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[GavJ]

So obviously absolutely no limit on building is ridiculous without alien ultra-tech computers. Just one 16x16 embark is straight impossible on a lot of people's computers. It's also not even clear if that's a coherent thing for the game to do as currently written.  So why not let it load additional areas in addition to your main fortress? I'd love to be able to tell my dwarves to "go 20 tiles past the edge of the map and build a wall". It inflates the site count, basically won't be able to actually respect any construction when you aren't looking, conflicts with the concept of hill dwarves, still runs into possible issues when crossing region borders and would require entirely new code for displaying unconnected but simultaneously loaded maps.

The game pretty much needs to stop you and say "you can't build any further". That can be the same point at which it stops displaying map. I'm not sure why you objected to this part of my post, it seemed like the least objectionable part to me, but hopefully I've explained myself adequately.

What are going on about? The boundary should obviously be the edge of the map! Which can be any size embark you choose... Nobody said anything about going beyond the edge of the map.

Perhaps you are confused about how DF works? The whole issue is that the edge of the map is NOT the edge of your building/digging zone right now. Currently, you are not allowed to build within a few blocks of the edge, and not allowed to dig on the outermost ring, for no obvious reason. So if you want to build a tunnel, it will end up like this:

X X X X X X Y Y Y Y
               X Y
               X Y
X X X X X X Y Y Y Y
or if you build a wall:

X X X X              Y Y Y Y

With Y being one embark, X being the other, and if you go visit as an adventurer, you will encounter a 2-thick wall representing the undiggable outer ring of each embark, making jtunnels or rooms spanning embarks impossible. Or a gap representing the unbuildable zone (except for ugly bridges that you might not want architecturally).

So your walls have holes and your holes have walls. That's bad...

I'm NOT suggesting infinitely sized embarks at 1 FPS. I'm merely suggesting being able to dig the furthest tile in your existing embark, and be able to build out to the edge of your existing embarks, so that you can do this:

X X X X X X Y Y Y Y
               
           
X X X X X X Y Y Y Y
(tunnels)
and
(walls)
XXXXXXXYYYYYYY

and the embarks will properly line up flush with each other.

[Dunamisdeos]

Guys, this kind of vitriol in a thread like this is uncalled for, and also not really what the thread is about. We do not need to fling barely-veiled verbal barbs at people jobs, opinions, or anything else. It is ok to have different opinions! It is really ok!

I think that the idea of a multi-embark fort is extremely cool. Does anyone have any non-inflammatory ideas on a unique way one could build this, or what kinds of dorfy purposes we can accomplish with the concept? v.40 seems to open up new possibilities for this!

[Genius Evil]

Would creating the first part of the fort, abandoning/retiring, then starting on another embark partially overlapping the first work?

[Wilfred of Ivanhoe]

Random obstacles for no good reason = bad.

I thought that was part of the spirit of Dwarf Fortress.

[Dunamisdeos]

Would creating the first part of the fort, abandoning/retiring, then starting on another embark partially overlapping the first work?

That what I was thinking of. As seen in the other posts here, that's been done before, but 40.01 offers new functionality. You could visit them fully populated in adv mode.

[GavJ]

Would creating the first part of the fort, abandoning/retiring, then starting on another embark partially overlapping the first work?

No, the game doesn't let you do that. (Just confirmed right now).
The site is "locked in" as a coherent site forever once you found a settlement there. Whether it is a ruin of retired or active, the site is a site and you can't embark over any part of it.

Changing the game to allow you to would also be vastly more complicated than simply fixing the digging and construciton borders. Because to overlap embarks, you'd have to answer all kinds of weird questions like "Do some of the dwarves appear in your fort now? Can they walk off and on the map edge on the side of their fort? How do rail lines and stockpile links across the gap work?" etc. etc.

[cyberTripping]

isn't there a DFhack feature that lets you embark over a site?

[GavJ]

isn't there a DFhack feature that lets you embark over a site?

Yes but if I recall correctly, if and when you do that in my experience, you end up on a completely unrelated weird embark site with no trace of any of the stuff that should have been there. Like, if the elevation map suggests a river in a particular spot, and you embark right on top of it while overlapping a settlement, you won't get any houses or anything plus also probably no river, and maybe different resources.

But it is the same basic biome type and stuff.

I don't know, it's weird. It's sort of like world gen goes "oh shit, they can't do that" and spits up some roughly equivalent land on the spot for you.

There's also a very good chance that as soon as you try to save, or even possibly right when you first do this if the site was your own player site, the game will just crash, etc. It didn't crash for embarks on top of NPC settlements, but those aren't stored the same way in memory. I never tried overlapping my own site.

[Frogwarrior]

I'm curious whether that applies only to pre-generated sites, or whether it works differently when overlapping player embarks.

Mind I'd probably just use bridges.

[Vattic]

I remember seeing a thread where someone had built a massive wall over a number of long thin embarks. I think holes were left every so often where the edges of the embarks meet.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Changing the game to allow you to would also be vastly more complicated than simply fixing the digging and construciton borders.

I think they are fixed, but not for multi-tile embarks.  They were fixed so that sieges could not be blocked from entering the map, and to not have them from entering through holes you dug to the edge of the map.

Also, with the holes in the walls: why not obsidian cast them away with raised bridges picking up the slack where you can't build walls?

[GavJ]

Changing the game to allow you to would also be vastly more complicated than simply fixing the digging and construciton borders.

I think they are fixed, but not for multi-tile embarks.  They were fixed so that sieges could not be blocked from entering the map, and to not have them from entering through holes you dug to the edge of the map.

Also, with the holes in the walls: why not obsidian cast them away with raised bridges picking up the slack where you can't build walls?

re "Fixing" sieges:
1) Why shouldn't you be able to stop sieges from entering with a giant wall?
2) You already can anyway with bridges, or even with a wall 5 tiles back from the edge. So it's not actually accomplishing anything. Just let people do what they want.
3) There's already an option in the .ini for turning off sieges anyway. So obviously he doesn't care about people who don't want sieges being able to not have sieges in the first place.

re obsidian/bridges to fill holes:
Why not?
1) Most architecture in game isn't made out of obsidian or bridges. If you want to maintain a consistent style and architectural design (like, "i'm making a clay castle" or whatever), then it's impossible, but it shouldn't be impossible.
2) Casting is about 100x more effort than building, yet there's no practical justification I know of for it needing to be any more effort at all. Bridges less so but still far more effort than walls when you take into account the need for mechanism links to make them raised.  This might all be fine if there were a reasonable need for the extra effort, but it isn't fine if it's just an arbitrary minor coding bug/mistake.
3) It isn't remotely realistic (in a real world OR a fantasy world sense), and in a simulator game like DF, lack of realism is in and of itself a problem, even if there were no gameplay issues. Because it breaks immersion and RP and makes it less of a simulation.

[Button]

whining

If you get all bent out of shape about poor game design, then Dwarf Fortress may not be the game for you.

[GavJ]

whining

If you get all bent out of shape about poor game design, then Dwarf Fortress may not be the game for you.

On the contrary, I'm not the one rudely insulting its designer by implying the entire game is shittily made...

The border buffer is not "bad game design." It was alright previously, because the continuity didn't really matter much, and might have been the simplest fix for something. Fine! But it's a shifting cost/benefit balance. Now that fort retirement is a feature, and adventuring is more integrated, multi-embark constructions and tunnels for adventurers are definitely more important to the community and worth some extra effort to tweak this and find some minor alternative workarounds even if it causes an issue or two.

[Broken]

I just want to say, there is a DfHack thing that allows to build walls and dig at the edge of the map.