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[Alanor]

It occured to me lately that it might not be too hard to develop a standard ATK type database which held a DF world....

It would then be possible to store such a DF database on a server somewhere and make it so that you could access those DF worlds remotely... and then download the pertinent information to start a fortress or adventure... which would of course be saved back to the database on a seasonal basis.

This could allow for some very interesting scenarios in terms of playing the same world by many people.  It would up the level of world sharing and historical depth.

This would of course require some more serious thought than I have included here (for instance how does time pass for the world in relationship to 5 different individual locations that are being played simultaneously?)....

Still just a thought at this point..

[Sowelu]

Sadly just not reasonable, especially as the game advances.  If you are just one tile over from the next guy's fortress, it's unreasonable to think that your trading would not impact each other.  When you can send out armies, that's a ton of impact.  And if goblins siege your neighbor and he kills them all off, it should make you safer--with this model, 'seasonal' is just too broadly grained.

[Alanor]

You are correct that it could not be done 'simply'.

My thought was that seasonal would be a good place to start.  You would have some serious limitations on a seasonal update perspective.

I think that this might be worth a little more consideration.  

Doing a constant update would be too intensive... seasonal would only capture large changes.... but it would certainly create someinteresting results.  After all usually there are only 1-2 external-to-zone events that occur to any given zone per season.  At least that is my experience.

The complicated part would be offloading the things like seasonal effects and other-worldly processes to the server rather than the client side of the system.

[Drunken]

This has been suggested before in concept but not in this way, ie. let's do it like this. I don't know much about the database system suggested but I would like to respond to anyone who points out the limitations of any such system.
I think that content sharing in dwarf fortress would be awesome.
Limitations don't change that, if we can't trade, we can't trade. If we can't attack each other, we can't attack each other. If you remove every non-trivial feature of world sharing you would end up with a situation where a dozen or so people all have fortresses on the same world, they cant interact in any way at all. But after a few months you would have a world with lots of abandoned fortresses on it. This would make adventuring more fun as you could explore them all. You could do this with the current system simply by passing on the world save after you abandon but it would take years to build up a large number of fortresses. If they can be created simultaneously you reduce this time immensely. This is the simplest possible case and I don't see any major problems with doing it. Saying it's unrealistic that X, or it would be no fun without X is neither here nor there. Dwarf fortress is about players building on a generated world. Sharing is a way of building faster. The only requirement in the simplest case is that the server would have to register who was building where so you wouldn't build on the same spot as something else. It could even just say the first to upload a fort in that spot gets it and the rest cant be uploaded.

[Digger]

quote:Originally posted by Drunken:
<STRONG>Dwarf fortress is about players building on a generated world. Sharing is a way of building faster. The only requirement in the simplest case is that the server would have to register who was building where so you wouldn't build on the same spot as something else. It could even just say the first to upload a fort in that spot gets it and the rest cant be uploaded.</STRONG>

/sign

[Draco18s]

But what if he plays for 6 seasons in the time I play 2?

[Jamini]

We could, conceivably, have time pass at a relativistically steady rate. For example, one or more seasons pass every two days, or every day, or every six hours. In that time you get an opportunity to play the season(s). If you don't play your fortress in that time period, it goes on without you. Food is farmed and consumed, jobs that are queued up are passed on, and goblins ambush/siege you. (While, of course, you're military and fortress guard automatically rush out to meet them and you civilians congregate in the meeting halls until the last goblin has died, been captured, or escaped.)

Each seasonal "turn" the players would be able to interact with other fortresses, sending out liaisons, trade caravans, or armies. These units would arrive at the other player's fortress the next "turn" and would act accordingly, returning the turn after that with a report. Of course, it's entirely possible none of them would return at all...

In fact, this system could also potentially be used to allow a player multiple fortresses in the same world simultaneously, which would be awesome in and of itself if you have a world you really want to fully populate but cannot because  you already have a fortress there.

Just throwing ideas out there.

Edit: Another thought, to do this you really wouldn't need an active server provided that all the clients would handle the migration/army/caravan code the same way. All you would need would be a database containing the current world as of last turn. Even better, one could potentially have an adventurer visiting active fortresses! (Although losing units to an adventurer that you had no idea even visited would sort of suck...)

[ March 05, 2008: Message edited by: Jamini ]

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by Jamini:
<STRONG>We could, conceivably, have time pass at a relativistically steady rate. For example, one or more seasons pass every two days, or every day, or every six hours. In that time you get an opportunity to play the season(s). If you don't play your fortress in that time period, it goes on without you. Food is farmed and consumed, jobs that are queued up are passed on, and goblins ambush/siege you. (While, of course, you're military and fortress guard automatically rush out to meet them and you civilians congregate in the meeting halls until the last goblin has died, been captured, or escaped.)</STRONG>

......
We don't have this level of AI yet.  This is why we have to abandon the fortress to use the world again.