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[Shurikane]

Something that came to mind because I just got back into Lords of The Realm.  There's little chance of something like that actually being done, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to talk about it.  I'm feeling a little imaginative at the moment.

-Large-scale dwarf civilization management: rather than making a custom fortress, you manage a larger-scaled map, either the whole world or some portion of it, with this map divided into nations or counties.  Creating a dwarven fortress increases the size of your territory, and for each fort, you order certain workshops to be built and a management style (favor food, favor weapons, etc.) but the actual design of the fort and the mood of its inhabitants is unimportant.  From those forts, you can raise armies and attempt to conquer surrounding civilizations, or send a group of settlers to found a new fort to extend your territory.  Your nation as a whole can also work on a large-scale project that could possibly have an effect on the rest of the world and implement some 'losing is fun'.  For instance, a doomsday machine that triggers based on certain conditions.  BONUS: Revert to fortress or adventure mode after the cataclysm and/or problems your great creation has caused.

-Replay mode: The evolution of your fortress is stored in a file.  Of course, generating a per-frame replay is unrealistic even for today's hard drives - however, it could be possible to store a snapshot of the fort at larger intervals.  Every month, for instance - a 10 year fort would thus contain 120 snapshots.  My guess is that individual snapshots don't need to take the surrounding world into account; only the playing area, and can thus be viewed independent of the world you've generated.  BONUS: Allow modification of the replay files by introducing points of interest, much like the DF map archive.  BONUS: Allow the player to take a snapshot at any point in time, to save a particular moment of interest during the game.

-Skip-and-remain: If a workshop job cannot be completed, skip it, and attempt it again after the other jobs have been cleared out and/or a certain amount of time has passed.  Useful for workshops that only run out of resources on occasion and for jobs that you want permanent in a "whenever the resources are available" manner.

-Space dwarves: I haven't played much with the world-gen, so perhaps this can be done already - but hey, why not?  There is no gravity, and the world is composed of asteroids and mini-planets (really, really, mini-planets.  Super Mario Galaxy.)  Mine resources and attempt to build a dwarven space station.  Some mini-planets contain monsters, magma or other dangers within.  Since there is no gravity and thus no notion of "flow", you must find a way to transport or pump some of your more dangerous resources - especially magma.

Discuss.

[Flok Speargrabber]

Not SMG small- If you do, knowing dwarves, if you come back two years later, all you'll have is an asteroid field. :| Not from lava or explosions, but from undermining.

[Tubi2b]

For the replay mode, you might want to look into Spore. They store millions of 3d creatures made by the players as extremely small .png files.

Just a suggestion; I know very little about file types except how to open all of them and tell what kinds do what. So I might be a bit off base here.

[Draco18s]

Just a suggestion; I know very little about file types except how to open all of them and tell what kinds do what. So I might be a bit off base here.

Spore critters are extremely well compressed.  They get 8 kb after compression, and store a heck of a lot of data (the creature itself is an XML file of points and part numbers, which is how those stay small) and there's some data about the pixels of the picture themselves.  It hasn't been completely deciphered yet.

In this context you're looking at making a bytelist of every unit and just going "thing 12!  thing 34!  thing 109!"  Which may or may not work.

[Shurikane]

We'd have to decide on what to keep and what to let go of to generate the snapshots.  Some things like wall engravings could be simplified to whether the wall is engraved or not - we don't need to know the detail of every single wall piece.  Likewise, we can skip stuff no one looks at, like clothing, stocks, etc - although there could be an option to sset if the player wants to actually show off something in particular ("look!  I collected a thousand boulders!")

[Tormy]

-Large-scale dwarf civilization management: rather than making a custom fortress, you manage a larger-scaled map, either the whole world or some portion of it, with this map divided into nations or counties.  Creating a dwarven fortress increases the size of your territory, and for each fort, you order certain workshops to be built and a management style (favor food, favor weapons, etc.) but the actual design of the fort and the mood of its inhabitants is unimportant.  From those forts, you can raise armies and attempt to conquer surrounding civilizations, or send a group of settlers to found a new fort to extend your territory.  Your nation as a whole can also work on a large-scale project that could possibly have an effect on the rest of the world and implement some 'losing is fun'.  For instance, a doomsday machine that triggers based on certain conditions.  BONUS: Revert to fortress or adventure mode after the cataclysm and/or problems your great creation has caused.

Yeah this will be in thankfully!

Read these:

Core26, OVERLAND ARMIES ATTACKS, (Future): The invasions by various creatures should no longer generate soldiers, but should use overland armies instead. There should be some AI limits in place to stop early dwarven outposts from being overwhelmed (at least as a default). Requires Core25 and Core45.

Core27, ARMIES OF DWARVES, (Future): You should be able to send patrols (and, as you get more dwarves, armies) out over the world map. They could attack smaller nearby threats, such as a kobold cave, or let you know about incoming invasions. Requires Core26.

Core28, CONTROL OF TERRITORY AND EXTERNAL LOCATIONS, (Future): As your fortress expands into a barony, county and duchy, these words should attain some meaning with regards to the surrounding lands. Additional outposts/villages/work camps might be founded under your control, but out of the playable view, providing local trade and a further population pool for warfare and other endeavors. The scope is undecided, but this might include typical mountainside outposts, dwarf/human/mixed villages nearby in other biomes, or deeper sites that you found in tunnels that you carve via the next core item. Related to Core29 and Bloat172.

Core29, EXTERNAL CONSTRUCTIONS, (Future): World map roads, bridges, walls and tunnels shouldn't just be products of world generation. You should be able to dispatch dwarves and materials to accomplish these tasks (though the amount of material used in a typical world generation road would virtually prohibit doing this as it currently stands, so something has to change). Requires Core28.
Core30, KINGDOM, (Future): If you manage to get the monarch of the dwarves to arrive, you should obtain at least indirect control over the entire corresponding dwarven civilization. This includes the movement of all dwarven armies on the map and the ability to make the most important diplomatic decisions. Requires Core28.

Core35, DWARF RAIDS, (Future): If you send one of your patrols to attack a site, and it is small enough, you should be able to control the units individually, as in adventure mode. If your group is large, then you could either control one squad as a party, and have the others on AI, or you could let the whole thing run real-time as in dwarf mode. Requires Core27.

Core38, SITE RESOURCES, (Future): The objects at a site need to be tracked in an abstract form so that the world can use them without loading up the site files. The different profession holders working at a town in world-gen and then during play should be able to produce and use resources based on these stockpiles and local map propertioes. Any changes could be applied to existing site files retroactively when they are loaded. Stores should restock their inventories. The objects need to be separated based on the entity that owns them, since several entities can potentially operate at one site.

Core45, CIVILIZATIONS AT WAR, (Future): Civilizations (for example, goblins or expansionist humans) should be able to declare war on each other and raise armies. They can send messengers to outlying towns or gather soldiers as they march from town to town toward their destinations. Requires Core44.

Core46, ARMY BATTLES, (Future): Hostile armies that meet each other should be able to fight and take losses. Armies should be able to attack towns, take captive historical figures, and switch towns to new allegiances over time. Does not include protracted sieges, tactics or strategy -- just the basics. An adventurer at the site of an army battle can observe it. Requires Core45.

Core62, FURTHER DIPLOMACY, (Future): Diplomacy in dwarf mode could afford a lot of changes. Aside from trade agreements that are more interesting, fun to uphold and related to the state of the world, all sorts of relationships could be established with both neighboring civilizations and the parent civilization. Though we'll leave quite a bit of work for later versions, the system should be satisfying for version 1 as it merges with the caravan arc, wars, tribute and succession conflicts described in other v1 dev items.

Core63, SUCCESSION, ASSOCIATED CONFLICTS AND SCHISMS, (Future): First of all, succession for positions needs to occur in play, so that dead liaisons are replaced, as well as dead monarchs. Then the process needs to be made messier all around. Wars over succession, schisms over religious disagreements, etc., starting from world gen and coming into regular play. In dwarf mode, you might be involved on one side or the other, directly or indirectly, relying on more involved diplomacy and army code than we currently have, and adventure mode can also gain a lot from such conflicts.

Core81, TRIBUTE, (Future): The tribute relationships established during world generation should be fleshed out there and then brought into regular play with tribute being transported across the map. These could also occur as part of dwarf mode diplomacy and dwarf mode world map play.