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[Gimmick Account]

Since I've heard conflicting opinions on the matter from various people on other forums, perhaps Toady can clear this question up once and for all:

Will it ever be possible for a player-controlled adventurer (perhaps after the automation arc?) to venture into a non-abandoned dwarf fortress created by the same player in an earlier session? If it's too much of a hassle to have the AI expand and maintain an existing player-designed habitat intelligently, perhaps some elements of the fortress could be 'locked' for the building (and especially digging) AI while you're still in dwarf mode (having this option seperately for each burrow would be good, I guess), and a certain desired amount of various goods could be set which the AI will attempt to hold but not exceed.

So, yeah, it would be treated differently than the 'normal' settlements in the world, which might give it somewhat of a handicap against its competition, but that's better than not having the option at all, right?

[Toady One]

It's not just a matter of AI tweaks -- adventure mode time is 72 times slower than dwarf mode time.  Everything they do would be excruciatingly slow, but that's not a bad thing really, although it might not square with how your adventurer does things when adventurer skills go in.  Dwarf mode is an abstraction, and adventure mode is much more explicit, with day/night schedules and (eventually) more tools and so on.

Human Town Mode (in future dev) is going to add elements of starting and stopping a game, since you'd be founding these places with adventurers at time, and you'd want to flip back and forth in some way.  If that works out, it might work in dwarf mode, but it's going to be hard in general to have all the dozens of retired dwarf fortresses working intelligently while you also play another dwarf fortress and so on.  There'd be a great loss of precision, but I don't have any moral objections to it.  If I do it now, it would just be a static place for you to go and visit your old nobles with a barbarian.  It would lock up a start site though, and maybe even a demon if you block them all out in a mountain -- being able to reactivate a dwarf game could be handled something like reclaim maybe, but I'm not in a rush to do it.

[Gimmick Account]

quote:Originally posted by Toady One:
<STRONG>
If I do it now, it would just be a static place for you to go and visit your old nobles with a barbarian.  It would lock up a start site though, and maybe even a demon if you block them all out in a mountain -- being able to reactivate a dwarf game could be handled something like reclaim maybe, but I'm not in a rush to do it.</STRONG>

Oh, that doesn't make the problem sound nearly as bad as I thought it was going to. I thought it was some sort of fundamental, unsolvable programming issue.

Since the player supposedly has full control over how many 'nerfed' fortresses are going to pop up in his world, excessive start site occupation shouldn't ever become a real problem (I hope?).

[karnot]

How about a temporary mid-way solution ?
The first fortress in the world will not get any dwarven caravans. Then, you could leave the fortress via the special option, and it will become inaccessible, but using some simple math the general things the fortress produce would be set, and their quantity, so when you start the next fortress - the dwarven caravans from the old fortresses will come to trade. How about that ?

[Toady One]

There are already many dwarf settlements on the map when you start the game.  This sounds more like the Early Game future dev stuff, where you'd actually be able to handle the first dwarves and so on.

[karnot]

quote: There are already many dwarf settlements on the map when you start the game.

Yeah, but what fun are those ?

[Chephren]

I do think that adventuring in a town or fort that had all the complexity of fortress mode would be awesome.  To watch the denizens around you go about their daily routines of sleeping, eating, drinking, hauling, workshopping etc.

I wonder how feasible it would be when playing fortress mode to possess one of your dwarfs and control them manually for a time. After every move the fortress could advance 10 turns (or however many turns it takes to move all dwarfs).  It would probably kill most computers if you held down one of the movement keys.