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[Timeless Bob]

I was looking at Meph's recent graphical attempt for the UI over in the dwarffortress reddit group and it came to me suddenly: Why isn't the loading of the wagon/s before we embark, not its own stacking mini-game?  I'm going to cross-post the idea here, so if you're not a redditor, you won't have to sign up.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This entire screen takes up too much real estate.

Shorten the distance between line items and point values, put the +/- over in front of the line items and have the remaining space be a wagon embark picture that is slowly filled with (and surrounded by in the case of the starting seven, multiple wagons and various animals) piles, sacks and boxes of items. The game already has a weight allotment for each wagon, which should allow you to be able to place a maximum total number of items in each one.

I'm surprised that "loading the wagons" isn't a starting mini-game anyway - Let the Player decide how the items are stacked in the bed and lashed to the sides of each wagon - which dwarf/dwarves get to drive it, and which creatures are the wagon pullers. To be able to SEE the wagons slowly filling with your embark goods allows a Player to become immersed in the process. Like the game itself, this can be a top-down view of each wagon bed, but if there were "z-levels" to each pile that might be a fun mini-game as well. Loading the wagons gives a preview of falling mechanics and flooding mechanics: Loading the wagons therefore becomes a mini-tutorial for the basic aspects of the game.

Physics aside, just graphically, having the icons in overlapping bounding boxes (like the cards in windows solitaire), could be a great way to show the wagons filling up. Perhaps large items take up multiple boxes, picks, axes, ect... take up various "t"s of boxes based on shape - filling the wagons becomes this jigsaw puzzle. When one layer is filled, add another z-layer that is smaller in area by say 20% and keep going until the weight allotment for a wagon is reached or you run out of space.

A "side view" picture of a wagon slowly stacking up layer by layer, maybe sinking down on its axles bit by bit as each item is added - "show" where the wagons get overloaded by having the wagons and their cargo displace down along an invisible slider relative to the static wheel hubs and ground. The whole purpose of a new GUI isn't just to reskin the old game, but to give Players a visual representation of the formerly very abstract list items.

DF is a fantasy world simulator - the embark screens should show that's what this is. Not just dry pages of data, but data that can be interacted with on a visceral as well as a cerebral level.

By playing around with even an ASCII variation of this mini-game, new Players would get a kind of tutorial about how the basic fort layout functions in first place as well as allow the wagon to be a 5 z-level starter concept for what will afterwards be much more.

         II===========II
   []   II--------------------II   []
   | |+II--------------------II+| |
   []   II--------------------II   []
         II--------------------II
         II--------------------II
         II--------------------II
         II--------------------II
   []   II--------------------II   []
   | |+II--------------------II+| |
   []   II--------------------II   []
         II===========II

[Maximum Spin]

I love this but I'm pretty sure 95% of everyone would hate it.

It would be so cool though.

[Starver]

I think it'd be against the whole "get noobs quickly into the game". Unless you went even further and made "loot boxes" purchasable items and/or allowed Tetris/Candy-Crush rules to 'free up more space/award more embark points' to draw in that kind of game-seeker.

It also goes against the innate quantum-stacking nature of everything but stockpiles, would there be limits to the strings of (non-hauling) snimals (or why not, by manually adding another pair of hauling animals, couldn't we stack up even more?


It might well be a good (mini-game within a) game, but I don't think it's right for this one. IMO, H or otherwise.


At a pinch, perhaps when boat-constructions come in (movable-fortress era of development) there could be a requirement that loaded/built/installed components be both balanced and not too anti-buoyant in nature, or else capsizing/sinking (~caveinish) might happen. But that doesn't seem like embark-screen thing until/unless there's a choice (from any navigable-from mountainhome/source-settlement) to go for a barge instead of a wagon.

[Nordlicht]

I love this but I'm pretty sure 95% of everyone would hate it.

I'm one of these. This sounds like something from the Terrible Suggestions Thread. Sorry but no.

[Quietust]

It also goes against the innate quantum-stacking nature of everything but stockpiles, would there be limits to the strings of (non-hauling) snimals (or why not, by manually adding another pair of hauling animals, couldn't we stack up even more?

The embark wagon actually has limited capacity, and if you try to bring too many goods, the game will spawn a second wagon to hold the rest of them.

Besides, I'm pretty sure the "quantum-stacking" behavior was never intended to be a normal part of gameplay, since it only happens when you use Garbage Dumping (whether an activity zone or a minecart route), often with non-garbage items - the wiki even describes it explicitly as an Exploit.

[Starver]

Besides actual Dump zones, which is but one method of QSing (and I never did that for actual QSing purposes, though admittedly accept the side-effect with more than good grace), there are so many other ways for arbitrary numbers of items to accumulate in a tile (and creatures, so long as no more than one is standing) that the way that Classical Stockpiles work (when filled as stockpiles, rather than otherwise 'gathering' other items or being set over what is already there) is clearly the exception and anomaly in this situation. Intended or otherwise.

(And I've not tried to force a second wagon. I imagine that'd be a good method to prep for a (superficially) treeless embark. I'm sure someone's experimented with that, right? But it rather degrades the 'game' of trying to fit everything into a wagon, wooden-puzzle-wise...)

So I still think it doesn't fit. But then I'd be happy without werecreatures/etc, and still they are something in the game, so not for me to decree, merely comment upon.

[Uthimienure]

I would like the mini-game wagon loading embark thing, and it should an option but not required.