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[HiEv]

Perfection is an admirable (albeit ultimately unattainable) goal in reality, but in games it tends to eliminate fun.

Ah, but attempting to obtain perfection can be a game in and of itself. 

[calrogman]

Not strictly related to the FotF, but I'm curious...

What text editor do you prefer to use when developing/writing raws?

[Dae]

EDIT: More seriously, though, I prefer running my forts in the background while I do other things.  I value automation above all else.  I want to fuss for days over getting every minor detail right to set up a system that works without me having to constantly correct it, and then never have to touch that system again because it works.

That's more or less the way I play as well, but I don't mind losing a dwarf here and there, and I do like dealing with the odd problems that can sometimes result from things I don't think through all the way.

But when you ge tto the point where you're neither putting things in the game nor taking input, you're not playing anymore. You've basically set up an aquarium, where you can watch dwarves going around. Stories happen when something wrong, interesting stories happen when something goes awfully wrong.
So rather than seek perfection, I seek the spot where I can safely assume everything is going to be alright but a few steps below perfection to see how everything will be screwed up.

[NW_Kohaku]

EDIT: More seriously, though, I prefer running my forts in the background while I do other things.  I value automation above all else.  I want to fuss for days over getting every minor detail right to set up a system that works without me having to constantly correct it, and then never have to touch that system again because it works.

That's more or less the way I play as well, but I don't mind losing a dwarf here and there, and I do like dealing with the odd problems that can sometimes result from things I don't think through all the way.

But when you ge tto the point where you're neither putting things in the game nor taking input, you're not playing anymore. You've basically set up an aquarium, where you can watch dwarves going around. Stories happen when something wrong, interesting stories happen when something goes awfully wrong.
So rather than seek perfection, I seek the spot where I can safely assume everything is going to be alright but a few steps below perfection to see how everything will be screwed up.

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

[bombzero]

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

Do you pretty much just wing it? cause thats about what i do.

[blue sam3]

You lot are massively overcomplicating the whole automated stop/go thing. Just stop it on a ramp with a door/floodgate/hatch/whatever stopping it from continuing.

[Elone]

How hard is it to plain simply install a logical gate system into general mechanics?

As someone who has programmed games, I found it very easy as a developer, and as a player, very hard to do while using rudimentary logical operators.

To reinforce my point, I'll say that even though you can create a turing complete computer in DF, or Minecraft, or somesuch, they take too much place. You make them as big megaprojects that are as subtle as a thorn in your eye, when they would have been more useful if you could give them a compact form.

Take the pumps for example. They are fairly complex systems taking only 2 tiles. Screw presses? 1 tile. And I can imagine them being full of little cogs and mechanisms. I would imagine that logical gates (actually the abstracted mechanisms for them) could very easily fit into one square each. Sure the mechanisms are awesome, but they really dont have to take so much space. A gear is huge and takes a whole tile, I find it very conceivable that the notoriously crafty dwarves could make a gear that fits into a single hand, and make a logical gate mechanism that fits into a tile.

Spoiler: This is a suggestion, do not view it (click to show/hide)

An installed mechanism, linking from a trigger (plate, lever) to the target (bridge, floodgate) could be changed to an inverted signal from the T menu, thus opening it when the trigger is closed, and closing it when the trigger is open. This way we could have, for example, airlocks where you flip a (single) lever, and one bridge raises and the other one lowers, while the people in between them wait for them to switch. I imagine that anything more than inverters and times though, would be more complicated (for the necessity of two or more such mechanisms interacting with each other), but even just inverters and timers would do a wonder for the fort designs and their awesomeness levels, while still fitting in universe as well as the current giant versions do.
Also, told you not to view it.

[NW_Kohaku]

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

Do you pretty much just wing it? cause thats about what i do.

You can't just wing it when you are trying to build a cartputer, though.  Unreliability kills the whole point of the processor. 

You lot are massively overcomplicating the whole automated stop/go thing. Just stop it on a ramp with a door/floodgate/hatch/whatever stopping it from continuing.

Provided smashing into a door doesn't actually cause a derailment or fling the contents of a cart, and there is never a need to have an actual stop, just tons of accelerators that could actually work. 

This is a suggestion, do not view it

One of the things I remember suggesting a while ago in the big Improved Mechanics/Traps Wishlist thread was a "black box" that could fit into one tile, but be designed in a manner of "pop-up window" that let you designate inputs, outputs, and jam it full of gears, so that you could make a compact form of any sort of gear assembly you could physically manage to make work. 

It would let players retain the ability to design complex gear logic systems manually, thus meaning that actually understanding gear logic was rewarded in play, while making a much simpler and smaller object for the game to track and save FPS (because the whole assembly could be considered one object for temperature and pathfinding and all those other FPS hogging reasons). 

People didn't like the idea of a pop-up menu, however.

[DS]

EDIT: More seriously, though, I prefer running my forts in the background while I do other things.  I value automation above all else.  I want to fuss for days over getting every minor detail right to set up a system that works without me having to constantly correct it, and then never have to touch that system again because it works.

That's more or less the way I play as well, but I don't mind losing a dwarf here and there, and I do like dealing with the odd problems that can sometimes result from things I don't think through all the way.

But when you ge tto the point where you're neither putting things in the game nor taking input, you're not playing anymore. You've basically set up an aquarium, where you can watch dwarves going around. Stories happen when something wrong, interesting stories happen when something goes awfully wrong.
So rather than seek perfection, I seek the spot where I can safely assume everything is going to be alright but a few steps below perfection to see how everything will be screwed up.

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either.

Well, that's one of the things that makes DF such a great game, isn't it? The forum is teeming with a diversity of players, each with a "correct" playing style. Yours is as valid as anyone else's, not because more people play in that style (and I think you might be surprised to find out how many people don't), but because it's based off of your own concept of goals within the game. I have different goals. Dae and Cruxador have theirs. The beauty of a game as open-ended as DF is that it has no built-in goals - the only "point" in playing rests in the hands and mind of the player.

Likewise, arguments about playing styles and goals are pointless, because such concepts are subjective.

[blue sam3]

That might be the way you guys play, but it's not the way I play.  And I'm not so strange that nobody else plays the same way I do, either. 

Do you pretty much just wing it? cause thats about what i do.

You can't just wing it when you are trying to build a cartputer, though.  Unreliability kills the whole point of the processor. 

You lot are massively overcomplicating the whole automated stop/go thing. Just stop it on a ramp with a door/floodgate/hatch/whatever stopping it from continuing.

Provided smashing into a door doesn't actually cause a derailment or fling the contents of a cart, and there is never a need to have an actual stop, just tons of accelerators that could actually work. 

Even if high speed collisions do, you could probably strategically place accelerators, ramps and stop tiles to get it to hit nice and gently, then release at will.

[Putnam]

What is the third argument in [CDI:TARGET_VERB:2nd:3rd: (always NA so far as I've seen)]?

[trees]

What is the third argument in [CDI:TARGET_VERB:2nd:3rd: (always NA so far as I've seen)]?

It's for if the interaction is mutual, which is only used in head-bumps right now, I think.

Code: [Select]

[CDI:VERB:head-bump:head-bumps:bump heads]

[Porpoisepower]

I wonder it the all mighty toady, happened to turn on recording when testing the minecart launch, goblin fight...

If so... Please release!

[MaximumZero]

Will we be able to launch minecarts via the bridge-a-pult?

Also:

Is there any plan to let a player establish a fort, and then take a new starting squad and start another fort after getting the first one up and running, thereby extending the holdings/exportable goods/import needs of the players civilization?

[BinaryBeast1010011010]

still no report... armok forbid but, is toady DEAD?