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[Mechanoid]

What if there was a way to see in Dwarf Fortress mode how likely an area was to caving in?

Basically, when you go into this view you get an overlay of colored X's (sort of like how you can see rooms) depending on how far away a floor tile is from a rock wall, where ever you have dug out or planned to dig. Green would be safe, yellow would be caution, and red would be a cave-in, which turns all nearby tiles in a 7x7 block (the original red tile is the center) red as well.

So for example, a single, double, or triple wide hallway would be Green. Four, five, and six tiles wide would be Yellow, and as soon as one tile turns Red, a 7x7 block of tiles centered on the original red tile will turn red as well.

And if you really want to, the game could predict where you would have to dig in order to cause a cave-in; imagine you dug a 7x7 room, but left one of the corner rocks alone. The 7x7 "-1" room would fail to collapse because of that one rock, and this vision overlay would display a Red X where that rock is, because the removal of that rock would cause a cave-in.

As usual, none of this is necessary. It's just something i thought up that would aid the player in planing out his fortress, and more easilly avoid annoying cave-ins (unless of course causing a cave in was his objective; there's no point in stopping that) and thus improve gameplay for everyone.

[Toady One]

But I so enjoy smashing the new people...  and they enjoy being smashed as well.  The dust effect is pretty cool.  Maybe if I bury the 7x7 reference manual deep in the manual I can be excused, or add some obscure init option to display something like the cave-in info you mentioned.

[Captain Mayday]

Toady, is the 7x7 cave in thing due to spaces being made vulnerable if more than 3 spaces from a support or wall?

[RPB]

No, you need an entire block of 7x7 squares empty before there's a danger of cave-in.

[Aquillion]

Hrm.  Question.  Aside from the walls around rooms, walls for defense, and walls to block a few specific things like miasmas and floods, is there any reason why the player would want internal walls anywhere in their fortress?

I'm beginning to find the idea of a vast, open underground city with regular supports to be tempting for some reason...

[Toady One]

I think walls for defense might lead to a number of walls...  traps in open space are fairly ineffective.  And you mean a sort of compact design then, with the workshops and so on close together?  Since more digging is more hauling.  But yeah, something like this might work, if the cave riverish features are controlled.  You'd have these noble palaces and dwarf apartments dotting the pillared workshop and pile landscape.  Be fascinating to try, anyway

[Mechanoid]

quote:Originally posted by Aquillion:
<STRONG>I'm beginning to find the idea of a vast, open underground city with regular supports to be tempting for some reason...</STRONG>

Strait from Lord of the Rings, in the mines of Moria, when the fellowship is being chased by goblins/orcs and they first encounter the Balrog (looks like you, er... They dug a bit too deep...  :roll: )

Anyways, dont walls count towards some sort of room value? And if a wall of a metal is present in a bedroom, the dwarf that owns that room and loves that metal will feel happier, correct? Oh, and lets not forget about constraining rooms to proper boundries.

[Toady One]

Yeah, the walls do that -- so I think any room where the value matters (living quarters, and maybe a communal dining room), you could set up one of the little palaces.  Of course, in practice, these take up a lot of the space, so it would be interesting to see how open the fortress ends up being when you actually try this.

[RPB]

I've found myself drifting towards using open shared workspaces for production areas... it started out just putting rooms for workshops close together and giving them access to shared storage, then I started taking out more and more of the partition walls when I realized that they were just eating up space I could use for more storage areas. So now my fortress is centered around a huge work area roughly about 50x35 or so, with partial dividers splitting it up into six big work pits (a bunch of workshops around a shared storage pile) with a wide open path right down the middle. I really like it (I will resist the urge to make any sad puns about "digging" it.)

[JT]

I've only ever made work areas in the game completely open, dotted with supports.