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[Jude]

I suppose I haven't given enough thought to this yet. I like the idea of toilets and plumbing, since it makes water necessary in another fashion, but I never considered having actual feces and urine which seem sort of like necessary extensions. I guess I just assumed that dwarves would go dig a little hole in the ground somewhere if you didn't have any bathroom zones designated, and have a bad thought from it.

Really, that would be an allright system. You don't have worry about little piles of turd stinking up your fort, because worst-case scenario they can just dig a hole and cover it up like cats, but things are significantly improved by having water-supplied toilets.

Showers/bathhouses, another favorite idea of mine, link right into this.

[Iden]

All I can really think to say:

How about... NO!

[Muz]

I do like the idea of all of it being covered under "filth".
A dwarf having to go off and remove filth in the communal restrooms after they eat.
A dwarf being charged a copper piece for going to the restrooms.
The rest rooms having a long underground tunnel that leads off into an underground landfill.
A pipe of slowly trickling water to 'flush' filth from the tunnel into the landfill so it doesn't leak miasma from below the toilets.
An adventurer/kobold thief sneaking past the fortifications and traps by crawling through the landfill-restroom pipe.

Uh huh, there's some power goals for ya.

[teefek]

Actually, I really like this whole idea.
I mean, imagine that: Your dwarves are sick of going outside to.. you know. So you decide to build some sewers. The feces the dwarfs produce would then be channelled into a magma or water stream.

But watch out !

The mentioned water stream should of course not be the source of the dwarves drinking water. This could cause diseases and stuff. And you should probably make sure not to dig your sewers into sand because the feces could ooze into the ground water, thus also infecting dwarves drinking it. leaking sewers polluting drinking water are actually a totally medieval problem, thus fitting into the fantasy world of dwarf fortress pretty well.

And additionaly, water and magma should not be the only fluids that could possibly flood your fortress. Imagine the following: You decide to expand the space designated for the nobels' quarters. You receive a message that says that your miner detected damp and warm stone. Without giving it a second thought, you tell your dwarf to go on. And suddenly... all your nobles are standing knee-high in shit !

PLUS: It would be hilarious to make the sewers a part of your defense system. flooding rooms with feces in case of a goblin invasion would be awesome.

Fun and jokes aside, I think that this whole sanitarian and sewers thing would be a cool challenge for the player.

[Draco18s]

Fun and jokes aside, I think that this whole sanitarian and sewers thing would be a cool challenge for the player.

Yes.  If they weren't REQUIRED.  They're fun if you want to do it, but annoying and complex if you don't give a shit.

[Mikademus]

Not my intention to be Draco's "YEAH!" beatbox, only that we tend to think alike on certain topics, but he is fully correct.

You might find it difficult to believe, but there actually are people that finds excrements distasteful. For us, having to deal with shit, or "poop" as many of you lovingly refer to your favourite plaything, would contribute to a decreased gaming experience. Basic game design (or any design) tenet: if you have a non-essential feature that some love and some hate, you remove it.

If you tone it down to "sewage management", then it might be different. But honestly, I don't see the benefit to gameplay experience from having to manually install plumbing, electrical wires, light bulbs, faucets, or whathaveyou, or anything that makes DF even more a chore than a game. Perhaps when the interface has matured enough you can start considering adding further architectural features, but even then, please reconsider before making shit suggestions, 'kay?

[Silverionmox]

You might find it difficult to believe, but there actually are people that finds excrements distasteful.

While vomit trails, frequent outbursts of violence, starvation of the sick by lack of care, chopped off body parts and eternal torture aren't?

Basic game design (or any design) tenet: if you have a non-essential feature that some love and some hate, you remove it.

Striving for inoffensiveness is striving for mediocrity. Let's replace dwarves with care bears, goblins with snugglebunnies and megabeasts with teletubbies.

[dizzyelk]

You might find it difficult to believe, but there actually are people that finds excrements distasteful.

While vomit trails, frequent outbursts of violence, starvation of the sick by lack of care, chopped off body parts and eternal torture aren't?

Don't forget kitten slaughtering based economies.

[Draco18s]

You might find it difficult to believe, but there actually are people that finds excrements distasteful.

While vomit trails, frequent outbursts of violence, starvation of the sick by lack of care, chopped off body parts and eternal torture aren't?

Vomit: Extremely easy to prevent cave adaption, the #1 source of vomit
Violence: Relatively easy to prevent, is either short lived or causes the fortress's downfall (violence against others: well...they're invading me!  Oh wait, cage traps + merchant = profit without violence)
Health Care: It's a BUG, it will be FIXED
Limb removal: lopping off limbs is so much cooler than "critical hit! -4895 hit points!"  If you think otherwise, go play Pokemon where you coerce wild animals to beat the snot out of each other for your own personal gain and amusement and where no one can die, ever (they just get knocked unconscious and are fine after 6 hours of rest (or 5 seconds, depending on if you believe the show's timespan or the game's).
Kitten Slaughtering: How about...YOU DON'T EMBARK WITH CATS?!?  Only a retard could fail to avoid this one.

Here's the big reason you should stop asking for biowaste:
Toady WILL NOT do it and has stated as such several times.

[ps0705]

Hi, don't know if I've posted before, just wanted to leave a small comment. The world's most popular pc game (well one of them at least) was half about managing people's bladders - the sims. Logically, if it's done tastefully, people won't have a (big) problem with it.

[Tormy]

Hi, don't know if I've posted before, just wanted to leave a small comment. The world's most popular pc game (well one of them at least) was half about managing people's bladders - the sims. Logically, if it's done tastefully, people won't have a (big) problem with it.

The Sims...mindless piece of crap, and yet its very popular. I am really wondering what kind of people like games like that...thankfully I don't know a single one personally. 

[Silverionmox]

Don't bother; I'm just making fun of the very selective tastes of some.

Maybe I should make fun of trying to use someone else's authority?

Here are the reasons why some biowaste has a place in the game:
- It would fit with the level of detail which apparently is aimed for.
- It would fit with the level of realism which apparently is aimed for.
- Using night soil and urine is an essential part of the medieval economy, which is explicitly taken as a model for the DF economy.

[teefek]

Limb removal: lopping off limbs is so much cooler than "critical hit! -4895 hit points!"  If you think otherwise, go play Pokemon where you coerce wild animals to beat the snot out of each other for your own personal gain and amusement and where no one can die, ever

And where nobody ever takes a crap ! See what I mean ?
I really don't want to offend anybody, and I don't want to let anybody believe I'm a poo lover.
But I can't really imagine that somebody would find little tiles of poo (that would, if you're not doing essential mistakes, land somewhere in the woods or in sewers) more offensive than (inevitable) violence.
Seriously, I don't think anybody would find it offensive to drown a dozen goblins in magma. Although the scenario does sound really macabre if you think about it further, it's still a part of a game that expresses itself through ASCII, which lets you decide how abstract or how detailed you picture the information about what's happening.

Of course it would be stupid if I judged what people should find disgusting and what not. Everybody has it's personal taste. But I can't really imagine that feces in an ASCII game could be much of a problem, though.

[Idiom]

It can be implemented in a very limited way. As said before: The Sims had it. The Sims was a family and house simulator. Guess what's an essential part of a house? The bathroom.

This is a fortress/colony simulator.
Guess what was a life or death factor for those? Waste management. The more advanced it was, the better the better the public health.

A material simply labeled "waste" would work well enough. You don't even have to specify between liquid and solid really. Fertilizer? Compost piles? It's used in tanning, isn't it? Many of the jobs in DF use waste materials. Ever seen your tanner tan a hide? Know what he probably used? Quite being so queasy.

Why not a [waste_managment:YES/NO] init.txt option, since everyone seems so polarized over this?
It would make the game much more advanced and more difficult for those (like me) that want that. People who just don't like that aspect can leave it out.

Personally I don't think any fortress is complete without working sewers and running water. That, and not without my murder holes armed with piles of ****.

[Guy Montag]

Man, I'm all for realism, and dwarves going number 2 is certainly something I think should be implimented. It replicates the problems and challenges real cities and any other place where masses of living things are gathered.

Should it be a massive part of the game? No. Should Urist proudly announce "Urist cancels Shit in the woods: interupted by Ground Hog x 78" no.

I think it should be abstracted to the extent that dwarves shitting is the equalivant of them dropping a tile of vomit, and should occur fairly infrequently. If each dwarf drops a duece every day like IRL, the Dwarf Fortress will quickly become Shit Fortress. Make it so they only crap 6 times a year or something, and they just taint water, like blood taints water, and it wears off if the water supply is moving.

IRL, a castle's moat was filled with sewage. Did it really stink or anything? Nah, people don't produce enough poop to really turn water that nasty. In towns and cities, people simply shit in buckets and tossed it out the window. Medieval streets were godawful nasty places reeking of Maisma.

So, I think massive, densely populated fortresses should have to deal with the issue of sanitation, even if its abstracted alot.