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[TomIrony]

Has anyone ever tried or bothered to paper-plan a fortress before building it?

An idea just came to me for a new kind of challenge: a blueprint is created (and scanned or drawn in photoshop or whatever) for a fortress with rooms, hallways, stairs, etc., but no designations; rooms can be whatever the builders want. Each player then generates their own world and tries to build it as closely as possible before Fun befalls them completely.

Pics to show the completed fortress and how the rooms were used. Would anyone be up for that? We could start small.

[the woods]

I only make general abstract notes for different areas because if an infinitely watery crocodile cavern decides to exist where I wanted my 27-workshop embroiders' guild, it sort of becomes a hassle. It might work if I bother to dig exploration tubes across the map though.

I remember a few 50 z-level dome projects where the op's would plan their radii out on graph paper, but you could also do that by zooming in to a circle brush in ms paint and counting the squares or whatever.

[wierd]

without a savescummed "reveal all" as an initial bit of deep earth scanning, it is impossible to properly plan a fortress that way of any significant size.

You run into things like aquifers, magma seas, magma tubes, the occasional slade deposit..... SMR...

You get the idea. Without very comprehensive prospecting on a scummed embark, there is no way to perfectly plan a fortress layout.

[Thormgrim]

i tend to plan them out in excel, then use quickfort to designate

i cheat a little and use DFHack and reveal to find spots to build it.  My OCD requires it

[Necrisha]

I don't mainly because the tiles aren't exactly square and my OCD flares up during the translation process. Unless I print grid for said tiles. Which is too much a waste to bother with when you can just paint what you want on a z-level you aren't anywhere near digging.

[wierd]

Tiles *ARE* exactly square if you use a 16x16 font, instead of an 8x16 font.

(Or use a graphics pack)

As for planned designations, I will make all the stairwells first, then designate everything I want to dig totally, then go back over and undesignate squares around the stairwells, for layers I dont want dug yet.  To initiate, all I have to do is redesignate the square areas around the stairwells.

[Necrisha]

but I like the ASCII! 

yeah I know it's an easy fix, I just can't be bothered to add tilesets or switch to the lazy newb pack and re-mod the stuff I've messed with over the past six months... I have to manually add the pathing every time I want to view a different reigon in isoword as it is since stupid "open with" refuses to recognize it as a program, I sort of wanted to wait till I noticed a tileset that makes me drool before I bother with adding one.

Although there is the advantage with how the ASCII grid happens to match for knitting purposes. I suppose if I get reeeealy bored I could do a pattern mega-project where the floor/wall of certain levels make reference block patterns for a knitting project...

[Mohreb el Yasim]

you can get ASCII with 16*16 ( i played graphical sets but i passed on ascii too it is easyer on the eyes once you get the hang of it)
and for the chellenge, i tougth about making
mini room-plans with roads from them (N-E-W-S) (marked on the other side too)
cut them out
distribute them randomly (face down) with only roads maching
and see what you have gotten as design

[Hyndis]

When starting I do a reveal in DFhack just to get the lay of the land, and then I hide things again. Its nice to get a rough idea of where things are, so I can plan what depth I want my fortress at. I prefer at least 10 fully solid layers of rock to dig my fortress in, as I'm fond of very tall great halls. I don't use much in the way of room for storage due to heavy abuse of mine carts and quantum stockpiles. I just like big, tall rooms.

[sprawl15]

When I'm not trying something interesting, I normally use the same basic layout.  A 3x3x3 cube of 11x11 rooms, with floor 2 being the 'lobby'.  The central column of rooms has a 3x3 stairwell leading up and down, 3 of the 'columns' are dedicated to dorms, the others are dedicated to crafting.  Workshops in the basement, raw materials on the lobby, finished stuff on the top.  Other rooms are attached as needed (extra storage, animal pastures, etc).

Big image:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The entryway is normally either up from the central 3x3 stairwell or a 3 wide corridor leading from one of the top center rooms, depending on how deep I go.  I normally try to make the entry a 3 wide hallway with the depot adjacent and a drawbridge to button up and force invaders through a trap tunnel right next to it.  Farm plots don't go in this layout, they're normally blistered as an 11x11 room above the food stockpile/kitchens, or up a few floors.  I'll usually also convert the bottom floor of one of the dorms into a hospital (with a cistern beneath it for a well).  Same with a magma cistern, if I find one and can be bothered to make a pump stack. 

The format's really flexible and quick to designate.  Sometimes I dedicate the bottom floor of the central columns into four nobles' rooms of 3x3 office and 3x3 bedroom, or other configurations as needed to keep them happy. Adding stockpiles above and below is very easy, or doing things like blistering a 3x3 room with a door for craftsdwarf workshops in case of someone demanding shells in a desert.  I also tend to build megastockpiles for food and whatnot once the fortress really starts going, usually on a floor directly beneath (I'll convert the up stairways into up/down stairways).

[Baccar Wozat]

Some weeks ago I started using graph paper to test a few DF design ideas.

The 3-squares-per-inch paper didn't have enough room. Then I got out some 10-per-inch, but everything was too small and unreadable.

I seem to do much better with notebook paper.

[Tally]

I've considered using a notebook to sort out migrants before. As I fill jobs, mark them down on a list, and new migrants can be sorted by what jobs are in demand versus what relevant skills they may have. I should probably start doing this.

[Tevish Szat]

my forts are pretty much of the "No plans, no prototypes, no backups" species, mostly because I have a few building blocks I tend to reuse:
> A 3x3 column of up/down stairs
> housing consisting of long 1-wide N/S corridors with 1x4 (Counting the door) rooms off either side
> Workshop areas consisting of 1-wide E/W corridors with 3x3 rooms off either side, able to be isolated by a single door for failed moods
> Stockpile areas consisting of 11x11 rooms

When designing a megaproject, I might "Sketch it out" first, or I might just to measure never and cut as much as it takes.

I use notepad files to sort squads and migrants when I'm not just drafting Urist vonUselessProfession x10 and making everyone else hauler/masons