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[qwertyuiopas]

quote:
nobles and children will refuse to get on it at all.

Once the noble has their room, rewall the entrance and make the only entrance by a few floors of scafolding.....
     

[Fishersalwaysdie]

You mean the only exit?
I sure do.

[Grek]

I think a simple silution would be that dwarfs have to be "sitting" to pass through scafolding, just like they do to pass people in hallways.

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Markavian:
<STRONG>How about ladders?</STRONG>

Technically the scaffolding is a ladder, only... cubed?   , ladders would be handy but again, its really hard to move up one while carrying large heavy objects.

quote:Originally posted by Vengeful Donut:
<STRONG>A staircase doesnt have a specific facing - it can be entered from any side. Also, a staircase can be placed directly on top of another one (this is displayed as an X iirc). Often seen in kobold and/or goblin forts before the archers turn you into a pincushion.</STRONG>

Oh right, i forgot that. Well that simplifies matters a lot. Attaching a 2X3 "box" with the stair assembly inside it to any scaffolding network and you have stairs that can be easily put up and taken down. You need the 6 tiles of room because once you get off the stairs in one direction you need to walk around to the other side to get onto the next set and so on.

-Adding wear and tear to scaffolding is a good idea. It is designed to be quick and easy to put up then take down. The scaffolding would be maintained in good repair if dwarves needed it to do work. If you simply had scaffolding sitting out in the sun with no work being done it would start to degrade. Eventually it becomes so rickety you have to demolish it.

The only question is, how fast should this happen?

quote:Originally posted by Grek:
<STRONG>I think a simple silution would be that dwarfs have to be "sitting" to pass through scafolding, just like they do to pass people in hallways.</STRONG>

Something to that effect yeah. When you think about it, you have a cage of beams that support modular platforms. All of which is open to the air. To get anywhere on it you have to move slowly and carefully.

-This system seems to be difficult at first but the idea can be simplified further. The idea is to make it completetly modular. That does not mean that every single scaffold has to be a solid block.

You could for example, build 4 single tile towers of scaffolding. Connect the 4 with bridges, then fill in the empty space with further bridges. You now have a platform that you can work on supported by 4 legs. The bridges then become scaffolding and can be taken down in any order.

Now if this was say, an engraving job that would be the end of it. If you needed to move stock blocks or something up onto the platform you would need to widen at least one of the legs to 2 tiles. This would allow dwarves to pass objects up onto the platform. If you had enough room and material you could also add that "boxed stairs" thing i mentioned earlier.

This way you would not need to build a solid block, just a hollow frame that allows you to get where you need to.

[Vengeful Donut]

I have a question. If it was implemented, why would I use scaffolding instead of a stack of staircases?

[M K]

On the question of how to make a rewalling outside the mountain act as an indoor area, why not create a new type of designation, "Indoors"?  This can only be set on outdoor locations and if the border of the designation is surrounded by enough walls/doors to make it being indoors logical.  Have this automatically removed should the requirements needed to create it are lost.  Anything physical done, such as placing a bed, prior to this that utilized the designation would remain.  Any assignments could either be removed or have the thoughts of the users affected.  An example being a building destroyed, leaving a bedroom behind.  The dwarf owner would feel negative thoughts about being exposed to the elements, losing their home, etc.

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Vengeful Donut:
<STRONG>I have a question. If it was implemented, why would I use scaffolding instead of a stack of staircases?</STRONG>

Not sure what you mean, the stairway box or a set of actual permanent stairs? If you wanted something permanent scaffolding would not work. But if you just needed to get to an out of reach spot scaffolding would work much better.

If you compare the two, the scaffolding would be much easier to put up and take down.  The advantage the scaffolding has is that the frame, stairs, and bridges all use the same material. You would tell your carpenter to build you a set of "scaffolding poles". One set of poles can be used to make one cube of scaffolding. If you wanted to convert that cube into a staircase, you would add another set of scaffolding poles to that same cube.

If you wanted to make stairs out of stone, you would have to designate each as a seperate job and pick the materials used.

Additionally, once you are done with the scaffold you can tell dwarves to dissasemble the whole thing with ONE order, no matter how big or oddly shaped the scaffold is. When they are finished you are left with a large pile of scaffolding poles which are light and can be stored untill you need them again.

[Pod]

re: Big Elephants.

Why not just make them an E that's 5 times as big? Think about it. It's just a bitmap letter.

eg:  

[Ostsol]

It may be drawn as a bitmap character, but Curses doesn't allow what you are suggesting.  Curses simply provides a framework for building textbased interfaces with fixed-sized fonts.  What you are suggesting could not be done without either extensive modification to Curses itself, or abandoning Curses entirely.

[ September 03, 2007: Message edited by: Ostsol ]

[Fieari]

Yes, but DF doesn't use curses at all.  It used to, but it doesn't now.  No, the problem isn't the display, the problem is pathfinding, which is non-trivial.

[Felix the Cat]

quote:Originally posted by Fieari:
<STRONG>Yes, but DF doesn't use curses at all.  It used to, but it doesn't now.  No, the problem isn't the display, the problem is pathfinding, which is non-trivial.</STRONG>

I don't see why elephants would use pathfinding, as they don't have destinations as far as I can tell.

You're correct that full pathfinding would be somewhat non-trivial, but steering for a multi-tile creature is pretty easy. Since elephants (and other animals) generally don't actually need to find a path to anywhere (except maybe the river to drink?), they don't need a full pathfinding algorithm.

Elephant behavior is (as far as I can tell):
1) Move around randomly in a herd.
2) If dwarves/humans/etc. approach, run away.
3) If dwarves/humans/etc. remain near, become enraged and attack.

1) would require no additional changes. 2) and 3) are presumably based off a simple chase - either move 1 tile away from or 1 tile toward the current position of the offending creature.

Note that multi-tile sentient creatures (demons?) would require pathfinding.

Presumably the larger issue is that the game implicitly assumes that all mobiles are 1x1, and multi-tile mobiles would require some structural changes to the code.

Also note that the game already pathfinds for multi-tile "mobiles" when it determines if the human caravan's wagons can make it to the trade depot.

[Fieari]

It's not impossible, it's just non-trivial, and potentially CPU sucking.  It requires an entirely separate connectivity map.  You also can't simply assume outdoor movement only.  And elephants certainly wouldn't be the only thing needing multiple tiles.  The Balrog, for instance, would need it, as would dragons, both of which DEFINITELY require pathfinding.  "Giving chase" itself requires pathfinding.  Toady has already gone over this with us earlier in the thread.

Remember, non-trivial doesn't mean impossible... it merely means that it will require potentially weeks/months of work to implement.  Toady earlier stated that making Adventure mode and Fortress mode use the same map would be non-trivial.  Look!  We're getting it!  Look!  It's taken half a year so far!

[Tamren]

quote:Originally posted by Felix the Cat:
<STRONG>Also note that the game already pathfinds for multi-tile "mobiles" when it determines if the human caravan's wagons can make it to the trade depot.</STRONG>

It does, but it is VERY limited. The intelligence in the system is pretty much set at "is there a path? okay USE IT!". It can not adapt in any way. If you make a road wider than 3 tiles, in this case 6 tiles. The wagons are not smart enough to direct fast wagons around slower ones. If something gets in front of a wagon, such as a mule, it will just stop, then move, then stop. This will happen over and over again. Toady said himself that the system needs work, but its not really a high priority rigth now.

At the very least we should be able to SET the path and perhaps even give it a direction. That way you could direct wagons to take a specific "loop" into and out of your fortress. If the path is interrupted they will walk to the path up until that point and wait for you to connect it. That way if the path had a drawbridge in it, and the bridge was up, the traders would come in and ask for passage instead of skipping your fortress as "unreachable".

[ September 03, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[Turgid Bolk]

Toady said the wagons can now adapt. He gave the example of sticking statues in their way, and they succesfully navigated around the statues. No more exploding wagons!

Does anyone have examples of an ascii game that has multi-tile creatures? It seems it would look pretty weird, but it would help to have a border around it to tell exactly where the "edges" are (as someone else suggested). Also, I wonder if it would be possible to have smaller than one tile images...for instance, have vermin not take up a whole tile, or show cabinets up against a wall. This gets in to the "just how wide is a tile, anyway?" argument, but we'll have to figure that out to decide how many tiles an elephant occupies, anyway.

[Mud]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>

It does, but it is VERY limited. The intelligence in the system is pretty much set at "is there a path? okay USE IT!".</STRONG>

I think there's already been at least some improvement on this; just look at the dev log:

08/02/2007: Allowed wagons to adapt their paths to changing obstacles, fixed problem with wood trading, fixed trading crash bug

If I recall correctly, the comment said something about wagons being able to get around statues built in their path. Don't quote me on that one though.