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[hermes]

I believe that we already have rubble to deal with, but in an abstracted form that fits so well into the game it's barely noticable.

Dwarf Fortress is not a mining simulator, the same way its not a farming simulator. You dig some holes to live in, and you dig other holes to obtain ores and gems.  I thought the digging stuff was fine. The problem was hauling all of the items around. That was fixed with making dwarfs carry bins to vaccuum up all the little things. I would have been happy with just that one change.

Agreed on both counts.  Especially Arkenstone's opening comment there; it is already effectively in the game.  We already have stones blocking other stones, and stones we have have to dump.  I haven't read any good argument for the addition of another type of general-stone-class that has the same drawbacks but a smaller selection of uses.   

And as GoldenShadow points out, this dev tangent is all about hauling, which has necessitated, what seems to be, a placeholder tweak on the way mining works.  Toady's language has suggested that he and Zack are still trying to balance it and probably will do again - Now I'm guessing here, but I anticipate mining getting a real overhaul when...

...when talking about the future of mining, it'd be a good idea to bear in mind Guilds and digging-invaders are on the way sometime.  These might support or lean against the rubble movement, but you have to be mindful of present and future game mechanics.  Goblins with wheelbarrows, anyone?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[reality.auditor]

Considering way that Toady is coding his game, I call BS on "this will not hurt FPS" claim. Rubble will be tracked like everything else, in addition to what is already tracked. How it will not cost even more FPS?

In general, I am against rubble, if it add micromanagement. One-time actions (like designating area where dorfs will automatically throw away rubble) are acceptable. Tedium crap that is done over and over (say designating mined rubble to throw away) is not acceptable. DF is already Micromanagement: The Game (especially things like broken pastures).

[NW_Kohaku]

But god no I don't take an interest in fantasy stories/games etc on account of how realistic the basic, real life aspects, of the world are. Thats just sillyness and surely defeats the whole point

Oh and plumbing? Sewage? Who really wants to spend hours working out where all their dorfs shit is going to go, really man, thats just insanity. I hope this games development isn't skewed by those who really ought to get off their PC more often........ (I mean obv we're all nerds here but I do draw the line at such pointless tasks)

It's exactly this sort of mindset that so often caused trouble for humanity during those days: the people with the power to oversee and change the world around them were uninterested in "mundane" things, and so their kingdoms fell. 

There's a reason why games like Total War sit you down at an accounting table asking you to balance the books and improve farms all the time - you aren't going to get your grand marching army to conquer the world until you have spare soldiers (which means excess population, which means increased birth rate, which means better health care), the food to feed them (which means enough excess food production to feed soldiers tramping around the world doing nothing for your economic policies), and the money to pay them (again, requiring excess economic potential). 

It is folly to discriminate against the complexities of the things we take for granted in society and only focus upon "exciting" parts of higher diplomacy when everything those "exciting" parts are founded upon are those complexities of the mundane.  Without logistics and economics and agriculture and making sure the trains run on time, there will be no war. 

[Askot Bokbondeler]

I hope this games development isn't skewed by those who really ought to get off their PC more often........ (I mean obv we're all nerds here but I do draw the line at such pointless tasks)

...

I hope this games development isn't skewed by casual gamers. go play call of duty or something fun, we had a nice thing going here and you guys are ruining it for us

[NW_Kohaku]

...when talking about the future of mining, it'd be a good idea to bear in mind Guilds and digging-invaders are on the way sometime.  These might support or lean against the rubble movement, but you have to be mindful of present and future game mechanics.  Goblins with wheelbarrows, anyone?

On the contrary, I think the arguments against rubble are often the ones being entirely too short-sighted about the concept. 

I am thinking specifically about a sweeping overhaul of the entire fortress economic model when I am talking about rubble.  The game is a matter of having far too many resources for all your problems to ever really have a challenge so long as you just don't forget something as it stands - we need to make every resource in the game scarce, so that real choices can be put upon the player.  This goes hand-in-hand with the more complex internal fortress mechanics including guild politics and economics and the more difficult farming.

As for goblin sappers, yes, why not wheelbarrows?  They can just make a little anthill, themselves.  It's probably not a terrible thing if they'll just give up if they can't sap a fortress wall within a set number of tiles or a set number of game-months or years.  We shouldn't need to go to some extreme length of encasing our entire fortress in a pressurized aquifer-fed water seal, as someone on the forum proposed - simply having a fortress with walls thick enough or buried deep enough that sapping around its defenses would be too difficult and costly should be defense enough.

How it will not cost even more FPS?

Because it prevents more items from being produced until you eliminate the old ones.

In general, I am against rubble, if it add micromanagement. One-time actions (like designating area where dorfs will automatically throw away rubble) are acceptable.

Nobody has ever argued for a manual designation to haul rubble away.  No hauling in this game has ever been manual in any manner or than your having to designate a stockpile or dump site, and nobody has tried to propose a change to that now.

[Mudcrab]

Im not even sure what to say... Why are you taking it all so seriously, in a game where you control a civilisation of Dwarfs, their not real man...

I understand your points and I do think they would be valid if the game was at that point, but its really not. Id much rather see an expansion of adventure mode, which really has the potential to be a brilliant aspect of the game. It would be so much fun if you could build, farm, trade, hire people etc.

I find its exactly your sort of mindset that hinders the production of games, so many people construct such strong arguments on things that aren't even realistic considering the stage the game is at. Why not focus on making the game really fun, I mean actual fun for now, and focus on the background necessities later?

EDIT: Oh and I would never play COD, ever. Please stop making assumptions just because I enjoy DF for its fantasy nature and awesome story telling.... Is that really so bad? Jeeeez im a really chilled out guy, obv you aren't.

we had a nice thing going here and you guys are ruining it for us

So we can't have a discussion? Your the one who with no actual knowledge of who I am or what I do assumes I play COD. Foolish.

[Loud Whispers]

go play call of duty

I agree with the point... But that was cold.

[Mudcrab]

go play call of duty

I agree with the point... But that was cold.

I honestly don't understand why you guys have a problem with me saying that I don't enjoy micromanagement and instead would prefer more interesting features implemented... Its just ridiculous. This is an ASCII game (or something like that) clearly I don't play games for the casual fun. Okay im not a binary wizard like you guys (again not sure what im saying here) but can you really attack me for it?

EDIT: Oh and I think you guys should bear in mind that it's not our fault you have played the game so much to the point that it poses no real challenge for you. Or that you are really clever so you find it very easy, again, that's no ones fault.

[Askot Bokbondeler]

go play call of duty

I agree with the point... But that was cold.

the guy deemed our level of nerdiness unaceptable, accused us of being antisocial basement dwellers, and deemed us a potential detrimental influence on the development of df. i responded with an equally classy statement, because i thought it would be the language he'd understand better, and i'd appreciate the irony when he inevitably missed the point and took offense

[Mudcrab]

I agreed on some of Kohaku's points, made an argument against others.

You on the other hand just made that statement, which was hardly fair. Cmon dude im being fair with what im saying, I even just practically said you were clever. Jeeeeez

[Askot Bokbondeler]

i just wanted to make you regret your statement. you made offensive assumptions, i just assumed from your statement you'd be happier playing another game, hardly unfair at all

that's enough though, i think i've made my point and i'm dropping the subject.

[Sinistar]

Now now Mudcrab. You've just made a bit of a bad impression with your first post here, calling some ideas silly, insane or you just did not care. While taunting you to go play CoD might seem a bit to much, it is a fact that your post did not try to contribute much to the debate. Which is, on the other hand, quite heated already. Maybe a bit to heated, IMHO.

My quick view: I like some things NW_Kohaku suggests, but I also cannot neglect bombzero. Generally, the idea of ruble that does not completely slow down the playing and still has some sort of useful purposes, well, I do find this idea attractive. But some sort of a middle path between totally realistic and "no-need-to-even-bother-with-it" would be needed. I cannot neglect the fact that realistic does not necessary mean it will simply "fit" in the game.



Eh, what I wrote seems a bit unclear right now, maybe I'll take my time and try to write a longer, more well-thought post later.

[Loud Whispers]

You on the other hand just made that statement, which was hardly fair. Cmon dude im being fair with what im saying, I even just practically said you were clever. Jeeeeez

You jabbed back before you made the edit, so you're not exactly innocent in this :d

[NW_Kohaku]

If we could drop the Call of Duty talk...

Im not even sure what to say... Why are you taking it all so seriously, in a game where you control a civilisation of Dwarfs, their not real man...

I understand your points and I do think they would be valid if the game was at that point, but its really not. Id much rather see an expansion of adventure mode, which really has the potential to be a brilliant aspect of the game. It would be so much fun if you could build, farm, trade, hire people etc.

I find its exactly your sort of mindset that hinders the production of games, so many people construct such strong arguments on things that aren't even realistic considering the stage the game is at. Why not focus on making the game really fun, I mean actual fun for now, and focus on the background necessities later?

Discussions of where the game should go are not bounded by "where the game is right now", they are discussions of where the game should end up.

Besides that, background necessities are the foundations upon which the rest of the game are built - we need the background necessities to work before we can get anything else to work properly.

Anyway, yes, I do want my fantasy game to involve an aqueduct system, a ventilation system, a lighting system (possibly with a need to pipe oil or gas to lanterns, requiring another layer of plumbing), a sewage system, and a heavy cargo transit system, all interconnected with the main throughfares and service tunnels so as to create a giant tangled mess for us to manage to get the game working. 

To simply make an electrical system fit inside the frame of a house is easy, but to have to manage a plumbing system, central heating, and maybe something like central vacuums, these all make architecture a complex and interesting job.  It helps us understand the intricacies of the world around us.

Further, I would like to point out the inherent contradiction of saying how we shouldn't worry about making a game that has realism and verismilitude in it because "they're not real man", and then saying that we should focus on making the game feel more real and making it a fantasy world you can explore.

Likewise, Adventure Mode is far more micromanagement-heavy than Fortress Mode is, and will become worse in the future.  If you think managing a farm is micromanagement when you just have to designate the plot and tell the farmers what to plant, and wait for the crops to roll in, you want to have it in adventure mode, where you have to find your plow, move to your farm, use plow, move one space, use plow, move one space, use plow...

I am no more a fan of micromanagement than anyone, and I go out of my way to try to argue for ways to mitigate micromanagement.

I have no idea why people keep wanting to harp on some crazy idea that I somehow want to force people to punch a button on each and every bucketful of rubble that has to be moved, as I've said in essentially every post that you aren't going to have to do much more than simply designate a dumping area, and wait for the wheelbarrow dwarves to offload their stuff.  For as long as atom-smashing still works, for that matter, you're not going to be wanting for ways to easily dispose of infinite amounts of material. 

The purpose of the rubble is to make digging slower, and if you so choose, you can mitigate this with an automated rail-and-dumping system.  If you find designing complex rail systems fun, you can do it.  If not, you can let the wheelbarrow teams do their thing, and maybe occasionally make a new atom smasher a little closer to the dig site. Atom smashers powered purely by pulling a lever, and with a channeled tile down to the smashing tile take extremely little time and space to build. 

It isn't something that makes the game hard all on its own, it just makes the rate at which you get your materials slower, and as such, the rest of the game may become harder as you try to solve your problems with less materials than you currently have.  As people have pointed out here, currently, you're trying to get rid of your excess stone.  If we actually had stone shortages that could make you actually have to consider what masonry projects to send your limited stone to, the game would become a much more interesting one.

[Mudcrab]

You on the other hand just made that statement, which was hardly fair. Cmon dude im being fair with what im saying, I even just practically said you were clever. Jeeeeez

You jabbed back before you made the edit, so you're not exactly innocent in this :d

Yeah I did lol, its all getting a bit heated.

Look im sorry, I should never have posted. My first post was pretty ridiculous and didn't actually put much forward but I stand by what I say. It would be interesting to know what the majority of DF players enjoy about the game, as that would be the only way of reaching a fair conclusion.

But I don't think you guys would enjoy that outcome 

Further, I would like to point out the inherent contradiction of saying how we shouldn't worry about making a game that has realism and verismilitude in it because "they're not real man", and then saying that we should focus on making the game feel more real and making it a fantasy world you can explore.

Yeah I did realise that in order for what I said to be possible much of what you said would have to be implemented, again im sorry. Sorry sorry. However plumbing and sewage wouldn't come under that so it wasn't totally stupid.