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[acetech09]

Problem:Observing the progress of creatures in mountainous terrain is sometimes a challenge; one must page between many slices that only show 5% of the total land area to get a picture of the surface.

Solution: Flatten View. It simply recognizes open space tiles, and shows the first lowest non-air tile under the open space.

Example:

Some dorfs on a hill. Some on top of the hill, some at the base. Here's the top and bottoms of the hill.

Spoiler: Before (click to show/hide)

And after the flattened view:

Spoiler: After (click to show/hide)

It wouldn't be hard to code if you take the slightly inefficient approach of simply scanning the layer every time the view changes, but there will probably have to be some major caching/optimizations going on to make it low-impact.

[Alpha Dwarf]

Repetition is the key to success and getting your way. I thumb this waaaay up.

[612DwarfAvenue]

+1, this definitely has uses.

[Starver]

I'd like to propose that this display mode should 'fog' increasingly low layers?  (Reduce contrast, perhaps sending the colours closer to grey, the further down from the viewing plane[1] the open space above the eventual 'surface' tile is.)

Should probably be doable through the current Curses/Curses-like tile implementation (or trivial to make a fork of it that does allow this), and would aid understanding of height hierarchies.  For example, in that example, the up-ramps could be leading up to an intrusion from the north (as it is) or a dip towards the north.



[1] Because it's not just open-air 'open-airiness' that might be useful to 'flatten upwards', as the understanding of subterranean voids, especially the natural cavern layers but also often player-made caverns, would benefit from such a display.  The only real clue, at the moment, being that the water in those two small ponds would be leaking if it were the latter.

[Starver]

Spoiler: Quick and Dirty (untidily) worked example of what I just said: (click to show/hide)

Maybe the black background goes too grey, too quickly, in that mock-up.  But it could be subtler, per step, and in a more multi-layer example it could show the terrain up quite well.

[Loud Whispers]

If you could toggle it on and off, I'd support it.

[Footkerchief]

This has an item and thread on Eternal Suggestion Voting.  The thread includes various mockups like the ones in here?

Depth by darkening / misting / blurring (thread)

Instead of displaying only hints of the two levels below the current one, display everything in a top-down view but differentiate the lower levels by a progressively more intense darkening, colouring, misting or blurring to give a sense of distance.

And it came up in an old FotF thread too, with some comments from Toady.

[acetech09]

I've seen both of those, but they seemed a bit more complicated w. shading and more for looks than utility - I was suggesting a very simple no-fog toggleable view so you can see lots at once.

[Silverionmox]

Depending on the amount of darkening/blurring per level away from your current, it would be practically the same, but still allows some depth perception without sacrificing information. It would be especially practical for, eg. designating all trees on a slope. Although making the designation work cross-level is yet another step.. but having a view that displays the whole slope over all the z-levels is a first and necessary one.

[Genybr]

Fog is unnecessary, "up-ramps" seems better for me.