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Author Topic: Levers!  (Read 2083 times)

KFD

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Levers!
« on: April 08, 2010, 08:12:45 pm »

I don't need to say that any proper dwarf fortress needs an abundance of levers and complicated machinery. What I do need to say is that levers need some tuning, specifically in the linking up department. Right now, you select which type of building you are linking up with, and are then given a complete list of ALL of that building. It can be a pain to find your new floodgate if you already have 40. Im not sure that you should make buildings only controllable by one lever, but at the very least a "hide buildings already linked to a lever" function would greatly help. But then, even if you do find it in the list, say you want to link up 10, 20 or maybe 50 of something at once? Well, your going to have you scroll through the list for every link. If anything, it should be similar to the labours list, where you check/uncheck which buildings are connected to the lever. Also, an option to name the levers could be a possibility. Yet, on the other hand, coming back later to a fort after time has passed and wondering which lever does which can be quite FUN!
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LucasUP

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Re: Levers!
« Reply #1 on: April 08, 2010, 11:53:19 pm »

It seems like it would be a better idea to let the player manually find and select the building to link the lever up with. You KNOW where that floodgate is in your fortress, you DON'T know where it is in a list of 100. Something like how you can select what stockpiles another stockpile takes from. Except maybe have the nearest building automatically select and blink, like how "V" works with units.
Am I making sense ???
Also, on naming levers, using Notes work, but it would be nice for levers to have definable names
« Last Edit: April 08, 2010, 11:55:12 pm by LucasUP »
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se5a

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Re: Levers!
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2010, 01:04:18 am »

Yup,

Definable names for leavers,
list of what they're hooked up to,
a bit of work on how you select what they hook up to.
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Mozleron

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Re: Levers!
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2010, 01:17:57 am »

I agree completely. 

Being able to quickly link levers to things that need to move would be very nice.

What i would also like to see is what each lever is actually attached to once it's been attached, without having to pull it.

A lot of times, my levers are hooked up to things that are designed to open other things that are then intended to kill everyone within a certain area.  Unfortunately, there are often living things within those kill zones that i don't want dead.
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weulitus

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Re: Levers!
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2010, 02:45:12 am »

Also interesting would be some kind of delay/wait job:

Say you want to open the floodgate to your reservoir to irrigate the fields, then close it again bevore your farms are totally flooded. Right now you have to order someone to pull the lever, then watch closely, order someone to pull it again and hope that your dorfs didn't decide that right now would be a good time to throw a really big party.

The wait job would work like this:

Pull lever
Wait (xxx ticks)
Pull lever

The dorf would stay at the lever, wait the ordered number of ticks and then pull it again.

Of course you could get the same result with water-triggered pressure plates near the farms, but especially for newer this option would be helpful. And you still have to work out how long it takes for the desired amount of water/magma to flow.
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immibis

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Re: Levers!
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2010, 02:57:43 am »

Linking levers by selecting the building, like with "Take from stockpile" would be incredibly useful.
Naming can already be done using notes, but changing from Notes mode back to [q] mode moves the cursor back to the centre of the screen, so naming levers would be nice too.
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Safe-Keeper

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Re: Levers!
« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2010, 07:11:47 am »

Also, buildings, when choosing a building to connect, should have icons or other labels next to their names indicated that they're being connected, or already are connected. Looking at a building with Q should give you the names of levers it's connected to.

Either way, I find it a bigger concern that you can place a lever anywhere on the map and have it remote control whatever you want to. Hopefully when traps become more complex, levers will as well (ie. you should have to actually connect them physically to whatever they are to control, the way you have to connect water wheels to millstones with a thingamajig). But this has been discussed to death elsewhere, so I won't go into details here.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2010, 07:32:38 am by Safe-Keeper »
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