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[qoonpooka]

Roman

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is an excellent Urist McLongSinceDead rendition of humans.  The Humans are laboring.  The image relates to the building of some big damn wall or something a long-ass time ago.

[Dakk]

Thats a column, not a wall silly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Geb]

You already can engrave built walls, but it does require exploiting a bug. Unfortunately the bug is too clunky to really use well.

How do you do this? The wiki doesn't say as far as I can see, neither do any forum thread I can find.

[Hyndis]

Have a natural stone floor. Designate it to be engraved. Do not let any engravers actually engrave it through.

From the Z level below carve ramps to remove that floor. Note that the designation still remains.

Construct walls where the ramps are. This will then produce a floor of the same material as the walls are made out of on the Z level above.

Your engravers will now happily engrave those platinum block floors.

[Cardinal]

Thats a column, not a wall silly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's on a column, but the image itself relates to building the walls of that fortress they're all so proud of in the next shot.  I wonder where Trajan's conquest of Arabia shows up?  Probably just one panel of Romans walking in and pushing Nabataeans off a table like Garfield did to Odie.  That's about how difficult it was...

[Buddybud]

Infact if you start looking you'll have a harder time finding roman or greek engravings from solid rock then you would of engraved blocks. The famous examples of "Petra" or "The Catacombs" , being carved out of solid stone, are rare examples rather than the norm, but still awesome.

[Shaostoul]

I believe the big issue is of the handling of stone. There is not true definitive way stone works. You take a stone, you build a wall or a floor. You'd think building a floor out of the same amount of stone (when it uses only 1 tile) would result in a wall. Even more so if you turn it into a block(s). You'd end up with less stone and being able to make a wall or floor out of the same amount of stone is just confusing. Do they discard the extra stone? Where's the extra stone come from to have a complete wall that impedes movement? Is a single large block created or are a bunch of bricks created? Is a rough stone wall just a bunch of stones set together to seem as a wall, more or less a pile of stones.

I guess the questions comes to... Should walls require multiple 'stones' to build or should floors be handled like paved roads?

Then you have to take into consideration wood, but that's a different discussion.

Also, we'd then need to see a solid implement of size. A size 5 creature will fit just fine in the tunnel it just dug, but when a size 50 dragon comes along and fits in the same tile, I see issues. IMO Ogres and trolls(depending on mood for trolls) and various other creatures should be too big to fit in a dwarven tunnel.

I figure a lot of it is just entirely too obscure to make sense, however it being obscure as it allows it to be a lot more "simple"

[Buddybud]

I would have to concur with you shaostoul. This is obviously a implementation issue and also an issue of the level of detail toady wants to focus on. Just in this category alone you could go further and say "what about mortar" or "the romans used wooden dowels or poured lead to bind the stones together" or argue that "the stones should be roughly finished first assembled then finally engraved" or "engraved first and then assembled"  Also i could so far as to argue that much of the white marble we see in the greek and  roman architecture was in fact embellished with colored dyes and paints and even inlaid with precious metals and ivory....etc....etc. All of which are valid depending on what time frame and what locations you look at and also what civilization did the work.

  Its like making chicken soup ....easy enough but every cook will give you a slightly different recipe with each one claiming they are right. ;P

Of course it would be cool if you could do all that, but i am realistic about this and know that we'll be lucky if even one of our suggestions or ideas get implemented. Every change toady makes or adds can easily have a cascading effect that causes more coding changes then most of us realize.

Still one can hope and dream, but again i think shaostoul is right on the money!

[Hyndis]

Consider gameplay reasons too.

You don't need every single tiny detail in the game. You can abstract away a lot of things if it improves gameplay.

There is a balance between being enjoyable detailed and being overburdeningly so. I'm sure you've all seen those games that are death by micromanagement. DF should not be one of those games.


With engraving, likely the easiest way to do it would be to just allow walls to be engraved. You can already carve a fortification from a constructed wall, and that uses the exact same process as engraving. With carving a fortification you chisel all the way through the stone. With engraving its just the surface that is detailed.

If an engraved constructed wall is removed the engraving is destroyed and the block just turns back into an ordinary stone block to be hauled away back to your stockpile. If the engraving happens to be a masterwork, your engraver will be unhappy about it, but thats just the price to pay.

[Shurhaian]

I do think it would make sense to have constructions be built more efficiently than they are now. As it is, the system is a placeholder; it simply makes no sense for a bridge, and all that goes into making it able to raise or retract, is built with FAR less material than a simple floor of the same size. Even the load-bearing aspect doesn't make up for that gap.

So floors could stand to be built in much the same manner as bridges. They need a bit more material to bear weight, but a bit less because they don't need to account for retraction, so it might pan out. Walls could use more stone, but might or might not be 1:1.

The real problem, of course, is what to do when unconstructing the things. When they're built 1:1, it's simple - you get the resource back. If they're not, things become much more complicated.

[kawaiidesunekochan]

I would have to concur with you shaostoul. This is obviously a implementation issue and also an issue of the level of detail toady wants to focus on. Just in this category alone you could go further and say "what about mortar" or "the romans used wooden dowels or poured lead to bind the stones together" or argue that "the stones should be roughly finished first assembled then finally engraved" or "engraved first and then assembled"  Also i could so far as to argue that much of the white marble we see in the greek and  roman architecture was in fact embellished with colored dyes and paints and even inlaid with precious metals and ivory....etc....etc. All of which are valid depending on what time frame and what locations you look at and also what civilization did the work.

  Its like making chicken soup ....easy enough but every cook will give you a slightly different recipe with each one claiming they are right. ;P

Of course it would be cool if you could do all that, but i am realistic about this and know that we'll be lucky if even one of our suggestions or ideas get implemented. Every change toady makes or adds can easily have a cascading effect that causes more coding changes then most of us realize.

Still one can hope and dream, but again i think shaostoul is right on the money!

The recipe should just be the same as with other walls. I think most of us don't really care how it's done,we just want to engrave our walls,who cares about realism. It should just be a simple as possible--all rock walls can be engraved,whether they're built or not.

[Delynx]

Hm, I've found this 2 years old thread, and I just tried in my fortress: it is still not possible to engrave constructed walls ( (neither from stone, nor from stone blocks)

So, is this feature still in "much wanted" list? What's the situation?

[ravaught]

See http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=93624.msg2632566#msg2632566 on Scaling Suggestions.

See Also: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=93624.msg2632566#msg2632566

[NW_Kohaku]

Your "see also" is the exact same link that you copy-pasted twice.  Did you forget to hit CTRL-C on a second thread?

[ravaught]

Oops:

Thread: Stone Blocks and Other Oddities: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=93624.msg2632566#msg2632566
Thread: Scaling Questions/Suggestions: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=93809.msg2640066#msg2640066


Sorry about that