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[nodule]

What might dwarf fortress look like if multiple z-levels were viewable at once?  I made a demo to find out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVhsIGGg3QE

Lower levels are displayed by darkening.  It is quite easy to tell what level you are on.  I also added a little fade effect when transitioning from level to level.

Let me know what you think.  It isn't quite as flashy as some of the other viz projects going on, but I think it has more potential of ever seeing the light of day

Edit: screenshot for those with youtube blocked: http://imgur.com/ieU2V.png

[Duke 2.0]

 Indeed, very nice looking. I like how it's just subtle little fades and smooth scrolling as opposed to per-tile scrolling. Then again, unless the recent renderer modifications have been improved anything per-pixel could lag to high hell.

 I suppose one would have to ask the guy in charge of the UI optimizations to see if he knows what can be done.

[Footkerchief]

That is AWESOME.  We actually had a Suggestions thread about this type of thing (which you might have seen, not sure) and some people made mockups, but none of them were this good.

Blurring also came up in that thread as a method of implying depth -- if your demo program could apply a Gaussian blur instead of (or in addition to) the darkening effect, that would be cool for comparative purposes.

[nodule]

I looked at the UI optimization code to see if I could implement it there, but I don't think the hooks into DF are rich enough (it is much lower-level).  I could be wrong though: that code is difficult to grok.

I'll see about adding a blur, but I don't think that it would work without darkening.  I also tried playing around with scaling the lower levels down and parallax-scrolling them, but it doesn't quite worth the way I hoped

[Neonivek]

If it works without harming the game then I support it.

[Eduren]

I think this would be really cool if it was somehow integrated into DFMA.

[martinuzz]

Looks awesome!

[Mike Mayday]

As far as multi-level display in ASCII goes, this is the best method available I could possibly think of.

[Myroc]

I approve of this.

[darkflagrance]

I kinda hope someone will post screen shots, because where I am Youtube is blocked. Along with Imageshack.

[RedWick]

That's just beautiful to see and it would make planning things in 3-dimensions so much easier to accomplish.

[MMad]

*Very* impressive mock-up, since it looks like it would improve on the existing game with zero drawbacks.

[Mohreb el Yasim]

indeed it looks really nice, how would be the look of a fortress with this? could you see only trougth open space or some shade effects for floor traversing view?

[PMantix]

Looks fantastic.

This would be great for battles on rough terrain..   it is always so difficult to see what is going on when there are 3+ z levels with goblins and dwarves cast about.

I would love to see it implemented.

[Armok]

Looks nice.