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[Davion]

Sounds like it might be better to lean more towards abstracting ship/boats so there isn't atrocious distortion and snaky ships.

It could be handled similar to how Adventure Mode handles travel right now, in that you could navigate across an overland map as a symbol representing your ship/boat/fleet. When confronted by other ships it could zoom down to a more detailed view of the surrounding terrain with the ships being represented by a graphic that is linked to how large or small they are; the size of the ship could be determined when the ship is first built and designated as a ship (maybe by how many tiles it takes up?)

The ships "inventory" screen could look something like Solifuge's mockup, or more or less like Fortress Mode where you can navigate around the ship, check supplies, observe visible damage and causalities, etc.

The battle could be handled as if the ship were its own creature/entity with other creatures inside of it, so the ship could have different parts that could be damaged or destroyed over time and depending on where you have your crew stationed it might also injure or kill them.

Seems like a good way of going about sailing and still being able to check out the details of your ship and other ships without having to deal with 45 degree angles and all the ugliness that is associated with it; could be used for both Adventure and Dwarf Mode as well.

[Impaler[WrG]]

Solifuge:  Nice longboat mock up, that's very much the direction I'd like to see ships going, realistic in scale and composed of the same structures we already know and use.

BTW: your 45 degree rotation example is a bit flawed, your rotating and saving after each rotation and ANY image is progressively DESTROYED by doing that.  Any intelligent implementation is going to use only one 90 degree and one 45 degree perspective and use flipping on one or both axis to produce the other six views.  The image at about 1:00 is as bad as the distortion should ever be.

[Solifuge]

The progressive distortion on the picture was mostly to demonstrate a principle, but if you consider item and unit locations, progressive distortions would indeed accumulate with each rotation. The boat itself would only have it's original shape, and a slightly distorted shape.

Also, Boats and other vehicles are entirely feasible if they stick to 4 movement Directions... at minimum 4 facing directions, with diagonal movement on a heading looking more like Projectile movement, where it would trace a jagged line over tiles to represent it's course.



While on the subject, I wonder how you'd handle boat sinking, and damage? Buoyancy is a tricky beast.

[Footkerchief]

While on the subject, I wonder how you'd handle boat sinking, and damage? Buoyancy is a tricky beast.

Buoyancy and sinking seem pretty straightforward as long as you only allow the boat to rotate in the XY plane (no tilting up or down, etc.).  Damage would presumably use some kind of tile-by-tile structural integrity measurement.  Taking on water would require that the boat, when moving, also moves any fluids sloshing around inside -- just like all its cargo and passengers, so that shouldn't be an issue.

[Craftling]

ships wouldnt be able to turn straight away anyways. they would have to do a wide arc to turn.

[eerr]

Why are we trying so hard to build a system of blocks based on ships?

We should make ships, then, if necessary!, cast them into blocks by measuring wether or not the block is within the ship.
honestly some minimally better graphics would work much better though.

Collisions would be handled via sides of the boat and nearby squares, turning would be very slow, and cause less than 1 block  of movement at both ends.

[Techhead]

If you want to start out simple, I can't see TOO many problems with using rafts as riverboats. They can be a simple 3x3, and scalable to any size square that would fit down a river. Their lower speed would mean that turning or other maneuvering issues are easily ignored. Also, rafts (almost) never capsize, so buoyancy could be reduced down to simple maximum weight.

I'm not saying rafts should be the only ships in DF, but they would be a good start.

[Elliott_Thinas]

When the physics engine improves we can just design our own boats and stock them ourselves. The two things we would need would be a bouyancy engine which decides whether the boat floats or sinks, and a physics engine that allows things like sails, or coal powered engines, or oars, to move the bouyant construction across the water.

[LegoLord]

I am designing a "boat".  It will be made of obsidian.

If we can design our own ships when real ships are in, then we might be able to really do that.

[Rowanas]

Actually, I've recently played in a LARP where Dwarves are primarily seabased people (shortness helps them not fall over the side, natural piratey disposition) and it works. Not including ships for use in fortress mode would be the sort of limitation that I thought toady (Armok be with him) did not want.

[DanielLC]

The main problem with non-90 degree rotations is that it messes with the relative positions of tiles. For example, you can walk through a wall after it's been rotated 45 degrees. This problem can be fixed by making it so whenever you're dealing with stuff that's just on the boat, it treats it like it's facing forward. That way, adjacency is preserved because, sense both objects are on the boat, the game acts like it's not even rotated. The only problems are interactions between the boat and the outside world and displaying the boat.

The only really perfect way to display the boat would be just to rotate the sprites that make it up. If you do that, you could make interactions between the boat and outside world calculate distances. For example, two points are adjacent if they are within root(2)/2+1 units of each other (half way between what's currently the furthest adjacent and closest non-adjacent), and are treated as in the same tile if they are within half a unit of each other.

There is also the problem of displaced water. Destroying the water would quickly drain whatever the ship's moving through. One way would be to have the displaced tiles move through the water like it was pressurized. If you use the 90 degree only method, the displaced water would normally move into the space that was just opened up. If you use my method, it would have problems as the volume of of the ship isn't conserved. By the way, whatever is used should also be used for floodgates.

[Granite26]

There is also the problem of displaced water. Destroying the water would quickly drain whatever the ship's moving through. One way would be to have the displaced tiles move through the water like it was pressurized.

Any wierdness with this could be hidden in the wake (as long as conservation is maintained)

[LordDemon]

I know this topic is a bit older, but since this came up elsewhere, I though I'd give my two cents, mostly in form of question:

I think the turn inaccuracies mostly matter on smaller scale, is that correct?

Toady mentioned measurements 16x5 with a 3 decks on second page, and who knows how large ships we would want to build. So would it be feasible, that different size moving constructs (ships, siege towers, etc. things to come) would have different amount of view angles?

Say you have a small, 3x5 ship.
(as noted below)
XXXX
XXXXX
XXXX

This would manage well with the 4 views. A larger ship, to avoid huge offsets, could have 8 views.
(like this)
XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXx
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx
XXXXXXXXXXXXXx
XXXXXXXXXXXX

The 45 degree turns cause some differences, but since the ship is bigger, the total picture looks better.  The distortions are easier to manage, because of larger size will small inaccuracies to disappear. Huge constructs could even have 16 or 32 views. It would need a way to refer to how many views construct has, and using the right one. If players are allowed to design own ships, maybe some work on the turn designs, but I think it could be done.

Of course, the inside square countwould have to match, but would this be feasible?

[darkflagrance]

The progressive distortion on the picture was mostly to demonstrate a principle, but if you consider item and unit locations, progressive distortions would indeed accumulate with each rotation. The boat itself would only have it's original shape, and a slightly distorted shape.

Also, Boats and other vehicles are entirely feasible if they stick to 4 movement Directions... at minimum 4 facing directions, with diagonal movement on a heading looking more like Projectile movement, where it would trace a jagged line over tiles to represent it's course.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While on the subject, I wonder how you'd handle boat sinking, and damage? Buoyancy is a tricky beast.

Yes, I'm all in favor of Solifuge's ideas on naval movement: jagged movement for diagonals while maintaining the same shape of the ship.

Also, for those who disagree that boats belong in Dwarf Fortress, bear in mind that eventually you'll be able to play more than dwarves in the game.

[Imofexios]

You can do 2x3 pier like trade depot?
You can do 1x1  unit which acts like boat which stays only on water doing fishing more productivilely than fisherdwarf and returns the materials in pier once full?

But really it would be nice to have some sort of boat in.