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[eux0r]

Spoiler: start of tile-size discussion (click to show/hide)

(...) I mean, a one metre by one metre by one metre (if that's what we're calling a tile-it can't be much less) block of stone (...)

One meter cubes are far too small for dwarves (much less humans, much less dragons) to fit inside. 
(...)

in my opinion 3x3x3 [m] tiles are faaaaar too large. every wall being at least 3m thick? every _sappling_ of a tree taking 3x3 [m] of space? even a normal tree taking 3x3 meters in space for itself? a multi-tile-tree to be enterable at all needs 3x3 tiles at least, including its walls, that being 9meters wide, to just be able to squeeze inside? tracks for little carts, _not_ including space to walk besides the tracks being 3m wide? a wagon being 9m wide? some small staircase being at least 3m wide? doors being at least 3m wide and taking 3 meters of space in depth(perpendicular to the width)?
i would have to answer all of those with "of course not, obviously!".

i have to agree with you that the tiles need to be assumed to be that large at least to fit everything inside _right_now_. but not everything is as it is desired or as it should be right now. especially since there are no multi-tile creatures. a dragon fitting in one tile right now does not mean the tile is just that large, it just means the dragon isnt multi-tile yet. from what ive heard so far about the plans for large creatures i assume even a dragons head will have its own tile later on.

this all goes for the width of tiles so far, for the height though, i dont think forcing tiles to be cubes is the right solution. rather making them something like 1m x1m x (something less than 1m, at most 0.5m i guess) would be far more reasonable(even though this would force even dwarves to be multitile, but there are giants who are bipeds who need to be multitile anyway and the size-difference between humans and dwarves would be visible like that). this would also make this whole strange story with the floors taking no space finally go away, since floors would only be needed as indicators to whether the tile below is filled with something solid or not. also, stairs/ramps would be able to get different degrees of inclination like that.
just find that one sand-as-liquid-suggestion ive seen, where sand(and even soil?) is being tracked in those x/7 heights to make ramps/walls/whatever, which is exactly like i envision the optimal solution to all tile-handling issues. of course this would also need something like that one suggestion/demand ive seen somewhere where the player is able to see multiple z-levels at once.

as far as i remember toady has mentioned those suggestions somewhere already saying those sound good or something.

edit: added spoiler to shorten

[NW_Kohaku]

Spoiler: Regarding tile size (click to show/hide)

No, the game does operate on cubes already.  Noise is a cube, with noise traveling an equal distance vertically as it does horizontally.  Crossbow range is a cube - 20 tiles omnidirectional range, including vertical.  Travel distance is a cube - one tile up is equal to one tile horizontal.  Everything in the game treats distances in all directions as equivalent.

Does a dwarf take up a full 27 cubic meter volume? No, but neither does a cat take up a full 1 cubic meter volume, nor could a dwarf fit in one, much less a dragon.  That's just an unreality of the way the game treats all creatures as occupying the "upright" portion of a tile, while infinite numbers of creatures can crawl.  Arguing on the basis of what creatures fit is therefore meaningless, because elephants and dragons and giant sperm whales all have to crawl to share space with a rabbit.

Further, one of the major reasons 3 meters is used is because vertical distance is the easiest thing to assume.  3 meters/10 feet is the height of a story of a house.  Each z-level in the game is equal to a full story of a building, and each z-level can house a different floor. 

If you were to put it in terms like Minecraft or Terraria, which have clearly designated areas for their tiles, Minecraft has 1 meter per tile, but needs 2 tiles height for a humanoid, and a floor tile, which adds up to at least 3 meters per floor.  Terraria has 2 foot tiles, and requires 6 feet vertical and 4 feet horizontal clearnace, plus 2 feet of flooring, meaning 8 feet/2.5 meters vertical space per floor minimum, although an extra tile to fit some furniture is common in housing.  Furniture in that game is often quite large, as well, with beds also being 8 feet long/2.5 meters in length.  Fitting one of those beds into a single DF tile would require a horizontal tile length of at least 2.5 meters, if not 3. 

Yes, these are dwarves, not humans, but they're also digging in stone, and having some slightly thicker masonry in the ceiling/floor for support also makes sense for them.

So, you could argue something closer to 2.5 meters, but that winds up making calculations really messy.  15.625 cubic meters instead of a clean 27, for example. 

By the way, although Toady has never confirmed anything, when pressed to think about housing size, he gave 2 meters as his initial guess as to room size, and given the things that must fit inside a tile, 2 meters is definitely the floor, not the ceiling. 
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=60554.msg1511922;topicseen#msg1511922

I think they are fine given what I've read (that the floor space for a cottage for a family would be between, say, 25 and 125 square meters, depending on affluence and local customs and whatever else).  Throwing out 2m arbitrarily as a tile edge, we'd be at 100m^2 for the floor space and 1536 m between villages, which I'm more or less comfortable with (I read an aerial survey for medieval sites in England which put average nearest village distance at 0.89mi or something, and we talked about how this might be varied earlier).  Since we are on a grid, even with a single room the outer walls take up 24 tiles and the interior is 25, even though the outer walls shouldn't take up a lot of space.  If they are divided into a living and storage area, which might involve an internal partition, then the floor area would be cut down an additional 5 tiles, putting us down to 80m^2.  I don't know how different the cottage shapes are going to be, but within their plot there will end up being variations in terms of overall size, gardens, other structures, furniture, items, etc.

[nopil3os]

idk if this has come up already.. but because i just observed something i was suspecting for a long time:
partying (and maybe weddings?) should be improved.

when i read
"Urist McClothier has organized a party at well"
i always imagined said dwarf hauling some booze to the location, maybe something to eat, some instruments etc etc.
at the very least, i expected said dwarf to actually BE at the location when he announces the party.

but as i just observed, urist mcclothier was nowhere near the well when the message came. only two idling miners

[eux0r]

Spoiler: Regarding tile size (click to show/hide)

No, the game does operate on cubes already.  Noise is a cube, with noise traveling an equal distance vertically as it does horizontally.  Crossbow range is a cube - 20 tiles omnidirectional range, including vertical.  Travel distance is a cube - one tile up is equal to one tile horizontal.  Everything in the game treats distances in all directions as equivalent.

i guess i wasnt clear about what i meant when talking about tile-height: you are of course right when saying that the game operates in cubes right now, but once again, i think this is not the ideal and certainly not what it should be like in the future. projectile range certainly does not work as it should, the trajectories arent correct yet and travelling vertically should obviously be handled in a more complex manner(toady just mentioned something like that in his last reply here in the context of wheelbarrows on stairs).

Does a dwarf take up a full 27 cubic meter volume? No, but neither does a cat take up a full 1 cubic meter volume, nor could a dwarf fit in one, much less a dragon.  That's just an unreality of the way the game treats all creatures as occupying the "upright" portion of a tile, while infinite numbers of creatures can crawl.  Arguing on the basis of what creatures fit is therefore meaningless, because elephants and dragons and giant sperm whales all have to crawl to share space with a rabbit.

isnt that pretty much what i said? arguing on the basis of what creatures fit is meaningless, i was argueing mostly on walls and trees and such stuff, all i said about creatures, is that multi-tile-creatures will make anything creatures have to say about a tile now obsolete. also, im more comfortable saying "there is a cat or rat(or even a cockroach) somewhere on this 1m^2 of space" than i am saying "there is a cat/whatever somewhere on these 9m^2 of space". making the tiles as small as possible without overdoing it is, in my opinion, the best way to go.
(crawling obviously doesnt work as intended, with the stacking of whales and such.)

Further, one of the major reasons 3 meters is used is because vertical distance is the easiest thing to assume.  3 meters/10 feet is the height of a story of a house.  Each z-level in the game is equal to a full story of a building, and each z-level can house a different floor. 

your argumentation is reasonable, but once again: everything is cubic right now, but i dont think thats the optimum and therefore i think the height of a tile shouldnt define its width(in the future).

If you were to put it in terms like Minecraft or Terraria, which have clearly designated areas for their tiles, Minecraft has 1 meter per tile, but needs 2 tiles height for a humanoid, and a floor tile, which adds up to at least 3 meters per floor.  Terraria has 2 foot tiles, and requires 6 feet vertical and 4 feet horizontal clearnace, plus 2 feet of flooring, meaning 8 feet/2.5 meters vertical space per floor minimum, although an extra tile to fit some furniture is common in housing.  Furniture in that game is often quite large, as well, with beds also being 8 feet long/2.5 meters in length.  Fitting one of those beds into a single DF tile would require a horizontal tile length of at least 2.5 meters, if not 3. 

i dont see a problem with a bed occupying 2 tiles and such.

Yes, these are dwarves, not humans, but they're also digging in stone, and having some slightly thicker masonry in the ceiling/floor for support also makes sense for them.

for dwarves its ok in _most_ cases(e.g. digging around underground) to have ridiculously thick walls, but when you come into a human village in adv. mode do you really want to see them having 3m thick wooden walls for each and every little shed? playing other races is also intended for fortress mode in the future.
when i build a little watchtower near my entrance in dwarfmode, i dont want it to have 3m thick walls. 1m thick walls are already incredibly thick. therefore saying "its ok for dwarves in _some_ situations" isnt a good argument when saying "thats how it should be".

So, you could argue something closer to 2.5 meters, but that winds up making calculations really messy.  15.625 cubic meters instead of a clean 27, for example. 

By the way, although Toady has never confirmed anything, when pressed to think about housing size, he gave 2 meters as his initial guess as to room size, and given the things that must fit inside a tile, 2 meters is definitely the floor, not the ceiling. 

i guess 2m tile-width can have a lot of arguments in its favour especially when things like 'furniture occupying only 1 tile' will not be changed and i could also be persuaded to accept 2m, but i think 3m are totally unreasonable(except for the height obviously, but im against cubes anyways).

[NW_Kohaku]

Spoiler: Tile sizes (click to show/hide)

The problem with your argument is that you aren't really making much of a(n objective) case for why the game shouldn't be made of cubes.  You simply say you don't think cubes are optimal, but don't say why. 

Cubes have the advantage of being simpler, more intuitive, and generally neater to calculate than rectangular prisms.  If we have a 2m*2m*3m rectangular prism, we deal with calculations of distance that become quite strange.  I would also point out that such a rectangular prism isn't terribly far from the 2.5m³ in terms of actual volume, anyway, which isn't quite as neat for easy distance calculations, but at least keeps the advantages of cubes.

Walls are problematic, especially since floors have functionally no volume in the game as currently implemented, but walls have a full tile's worth of volume, but that's a game limitation we are dealing with.  Most games have walls as boundaries to tiles rather than full tiles for a reason, but this game does not work with that - doors are a full tile cube, as well, and it's just as ridiculous to say that a door is a 1-meter cube as it is to say it is a 3-meter cube.  These are the same doors that can open so as to allow traffic in multiple different directions, I will point out, including "four-way doors".

[Andeerz]

Animal Hauling is already partly in the game. They have Waiting Post, which have feeds and water for them. But in order to push out the release, they'll probably wont be included in this release.

Though when Toady does go back to Improved Hauling, they'll probably get added in too.

Cool.  I just hope we can someday have animals tethered to whatever object of our choosing so that they can pull or push it... it would especially be great for when multi-tile constructions and boats come into the game; imagine underground dwarven canals with animals on flanking towpaths towing underground mining barges... or pulling open huge obsidian gates... but I digress.

[ninjanomnom]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 I have always assumed that the tiles you see in-game are aranged like so:
x
-
x
-
x
with x being the viewable layers and - the floors of the layer above (and the roof of the layer below)

actual tile sizes though can't really be determined due to all the small stuf which takes a whole square and all the big stuf which takes up the same space.

Layers and tile sizes

[eux0r]

Spoiler: tile size (click to show/hide)

I have always assumed that the tiles you see in-game are aranged like so:
x
-
x
-
x
with x being the viewable layers and - the floors of the layer above (and the roof of the layer below)

actual tile sizes though can't really be determined due to all the small stuf which takes a whole square and all the big stuf which takes up the same space.

yeah, thats how it is right now, you see a floor-layer and the corresponding tile above it(there arent any real roofs, only floors, i guess).

The problem with your argument is that you aren't really making much of a(n objective) case for why the game shouldn't be made of cubes.  You simply say you don't think cubes are optimal, but don't say why. 

oh, i didnt notice, thx for pointing that out.

Cubes have the advantage of being simpler, more intuitive, and generally neater to calculate than rectangular prisms.  If we have a 2m*2m*3m rectangular prism, we deal with calculations of distance that become quite strange.  I would also point out that such a rectangular prism isn't terribly far from the 2.5m³ in terms of actual volume, anyway, which isn't quite as neat for easy distance calculations, but at least keeps the advantages of cubes.

well, for once, i think cubes arent that intuitive at all. its actually quite hard to find something thats truly cubic. for most purposes, height differs quite considerably from width. take trees for example, they usually are like 20 times as high as they are wide. doors are like twice as high as they are wide. a bed is about 3 times longer than it is high.
if you look like 20m ahead of you on a field, one thinks "heh, this distance is nothing", but looking down a 20m tower it goes more like "dafooq! thats high!" it really is a subjective thing, but height and width usually are perceived quite differently and with real cubes being actually quite rare rectangular prisms are more intuitive, at least in my opinion.

its true, that it is easier for people to calculate with cubes, but what calculations are you actually doing when playing? the game does everything, and the computer doesnt care whether the volume of a square is 27m^3 or 4.5836049*pi.

Walls are problematic, especially since floors have functionally no volume in the game as currently implemented, but walls have a full tile's worth of volume, but that's a game limitation we are dealing with.  Most games have walls as boundaries to tiles rather than full tiles for a reason, but this game does not work with that - doors are a full tile cube, as well, and it's just as ridiculous to say that a door is a 1-meter cube as it is to say it is a 3-meter cube.  These are the same doors that can open so as to allow traffic in multiple different directions, I will point out, including "four-way doors".

yeah, i already mentioned the problem with the volume-free floors too, thats why i would want to see something like every 1/7 tile of a liquid being its own z-level. this would make floors and roofs actually tangible with those strange floors we have right now being nothing but a "the square beneath me is/isnt solid".
in a game, where digging is such a fundamental part having completely solid tiles is absolutely necessary. therefore having the edges between tiles being able to be impassable walls with no volume is not necessary. so using tiles as walls is the better solution. but with not having infinitesimal tile-border-walls comes the need to have reasonably thick tile-walls and therefore tile-widths which are far below a reasonable room-height.
i think having those 4-way doors is just doors not working as intended. they are a byproduct of allowing entrance onto the door-tile from a diagonal position. how should such a 4-way door actually look like in real life? i doubt those would be used for normal door-in-straight-wall-type doors.

if youre truly adamant about cubes being more intuitive than rectangular prisms(which is completely valid, "intuitive" is a subjective thing) i still think making them 1m^3 is superior to 3m^3 even though most creatures would become multi-tile. apart from the width-issues i wont mention again right now, there are also advantages to smaller increments in height. one can have the tile below a window or fortification solid with the window/fortification-tile above being passable for light/projectiles. chairs and tables can leave space above them(how i would love for tables to be impassable without moving strangely, i hate my dwarves always standing on top of tables others are eating from to the point where i exclude the respective tiles from the civilian burrows)

[bombzero]

Spoiler: Tile Size (click to show/hide)

I don't believe NW_Kohaku meant anything about player calculation.
just a few questions but;
1. are you a coder?
2. if yes, have you ever made a 3D tile based game?
3. if yes, have you considered the added complexity of coding a game that uses non-cubed tiles?

I believe he was referring to extra work both for Toady and your computer, and the number of bugs related to movement, distance, and more that would crop up from having non-cubed tiles.

[eux0r]

Spoiler: tile size (click to show/hide)

I don't believe NW_Kohaku meant anything about player calculation.
just a few questions but;
1. are you a coder?
2. if yes, have you ever made a 3D tile based game?
3. if yes, have you considered the added complexity of coding a game that uses non-cubed tiles?

I believe he was referring to extra work both for Toady and your computer, and the number of bugs related to movement, distance, and more that would crop up from having non-cubed tiles.

i wouldnt call myself a coder and i havent programmed any games but ive worked on programs for scientific evaluation as part of my university course. since every movement gets divided into 3 separate superposing movements in the 3 spatial directions in every case it wont matter if the number for the z-velocity is 5 times higher than for the x- or y-velocities or something like that. the actual numbers dont matter. for all trajectory and volume-related calculations, nothing changes for the computer, but the input numbers.
i have to admit though, that i can imagine quite some difficulties with the pathfinding-ai, but all those difficulties will have to be tackled anyway, since multitile creatures are guaranteed to come in the future.

[Kadzar]

idk if this has come up already.. but because i just observed something i was suspecting for a long time:
partying (and maybe weddings?) should be improved.

when i read
"Urist McClothier has organized a party at well"
i always imagined said dwarf hauling some booze to the location, maybe something to eat, some instruments etc etc.
at the very least, i expected said dwarf to actually BE at the location when he announces the party.

but as i just observed, urist mcclothier was nowhere near the well when the message came. only two idling miners

Perhaps it was a clever plan by Urist to set those two miners up on a date.

[NW_Kohaku]

Spoiler: Tiles again, although seriously, it's time to consider just making a new thread if this goes on much longer... (click to show/hide)

The thing about having each 1/8th of a cube (counting the "0" level) be their own z-level is that it's going to be nightmarishly hard to actually represent even in a general sense, but especially in a game based upon a severely limited pseudo-ASCII tileset. 

That's basically akin to asking for the game to have 8 times as many tiles in it as it does right now, and to start displaying the game looking at multiple z-levels at once in a format that just simply is NOT prepared to show multiple z-levels at once. 

How, exactly, are you going to show the difference between a dwarf 2/8ths of a tile up as opposed to one 0/8ths of a tile up?  Are we expected to start scrolling through z-levels to see how many z-levels a given creature occupies? 

There simply is no way this game can meaningfully represent multiple z-levels at once (apart from "there's empty space in the next few floors, too", I mean where you can represent a bat flying overhead of a dwarf in a cavern) without having a radical overhaul of the game's graphic engine that is not going to be forthcoming anywhere even remotely soon. 

Large, cubic tiles are necessary for a game like DF just because multi-tile objects need to be minimized as much as possible. 


As for four-way doors, maybe it's not just one door?  Maybe it's just an abstract marker for a door area.  If I have a stairwell on one corner, and three small residences hooked off of a four-way-door, then it just represents a small alcove with three (or four) regular doors. 

(Alternately, it could simply be a revolving door.  They are shaped like a "+".)

Maybe walls aren't 3 meters thick, but extra space just doesn't get represented. 

Maybe you should just accept that certain unrealities of size are going to occur in a cube-based (or rectangular-prism-based) game simply because everything stretches or compacts to fit in discrete tile quanta. 

[CodexDraco]

Spoiler: tiles (click to show/hide)

I don't believe NW_Kohaku meant anything about player calculation.
just a few questions but;
1. are you a coder?
2. if yes, have you ever made a 3D tile based game?
3. if yes, have you considered the added complexity of coding a game that uses non-cubed tiles?

I believe he was referring to extra work both for Toady and your computer, and the number of bugs related to movement, distance, and more that would crop up from having non-cubed tiles.

i wouldnt call myself a coder and i havent programmed any games but ive worked on programs for scientific evaluation as part of my university course. since every movement gets divided into 3 separate superposing movements in the 3 spatial directions in every case it wont matter if the number for the z-velocity is 5 times higher than for the x- or y-velocities or something like that. the actual numbers dont matter. for all trajectory and volume-related calculations, nothing changes for the computer, but the input numbers.
i have to admit though, that i can imagine quite some difficulties with the pathfinding-ai, but all those difficulties will have to be tackled anyway, since multitile creatures are guaranteed to come in the future.

Game calculations are different than scientific ones in which performance and simplicity are more important than precision and accuracy. There is no teorical difference between 2.5m^3 and 3^m but in computing doing integral calculations is tipically faster than float operations. Personally I would use 1m^3.

[MrWiggles]

I think these tiles post could use their own thread, perhaps Toady or ThreeToes would be able to split and move those post to the tile thread.

[eux0r]

Spoiler: Tiles again, although seriously, it's time to consider just making a new thread if this goes on much longer... (click to show/hide)

The thing about having each 1/8th of a cube (counting the "0" level) be their own z-level is that it's going to be nightmarishly hard to actually represent even in a general sense, but especially in a game based upon a severely limited pseudo-ASCII tileset. 

That's basically akin to asking for the game to have 8 times as many tiles in it as it does right now, and to start displaying the game looking at multiple z-levels at once in a format that just simply is NOT prepared to show multiple z-levels at once. 

How, exactly, are you going to show the difference between a dwarf 2/8ths of a tile up as opposed to one 0/8ths of a tile up?  Are we expected to start scrolling through z-levels to see how many z-levels a given creature occupies? 

There simply is no way this game can meaningfully represent multiple z-levels at once (apart from "there's empty space in the next few floors, too", I mean where you can represent a bat flying overhead of a dwarf in a cavern) without having a radical overhaul of the game's graphic engine that is not going to be forthcoming anywhere even remotely soon. 

Large, cubic tiles are necessary for a game like DF just because multi-tile objects need to be minimized as much as possible. 


As for four-way doors, maybe it's not just one door?  Maybe it's just an abstract marker for a door area.  If I have a stairwell on one corner, and three small residences hooked off of a four-way-door, then it just represents a small alcove with three (or four) regular doors. 

(Alternately, it could simply be a revolving door.  They are shaped like a "+".)

Maybe walls aren't 3 meters thick, but extra space just doesn't get represented. 

Maybe you should just accept that certain unrealities of size are going to occur in a cube-based (or rectangular-prism-based) game simply because everything stretches or compacts to fit in discrete tile quanta. 

Spoiler: k, i guess this is the last thing ill say on this topic here (click to show/hide)

well, representing how many z-levels something is below the one the screen is on atm could be done using colour-shades but i dont know how far this is supported by the game, or how far one can go with that and keep things at least remotely clear.

at least 1m^3 tiles can be used that way, so normal humanoids can be seen on their head-level while their leg-level is just 1 shade darker or lighter or whatever(there is a thread for "let us see whats on other z-levels!" somewhere)

in the future you will be forced to go through z-levels to see how big some creatures are anyway.

(those lines are awesome, gotta use them more often too)

ive never heard of a revolting door being used in the 14th century and door-areas with multiple doors are possible, but do you use such things for your wooden shed right next to the barn? people do in this game, apparently.

of course i have to accept, that things will never fit perfectly inside quantized tiles, but just waving away those 1.25m on both sides of a 0.5m wall(which is already really thick) is not necessary when one could just have to wave away 0.25m per side instead. just blindly and instantly accepting something is not necessary when one can try to find a solution which is at least a little bit better and _only_then_ be forced to accept it wont improve beyond that.
i just find 1m border-width to be more reasonable to accept than 3m.