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Have few types but with many possible functions for each.  The simpler option

38 (42.2%)

Have many different types that each takes a particular input, for long assembly lines

29 (32.2%)

Have many types, allow using the wrong ones, but using them correctly lets the items have quality levels

23 (25.6%)

Total Members Voted: 69

[Jaso11111]

So what does the Clockwork Key do exactly? It dosent appear to be in the manual.

[IndigoFenix]

I am going through the files atm, fixing a bit in the manual. When I made the pics for the buildings, I noticed that the thunder coil, the electrolytic cell and the electrostatic generator use the same design. I guess thats not intended?

Same for the bio-augmentation unit and the conversion chamber, exactly the same graphics.

I would make different graphics, but currently most of these buildings are not actually in the entity file - they are placeholders for later developments.  Well, except for the thunder coil and electrostatic generator, but I thought I changed the electrostatic generator.

Why are the vetinerian, the autocrafter input/output and the excavation site just 1 tile workshops? Its makes them hard to find, especially the excavation site, which looks like a grate; and the crafter input, looks like a cage. Is that on purpose?

The autocrafter input/output are one tile because they are effectively workshop 'pieces', only useful when connected to an autocrafter, so making them small allows for greater flexibility.  The excavation site is meant to be a temporary spot that can be quickly set up anywhere and dismantled, it's really just a spot to run the prospecting reaction.  The veterinarian is a placeholder and cannot actually be built.

A lot of workshops are 3x3 with the 4 corner tiles being the gear/web/raw-gem tile. This leaves only 5 tiles to give them their own look. Is that because of limitations of the script that draws power, or could these buildings be made larger ?

It depends.  Some of them are technical limitations based on the script (such as the autocrafter), others could be  made larger, but it would make them harder to position in the precise spot you want them to operate.  The script uses the gear tiles to determine the connection points, while it doesn't have to work that way, I think it makes them easier to understand.  (I should really learn how to animate them.)  Also, I just happen to like small workshops.

Here is the file with the changes: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=8437
It adds the fitting building pictures to the buildings.html, and adds the png files to icon/buildings.  

Edit: DragonDePlatino is a professional sprite graphic designer. He makes his own tileset and sprites atm, and asked if I have anything missing for MDF. Not really atm, but I guess he can help do the gnome professions and nobles, and your pets.

Overall, really nice progress.

How do you make the building pictures?  Do you print the screen or does the workshopdraw program have an export image button that I haven't noticed?

I haven't even started to think about nobles yet, but if he wants to make some more sprites or improve the existing ones (although I'm quite satisfied with how they turned out, but some of them are not complete currently, like the craftgnome category) I have no problem with that

So what does the Clockwork Key do exactly? It dosent appear to be in the manual.

It's basically a steam engine that works for a much shorter period of time but doesn't require fuel.  Ideally it should be used to convert gnomepower to machine power directly, however, because I haven't figured out how to modify the steam engine code, it still requires water underneath it.  Who made the steam engine so I can request from them a water-less version?

[Arcvasti]

Just redownloaded the mod after realizing hat I'd been playing v0.3 since I messed up updating the gnomes to the current version.

Spoiler: Possibly Irrelevant food rant (click to show/hide)

The one thing I DID notice in my aborted v0.3 game is that gnomes don't have a reliable food source. Kobolds butcher jack rats by the thousands, which absolutely wrecks the whole Nature Magic part of gnomes. Warlocks kill sieges and wild animals, which is impractical because gnomes suck at direct combat. Dwarves either farm moleweasels or farm and the latter is really inefficient. The closest I've come to getting a reliable food source is having a TON of egg-laying creatures, large farms and bringing tons of food at the start. I think that there should be a gnome-unique or at least viable way to get food since Masterwork is so heavily biased towards animal farming.

AND I just realized I forgot that you could fish. The above food rant is probably meaningless.

[IndigoFenix]

Just redownloaded the mod after realizing hat I'd been playing v0.3 since I messed up updating the gnomes to the current version.

Spoiler: Possibly Irrelevant food rant (click to show/hide)

The one thing I DID notice in my aborted v0.3 game is that gnomes don't have a reliable food source. Kobolds butcher jack rats by the thousands, which absolutely wrecks the whole Nature Magic part of gnomes. Warlocks kill sieges and wild animals, which is impractical because gnomes suck at direct combat. Dwarves either farm moleweasels or farm and the latter is really inefficient. The closest I've come to getting a reliable food source is having a TON of egg-laying creatures, large farms and bringing tons of food at the start. I think that there should be a gnome-unique or at least viable way to get food since Masterwork is so heavily biased towards animal farming.

AND I just realized I forgot that you could fish. The above food rant is probably meaningless.

Yes, you will want to see a lot of this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Meph]

How do you make the building pictures?  Do you print the screen or does the workshopdraw program have an export image button that I haven't noticed?

Load workshop into workshop draw, print screen, crop, save, rinse, repeat.

[IndigoFenix]

So I've got the automated block cutters, furniture shop, and arc furnace (smelter) working quite nicely.  It works as a very good incentive to get powered machines running as soon as possible.  They can produce items with a quality; the equation is taken directly from the normal skill calculations, based on the rounded-down average of all mechanisms used in the machine.  So a machine made of only masterwork mechanisms will produce work of the same quality as a proficient worker.

I'm still working on the automatic item sorter and minecart loader, both of which will greatly improve the ability to make automatic production facilities.

[Stronghammer]

So i love the mod especially the powered buildings. However the autocrafter will not work for me. I have power to it which dfhack is seeing and i have an output tile on every adjacent tile. Dfhack sees all the outputs however it says there are no connections. Please let me know. And keep up the great work.

[IndigoFenix]

So i love the mod especially the powered buildings. However the autocrafter will not work for me. I have power to it which dfhack is seeing and i have an output tile on every adjacent tile. Dfhack sees all the outputs however it says there are no connections. Please let me know. And keep up the great work.

Do you have an input tile?  Also, make sure you run the adjust settings reaction to set what you want to produce.

[Stronghammer]

Yes i have an input tile and have set the settings, i just dont know what im doing wrong. Also the dfhack sees the input as connected

[IndigoFenix]

Yes i have an input tile and have set the settings, i just dont know what im doing wrong. Also the dfhack sees the input as connected

Hm... well I have the following suggestions...
If the dfhack console says it's powered but doesn't say by how much, it isn't powered.  Try constructing a new building somewhere, anywhere.

Check the items in the machine (with 't').  Is there anything inside it besides the building materials?  It might have pulled in an invalid item and stopped (this is a bug).  If so, deconstruct and reconstruct the machine.

I hadn't done much testing with multiple outputs in the last version...shouldn't be a problem, but I could be wrong.  Try removing all but one of the outputs.  The correct spots are adjacent to the center tiles of any side of the machine.

When you place an item on the input tile, is it going inside the machine input building or resting on top of it?  It should be on top.  If for some reason it is going inside, try building a construction with a garbage dump over the input tile and drop items in from above.  This should be fixed by the next version...

[Stronghammer]

ok i will give it a go, ty

Edit: So i gave it another try with all of your suggestions. However now it will see the input and output(it appears in dfhack) however it will say found 0. The power is seen and has a number, so that seems to be working. I have tried dumping from above onto the input, having a minecart dump onto it. And it still seems to do nothing. I will just wait till the next version.

Edit2: it lists every input or output as a new line in dfhack so it looks like this

connections for <DFHACK_MACHINA_FACTORY_GNOME> found: 1
connections for <DFHACK_MACHINA_OUTPUT_GNOME> found: 0
connections for <DFHACK_MACHINA_INPUT_GNOME> found: 0
Power allocated to <DFHACK_MACHINA_FACTORY_GNOME>: 20

and then if i add others  it looks like this

connections for <DFHACK_MACHINA_FACTORY_GNOME> found: 1
connections for <DFHACK_MACHINA_INPUT_GNOME> found: 0
connections for <DFHACK_MACHINA_INPUT_GNOME> found: 0
connections for <DFHACK_MACHINA_OUTPUT_GNOME> found: 0
connections for <DFHACK_MACHINA_OUTPUT_GNOME> found: 0

the only reason that i posted the examples was that dont know how it is supposed to work so have to try and show everything.

[IndigoFenix]

Well, the power allocation suggests that it should be working.  Not really sure what the problem could be, but I've been constantly debugging so hopefully it will be fixed in the next update.

[IndigoFenix]

This update adds a lot of stuff:

The basic dwarven workshops have been removed.  However, automatic production machines have been expanded on with stonecutter/woodcutter, furniture assembler, arc smelter, thunder forge, grinder, sorter, and cart loader.
Stonecutter and woodcutter split raw materials into blocks.  Boulders make 16 blocks, logs make 8.  Furniture can also be put in these to break them apart, but you will lose half of the material used to make them.
Furniture assembler turns blocks into furniture.  Most furniture takes 5 blocks to make, for 3/2 the efficiency of dwarf mode, if you can master the art of the machines.
Arc smelter (you will need a dynamo for this) smelts ore and can also melt metal objects.  Organic materials will be turned to ash, rocks will be melted into nearly-useless rock bars.
Thunder forge (also needs a dynamo) can make metal furniture from bars.
Grinder turns items to dust.  It is currently useless except to get rid of junk, but later will be used for decorating items.
The sorting machine is a bit complicated, but it basically lets you separate items based on item type and/or material.  Selected items will come out a side output, while other items will continue straight.

i = input tile, o = output tile.  Bottom output is where the 'separated' items will go.

		[]	[]	[]
->	i	[]	[]	[]	o	->
		[]	[]	[]
			o
			|
			V

It also functions as just a 'generic' item transporter that can take in any item and output it unchanged.  (Other machines can get damaged if the wrong kind of item is placed in them.)
Manufactured items can have quality levels, but only if the correct type of item is placed in the machine.  The quality will be based on the average quality of the mechanisms used in the machine.  Damaged mechanisms will sometimes produce damaged items.
Safety around machines is important.  Don't forget to designate traffic routes ensuring that your gnomes stay off of the input tiles of machines when they are running (forbid the danger tiles, and set traffic levels to high for all the adjacent tiles).  Also, note that the center tile for all factories is also an input tile.  Keep pets away from the facility, if possible.  You will probably lose the fort to a tantrum spiral the first time you try setting up an automatic factory.  Remember, more power leads to faster production, but also increases the likelihood of being caught in a machine.  (This is important information, of course, if you plan on weaponizing them...)

The cart loader is exactly what it sounds like.  Items placed on the tile (for example, by a production machine, a different minecart, or a garbage dump) will be loaded onto passing minecarts if the cart loader is powered.  You may need to stop the cart to allow it a chance to load up, but this can also be automated with pressure plates and rollers.

The Aerial Transport Device can be connected to a machine input (just like the factories) for chaining purposes, that is, a machine can deposit an item directly onto the ATD's input, and then it will be catapulted through the air.  The Drilling Rig can be given an output, and if it has one, it can suck items up z-levels.  Unlike liquids, the items will be deposited on the z-level of the machine itself.

The druidic system is now much easier to use.  Failed attempts at taming animals will give you hints as to why they failed.  Failed attempts will also raise the animal taming skill of the user slightly.  Also, it should now be possible to tame titans or forgotten beasts with high enough skill and merit (you must be a legendary animal trainer AND have at least 50000 nature merit points to even have a chance of success though).

Also, muskets and pistols are back in - the gun/bullet parts are made in the forge and completed at the artificer's workshop.  And once you have dynamos and magnets, you can make railguns and magnetic crossbows.  They are both very slow-firing weapons with expensive ammo, but deal serious damage if you can land a hit, so give them to your high-level marksgnomes.

[Meph]

This sounds amazing, and very complicated.

Can I make a conveyor belt, if I make several automated workshops and place the output pile of Workshop A on the input tile of Workshop A+n, for an unlimited amount of workshops?

Drops item, teleport it from a to b to c to d to e, and have it appear at the end of a long line of workshops?

[IndigoFenix]

This sounds amazing, and very complicated.

Can I make a conveyor belt, if I make several automated workshops and place the output pile of Workshop A on the input tile of Workshop A+n, for an unlimited amount of workshops?

Drops item, teleport it from a to b to c to d to e, and have it appear at the end of a long line of workshops?

Yep, that's pretty much the whole point.  And thanks to the sorter, it can even be multi-directional.
Let's say, for example, there's a minecart that will be loaded with all stones and wood, on a map that includes hematite, and I want to make 50% tables, 50% chairs, but leave the iron for making weapons.
The minecart dumps everything onto a single tile, which feeds into a sorter.  The sorter pulls out all logs and feeds them into a wood cutter, which cuts them into wood blocks.  The stones continue on into another sorter, which pulls out hematite and feeds it into an arc smelter.  The non-ore stones continue on to a stone cutter, which cuts them into stone blocks.  The wood and stone blocks are then transported, by a chain of sorters (or, if you prefer, by setting them onto cart loaders and sending them to the same spot via minecarts and rollers) into a sorter that places both kinds of blocks into another sorter, which has no direct output but has two sideways outputs.  This sorts them at random.  50% of blocks are sent to a furniture assembler set to produce tables, 50% sent to a furniture assembler set to produce chairs.  Meanwhile, the output from the arc smelter feeds into a sorter that pulls out the slag and sends it to another smelter (or back around into the first one) to turn it into ash... which can then be pulled out and sent to where the farmers are working, while the iron goes to the forge.
Also, you can even direct some stuff (maybe the slag?) to an aerial transport device near the entrance of your fort which is separately powered and can be activated by a lever, turning it into a loaded machine gun ready to fire at the next invasion force...
Of course, setting this system up will require a huge number of mechanisms, blocks, and pipes.  So you might want to have another factory that produces these items.  You will also need a lot of power.  Setting up the main facility deep underground where it can be powered by geothermal energy might not be a bad idea...you can include a drilling rig in the line-up that can transport items back up z-levels quickly...
So yeah, basically infinite possibilities .