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[Liamar]

I know this suggestion has been made before, but most recent posts were from years ago and none were properly argued for.

Secret passages would be VERY easy to add to the game. All Toady has to do is copy-paste doors and hatches and just change a couple text fields to make them be described as walls and add them to the build interface. Simple as that! He could add them in one hour and cram them into this update, WHICH WOULD WORK WONDERS WITH ARTIFACT HUNTING *WINK* *WINK*
Of course if it were to be made more proper, with passages only opening via mechanism or when [A]ctivated if no mechanism attached, not to mention adding them into the procedural world it would take a fair bit more work. But it's still SO, SO, SO worth it!

And how much do secret passages add to the game? SO MUCH. IMAGINE IT. We can build forts specifically build for other players to be adventure-mode dungeon crawling games of their own! We could add hidden artifacts in the next update, do treasure hunts! This would make Dwarf Fortress just steamroll all dungeon-crawling competition! I've played dozens of hours of Legend of Grimrock this past month, and I loved looking for hidden passages - if DF had that I would never play any other Dungeon Crawling/RPG game ever again!

This honestly feels like *THE* FEATURE that DF is missing right now! With hidden passages DF would be almost complete!

[KittyTac]

This honestly feels like *THE* FEATURE that DF is missing right now! With hidden passages DF would be almost complete!

*looks at the version number* *ahem* Half-complete isn't "almost".

[Shonai_Dweller]

Dwarf fortresses are hard enough to traverse right now. Can you imagine the complaints you'd get if you threw in invisible doors too?

Let's wait until the gradual improvements to site generation can manage not to spawn you into inescapable labyrinths before making them harder.

[Liamar]

Dwarf fortresses are hard enough to traverse right now. Can you imagine the complaints you'd get if you threw in invisible doors too?

Let's wait until the gradual improvements to site generation can manage not to spawn you into inescapable labyrinths before making them harder.

That's why what I suggested are only player-made secret passages, for now.

Imagine a hereditary world full of treasure-hunting fortresses all over the place with hidden passages. We could use bridges now, for same purpose, but it's not quite the same when you can see what opens where, letting you know there's something to look for.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I can see secret passages being a feature of dungeons, especially as the treasure hunter adventurer arc gets fleshed out. And then fortresses as site generation gets better. Wouldn't be much point putting in the work if it were limited to player fortresses though.

[KittyTac]

And most suggestions will either be not fulfilled or banished to the "20 years from now" dungeon 

[FantasticDorf]

Wouldn't a secret passage just be a seamless retracting bridge with a fake name & appearance built into the wall? Right now there's not a lot of purpose to going to that effort untill we actually have dungeons properly set up. The purposes for dwarven settlements with this in fortress mode aren't very great as you can bridge up a place as it is, and NPC's wont be able to destroy or tell the difference between it and any other wall.

Then you have to make NPC's that are smart enough to either go around the wall (dig through it/go over/under it etc) or find the correct lever to open the passage and proceed through, tying into smart enemies taking alternative routes.

So probably not happening outside of slightly predictable generated maps especially for worldgen.

[Fleeting Frames]

You can kinda-sorta if you squint do it right now with black-cap doors: indistinguishable by appearance from dark gray (obsidian, ash,etc) NS walls.

Though, as far as NPCs go, the closest thing would be the parameter of observed traps.

[Liamar]

Then you have to make NPC's that are smart enough to either go around the wall (dig through it/go over/under it etc) or find the correct lever to open the passage and proceed through, tying into smart enemies taking alternative routes.

Why would you do any of that?

[FantasticDorf]

To stop dwarves walling themselves in using secret passages by going directly through the natural terrain, its mentioned in Toady's talks & devplans about how he wants to make enemies approach sieges smarter and cheatier. Your secret passage wouldn't be useful for fortress mode, hence why i mentioned it could only be used in worldgen at the moment.

NPC's aren't intelligent enough to look for nuance tiny changes in the room that are 'secret' built in fortress mode, at most they'll stand around and path to the next nearest point.

[bloop_bleep]

Sometimes features are much harder to add to a program than you would first think they would be. How would secret passage mechanics work? How do creatures detect secret passages? How do creatures decide to path in the presence of secret passages? Do creatures remember secret passages they've seen before? Can knowledge of secret passages be spread by rumor?

It often isn't as simple as copy-pasting when adding a new feature, especially in a program of DF's complexity. You have to make sure that it intertwines correctly with all the other working parts of the program, which might not be that easy.

If Toady actually does decide to implement it, it probably won't be this new release, since it's coming around very soon and he's too preoccupied with finishing up the goals he set for himself before he started working on it.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Incidentally, secret doors are listed in the devnotes. So they'll turn up eventually.
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html
Path-finding issues are mentioned there too.

[Liamar]

To stop dwarves walling themselves in using secret passages by going directly through the natural terrain, its mentioned in Toady's talks & devplans about how he wants to make enemies approach sieges smarter and cheatier. Your secret passage wouldn't be useful for fortress mode, hence why i mentioned it could only be used in worldgen at the moment.

NPC's aren't intelligent enough to look for nuance tiny changes in the room that are 'secret' built in fortress mode, at most they'll stand around and path to the next nearest point.

I don't really see any sense in what you are writing.

For sieges the rumors and event witness mechanic would be easy enough to add so that sieging enemies will know where the secret passage is and use it to sneak into the fortress.

For NPCs in adventure mode a simple trap-check would let them find the passage, same for the player possibly.

Walling themselves in... is like, no problem at all. What do you even mean by that? What does it have to do with secret passages?

It's awesomely useful in dwarf mode - we can make forts for each other to dungeon crawl through. When bridges will be destructible secret passages would be very useful for every player allowing for escape routes from !FUN! and sally-out points for soldiers like in Helms Deep where Gimli and Aragorn went out.

(toad-edit: response to flaming removed)

He also assumes that you can just copy and paste doors into them, and that it would take an hour. |:/

Yeah, I do programming. MVP is just copy-pasting doors/bridges and changing UI and graphics. Compared with what Toady usually tackles it's nothing. He just likes to add the entire system in one release that's why he probably won't do that.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Updates to rumours and eye-witness accounts seem to have taken up a not insignificant part of the current 15 month update. Not sure what about it you think is 'easy'. Not to mention the tracker being full of 'siegers pathed straight to my secret entrance' reports when it's actually working as intended. It's all good, of course, but you seem to throw the word "easy" about a little too easily.

[Liamar]

MVP stands for minimal viable product. I said THAT would be easy. And it IS. And that's all that's needed for all the purposes I'm enthused about right now. If you want to criticize and argue for no reason at least do me the courtesy of reading what you are addressing.