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Author Topic: Ideas for much-needed utilities  (Read 1892 times)

ac31

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Ideas for much-needed utilities
« on: June 09, 2009, 05:49:34 am »

Mine: A tool that looks at every non creature object and moves it to a free space on any stockpile capable of holding it. i KNOW from my own experience in memory reading and manipulation that this would be a NIGHTMARE to code but still, no more stone all over the place cluttering things up.

anyone else got suggestions they would like to voice?
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ein

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #1 on: June 09, 2009, 06:12:46 am »

Auto-Military

You plug in certain professions, and when an immigrant arrives with that profession, it's automatically swapped to something else. You could have it swapped for something other than military, but it's the only name I could think of.
No more manually reviewing the immigrants! Straight to the military with the soapmakers! Masons from the lyemakers! Wood burner? Now you're a wood burner, furnace operator, and blacksmith.

Greiger

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #2 on: June 09, 2009, 09:20:42 am »

I can't think of a name for it.

Anyway you use it once when you first create a fort and it notes down wild animal and fish populations in the local area.   Use it again after a few years once all the wildlife and fish have been hunted and fished to extinction and it will repopulate the area with the population numbers from when the fort was first started.

EDIT for explanation: It kinda puts a hitch in the plans for a carnivore fortress when all the meat sources in the area are completely exausted before year 2.  Sure you can set up a breeding program, but immigrant dwarves will outpace the breeding animals' ability to feed the fortress unless you intentionally scare immigrants away.  Trade for food works sorta ok, but it barely keeps up even when you request all the meat availible every year, and then if even one caravan gets waylaid yer screwed.
« Last Edit: June 09, 2009, 09:48:48 am by Greiger »
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ac31

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #3 on: June 09, 2009, 11:40:44 pm »

any other takers?

i have another one too, a tool to replace the old ore.exe and granite.exe tools to replace tiles with s sqaure of a specific ore/stone or granite respectively
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Just wondering if it would be possible (however unwise) to make demons a civilisation
I don't see any reason they couldn't be. What would happen if they breached the HFS?
Horrors! Annoying relatives in the deep!

Mechanoid

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #4 on: June 10, 2009, 11:05:06 pm »

A utility that detects designations and auto-executes them, possibly with the prefered skill level set in the utility. In combination with reveal and a remade [ore/granite.exe] the perfect fort could basically be made from day 1.

Imagine, starting a game in a perfect area, saving, revealing/crashing and explosing the features after loading again to activate them, saving/loading... reveal it again, and then *poof* perfect fortress is formed after you finish the designations and hit the 'make it happen' button.

And having no goddamn loose stones anywhere cluttering the place up ;D
« Last Edit: June 10, 2009, 11:06:53 pm by Mechanoid »
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Rochndil

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #5 on: June 11, 2009, 02:51:24 pm »

Actually, the loose stone issue could be fixed with a fairly simple program change.

Currently it automatically looks for the NEWEST stones to throw on the stockpile. Simply inverting that so that the program looks for the OLDEST stones instead will quickly get the loose stone out of your main living areas, while leaving the debris in your mineshafts where, generally, you could care less about it.

Rochndil, who thinks that would be a pretty simple fix...
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Zantan

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #6 on: June 12, 2009, 12:03:39 pm »

Actually, the loose stone issue could be fixed with a fairly simple program change.

Currently it automatically looks for the NEWEST stones to throw on the stockpile. Simply inverting that so that the program looks for the OLDEST stones instead will quickly get the loose stone out of your main living areas, while leaving the debris in your mineshafts where, generally, you could care less about it.

Rochndil, who thinks that would be a pretty simple fix...

This mod could remove clutter and reduce FPS drain from thousands of stones:

Make a utility that coud phase out large stockpiles of rocks.  You could tell it to remove all rocks marked as dump from the map, and it would save the location of all the dumped rocks, so you could later tell it to replace all the rocks it removed.  This would allow you to keep stores of 10,000s of rocks in reserve for a megaproject, while easing the strain on your computer.  I don't know a whole lot about modding, but I think this is doable, since we already have utilities which remove things and utilities which create things.


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varkarrus

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #7 on: June 12, 2009, 02:32:26 pm »

I don't know... anything... about memory editing, but what about a utility that spawns seiges and ambushes, and attracts megabeasts?
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blah28722

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2009, 06:06:18 pm »

A utility that allows the passing of time in the DF world. Mostly for Adventure mode, where you can see the results of yours actions.

Utility that spawns creatures. Creating more megabeasts and bringing the world back into the Age of Myths would be neat.

Utility that reveals everything in legends mode.

And a utility (mod?) that would allow worldgen to create more civilizations, have them survive, make them hate each other, and allow for extraordinarily powerful figures (For example, a Warrior-King who's decked in >Steel armor and has super stats).


Yeah. I like adventure mode.
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Grimlocke

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #9 on: June 13, 2009, 02:25:34 pm »

A utility that prevents repreated messages from displaying, would very much appreciate that.

Saves a lot of irritation, especialy with messages like 'need empty bucket'. Mainly usefull so that the other job cancelations are still noticed, like Urist McWhatever canceling his drinking from the carpfilled river.

Could be merged with the existing utility that disables digging designation cancelation.

Also, a utility that allows me to designate construction in midair. Dwarfs would not build these of course, but it would safe a lot of time, especialy when makeing the designations idiot-proof (as in, no stravation from Urist McMason who got stuck on a 1x1 square cause he build the wall from the wrong side).

Theres plenty more UI related idea for utilities I guess. Like... allow grouped labour selection, disable a labour temporarily for all dwarfs, item-type forbidding/dump (forbid/dump all the Gneiss, for example), well I could go on for a long time.

None of these would open up many new possibilities, none of them are essential for the game to be fun, but it sure as hell would make me happy ;D It makes the game far more playable, less irritating at some moments, and would help newer players a lot.
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aklyatne

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #10 on: July 04, 2009, 10:31:40 am »

How about a tool that designates all saplings as restricted traffic?  I'd love one of those.  I spent ~20 minutes yesterday clicking on every single damned sapling on my map (with a touchpad, mind you) because immigrants kept killing all of my trees and I ran out of wood.
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Fedor

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #11 on: July 04, 2009, 12:28:50 pm »

Auto-Military

You plug in certain professions, and when an immigrant arrives with that profession, it's automatically swapped to something else. You could have it swapped for something other than military, but it's the only name I could think of.
No more manually reviewing the immigrants! Straight to the military with the soapmakers! Masons from the lyemakers! Wood burner? Now you're a wood burner, furnace operator, and blacksmith.
Don't you want to check your immigrants for preferences?  A preference for steel, ballista parts, or crossbows, or even for marble, mechanisms, giant cave spider silk, beds, or tower-caps can turn an ordinary immigrant into a great choice to skill up.
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Goran

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #12 on: July 04, 2009, 12:51:09 pm »

Naturalize... a script that would turn constructions into their natural stone counterparts. I believe this should be possible in dtil as a combo of reveal/hide and tile editor scripts
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0x517A5D

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #13 on: July 04, 2009, 02:15:02 pm »

How about a tool that designates all saplings as restricted traffic?  I'd love one of those.  I spent ~20 minutes yesterday clicking on every single damned sapling on my map (with a touchpad, mind you) because immigrants kept killing all of my trees and I ran out of wood.
If you're willing to resort to a tool, you're probably willing to edit your raw files.

Edit creature_standard.txt, adding the token [GRASSTRAMPLE:0] to the dwarf entry.

Consider doing the same thing to all of the entries in the creature_domestic.txt file.

Doing this should not require a world regen.
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aklyatne

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Re: Ideas for much-needed utilities
« Reply #14 on: July 06, 2009, 12:35:25 am »

If you're willing to resort to a tool, you're probably willing to edit your raw files.

No actually  8)  I've got a twisted sense of game morality.
I wouldn't mind using a tool to make saplings restricted, but I don't want to make dwarves essentially weightless with satin shoes.  I want them to trample things like useless plants, but not the saplings.  And besides, I like imagining dwarves tip-toeing through a field, dodging around saplings and generally being gentle.  It's very un-dwarflike, which adds to the appeal.
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