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[Explorer]

This is part suggestion, part question. I decided to post it in here.

When you zoom into a map square from the travel map, it seems that the generated region doesn't really fit the map square. Any rivers that appeared on the map aren't there, etc. Is this something that just hasn't been implemented correctly, or is it intentional? I think it would be awesome if the zoomed in region had more detail to it in the way of things like that... and maybe you could come across farms, cabins, animal dens, etc to flesh the wilderness out more.

And another question: Are there ever going to be roads between towns? And if so, will they show up in the zoomed in area, with people travelling them?

And now the suggestion: You should be able to move between zoomed in areas without having to go to the zoomed out map. This would be really cool for role playing purposes while travelling.

[Toady One]

This is all planned.  Rivers simply aren't generated locally now (partially because of the next paragraph needing to be implemented first).  We want to have roads (the dwarf mode merchant road implies them), but they aren't in yet.  Smaller features like farm houses depending on spreading the towns out a bit, which also relies on the next paragraph.

There are some issues with travel that doesn't include zooming.  We're planning on doing this, but it can't be "seamless" in the sense that you just keep walking in a single map centered on your character -- if the game were more simple it would be easier to do that (Armok had this), but since there are jobs where people have to fetch things respecting the terrain, it has to have separate map areas that are self-contained units or else many improbable things will happen... it's a tough decision in the end, since it's ideal to not have any separation, but the job/schedule AI would become a nightmare and ultimately have many errors from the abstraction.  It isn't completely decided, but we were thinking of having each world square correspond to 7x7 play areas.  You could use the travel map as usual, but 7x7 is the amount you'd need to make the 3 hour travel times on the world make sense, since it takes something like 25 minutes to walk across a play area in game time.  Another issue with having seamless transitions is that the dwarf mode play area is 480x480, while the human town mode play area is 144x144(x31).  However, if some of the 7x7 areas are larger or smaller, it isn't really a big deal as long as they are separated.  Now, on the other hand, having separate play areas means that things like pursuit need to be handled.  There are a few issues with this, but nothing all that serious...  things like being pursued by archers and then moving to the next area for example, and then waiting for them on the edge so you can engage them in melee when they appear.  There are a few ways around this, such as letting them shoot you off-screen (which is fairly harsh) or having you enter the new screen not at the edge, but a bit in from the edge with your pursuers already on the edge.

This has implications for human town mode.  Since you'd be operating in a smaller x-y area (144x144x31), right now we're thinking of letting you move between areas, at the price of some abstraction when you do it.  It's abusable if can do it too often though, since you could extricate your humans from certain situations just by flipping to another area, so it might be seasonal/monthly or something, or not.  It's a bit earlier to make these decisions.  Ideally, you'd just be able to play your town on the whole world square's 1008x1008x31 area, but that eats too much memory (even if a lot of the blank Z info isn't counted) and the path finding would have too much lag potential.

[Explorer]

I'm wondering how towns will work in adventure mode. After the bustling town arc, it doesn't seem that towns are quite done evolving into massive real seeming areas. The towns are still pretty small, there is only ever a road running through the center... What are the future plans for increasing city realism past the bustling town arc. And when do you intend to detail map squares as mentioned in your above post? Just curious  

[Toady One]

You can read the analyses of ThreeToe's stories to get more of a sense of how we want towns to be, and the consolidated development page has some notes.  There are a lot of missing elements that are touched upon throughout there.

It's important to introduce some sprawl once the 7x7s go in (if that's how it's done), and especially some outlying farmland.  Roads are part of this as well, at least where they make sense.  Large capitals could have several sections from with the 7x7 grid that are totally built upon.  There should be a lot of possibilities once it's established.

The map change could come as soon as the next future of the fortress, since it's important to do it sooner rather than later.  This would fit in with a survivalist or adventure craft skills push, though it's not decided exactly which way we'll go during the next cycle.