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[AlienChickenPie]

I've been looking for a program that would let me use voxels to sketch out fortress elements before implementing them ingame.
So far, the only seemingly suitable program I managed to find was Everygraph Voxel3D, and the free version is not particularly generous in its features.
Do you know a program that does this reasonably well and has a save feature?

[Stravitch]

You could use the digger program in Dtil it has all the symbols and all that already in it and you can set the columns and rows in it before you begin.  An added bonus is you can flip and rotate it and save it for use in any of your forts with the click of a button!

[AlienChickenPie]

I'm looking for a 3D program, which is why I said I was looking for voxel capabilities.
I could sketch each layer by hand and then draw an isometric view, or use a full-fledged 3D program to stack cube primitives on top of each other, but that would be very inconvenient.
What I'm looking for is a program that would let me specify voxels in space, and then render them in 3D.

[Techhead]

There is always Lego Digital Designer.

[Danarca]

Lego-based Dwarf Fortress?
"I roll a D20, and get... 14! I get to rip your arm off!!"
"Aww, alright, what's the rules on determing the position it lands?"
"Dunno, Let me get Rulebook #22 out.."

[The Doctor]

Wait, what?

...Do you even know what Lego is?

[Optimizt]

Wait, what?

...Do you even know what Lego is?

I think he means building a real-life fort in Lego and simulating a game of DF.

[Techhead]

I saying that you can use individual Lego blocks to simulate voxels, and you can do it digitally with the Lego Digital Designer program.

[The Doctor]

I was talking about Danarca.

Sounded like he thought we were talking about DnD

[Dasleah]

I still don't understand why Voxels are needed to accomplish this. Why not just get Paint.Net (or some other program appropriate to your platform) - just turn the grid on, use layers, and just use the pencil brush. Easy. I don't see what benefits using voxels would be other than 'omg u gais check out this awesome nu buzzword i found how kewl does it maek me look f reels'.

[Kardos]

What we should really do is get someone high up in the Auto-Cad industry to make us a 5000 dollar 3-D DF tool.  All proceeds go to Toady, of course.

[Ampersand]

Why not use the Cube2 engine? Everything is constructed out of cubes and ramps. With a little modification, it could be possible to make it interpret hight maps exported from Dwarf Fortress so that you'd have your own map to work with.

[Spiral42]

Why not use the Cube2 engine? Everything is constructed out of cubes and ramps. With a little modification, it could be possible to make it interpret hight maps exported from Dwarf Fortress so that you'd have your own map to work with.

In fact, the good folk over at plexus are importing DF maps straight into Cube2... Check it out here: http://blog.plubble.com/

I recently tried modelling a concept out of digital lego using the old, free alpha of Blockland but it was a slow, tedious and unwieldy process. Also hard to undo things.
I recall that Sphr has a tileset up on the wiki for google sketchup, though I wasn't too happy with that program either.

This kind of 3D planning is something I am also looking for, though I agree with Dasleah - Voxels aren't going to be any more useful than anything else...

[Vicomt]

Speaking as an AutoCAD developer for the past 15 or so years.... It can be done, it just depends on how much you want done and how.

I've considered doing it using various methods (blocks, AutoLISP, ObjectARX, and most recently OMF) but in the end it all comes down to a LOT of work. If I had the spare time from my normal development, family, friends, and of course, playing DF, I might attempt it, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Of course, if I had some nice tidy, well documented c++ code that I could use to pull the map from DF, it'd make things a whole lot easier, but most people seem to want to use simpler languages that have about as much use in AutoCAD as a cat-tallow magmaguard. (and yeah, I have very little experience in moving code from one language to another)

[Danarca]

I was talking about Danarca.

Sounded like he thought we were talking about DnD

Wait, what?

...Do you even know what Lego is?

I think he means building a real-life fort in Lego and simulating a game of DF.

Real-life Lego coupled with DnD-style rules for everything for max awesomeness.