agree. More stairs is a temporary fix at best. We KNOW there's some problems with pathing anyway, so this is just another pathing problem.

Instead of doing actual or "by the road" pathing, it seems to do literal or "as the crow flies" pathing. The difference is that instead of seeing if there IS a way to get somewhere and seeing how far away that place is, it just... Tries to go there.

Who knows, we might get pathing errors if you have stone above or below a workshop and no actual path to get there. Say, for instance, if a staircase is destroyed.

[palin88]

The problem, as always, is if you're willing to trade FPS for better pathing.

Doing a z-level tolerant path search would take much longer than the current flat path search.

[Griz]

I'm not sure exactly what's happening, but the pathfinding may be entirely disregarding z-levels. if you have a garbage chute that goes several levels down with a dump zone designated on each level, the dwarves will often go up or down to throw the item instead of using the dump on their current level.

[Align]

Pretty sure that the pathfinding originates from the dwarf; ie, it checks the adjacent squares first, then the squares adjacent to those, etc. Changing that to actual pathing would make a huge difference in cost.
One idea is to make it only check the nearest squares on the same z-level, unless it detects a staircase in which case it'll start checking the nearest squares on different z-levels.

[ November 25, 2007: Message edited by: Align ]