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[CobaltKobold]

Yes, that.

[Shoku]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I highly doubt we'll see rope ladders at all. That's a big project that affects a lot of areas all at once, especially pathfinding and the definition of a construction. If he didn't find time for formations or other venom features then I can't imagine he'd tackle something so big at this stage in the game.

Indeed, I'm very much hoping by Friday he'll be able to say he's done with all the major content pushes to the game, and can finally begin cleaning up.

Mmmmm... maybe your right, this might be bigger than expected, but I guess if there is one thing that comes to mind regarding the pathfinder, is asking how long did it take Toady to work on the path finder that made up the 3D world of DF (yeah I'm lazy and I could just look it up probably, but I'm sort of busy anyways..)

I mean we know this item was one of of Toady's possibly not going to be included for this version list. But so were some other things, heck even the booze for Soldier thing was on that list, but you what, it got done.

Still by the way Toady said this...

I'm hoping to be through with all the life-related checks for the underground tomorrow, which would leave the map-related stuff and that rope ladder issue.

It makes me think he's going to do this...

Regardless of that though wouldn't a rope ladder be treated in the same light to how stairs work?

I mean we can make ropes already that we tie our dogs to warn us of thieves and predators.
So couldn't we just make ladders act like a set of Up/down stairs with the exception of the top and bottom and call it a ladder?

Course there are some questions that I would be curious about... if we really our going to make a ladder work.

Main things like:

Would the rope ladder be constructed via (B)uilding or would it be done with workshops?

Would we be able to make a ladder vary in length much like how bridges and stuff our made?

Will our dwarves be able to pull the ladders up and drop them down in the location depending on if they need access to the area? And would that be done manually or automated like a switch, or both?

If we have a dwarf climbing a ladder and the other dwarf pulls it up will he be able to pull it up with him on it? And if so, would there be a weight limitation to how much a Dwarf can lift up at the same time?

Will the ladders be flamable, and can they be cut to prevent a vicious underground monsters from attempting to climb your ladder?

What method would the ladder be nailed or tied to the wall to prevent it from falling?

Would it be limited to only allow Dwarves and other humanoid creatures to use the ladder (last thing I'd want to see is a donkey or some other four legged animal that has no fingers of thumbs climbing it, but I doubt he's gotten that far with that.)

I think that covers all my bases of the rope ladder That does sound like alot, though I keep thinking he has plans to cover most of the basics on this.

All of that focuses largely on an attempt to model rope ladders realistically.  For the time being, I'd be satisfied with simply being able to construct up or up/down stairs from above, where a down or up/down stair already exists.  To make it slightly fancier, make a separate type of stairs from the current type, make them only buildable using rope (or chain, cloth?), and make them only buildable either on the same level or downward, in contrast to the current stairs being buildable on the same level or upward.  Operate deconstruction in a similar reversed fashion.

You'd get none of the fancier effects, but you'd be able to extend downward, the main feature being sought after currently.  And if you had to build it with rope, then it would make it at least a little harder; you wouldn't be able to simply pick up a nearby stone and make it.  So it wouldn't feel like a complete exploit.

That's kind of the trouble with constructions though. You've got to be standing on the tile you want to place them or be just under the floor-layer, meaning practically on the tile. Basically all of those kinds of things work like that so writing an exception to do a hardcoded behavior backwards might be so much trouble that he might as well do a more complete rope ladder.

And maybe Toady wouldn't want to settle for donkeys on the rope ladder.

How much power do you plan on giving modders over buildings?
Will we eventually be able to have buildings which require power to function, or which spawn creatures (particularly members of the player's civilization/race) as well as items?
Will we eventually be able to have buildings which allow teleportation, whether between two buildings or simply set to a waypoint? Will we be able to have migrations require and be spawned on a building?
Will any of this be possible with some kind of script?
Will it be possible to change the siege alert text (A vile force of darkness has arrived!) to something else?
Will we eventually be able to make vehicles, with customizable tiles and sizes and be able to set man/dwarfpower requirements on certain functions of those vehicles (such as a tank firing its gun, or a driller drilling) and attach skills to those positions, and have those skills affect performance?
Will this be possible with some kind of script?
When can we expect any of this, if ever?

With so many questions that are even phrased in a "I can tell it's not coming this release" manner you should probably go through a different channel.

The dev_now makes me wonder: what is the blocker on having adventure-mode dwarves be able to do everything a fortress-mode dwarf can do?  Is it just a matter of adding some UI for it (i.e. a matter of time), or some deeper question?

use (b)uilding, (c)rafts, (r)ock, (m)ug.
bcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrm
bcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrmbcrm
You are now a dabbling typist.
Your wrist is broken.

Maybe an alternative "realtime mode" for Adventure Mode?

This would be nice for all kinds of things, like just standing in a town and watching people walk around.

Doesn't holding down 5 work for that?

Though I suppose you might as well sneak around for skillups of that sort.

I'm not really discussing them-as in, this isn't a suggestion that wireframes be limplemented-just mentioning something that your post made me think of, as concerns the realities and limitations of the current game to portray it in an effective way.

So, no crazy graphics flamewar, please.

Did someone say graphics flamewar?

Everyone go get your shovels and molasses!

"Visualize" command

Though I'm not going to carry the banner for ascii only, the whole point of using it is symbolism.  You then use the best graphics card & processor known to man to visualize it...your brain & imagination.

I love the visualizers that people have worked on.  But I don't want my game limited by either their technical know-how or their own vision on what something looks like.  My forts look horrifyingly horrible in those things...but in my mind they are fantastic, epic, a paragon of dwarfdom.

Looks like there's no avoiding this topic. Oh well.

After taking a few new drawing classes I've come to realize that my mind actually doesn't visualize in very high quality. You can also see it by directing yourself while dreaming- details like writing just aren't there for me and the textures are so blurred even things like buttons on a remote are only ok if I don't look.
As such I've had a hard time not lucid dreaming since I started noticing it.

My brain's got enough memory to hold a pretty screenshot easily enough but it's easy to make a single frame look great in photoshop but rendering something like that takes a lot more power.

But I guess if you're willing to not ever look for details that aren't the first things you notice it doesn't ever come up. Actually it's probably really hard for most people to look for things they wouldn't usually look for first in dreams and mental images.

So, no crazy graphics flamewar, please.

It was a foregone conclusion.  You should know that there are certain topics that can never just be mentioned in passing.

That's everyone else. There's something special about me that makes it ok to do this stuff and if I forget about any problems this caused it's like they didn't happen so clearly there's no issue.

Turning "graphics" into a dirty word, on a Forum about computer gaming, achieves what, exactly?

You've totally misidentified the problem. This thread is about the upcoming release and only sort of the next few arcs.

The topic is development, and the "future of the Fortress". So discussing possible directions in which that future might develope is spot-on.

You're really going to pull that? I threw enough of a fit back at the how castes work thing but even the reason for that (which I was mistaken about) would have been somewhere within reason. This is blatant equivocation.

Until/unless the thread actually starts to derail, and I'm not noticing that it is, I think we're all still safely in the "mature conversation shared amongst adults" zone, where we can still share our thoughts and ideas in a free and democratic manner.

Oh you can already see it happening. We've all seen it enough that we don't need several pages to see a topic that people are going to have to add their two cents to (and that saps the will to keep from adding our own but it's just a drip in the pond at that point.)

There's a lot of things like that in this world.

It's my understanding that censorship-either self, or imposed-has been found an unreliable and imperfect solution to these problems. 

People can either choose to fight over graphics, or choose not to fight over them. I'm hoping for the sake of sparing hurt feelings and avoiding disrupting this thread, that we can all find it within our better selves not to go down that road.

Your waxing philosophical only infuriates me.
Shoku is throwing a tantum!

Really though there's a half decent chance of not derailing the thread if only because so many people recognize footkercheif's pointreminder.

I count atleast 5 people besides myself that wanted to discuss it, Outcast Orange. And every one of them did so peacefully, without recrimination.

Noone, infact, said it was a bad idea. Only that talking about it was taboo.

I wish I knew in what way I was being cruel, or in what way I was personally attacking Footkerchief. I'm not. He is reliable and knowledgeable. That doesn't mean I recognise his right to judicate arbitrary censorship.

First you don't see the thread derailing and now you see five people chiming in about it...

Apologies if this has been answered. Tricky to search this monster of a thread, and on that note I agree with whoever suggested how to change it up over an easier-to-search-and-navigate subforum or whatever following this release.

How will the walkway-entrances to the underground work next version? Will adventurers just see a 1x1 wide hole in the middle of nowhere, or will there be more to signify an access tunnel there? Will there be random holes shooting down light if a cavern's roof is near the surface? On that note, will caverns appear at various depths beneath the surface rather than just 'far below'?

We've got some world gen control over it with the default being like 5 layers of stone before most likely hitting a cavern, and then if I understand correctly about another five layers cavern, five layers, and deep cavern. Number of layers between and number of cavern layers can be configured.

[SirHoneyBadger]

people are going to have to add their two cents

[Martin]

That's kind of the trouble with constructions though. You've got to be standing on the tile you want to place them or be just under the floor-layer, meaning practically on the tile. Basically all of those kinds of things work like that so writing an exception to do a hardcoded behavior backwards might be so much trouble that he might as well do a more complete rope ladder.

Actually, that's not true. Bridges and hatch covers are built without standing on the tile. Walls, fortifications, statues, pillars, all are built without standing on the tile.

Anything that blocks movement or permits movement is built next to the tile. Yeah, rope ladders are an exception, but there are already quite a few exceptions in the game, including building staircases over open space from an adjacent ledge.

[CobaltKobold]

That's only permitted if it's an upstair, mind.

[Martin]

Well, yeah, but the point is that you don't stand on the tile when you construct it, so it's less of an exception than Shoku is making it out to be.

I mean, let's be serious here. Rope ladders affect pathing, and introduce some new construction rules, but sooner or later those things will get added in. How much work has Toady already done in this release related to pathing? Burrows. The military stuff. I think there's some line-of-sight in fortress mode now. Sure rope ladders are a relatively minor feature for the amount of work its going to take, but developers tend to have these list of things they know they need to tackle sooner or later and when a good excuse comes along to tackle them, they sometimes jump at it. Once it's done, there's all kinds of related things that go easier. Who knows what he might have in mind.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'm not quite grasping (no pun intended) what these exceptions for rope ladders are, precisely. We can build stairs out of rocks already, so why not the same from rope, make them hardcoded passable/impassable for certain creature types, and then give them a down/up function?

It seems like it would require some coding, but I'm not really understanding what's going on here that isn't already somewhere in the game, in some form.

Ofcourse, ToadyOne is the only one who knows for sure, but has anything out of the relative ordinary been mentioned?

[CobaltKobold]

I'm not quite grasping (no pun intended) what these exceptions for rope ladders are, precisely. We can build stairs out of rocks already, so why not the same from rope, make them hardcoded passable/impassable for certain creature types, and then give them a down/up function?

It seems like it would require some coding, but I'm not really understanding what's going on here that isn't already somewhere in the game, in some form.

Ofcourse, ToadyOne is the only one who knows for sure, but has anything out of the relative ordinary been mentioned?

Yes. Presently, all creatures use the same pathfinding code. Exceptions like this (which already exist in the "tightly closed, but not locked" doors) can cause the pathfinding code to try madly to find ways to the other side when (an animal) thinks it can pass, but cannot.

He doesn't want to have that, nor the unrealistic (rope ladders just duplicating stairs, being down-buildable). So, we must wait and see how he copes.

[SirHoneyBadger]

So by that logic, this may/will go hand in hand with improvements to the way the game handles doors, or maybe even an overall AI improvement?

[CobaltKobold]

Perhaps, if he decides to tackle it that way. The list item is "consider" after all. I expect he won't do huge changes now, though.

[Warlord255]

On the subject of ladders, it is already possible to make one-way entrances/exits with the ramp bug, and they usually aren't a problem... so long as there's a way back out elsewhere.

[CobaltKobold]

Generally if you're trying to exclude something from one entrance you try to exclude it from all of them.

[Osmosis Jones]

Unless one entrance has a detour by way of the spike pit.

[Deon]

I am ok with ropes being used by creatures without "grasp", at least for some time. Another solution would be to allow up-down stairways to be constructed under other stairs.

[Nivim]

In regards to underground plant growth, is it limited by layers or mud availability now?