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[bloop_bleep]

... But where's da rope? You need a rope to build a set of rollers in-game.

[jecowa]

... But where's da rope? You need a rope to build a set of rollers in-game.

Maybe something like this to show the rope:

[Rekov]

I'm not sure if this is an accurate representation. On the image below, the magenta tile goes down a full level, but the yellow tile only goes down a half level. I'm not a game mechanics expert, but I kind of thought objects on ramps counted as being on the bottom of the ramp, not halfway up.

You're basically correct, the solution I've proposed, and vettlingr's appears to be identical, only go to 'half-depth' in those narrow canyon sections. The reason to do this is that it lets you keep the same slope for all ramps, and it simplifies what you're looking at visually.



Now that I've mocked up the 'full depth' version, the WIP's that Toady posted suddenly make a whole lot more sense to me. The two indicated slopes (red) have the exact same shading, so I assumed that they were supposed to be at the same angle. Similarly in the blue box. If that is supposed to be going to full depth, then the left hand ramp doesn't make sense, because it should be steeper in the narrow part.

But if you made the slopes in the narrow parts obviously steeper, then this geometry works fairly well.



Fleshed out both approaches. I think the reason people are still talking about this isn't because it's particularly hard, but because there's just a ton of choices that have to be made, and at some point someone is simply going to have to make those choices. The two examples below I think have every possible ramp (EDIT: I don't. There are more possibilities with single-file constructed ramps), though not every possible rotation/mirror of them. The top one favours visual simplicity, while the bottom one more accurately represents how ramps function in game in terms of fluid mechanics. They both work and make sense. It's just a matter of choices now.

[PatrikLundell]

Rollers: I had envisioned them as a set of rotating cylinders, somewhat akin to a cattle grid. Basically jecowa's image but with cylinders throughout rather than gaps (and possibly somewhat larger diameter cylinders), with the alternative mental image being an actual conveyor belt, and thus only two cylinders.

[SuperPluck]

I always invisioned rollers like the chains in roller coasters: See here

That said, the picture is very clear.

[BLazerules]

It is probably also hard, but cat, dog, goose are really weirdly sized in this example. Note that it may turn out that smaller animals are not much better - we see higher static images, in actual gameplay it will work differently.

But lion-sized housecat seems to be unfortunate.

I'd like to think that people who are used to random single symbols representing creatures would be more ok with pictures representing creatures.

Maybe me seeing it just as a representation of what is there rather than as a literal thing helps? I don't see it as a lion-sized housecat. I just see it as a housecat. It's scaled up to make it easier to make out what it is, which is the most important thing, and its a nice looking bit of pixel art. Which is all I care about at least.

The same way I don't see the c symbol for cat as a literal representation of a cat. It doesn't seem like that far fetched of a thing? Most pixel art games do basically the same thing.

[Meph]

Three rollers in a row, with the chain/rope visible.

[Rose]

Yes. This looks good.

[Cruxador]

I agree, the payoff would be huge. I do think showing gear is more important though, and i think multiple z-levels are as well.

Although in retrospect my phrasing wasn't clear, I was still talking about relative to effort. Showing gear accurately needs at the very least a separate sprite for each type of gear and type of creature to wear it. It may also require a but of code support per thing, depending on how it's set up, although based on how he normally does things I would expect Toady can and will go for an easily expansible and moddable solution.

Would you say this is reasonably clear as a track roller? Bottom shows one on tracks with a gear assembly next to it.

I couldn't find any RL references to rollers. ^^

I always assumed that they were equivalent to the "roller" portion of a rollercoaster. After all, a rollercoaster is basically a minecart track designed by the kind of person who might play DF, and the first rollercoasters were gravity railways anyway. In case you're not very familiar with rollercoasters, it's basically Mala's first mockup but with a chain on the gear because normally they're linked over multiple gears and the chain is linked to an engine below, next to, or otherwise out of the way of the track.

The kind of roller that you've depicted there isn't normally powered, and I'm having a hard time imagining how it would work with a minecart on top, since minecarts do, after all, have wheels. Seems like you'd basically need to take the cart off the track and turn it on its side or something? I don't know, I've only ever seen these used in packaging facilities and playgrounds.

Maybe me seeing it just as a representation of what is there rather than as a literal thing helps? I don't see it as a lion-sized housecat. I just see it as a housecat. It's scaled up to make it easier to make out what it is, which is the most important thing, and its a nice looking bit of pixel art. Which is all I care about at least.

The same way I don't see the c symbol for cat as a literal representation of a cat. It doesn't seem like that far fetched of a thing? Most pixel art games do basically the same thing.

It's a representation, but the point of moving away from ASCII is to have a better (that is, more representative) representation. One where you don't have to learn to "read" DF to be able to tell what you're looking at; where new players can tell just by looking rather than always loo[k]ing. Obviously, perfection is not attainable. But that hardly means it's meaningless to identify things that ought to be improved, and in a game with lots of giant animals, an oversized cat does have a substantial potential to be misleading. Furthermore, the illusion of meaningful sizes in the graphics is important to provide context for the game's fictional creatures, and it relies in the known creatures being accurate. For this purpose, although it's not the situation "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link", still each imperfection weakens the overall illusion, and this error, besides being quite noticeable, is also in one of the most recognizable creatures.

I started this post before this was here, but:

Three rollers in a row, with the chain/rope visible.

Why is there two chains? And although this might be a nitpick, it seems like this mess would get in the way of the wheels as well.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, the wheels would go outside of the chains, and the rollers themselves would actually sit underneath the tracks to be out of the way, with the cogs driving the chains being large enough to get the chain to reach up to hooks in the cart undercarriage.

However, with the introduction of the chains the thick parts "hugging" the track aren't needed (and so would get out of potentially being in the way).

[vettlingr]

Three rollers in a row, with the chain/rope visible.

I think this is good enough. Dwarves certainly don't have reference images when they construct theirs.
Would be interesting to compare with a one chain version and so on, also. Does the roller sprite include the tracks underneath or are they transposed above tracks thanks to transparency?

[Cruxador]

Three rollers in a row, with the chain/rope visible.

I think this is good enough. Dwarves certainly don't have reference images when they construct theirs.

This is a fallacious line of reasoning. Although the game doesn't fully represent this, the dwarf can be assumed to be working from schematics or to already know how the thing is supposed to work. It's intelligent design, and with the exception of strange moods, stuff in the game doesn't come to exist simply because a dwarf was dicking around and happened to stumble on something that basically got the job done.

Would be interesting to compare with a one chain version and so on, also. Does the roller sprite include the tracks underneath or are they transposed above tracks thanks to transparency?

Seems to me there's no benefit at all to adding another layer for the sake of the latter.

[bloop_bleep]

Seems to me there's no benefit at all to adding another layer for the sake of the latter.

Well, I mean, what if we want the rollers and minecart tracks to change color per their materials? It seems more difficult and inelegant of a solution to create N^2 different roller tiles.

Or have we decided that different material colors for certain objects won't make it into the Steam version?

[mko]

Three rollers in a row, with the chain/rope visible.

Much better. It would probably not work in reality. But I cannot imagine any reality-adjacent mechanism that would explain how minecarts are powered and match ingame usage.

[Meph]

A slow turning axle with a gear or chain that hooks under the minecart?