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[Xazo-Tak]

Dwarf Fortress is a wonder of content generalisation in gaming, so it does seem very odd that it runs on a tile based system.
Using rudimentary meshes instead would open up so many possibilities!
Obviously, the game would be confusing and unfamiliar if it abandoned the tile system together, but it's easy enough to have it so that designations are still tile based, and tiles render based on what meshes are inside them.

Here are the things that I think become better:
-Creature behaviour becomes much more realistic, as diagonal and orthagonal movement can be made perfectly identical in terms of real distance travelled, and by giving each creature a particular position with a tile it's no longer possible to have a dozen attackers standing in one tile. With animation of creature meshes, it becomes possible to make more accurate calculations of hits in combat; so it won't be so easy to kick a standing person in the face anymore, and if you aim for someone's fourth right finger and miss you might hit something else.
-Multi-tile creatures and constructions will handle their own visual appearance, they only require meshes (Which mostly exist already) and animations.
-Mechanical stress to constructions and natural structures become possibly easier to calculate as terrain shapes can be simplified; not to mention that meshes can collapse in swinging motions as well as straight down.
-Open space can be extended enormously without hitting performance.
-Adds the possibility of dropping tile rendering altogether, which modders would really like.
-Gases such as mist and miasma no longer have to be so taxing to simulate, they can be replaced with moving points that say "at distance x from me, the density of gas y is z".

The things that would become harder would be pathfinding and water flow, but if they were made to work they would be better than they were before; the currently clear-cut definition of what movements are trivial for a dwarf and which are difficult would become blurred, so the game has to be programmed so that a dwarf will consider leaping and climbing outside of combat; as for water flow, the amount of simulation required could end up decreasing for large volumes, and simulating objects in the water being pushed by the flow could become more realistic (an object no longer has to be pushed a whole tile suddenly to be pushed by water).

Adventurer mode would probably become weird and difficult though, since only AI creatures would be able to see and navigate the mesh-based world.

Thoughts? Accusations of heresy?

[Bumber]

I'm not sure what you're asking for. Something like Slaves to Armok? The system was ditched for being difficult to work with and create content for.

Maybe Armok Vision? It's a visualizer that works with the current system.

[Xazo-Tak]

I'm not sure what you're asking for. Something like Slaves to Armok? The system was ditched for being difficult to work with and create content for.

Maybe Armok Vision? It's a visualizer that works with the current system.

Something like Slaves to Armok I, but with zero focus on graphics, because the current graphics would be preserved by having it so that the symbol for something appears in each tile that something's mesh is in.
And I'd say that since the raws almost have all the information needed to make such a rudimentary mesh, it won't be too hard to create content if there's procedural animation  (All that's needed is stuff like saying where parts attach to on a part since part sizes are already given, stuff like arranging the teeth in the mouth doesn't matter outside combat, only really placing the arms high and the legs low matters).

[Eagleon]

Armok 1 already had zero focus on graphics. When DF first released I wanted to argue that was part of its charm, I was upset that I'd never see another update to a game that let you turn people's hearts into water with your mind, but I was veto'd by the wonderful world of roguelikes and never looked back. But the system you're describing was basically how it worked - the creature and weapon parts had primitives associated with them, they were deformed based on various attributes, and it all looked really hilariously bad but still took ages to develop because it couldn't look so bad that you didn't know what was going on.

[Xazo-Tak]

Armok 1 already had zero focus on graphics. When DF first released I wanted to argue that was part of its charm, I was upset that I'd never see another update to a game that let you turn people's hearts into water with your mind, but I was veto'd by the wonderful world of roguelikes and never looked back. But the system you're describing was basically how it worked - the creature and weapon parts had primitives associated with them, they were deformed based on various attributes, and it all looked really hilariously bad but still took ages to develop because it couldn't look so bad that you didn't know what was going on.

But with my proposed system, it can look that bad, because the original graphical system can still be used, by having it so that if a primitive from say, a dwarf is in a particular tile, that tile will show as having a dwarf in it.
The problem with that is that the dwarf can be in two or four tiles at once, and therefore appear as that many dwarves.

[Orange Wizard]

The fatal drawback with your suggestion is that the graphical simplicity will make DF even more unplayable. If a dwarf's mesh overlaps with multiple tiles, suddenly the display for that would be utterly atrocious because I won't be able to tell accurately where the dwarf is.
Sure, it'll make some development easier, but it'll be impossibly difficult to tell what is going on. Hence unplayable, and incredibly difficult to debug.
Unfortunately, if you want a nuanced 3D world you're going to need a nuanced display. The original Slaves to Armok wasn't particularly nuanced, but at least you can tell where things are. Using tiles to display the same thing simply isn't feasible.

[Xazo-Tak]

The fatal drawback with your suggestion is that the graphical simplicity will make DF even more unplayable. If a dwarf's mesh overlaps with multiple tiles, suddenly the display for that would be utterly atrocious because I won't be able to tell accurately where the dwarf is.
Sure, it'll make some development easier, but it'll be impossibly difficult to tell what is going on. Hence unplayable, and incredibly difficult to debug.
Unfortunately, if you want a nuanced 3D world you're going to need a nuanced display. The original Slaves to Armok wasn't particularly nuanced, but at least you can tell where things are. Using tiles to display the same thing simply isn't feasible.

Perhaps there could be some rule like "if something is smaller than a tile, it must show as being in a single tile".
It might get more complicated with something long and thin, but it seems good enough.

[Bumber]

To be honest, you're pretty much asking Toady to rewrite the entire game from scratch. DF was built on its tile system. The fluids and pumps were programmed for tiles. The drawbridges. The zones. Anything movement related. So much technical stuff that we can't even know the extent. It's pretty much not going to happen.

[Xazo-Tak]

To be honest, you're pretty much asking Toady to rewrite the entire game from scratch. DF was built on its tile system. The fluids and pumps were programmed for tiles. The drawbridges. The zones. Anything movement related. So much technical stuff that we can't even know the extent. It's pretty much not going to happen.

Isn't he already rewriting it from scratch?

[Bumber]

To be honest, you're pretty much asking Toady to rewrite the entire game from scratch. DF was built on its tile system. The fluids and pumps were programmed for tiles. The drawbridges. The zones. Anything movement related. So much technical stuff that we can't even know the extent. It's pretty much not going to happen.

Isn't he already rewriting it from scratch?

No?

The changes you speak of also mean DF cannot be represented by tiles, which kind of kills a whole lot.

[Sorg]

Isn't he already rewriting it from scratch?

Um... no?

edit: damn, ninja'd

[Putnam]

To be honest, you're pretty much asking Toady to rewrite the entire game from scratch. DF was built on its tile system. The fluids and pumps were programmed for tiles. The drawbridges. The zones. Anything movement related. So much technical stuff that we can't even know the extent. It's pretty much not going to happen.

Isn't he already rewriting it from scratch?

14 years of work basically down the tube because...?


not sure where you got that

[Xazo-Tak]

The changes you speak of also mean DF cannot be represented by tiles, which kind of kills a whole lot.

I already explained how it could still be represented by tiles, and in fact would massively simplify multi-tile creatures.

14 years of work basically down the tube because...?


not sure where you got that

64-bit version.
The biggest things that have to be redone to be disposed of tile-based simulation are physics simulation and pathfinding, and doing that rewrite would be the perfect time for that.

[Putnam]

64-bit is not a complete rewrite.

[Orange Wizard]

And even if it was, it'd still be more work to rewrite DF to be an entirely different game than it was to begin with.