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[brewer bob]

Look behind you! A three-headed monkey!

(Wonderful work, btw)

[scriver]

Love you meph

...wait is that monkey giving us the finger?

[voliol]

I'm truly sorry for the long wait, it's obviously the first thing I should have done.

Wait... aren’t those the chimp and gibbons you showed us earlier? Those are apes you buffoon!
(jk I love them)

[clinodev]

I'm pleased to see a large rock pot!

[Thisfox]

.... and afterward it was very difficult to figure out which lever was linked to which building without just pulling it and seeing what horrible things happened.

...See, I was always mystified by this. I put the lever in a room near where the thing it was connected to was, and never had trouble working out (months later) what it was hooked up to. I honestly think it depended on your architectural control of visual context, rather than game design. But I guess it was seen as a problem rather than a feature for everyone else?

I mean, it was one of the driving forces of the entertainment value of reading Boatmurdered, once apon a time, a series of architects who purposefully put the levers in random locations around the map and then left the mystery in their inheritance.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I always named my levers after naming levers became a thing.
Can see how you might forget I suppose.

[Meph]

I have a lever control room, far away from any action, entrances or danger. It's shape is a miniature version of the fort and the levers are in the corresponding location. So a lever for the bridge at the north of the fort is on the northern wall of the lever control room. In addition I color-code them by using different materials.

[Starver]

Personally, I tend to operate a Lever Room dedicated to my Whole Fort Lockdown Control™ with the layout of levers matching 'reality'. The main North Drawbridge has the lever in the mid-north of the room, the main West Drawbridge in the equivalent mid-West spot. The flanking Sally-Ports of the southern approach operate via the levers flanking the one in that shuts off the whole 'official' Southern Approach, etc.

Spoiler: I *might* also use colour-coded mechanisms in their construction (click to show/hide)

White material=normally to be 'open', grey material=normally to be 'closed'..., and reserve blue and red types for water-/magma-gates respectively, which may indeed be put just the other side of a wall from where they operate when it's not something that then needs anything more than occasional use.

(Never yet had Gremlin problems. but I suppose I could also put a wall across the entrance of the destination-pointing alcove the lever is in.)

Though I tend to concentrate more on the (currently) invisible qualities. All the levers for a particular type (Depot entrance isolators for N, S, E, W being the same Quality Level, and the mechanisms used to connect these to the respective isolating-architecture also being (possibly another) identical quality and material shared between and among themselves, just for my satisfaction alone).  But if I've fired off enough Mudstone Mechanism craftings early enough I may get not just 4/8/etc absolutely identical MMs but enough to make the whole control system out of an utterly, utterly uniform, where I think even the current Steam-plans would only worry about the quality+material(...inc. MAT family) of the built lever, right?

Anyway, my personal CDO is not important.

I would do all this whether or not I could later go and 'rediscover' what was connected to what. But it's also a good idea to give that opportunity. Even if I wouldn't personally just set out new levers next to the last added lever, whatever it was/wherever it was connected to to form up ranks and files of levers, it wouldn't be a bad thing to let someone do this if they wanted and then quickly confirm (or correct) their memories of what a specific one actually might do when then do (or don't!) want it pulled.

Right now, I think the way I'd do that is to try to connect Lever X123Y456 with VitalSupportB3579, and I'd be unable to attempt to make that connection if I'm right (and not go that far if it shows that I'm wrong).


PPE: Oh look, doubly-ninjaed, making the more important parts of the points I made, but with less words. (And I absolutely have forgotten about labelling. Never use raw labelling for anything, because I'm so used to not being able to and dealing with it as already described in leiu. )

[PatrikLundell]

Like others, I place my levers in patterns and places that symbolically represent their targets, plus labeling them (AND their targets). Labeling levers was possible with DFHack, while labeling targets only became possible with the vanilla introduction of naming (which was a great thing, in my opinion). The purpose of naming the targets is that it makes hooking up new ones a lot easier as you can find them without too much comparison of the terrain (two muddy caverns look rather similar, for instance). Also, my minecart repeaters are built in a grid and used as needed, so there's not much order to them. Naming the doors blocking them off when in use makes it easier to lock/unlock the correct one when required to allow the stones to be hauled out of them safely (when done the doors can be locked permanently). If you don't have doors there visitors will wander down there and get themselves killed when they try to leave during a siege lock down (and cats will do it out of pure malice), pulling valuable dorfs to their deaths.

[brewer bob]

Labelling levers and their targets really helped out. One of the bigger game-changers for me.

I can't remember how I managed not to mess up my typical fort waterworks that had dozens of levers and floodgates before labelling became a thing (or maybe I messed them up, but refuse to remember the horror of flooding my fort).

[orius]

I label my levers, and I keep them in a control center in the main dining hall.  The usual levers like the fort gates, the water and magma control systems, and the atom smasher have something of a standard order they're placed in as well, which helps me keep track of them.

[kitfoxgames]

Steam Community Update 6 May 2021: "New Trade Depot + Animals and Wagons"

https://steamcommunity.com/games/975370/announcements/detail/3064114295970997879

Full Text:

New Trade Depot + Animals and Wagons
...And is that Adventure Mode?

Hello again!

Over the last few weeks, part of what we've been doing involves trade in the fortress, both making it look better and adding some new practical pieces as well.



Here we have some full wagons on the bottom of the screen bringing much-needed supplies to the player, through a bamboo forest.  There's also a yak with some bags packed on it that is part of the caravan as well, and a few bodyguards.  On the wagons and animals, there's not a lot of graphical real estate to work with, so the images reflect the amount of stuff being carried (there are four levels), rather than specific items.



Once we get to the newly redesigned depot, though, the situation changes, and we can show specific trade goods on the tables.  The tables at the top are for the visiting merchants, and they also get the northern stool.  The bottom tables show the goods the fortress is willing to trade (which are selected by the player), and the fortress broker sits on the southern stool.

In the image above, the left side is before the wagons arrived, and on the right side, the wagons have unloaded (you can see the wagons resting at the very top.)  I've also brought the, um, goods I had on hand in my little test fortress, ha ha.  It is a bin of wooden crafts and some turtles we caught.  I'm sure the thriving capital of the dwarves will love my little turtles.



Just for fun, here's an image of the depot in the old version.  I've circled it in green in case you have trouble picking it out!  The separate tables and the ability to tell who is trading which item are new to the graphical version.



We're still working through the trade screens.  Here you can see what we have for bringing items to the depot so far.  It's a little easier to select groups of items now, as well as bins containing various objects, but we're also going to allow direct selection at stockpiles and from the items themselves, so you won't have to handle everything from the depot, which could be very cumbersome to say the least.



A little of this applies to adventure mode as well!  Here I've packed some items on my trusty donkey, and that is visible now as I lead the critter through the village.

- Tarn

[Fleeting Frames]

➀ So, unmentioned but seems saves transfer fine between the two versions! That's good for community games, which have oft been plagued by "walls look weird now".

➁ I wonder if bamboo will have more gameplay impact as side-effect? I don't expect it though with the schedule being so full already...

➂ Tarn has got to be first person, ever, I've seen selling turtles! The big Toady One sure plays game on a different level.

➃ Entering adv mode changes? Whoa, the steam release might come sooner than I expected.

[Mr Crabman]

Steam Community Update 6 May 2021: "New Trade Depot + Animals and Wagons"

https://steamcommunity.com/games/975370/announcements/detail/3064114295970997879

I posted this feedback on reddit too, but I'll do it here as well:

It looks mostly great, but there are a few bits that are a bit off.

In the trade depo, a dwarf is being rendered on top of the "sell" sign, which makes the perspective a bit funky; the sign should render in front of the dwarf. The bison on the top right IS rendered behind the sign correctly, so this is probably either an oversight or is planned and just hasn't been gotten around to yet.

Next, it looks strange seeing a second dwarf standing on top of the bottom right table; maybe it should be a flat wooden panel on the ground rather than a table? Something about dwarves (and the bison on the top left frankly) just happily walking across tabletops doesn't sit well with me personally.

Also, something about the wooden bin on the left table looks off, and I'm not sure why/what aspect is causing the issue; it just looks like it's edited in somehow?

The bamboo in the wide shot also looks photoshopped in/artificial, it has no sense of presence like the bushes, saplings and boulders in the same picture do; probably just needs some shadow and/or a more natural transition with the grass?

[Starver]

I imagine the "sell-sign" issue is because of semi-petspective primacy of the Depot. The dwarf off-depot that is layered difectly over the grass is then over-layered with the "nearer" depot elements, including the buy-sign, that poke up into those tile-boundaries. The one in the depot is atop the depot, which has already been constructed of the standard floor, furniture (stools and tables) and the buy/sell-signs as increasingly viewer-wise layers before tabled goods and character figures (including that entabled dwarf, you mention, clearly being offered for sale... ) get their own overlaying.

The solution might be to 'reserve' the non-diagetic signage for even-toppermost over-layering. Or to rework "any character in the footprint of a workshop/etc" out of the more general landscape and slot them into the workshop's layer-construction scheme[1] as a localised under-to-over and rear-to-near stacking to produce the completely accurate 'occupied Depot' stack (front tables and signs show in front of such midway-standing characters) to then place onto the ground (showing in front of the characters standing just beyond the rear). But there might be other considerations[2].

I mean, I'm just guessing at the current internally-coded approach, so my 'solutions' might be starting off from the wrong premise. I could just be putting the cart before the horse wagon before the yak[4]!


[1] In this case, it looks like only the buy/sell-signs poke over tile boundaries beyond (the five tables, and the two bargaining stools, stay within), but some workshop worktops/decorations might also extend. And some creature-sprites (esp. Giant <Foo>s) might themselves poke downwards and sideways in a manner that should go 'under' those tabletops..?

[2] Going with the possibility of Giant Foos being widthwise beyond the tile boundary, you'd want one just off the side of a Depot/similar to layer above the flooring element but sneak beneath the table-top? That'd require keeping layering as a deconstruction (which would also solve the sign) by putting ground-texture, specialist floor texture (first constructed, then 'built room', if constructed isn't already subsumed into earth/grass/etc ground), grounded furniture and creatures[3] with rear-to-near overlaying enforced for all overlaps and perhaps a firm lateral policy for the Giant things vs tables, then repeat for things on the tables (goods, buy/sell-signs, workshop-worktop-tools, etc).

[3] Further separating potentially flying creatures? And the 'table-top' dwarf ought to be deferred at least until the sign's level (if in the same tile) to appear on the table where casually allowed to walk across it, as apparently this one is.

[4] Which, with reference to recent "face left or right?" discussions in mind, I expected to be the main point-of-order in discussing this particular release of images!