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[§k]

They seem to break the continuity of space.

EDIT so my suggestion is that there is no "floor" for a tile, you have to leave a whole tile unmined or build a construction that occupies a whole tile to have a floor, the same as what you would do when you want to have a wall.

[Bumber]

I don't see what's wrong with them. You're going to wreck a whole lot of designs (e.g., pump stacks) if you require extra layers to have buildable tiles.

What about floor grates, hatches, etc.? Do those "break the continuity of space" too?

[Orange Wizard]

I think, but I may be mistaken, that Toady uses floor tiles because it's easier to code than what you're suggesting.
For games like Minecraft, the single-solid-block system works fairly well, but in a 2D roguelike, it's much harder to implement and much less functional.
That said, it's not impossible, but floors make things much simpler.

There's also the gameplay considerations with multi-z structures (among other things). I don't want to have to build a solid wall above every level of my tower. Why can't I just build a floor and save on space?

[SixOfSpades]

Personally, I imagine that each tile is 10 feet tall along the z-axis, and when it gets mined out, the Miner only takes away the lower 7 feet of it. This leaves lots of headroom (for a dwarf, at least) and 3 solid feet of rock/dirt above, enough to conceivably support the weight of dwarves walking on it and/or growing small crops in it. This explains why, when building stairways, you have to build a 7-foot UP stair on zlvl: 0, and also a 3-foot DOWN stair on zlvl: +1, and also meshes up nicely with how fluids top out at 7/7. (Admittedly, this last part fails when you consider multi-z fluids, like water reservoirs. What, are there 7 feet of water, then 3 feet of nothing, then another 7 feet of water?)

If anything, I'd complain about how building a Wall tile takes up exactly as much material as building a Floor tile.

[§k]

horizontally, a tile is a smallest and undivided space(which is natural in ascii game), that's why we can't have wall thinner than a dwarf.

 vertically, however, every tile consists of an uppr part "space" and a lower part "floor". then the whole world, whether a tower, a natural hill, or even the empty space in the sky, are interlaced with "space" and "floor".

in game like nethack, that's convenient, because it takes place in an apartmentlike building, where space and floor are defaultly interlaced. the game just packs every pairs of space and floor together, for the sake of conveiency. DF involves  much variable and natural terrain, so it doesnt have to have this feature.

it would surely change how things work, but wouldnt make things like pumpstack impossible (make them work in a slightly different way probably). it is good to make things consistent horizontally and vertically, and make a tile a smallest undivided space.

[Shazbot]

I believe our dwarven philosophers have all concluded a tile is eight layers thick, that digging removes the top seven layers, that a stairway down opens a hole in the bottom layer, and that a completely empty space then filled with water fills with 7/7 water instead of 8/8 water because of quantum uncertainty, which is our way of waving our hands and speaking gibberish to conceal our intellectual nakedness on this matter. There are some excellent diagrams explaining pump stacks which double as a visual representation of mined and unmined space.

If you are interested in more three-dimentional excavations I recommend digging stairs through the space to make void, then channeling layer by layer from top to bottom. I make rather large galleries and halls in this fashion.

[§k]

if a tile has 8 layers, why cannot we leave the 2nd, 3rd or 6th layer unmined? if we can, then we can just divide one tile into 8 ones, and every one cannot be further devided, which is equivalent to my sugeestion.

[Tomsod]

if a tile has 8 layers, why cannot we leave the 2nd, 3rd or 6th layer unmined?

That's like digging 3x3 room with ceiling at 50cm height - kinda tricky unless you're a kobold or really anorexic. But I guess leaving the floor in the middle of tile instead of the lower 1/8th would be nice and a good framework for more gradual (than 45°) slopes.

[Sizik]

There's also three different floor layers: The top of a wall below, the natural floor left over from digging, and constructed floors.

I think it might be a bit more realistic if the first two were merged. So if you dig a tunnel under a preexisting dug tunnel, you end up taking out the floor above (similar to what carving ramps does). Thus, if you want to have tightly-packed z-levels, you need to build a floor between them. Also, you would be able to see the rock type of the layer below.

[Bumber]

if a tile has 8 layers, why cannot we leave the 2nd, 3rd or 6th layer unmined? if we can, then we can just divide one tile into 8 ones, and every one cannot be further devided, which is equivalent to my sugeestion.

Besides the fact that no playable races could really fit, it adds unnecessary tile data for what is essentially a fortification (or a potential new construction type, e.g. half-wall.) Not to mention the additional support calculations.

There's also three different floor layers: The top of a wall below, the natural floor left over from digging, and constructed floors.

I think it might be a bit more realistic if the first two were merged. So if you dig a tunnel under a preexisting dug tunnel, you end up taking out the floor above (similar to what carving ramps does). Thus, if you want to have tightly-packed z-levels, you need to build a floor between them. Also, you would be able to see the rock type of the layer below.

This is a bit better. We could do away with the whole up/down stair confusion, as well as potentially merging dig/channel, yet still build narrow floors. Constructed floors would need to be cheaper and engravable.

Just be prepared for Fun when you dig under your farms, stockpiles, towers, etc.

[GavJ]

if you were a dwarf, would you dig an 8 foot mineshaft EXACTLY 8 feet above the other 8 foot mineshaft? No, that would be stupid. So they don't. They just intentionally leave room in between.

I don't see why that "breaks the continuity of space"? I mean it's not like there's some physical law that prevents you from leaving a foot or two in between mineshafts...

[Orange Wizard]

if you were a dwarf, would you dig an 8 foot mineshaft EXACTLY 8 feet above the other 8 foot mineshaft? No, that would be stupid. So they don't. They just intentionally leave room in between.

This, so much this.

[StagnantSoul]

If that were how it worked, the world would be swiss cheese, and cave ins would probably kill off most civilizations as they worked.

[Reelya]

if a tile has 8 layers, why cannot we leave the 2nd, 3rd or 6th layer unmined? if we can, then we can just divide one tile into 8 ones, and every one cannot be further devided, which is equivalent to my sugeestion.

Great idea, just break the whole concept of a roguelike. Nobody does that because it would be a nightmare to code and the controls would be awful. Do you want to e.g. click "up z level" 8 times to go up the height of 1 dwarf? And can you imagine the path finding CPU costs where there's no distinct z-levels to process, and everything has to be done to 1/8th of a level.

Of course if we're splitting z-levels down into 1/8ths it would make even less sense to leave squares undivided horizontally (each minable segment would now be a long and flat slab, rather than a cube as it is now). So bye bye ASCII, we'd have to go full MineCraft 3D with the resultant either massive slow down or complete dumbing down.

if you were a dwarf, would you dig an 8 foot mineshaft EXACTLY 8 feet above the other 8 foot mineshaft? No, that would be stupid. So they don't. They just intentionally leave room in between.

I don't see why that "breaks the continuity of space"? I mean it's not like there's some physical law that prevents you from leaving a foot or two in between mineshafts...

Yeah, it doesn't "break" anything. Because gravity. We walk on floors. Hence, all buildings and, yes, EVEN underground facilities leave floors for walking on. It's a very minor logical problem (why don't the dwarves mine out all of the rock) to make way for a MUCH easier and simpler to play game.

[612DwarfAvenue]

if you were a dwarf, would you dig an 8 foot mineshaft EXACTLY 8 feet above the other 8 foot mineshaft? No, that would be stupid. So they don't. They just intentionally leave room in between.

I don't see why that "breaks the continuity of space"? I mean it's not like there's some physical law that prevents you from leaving a foot or two in between mineshafts...

This pretty much sums it up.