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[evthestrike]

The carved minecart tracks showed are just groves that the minecart rides between. Am I missing something? The ones on the top are carved and the others are constructed.

[Shonai_Dweller]

The carved minecart tracks showed are just groves that the minecart rides between. Am I missing something? The ones on the top are carved and the others are constructed.

This looks nothing at all like a groove to me. I mean, just look at where it meets the rail, it's exactly the same. A groove is a cut in the floor, a rail is a piece of wood/metal/rock placed on top of the floor.

[Starver]

Interesting image I found earlier when looking for pictures (in this article that explains the situation but has little itself to do with the in-game one)... https://bathtrams.uk/safety-issues-when-trams-run-over-temporary-track-during-say-utility-relocation-diversions/

Noting that the track is 'constructed' in both forms, but in-game would be differently fudged by material/raw-tile needs.

[voliol]

I think the current solution works well enough, like evthestrike I didn't note anything being odd before it being pointed out by shonai et al, and even after aquiring the knowledge I must say it is the clearest solution visually. If the question of how to carve them out is extremely important, consider this:


 

[Shonai_Dweller]

I think the current solution works well enough, like evthestrike I didn't note anything being odd before it being pointed out by shonai et al, and even after aquiring the knowledge I must say it is the clearest solution visually. If the question of how to carve them out is extremely important, consider this:

Yep. That's how I see them. It's cool. Just seems a lot of work for dorfs to shape all their corridors like that rather than carve grooves. But, they are dorfs after all.

So just to be sure, we're saying technically that an actual groove just wouldn't be possible to show graphically at this scale?

[GrayAx]

Heyo, I'm really looking forwards to seeing this version of the game go live, and the work put into the graphics is really impressive so far. (Sorry if it derails the minecart discussion a tiny bit.

I was just wondering, would it be possible to add height/depth to the back walls?
Here's a quick thing I threw together to illustrate:


I very much like the style and depth of objects in the room (like stairs, or the various devices belonging to the workshops.
But I have to admit that I'm having some trouble parsing rooms as rooms. The various tweaks like shadows in the corners, and 'deeper' walls has helped a lot.
I just find it that there's a strange dissonance between objects having a sense of perspective, but walls seem more like they're completely flat, much like on a blueprint.

I apologize if this has been asked before, but it's a really huge thread to scan over to see if this has been talked about before.
Personally, the moment there's a bit of depth to the back wall (after all, the 'front' and 'side' walls are straight on to the camera, and don't really need to be changed to fit.), the rooms parse as actual rooms to me a lot easier.
Especially since there is a bit of depth to some elements, like the hills, and as mentioned, furniture.

Though it's entirely possible I'm alone in this sentiment, and that others prefer the current style.

[Starver]

The wall-height and creature-variant issues (@Rekov) have been addressed in this thread before, yes. Was hoping someone else would point this out, because though I found early examples (of the creature variation, that is) I was sure it was mentioned again in the last quarter of pages (before the windmill stuff?) but hadn't time to scan for it. (And didn't hold onto the reference URLs I did start to copy, sorry.)

Wall-heights should be near the beginning, though, alongside the (initial) arguments about slopes. Then there's the apparent Steam Artist Crew policy on overhead vs angle-view, which I won't try to recall precisely, but I think boils down to not attempting an angle where multi-Z spans are possible/likely (tree trunks, famously, but walls can apply) because of the problems doing anything meaningful with an angle-view there without displacing everything in a column of Zs to be consistent in all placements. Which changes many things, including 'hiding' stuff that goes on behind such a sloping wall.

I could be wrong. Maybe I'll recheck back in this thread when I have a spare moment, to get exact references. But it would be helpful to get official word or someone else with significantly more stake in the conversation(s) than me to cut out the need to search.

(The whole thread was (re)illuminating when I started to look for creature-state references, I know it's a lot of work, especially without easy way of storing "backlog progress" other than keeping a browser tab open/rebookmarked 'pointer' reference just for that purpose, but you'll see a lot of cool stuff in among things you maybe don't want to read (more) about.)

[PatrikLundell]

I don't think a groove would be too hard technically to show as graphics, but I think a lot of people would have trouble understanding that it actually represent how things were done in the real world. If you say "tracks" I'd expect most people to imagine a pair of rails, not a single guiding groove. So while grooves would be cool, they will probably confuse a lot of people (the "extra stuff when everything important has been done" pile could easily have groove images as an alternative display).

[Cruxador]

I don't think people are stupid enough to be confused by two parallel lines appearing when they select to build tracks, regardless of how they look. If they are, then there are other aspects of the game that will be a far bigger problem for them. If the people don't know that tracks can be dug out instead of built, then they'll have an opportunity to learn something. That is not such an undesirable experience that we should make the game lie to everyone in order to avoid it.

The degree is different, but under this logic we should have reddish brown copper ore, black or grey iron ore, and gold should be good for weapons because it's expensive and what if someone is coming to this game from Minecraft? It's nonsense.

[PatrikLundell]

Two grooves is a huge difference from a single one when it comes to recognition (and understanding what it actually represents, as opposed to just accept that this image means a mine track, for some unknown reason). The issue is somewhat similar to the windmill discussion where various lesser known historical examples were brought up.

[MoltenIdol]

Ignore this, stupid touchsreen.

[MoltenIdol]

I don't think people are stupid enough to be confused by two parallel lines appearing when they select to build tracks, regardless of how they look. If they are, then there are other aspects of the game that will be a far bigger problem for them. If the people don't know that tracks can be dug out instead of built, then they'll have an opportunity to learn something. That is not such an undesirable experience that we should make the game lie to everyone in order to avoid it.

The degree is different, but under this logic we should have reddish brown copper ore, black or grey iron ore, and gold should be good for weapons because it's expensive and what if someone is coming to this game from Minecraft? It's nonsense.

All of this is true.

If you dont have the mental capability to understand what two lines in the floor means when you select carve track, or if youre not naturally curious enough to even go find out what it might be, then Youre probably never even gonna stumble upon dwarf fortress to begin with, and Much less play it when you find out what its all about.

Two parralel lines in the floor. What else do you imagine people would Think it was, other than tracks?
Chalk lines? Spaghetti? Random string?
Im not trying to be rude, but i really cant see how this could be misconcieved, unless said person trying to fathom it, would also fail at comprehending Minecraft.

About the seamless connection between carved and constructed, I believe in smol ramps. Logically (a word rarely taken into account when talking about dwarf fortess), this makes the most sense.
Its the easier way to do it, with minimal energy invested.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yeah. Carve track, and a....track appears. Crikey what happened?! Rage quit. Not likely is it?

I don't really care how history did it, medieval dwarves not being a thing. But basic English tells me that "carve track" resulting in a 3d track appearing out of the ground that matches exactly with a  built track (involving placing materials on top of the ground) is strange (explainable as the above diagram shows, but still pretty strange).

[Marcus Aseth]

this is the image from the workshop, but if I place it on a marble floor then I have a random gray brick from the workshop in that room, ruining the looks.
Would it be possible to go for workshop with transparent floor so that it blends in with wathever floor the room has? This would allow me to place this same gray brick under the workshop only if I deemed it cool looking for that specific context, leading overall to more freedom of creativity, consistent yet varied looks for the fortresses
The current floor is imposing a "uniform" look to wathever we might come up with, so not very good in my opinion (aside for the floor being fixed, it looks awesome )

my 2 cents

[Marcus Aseth]

I went ahead and removed the floor from the bottom workshop to better illustrate my point above and let you judge for yourself:



Sure, now you might think it looks more underwhelming than before, but consider it is built on a rough cave floor so that might be exactly the poor aesthetics one is going for.
Now imagine if someone where to build a cool floor underneath, it could be anything, it if was a sand floor and there was the option to drop in a carpet floor, maybe you could go for a desert bazaar look, the possibilities are infinite and a fixed floor is a limitation not suited for this game imo.
Also still trough transparency a tad bit of shadowing could be added under the element on contact with the surface, some sort of ambient occlusion, to better separate the elements from the floor and having them look less "floaty", but that is a personal preference that has nothing to do with my point above