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[Zantan]

I saw some discussions about custom workshops when they were announced in the dev log (most notably here: http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=42146.0).  I recently started thinking about them again, and was hoping to create a list of useful custom workshops that could add to the game.  Right now I'm not thinking about magic or other tricky/game changing things, but workshops which would add to the realism that is so often the focus of DF.  I'll present a couple thoughts here (not all strictly mine), and It would be great if others gave their ideas and commented on mine.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• New foods.  Bread and cakes could be created in a bakery using flour, plants could be ground, dried, and made into meal, etc.  Looking at the current food raws, this doesn't look like it would be easy, but you could easily define each food as a seedless, biomeless plant produced at the appropriate workshop. 
• Lumber Mills.  It would make sense to require logs to be processed into boards before being used for furniture and construction.  I'm not sure how realistic this one is, since a lot of the uses of logs are probably hard coded, but if it were possible, it could be fun.
• Paper making.  I'm sure this would be popular, even if they are useless.  Of course, it would be great to record history by decorating books with paper, but it would be great to have libraries, especially if books were stackable.
• Altars.  There are many ways to do altars.  Of course, there can be sacrificial altars, where corpses or valuable items can be offered to Armok, but also small shrines where dwarves can go for the prayer labor without offering anyting.  Players could accept devotion as its own reward (I'm sure this would be enough for many people) or you could give a prayer a small chance of creating some kind of "item" such as strength or mercy or piety.  These abstract rewards could be set to weigh more than any dwarf can carry, so they stay at the altar, or you could use them as components for making holy items.  Maybe several different progressively more important religious buildings could be made, with each requiring heavy use to produce the necessary components for the next.  For instance, praying in a shrine eventually creates mercy, which can be used to bless booze and sanctify an altar.  Sacrificing at an altar eventually creates strength, which can be used to make a holy weapon, necessary to build a temple, where prayers and sacrifices can create glory, which adds to your fortress wealth.  You could also add memory editing to altars, and be able to set up all kinds of events associated with different types/amounts of sacrifices, but that is for another modder...
• Furs.  Certain animals should sometimes make furs instead of skins, which can be made into valuable clothes or rugs.  Other custom clothing materials or clothing styles could be made, but I'm not sure how interested people would be in that.
• Taxidermy.  I don't know that corpses can be used in custom workshops, but if they can, you should be able to stuff them and place them like statues.
• Pottery.  Sedimentary clays could be added to the raws as rocks, which could be used to make ceramics.
• Tapestries and Rugs.  It would make sense to make these at the loom, but I don't think we can add tasks to the old buildings.  It would be as hard to hang one of these on a wall as it is to put a window in a wall, but they would be nice to have around, and it would make more sense to sew your history onto one of these than a bag or a rope.
• Stone management.  This one may be kind of cheap, but you could set up a reaction that would take a large number of stones (10, 20, 50?) of the same type to make a giant block.  It would be cool if this block could be a trap component, or used in construction, but its primary purpose would be stone management.  The block could be later disassembled to recover 90% of the stones.  For the sake of realism, they could be made heavy enough that only the strongest dwarves can move them.
• (Magma) Fountains.  I don't think you can require water access, so only magma fountains for now.  Requires magma and power, and can add a lot of value to a room.
• Automaton Workshop.  Lots of people want to be able to make automatons out of mechanisms.  It makes sense for dwarves to want to as well, so why not give them the opportunity to waste countless mechanisms in their futile attempts to make a creature that the game does not support.
• Fossils.  Large fossils could be defined as extremely rare sedimentary stones, which can be cleaned to produced fossil statues, or fossil bones to be used in crafts.  Conglomerate and shale stones could be processed to make fossil shells.
• Repair Shops.  Workshops which take an item and some extra raw materials to remake the item.  This could be used to repair damaged items or possibly improve low quality items.  It is not clear how easy it will be to implement.  Reactions may not be able to require a specific quality, and dwarves may be unwilling to give up their worn out clothes.
• Recycling Workshops.  Turn narrow and large clothing into cloth.  Make logs out of a dozen wood crafts.  Break stone furniture down into stone.

And here are some raws for custom workshops supplied by Toady:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

    When designing custom workshops, can you define the length of time required to complete a job?  How specific can you be when defining the materials required for building the shop?  Could you give us example raws for custom workshops?

No job durations yet.  The building materials are the same as in reactions.  Here's the soap maker's shop I'm currently using:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Code: [Select]
building_custom

[OBJECT:BUILDING]

[BUILDING_WORKSHOP:SOAP_MAKER]
[NAME:Soap Maker's Workshop]
[NAME_COLOR:7:0:1]
[DIM:3:3]
[WORK_LOCATION:2:2]
[BUILD_LABOR:SOAP_MAKER]
[BUILD_KEY:CUSTOM_SHIFT_S]
[BLOCK:1:0:0:0]
[BLOCK:2:0:0:0]
[BLOCK:3:0:0:0]
[TILE:0:1:' ':' ':150]
[TILE:0:2:' ':' ':'/']
[TILE:0:3:'-':' ':' ']
[COLOR:0:1:0:0:0:0:0:0:6:0:0]
[COLOR:0:2:0:0:0:0:0:0:6:0:0]
[COLOR:0:3:6:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0]
[TILE:1:1:' ':' ':'=']
[TILE:1:2:'-':' ':8]
[TILE:1:3:' ':' ':150]
[COLOR:1:1:0:0:0:0:0:0:6:0:0]
[COLOR:1:2:6:0:0:0:0:0:6:0:0]
[COLOR:1:3:0:0:0:0:0:0:6:0:0]
[TILE:2:1:'-':' ':8]
[TILE:2:2:' ':' ':8]
[TILE:2:3:' ':150:' ']
[COLOR:2:1:6:0:0:0:0:0:6:0:0]
[COLOR:2:2:0:0:0:0:0:0:6:0:0]
[COLOR:2:3:0:0:0:6:0:0:0:0:0]
[TILE:3:1:150:' ':8]
[TILE:3:2:' ':' ':8]
[TILE:3:3:' ':240:' ']
[COLOR:3:1:6:0:0:0:0:0:6:7:0]
[COLOR:3:2:0:0:0:0:0:0:6:7:0]
[COLOR:3:3:0:0:0:7:0:1:0:0:0]
[BUILD_ITEM:1:BUCKET:NONE:NONE:NONE][EMPTY][CAN_USE_ARTIFACT]
[BUILD_ITEM:1:NONE:NONE:NONE:NONE][BUILDMAT][WORTHLESS_STONE_ONLY][CAN_USE_ARTIFACT]

in the reaction file

[REACTION:MAKE_SOAP]
[NAME:make soap]
[BUILDING:SOAP_MAKER:CUSTOM_S]
[REAGENT:A:1:BARREL:NONE:NONE:NONE][CONTAINS_LYE]
[REAGENT:B:1:GLOB:NONE:NONE:NONE][REACTION_CLASS:RENDERED_FAT][UNROTTEN]
[HAS_MATERIAL_REACTION_PRODUCT:SOAP_MAT]
[PRODUCT:100:1:GLOB:NONE:GET_MATERIAL_FROM_REAGENT:B:SOAP_MAT]
[SKILL:SOAP_MAKING]

I don't remember if I tested this specific reaction or not.

[xdarkcodex]

I like the magma fountain Idea.The Automaton Workshop idea is pretty good too.
How about a fire workshop.You can build like gas containers, flamethrowers, fire hoops ect.

[rubberduck]

I love my magma forges. So I had an idea to create magma extraction facilities which would provide magma bins. These could be used to build magma forges (or another workshop with same capabilities) in a place where there is no magma.

Might even be able to by magma bins from the merchants on maps without magma.

[Zantan]

I love my magma forges. So I had an idea to create magma extraction facilities which would provide magma bins.

That would be useful, though I'm not sure whether that would be very realistic or if the game would support that.  If custom workshops can produce magma, you could make a magma powered workshop that turns several stones and a magma safe box into a magma container, which can be used at another workshop to make some magma.  It would be tough to make caravans offer them in trade...maybe it could be a seedless noncookable plant that only grows on mountains?

[Lofn]

A furrier (I think that's the term) that takes skins and produces furs, which are functionally equivalent to leather.

A scrap-sorting shop for my scavenger mod, and an assembly line for putting together stuff out of the sorted garbage.

[Zantan]

A scrap-sorting shop for my scavenger mod, and an assembly line for putting together stuff out of the sorted garbage.

Could you elaborate on what the custom workshop would do?

[sunshaker]

Pottery.  Sedimentary clays could be added to the raws as rocks, which could be used to make ceramics.

They already exist in the raws. Kaolinite (primary ingredient), Microcline (fledspar), Orthoclase (feldspar), Claystone (kind of sorta, but it is a horrible hack) and any of the Quartz stones/gems (including glass). You just need the reactions.

The Reactions go something like this Kaolinite + Fledspar + Quartz + Options
- Earthenware: Claystone (really it should use clay but you can't collect it like sand (yet) so this is the next best thing).
- Stoneware: Claystone (see above) and Fuel (Earthenware is not fired anywhere near the temperatures of Stoneware (it can be made in large fires), so Stoneware uses fuel and Earthenware doesn't, at least that is my take on it).
- Porcelain: omits Claystone and uses fuel.
- Bone Porcelain: Omits Claystone, adds Bone (or bone ash, but that is another reaction and another material you have to add) and uses fuel.

The reactions make stone that does not spawn and has different values (2, 3, 4 and 5) and is used as normal stone (earthenware blocks make brick walls, so it is not unreasonable to think that some noble, government or religion would build a structure out of bone porcelain if they had nothing else to do with the money).

That all said a specific workshop to handle those reactions would be awesome.

[sunshaker]

I want a Blast Furnace and a Refinery.

Blast Furnace: Reactions for making large batches of metals (10+ bars at a time) and for casting low/no quality metal objects out of various metals (sure we can make 100 cast iron boat anchors, a large bronze bell, and a steel anvil).
     The current smelter reactions for making metal are somewhat odd (from a real world metal working point of view) as they are a mixture of bloomery production, molten metal techniques, metals that were not issolated until after 1400 (Toady One's cut off date), metals that melt above the temperature of magma (iron, nickel) and in some cases the reactions go backwards (iron/steel I'm looking at you).

Refinery: There were other methods of extraction that were used in the real world which have been ignored in the game (gold extraction via mercury or cyanide, placer deposit (river/sand/gravel) extraction of heavy metals (iron/gold/silver/copper)) which are not implausible at DF tech levels.

[Arrkhal]

It would make sense to make these at the loom, but I don't think we can add tasks to the old buildings.

I thought the old buildings were going to be converted to the new system?

Taxidermy.  I don't know that corpses can be used in custom workshops, but if they can, you should be able to stuff them and place them like statues.

Taxidermy doesn't work like most people think.  The only part of the animal that's used is the skin, everything else is pitched, or cooked and eaten.  The skin is tanned like a fur, but kept as intact as possible with all the limbs and everything (while furs and leather are stretched flat), then glued onto... basically a "statue" of the animal, called a form.  Forms are made of plastic these days and you can even buy them pre-fab in different sizes, but in the olden days, they were hand-carved from wood, IIRC.

Anyway, I'd like to see a "shear animal" task at the farmer's workshop, and I could mod in sheep and cashmere goats.  Sheep have many uses! 

Hm.  Even if the vermin-only milking problem is still in the next version, it should hopefully be possible to mod in angora bunnies.  Angora "wool" comes from widdle bunny wabbits.

[Greendogo]

I like the idea of a library and books.  The descriptions of the books could be generated too.
Example:
"The tome of The Eighth Elephant of a Image of a Cheese menaces with spikes of mandrill bone.  The tome relates to the mortal wounding of The Eighth Elephant of a Image of a Cheese by Urist McCheese in the Early Winter of 3 during the umpteenth attempted siege of Boatmurdered by elephants.  A sketch in the borders of several pages depict Urist McCheese in a gallant pose above The Elephant of a Image of a Cheese.  The Elephant of a Image of a Cheese is burning."

[Duke 2.0]

 The only workshop I care for is the eventual realization of a Star Jelly Dispenser.

[Zared]

Pottery.  Sedimentary clays could be added to the raws as rocks, which could be used to make ceramics.

I've thought about that one myself.  A previous poster has already outlined the basics.  I do like the idea of bone porcelain, makes elves useful for more than just practice bolts.

Now optimally, you'd be able to set dwarves to gather clay, just like they gather sand.  However, I don't think that's coming in the next version.  Meanwhile, you can just turn all clays into sand as well, and tell users of your mod that it's an honour system, if your map only has sand, only make glass.  If it only has clay, only make ceramics.

Next:  I'd like to have the pottery workshop just make unfired pottery, which is then hauled to the kiln for firing.  This depends on some wishful thinking on my part though.  Namely, that we can specify in the new reactions, to preserve the quality of one of the reagents in the final product.  That is, masterwork unfired clay mug + kiln = masterwork clay mug.  Also, it relies on being able to add new reactions to the kiln, which is something I'm not sure will be in there.

Having the kiln right in the shop isn't really bad, per se, I just feel bad for the existing kiln.  Being used for nothing but pearl ash must be a boring life

I thought the old buildings were going to be converted to the new system?

No, Toady has said that most, maybe even all, of the old buildings will remain hard coded.  At least, as of 09/18/2009 that's what he said.  Still unknown is if we can add custom reactions to the hard-coded buildings, or if it will remain limited to just the smelter, plus the new custom workshops.  I'm eager to find out, though   

[Sean Mirrsen]

I had this idea for a CraftsNightmare workshop series. Basically, 1x1 lil' shops, each with specific reactions to make specific item parts, and then one master workshop to make the item out of its parts. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like reactions are going to be able to handle item qualities...

[Zantan]

I thought the old buildings were going to be converted to the new system?

From the dev log on 9/18/2009:

Most or all of the old buildings will have to remain hard-coded for the time being.

Anyway, I'd like to see a "shear animal" task at the farmer's workshop, and I could mod in sheep and cashmere goats.  Sheep have many uses! 

That is a good idea.  I don't know how we would restrict shearing to once per year, though.

[Lofn]

A scrap-sorting shop for my scavenger mod, and an assembly line for putting together stuff out of the sorted garbage.

Could you elaborate on what the custom workshop would do?

Currently, my mod contains two new stone layers - 'landfill' and 'debris'.  I have a smelter set up with 'sort landrill' and 'sort debris' reactions that take a unit of the relevant stone and produce items like trinkets for trade, scrap metal, and weapon/armour components.  I'm going to replace this with a custom workshop - maybe a 1x2 one - called a sorting bench for the first step, and an 'assembly line' or such that has reactions to take the components and produce usable gear from them.