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[Romeofalling]

It would be downright awesome if there was some way to export abandoned fortresses, and then add them to other worlds.

At first, I thought this would be an extremely difficult idea to integrate, since there'd have to be some kind of import system which matched up biomes, soil layers, river endpoints, etc, to the point where it would be downright impossible. Plus, I have no idea how games are actually saved, so the conversion process is equally beyond my comprehension.

But, actually, we don't need to make perfect matches in order to port an abandoned settlement into a square. Soil layers for an abandoned city are completely irrelevant -- as are any resources which were used while that city was still alive. The only important factor is the elevations of the outside tile edges.

Since the cities would be added during world generation, you could find near matches and then adjust the tiles surrounding them to link up rivers and relative elevations.  This becomes even easier if it's possible to rotate the fortress layouts. After that, I think the only thing left to do would be to redefine the engravings to match the history of the new world being generated.

With a large enough pool of contributed cities, the game could even generate entire civilizations whose cities are designed by a particular player.

It seems like much of this functionality already exists in the Export Local Image command.

What do you think? What other steps would need to be added? Have i missed something important?

[Draco18s]

Missed something important:

Yes!  The fact that a fortress's terrain will never line up in any spot that isn't that worldseed.

[Foa]

I think you have thought of something awesome!

What about the z difference?
I say, let it be buried, and uses custom seeds to decide what the forts' caverns' geography.

Heh, resurrecting the Great Fortress of Armok which is hidden under the mountain, and is actually a giant chasm filled with many demons, and is filled and surrounded with so much adamantine, it becomes unreal!

[Romeofalling]

The terrain elements and z-levels concerned me for a while, which is why I've only just posted it. But as I said, we already have a rough system in place with the Export Local Image function to base this suggestion off of. The system could selectively export only the levels specified by the player (or even just the ones with building elements). So instead of the entire elevation range, it would only need to export the ones crucial to the layout. Then we'd only need to line up the relative z-level range of the fortress itself to the map.

And since this would be done during world generation, the terrain elements could be forced to match. It would probably be relatively easy to adjust the actual soil/stone types to match areas. Terrain elements which connect off to the edges could then be readjusted during another pass. This already seems to happen to some extent during world gen when it builds rivers and then makes sure they all flow to the ocean, so the new pass would be able to reuse a lot of the code already there, just with different criteria.

Local terrain elements don't need to be adjusted at all.

Draco18s, I was stuck on the same point for a while, but only because I was thinking in terms of importing fortresses after world generation. If this was to happen during world gen, I think the concern you raise wouldn't be difficult to handle. Assuming, that is, that I've correctly understand your objection.

I read somewhere that one of Toady One's plans for the future is to try to make towns look more realistic. This would certainly be a neat way to sidestep the on-the-fly town building functions and get much richer content.

[Mattex]

Great idea, may i expand/tangent this?

instead of trying to match up tiles, when exporting the fortress map. make it separate from the world map entirely (not sure if it is now already)

Then, have an option to "Combine Abandoned fortresses" combining 2 or more exported fortresses, placing them on the map somewhere, along with its high mountains or moving rivers.

The world gen could read the features you have, (river, magma, mountain, chasm, etc) then generate a world around those fortresses.
Reading+creating from fortress features *shouldn't* be too hard, since it seems to do so already (Mountain peaks are surrounded by mountains)

Obviously it would need a Maximum amount you can have per world size.

[Granite26]

Missed something important:

Yes!  The fact that a fortress's terrain will never line up in any spot that isn't that worldseed.

Funny, I'm currently playing a world filled with burnt out cities designed by one player...

[Draco18s]

Missed something important:

Yes!  The fact that a fortress's terrain will never line up in any spot that isn't that worldseed.

Funny, I'm currently playing a world filled with burnt out cities designed by one player...

But those cities were created and destroyed in that world, weren't they?
If so, then your point doesn't counter mine.

[Granite26]

I know...

[EverybodylovesTJ]

Granite26 was making the point that we already play in worlds with character made areas.

Overall, I really like this idea. Say I wanted to play in a world where Draco18s Dwarves became their own civ, and built fortresses like him. This would be a great workaround for all of those people that just clamor for multiplayer for whatever reason they do.

[Granite26]

What is the benefit of player built forts over existing dwarf cities?

[winner]

they have more varied ideas.

[Lazer Bomb]

Meh, it sounds fun, but wouldn't work out in practice. Roughly half of my forts are small pits before I say "Well, I don't see any zombies, I'm going somewhere else."

[Granite26]

From a technical standpoint, I could see it working easily.  You don't have to line the tunnels up with anything, it just has to all be underground.  Features would be a problem, but it wouldn't be too hard to tweak the feature design code to hard set the latch on points for area when the zone is generated (since I doubt that the exact layer by layer shape of every magma tube is set at world gen).

Meh, it sounds fun, but wouldn't work out in practice. Roughly half of my forts are small pits before I say "Well, I don't see any zombies, I'm going somewhere else."

Would be just as well, there should be a lot of 'in-progress' cities out there.

I just don't see the merit in the idea as a whole...

[scribbler]

Maybe you could get up a community game with everyone running a fort on the same map and beg Toady for a way to combine them back into one file? Not really sure how useful... I mean if might have some offline multiplayer capability taking a turn and sending a file with a caravan... Well, it's a way to start.

[i are not good with compu]

Maybe you could get up a community game with everyone running a fort on the same map and beg Toady for a way to combine them back into one file? Not really sure how useful... I mean if might have some offline multiplayer capability taking a turn and sending a file with a caravan... Well, it's a way to start.

+1

There's already a community game going to put adventure mode-centric fortresses on one map, but obviously it has to take a while, what with it being necessary for every player to take up his turn after the last has finished his fort. 

This would also make for some interesting hodge-podge worlds with dozens of saves from different people stuffed into them.

Personally I think if something like this ever happens it will be a major enrichment of the playing experience.