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[Lightman]

I don't think a "sonar" fits in DF and I don't see the need for this at all. Do some digging. You find stuff. It's simple. It's great.

[ August 10, 2007: Message edited by: Lightman ]

[mickel]

I see a bunch of options for how to make something like this. One is to add a "prospector" skill for the miners, which increases the amount of space that is revealed around the newly cleared space when they mine something. In game terms it could be a combination of skill and experience. Maybe the echoes made by their picks in combination with vast experience in mining and various other hints let them get a fair idea (which could be wrong!) about what's further away.

If you're quite close to a large hollow space and pounding the rock, I imagine you'd be able to tell, again with experience, that you're approaching something.

It could also be made a more active skill, let's say by having the player designate walls to be prospected, at which point a prospector dwarf comes along with a stetoscope and a hammer and taps the wall, revealing perhaps a one or two square radius of predictions?

[mickel]

quote:Originally posted by cavemanbob:
<STRONG>

Huh so based on that i'm going to take a guess that you have absolutely no idea how most real world hard rock mining works.  Finding actual minable ore on surface is pretty rare these days, more likely you're diamond drilling geophysics targets or even seismic stuff but that's still kind of new for hard rock mining.</STRONG>

He didn't say that's how it's done today. The iron ore used in the start of the iron age was pretty much picked up from the ground, and later quarried from the very surface of cliff faces.

Actually digging into mountains like the dwarves do wasn't practially possible until much later, and didn't take off big time until industrialisation hit.

Roughly speaking, that is. History wasn't my best subject.

[mickel]

As for the sonar idea, there are techniques that involve detonating a subterranean explosive and listening for the sound reflections, but that involves reliably and precisely detonating charges, as well as listening acutely and making some pretty big calculations. Somehow I don't see dwarves doing that. Perhaps with a steamtech computer (Babbage redeemed!) or something? Just please don't make it magic. Magic would ruin the game for me.  

[Angela Christine]

I think for steamtech computers you'd need to be playing Gnome Fortress.    

[Goran]

Just stay away from the underpants stealing gnomes... as for steamtech, some sort of railroad would be nice within the mines for quick hauling, but thats another story(i'd be happy if mules and horses could be used for hauling in the same manner dogs can be used for hunting).

As for survey, there are some cheat utils that do the trick, and I'm not sure how this survey stuff would work without... magic, the only thing that dwarves *might* sense would be hollow spaces and noise generators, such as river, chasm, magma or the pits.

[mickel]

Hollow spaces and noise generators sound pretty reasonable to me too, when it comes to what you can listen for and get a rough heading and distance to.

When it comes to what ores might be nearby, that's more a case of looking at the type of rock you're in, the geographical location, etc.