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[NW_Kohaku]

Umm... I'm not sure if you're commenting on the suggestion or just ranting in frustration, Sizik...

Anyway, the basic idea is that we can have some methods for creating hallways of various sorts that connect rooms, and then have player-moddable rooms that have specific purposes, with fortresses looking at the demands made of the fortress's infrastructure by the needs and jobs of the fortress's citizens, and will expand by digging out a little longer bit of hallway and placing those modded rooms.

The idea being that even if Toady gives us something very bare-bones, we, the players, can custom-create content that makes for beautiful fortresses that would essentially be fully-functional procedurally created fortresses almost as good as the ones players make (at least short-sighted players who design as if they had ADD and didn't plan ahead, but just added everything as they found out they needed it)... provided the code that Toady gives us is powerful enough.  (The flexibility of the code for making hallways can really make or break that part.)

[Solace]

I would actually expect this to be more something of a 4 to 10 z level straight up "column" of wood, which then makes a "plataeu" with "branches" spreading out and away from there that the house or elven throneroom or whatever is actually built upon, which may be as much as a 30 or so tile "room" placed on this plataeu.

A house literally built on top of a tree, rather than inside it? Still, even with... rope/stairs, you'd need some serious "dwarven physics" to explain a 30 tile house on top of a 1 tile pillar. Unless... you said the leaves/branches where matted enough to walk across, and didn't stick anything heavy up there?

I guess if elves weren't big on personal space... would it be possible to have a 3X3 area with "walls" on the outside that don't take up a whole tile? A 3X3 house, with the trunk acting as a central support through it, would still give you 8 spaces to work with, and there could be bridges to nearby trees if you needed more than one room. However, if you needed walls on the outside of the space, having a 5X5 house supported by a single pillar would still kinda look like it was pushing it...

[NW_Kohaku]

I would actually expect this to be more something of a 4 to 10 z level straight up "column" of wood, which then makes a "plataeu" with "branches" spreading out and away from there that the house or elven throneroom or whatever is actually built upon, which may be as much as a 30 or so tile "room" placed on this plataeu.

A house literally built on top of a tree, rather than inside it? Still, even with... rope/stairs, you'd need some serious "dwarven physics" to explain a 30 tile house on top of a 1 tile pillar. Unless... you said the leaves/branches where matted enough to walk across, and didn't stick anything heavy up there?

I guess if elves weren't big on personal space... would it be possible to have a 3X3 area with "walls" on the outside that don't take up a whole tile? A 3X3 house, with the trunk acting as a central support through it, would still give you 8 spaces to work with, and there could be bridges to nearby trees if you needed more than one room. However, if you needed walls on the outside of the space, having a 5X5 house supported by a single pillar would still kinda look like it was pushing it...

Oh, no, not a one-tile column of tree, a thirty-tile column of tree creating a "Plateau" when it abruptly levels off, with some "branches" forming walls around it.  Again, this is what the Threetoe stories imply.

For clarity:

Code: [Select]

Ground level up to the "plateau"
  WW 
 WWWW
WWWWWWX
WWWWWWX
 WWWW
  WW 


"Plateau" level:
 W++W
W++++W
++++++X
++++++X
W++++W
 W++W
With the "walls" on the Plateau level that extend upwards from there a couple z-levels, eventually ending in leafy branches or just small trees sitting on top, and that floorspace being taken up by furniture and such for an actual room.

[Sizik]

Umm... I'm not sure if you're commenting on the suggestion or just ranting in frustration, Sizik...

Anyway, the basic idea is that we can have some methods for creating hallways of various sorts that connect rooms, and then have player-moddable rooms that have specific purposes, with fortresses looking at the demands made of the fortress's infrastructure by the needs and jobs of the fortress's citizens, and will expand by digging out a little longer bit of hallway and placing those modded rooms.

The idea being that even if Toady gives us something very bare-bones, we, the players, can custom-create content that makes for beautiful fortresses that would essentially be fully-functional procedurally created fortresses almost as good as the ones players make (at least short-sighted players who design as if they had ADD and didn't plan ahead, but just added everything as they found out they needed it)... provided the code that Toady gives us is powerful enough.  (The flexibility of the code for making hallways can really make or break that part.)

In you opening post (relevant parts below), it seemed like you didn't know about how 40d Dwarf Fortresses were like. Nowadays, they're significantly better, since you don't have to search the whole thing to find the king.

All dwarven cities but the ones you build are just open fields with dwarves sitting around doing nothing but "enjoying nature" or some tripe like a bunch of elves.

Even if we get dwarven forts, we won't have anything but dwarven forts, goblin towers, human villages, and maybe elven hippy communes.

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

I fully support this idea.

If we can't have this idea, can we at least go back to 40d style dwarven forts? The new ones are just... undwarfy.

[Kogan Loloklam]

We kind of have the old ones... At least the entry halls to old ones. None of the external sprawl. At least when I go to a dwarven fort I can find a 4 or 5 z-level weird ramp inside a box of stairs up.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, that's why I said that we don't have a fort and dwarves mostly loiter outside... I consider it more of a pit that only a couple of dwarves even inhabit, with far more dwarves sitting around watching grass grow.

[NW_Kohaku]

This has given me a little inspiration, from the FotF thread:

I'd like to see underground features like rivers, and springs where underground rivers flow into the surface. Huge underground oceans and massive underground rivers. Not every place can have them, but they'd enhance the feeling of underground exploration. When you add in old tombs from lost underground dweller civilizations that sprang up and disintegrated before the beginning of time, you've got some real fun underground activities to do. Dwarf Mode doesn't benefit, but they can certainly be embarked on for flavor. That's what I've thought we were talking about when it came to underground features.

A possible addition to what we could have in Raw-Editiable Cities, we could potentially also start designing some special landmarks or features.  Especially the idea of having the abilities to build the ruins of some cthonic civilization as a random additional terrain feature that rarely occurs on the worldmap as additional goodies for Adventurers to find and explore.

Since they are raw-editable, we'd inevitably wind up with some sort of super compilation mods like the way that Dig Deeper in the last version vastly expanded on almost everything, and we could have so many features that were so rare that individual players might have trouble ever finding and exploring all of them.

[NW_Kohaku]

Oh, and I put this up on the Eternal Suggestion Voting, now...

[sweitx]

I think in order for large scale elven city to be possible, you need to have multi-level tree.
Or an elven "tree house" can be similar to a goblin tower, except made of wood to convey that they "grow" or carve their home into the interior of the tree.
A tree only need to have its outer bark to survive, the inside of the tree are mostly there for structural support (so a controlled carving won't necessarily destroy a tree).

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, that depends on just how rediculously large you want to make elven trees, though.

Unless every tree elves touch can somehow turn into the freakin' Tree of Mana,

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://squarehaven.com/games/snes/som/wallpaper/01/mana_tree2.jpg

I don't expect more than a few elves would be able to live in hollowed-out trees.

Honestly, I would go back to my original idea, and say that they all live in tents, huddled together naked in piles of 40 or more as they sleep.  (For immortals who care so much about nature, they sure have a reckless birthrate...)  In the middle of a few fields below some of the larger trees built around houses, and maybe one giant tree that has a house on it's "plateau".

Of course, this really makes me want to discuss how trees grow multi-tile...

[Foamy]

What's wrong with tree houses? you could increase the livable space quite a bit like that.

[NW_Kohaku]

What's wrong with tree houses? you could increase the livable space quite a bit like that.

The basic problem is that you either need absurdly large trees to fit your treehouses in, or you are going to be building 2-story tall, 7x7 tile homes on top of a tree that fits in 1 tile.  The latter of which kind of looks silly.

The really huge kinds of trees you could build a real house in would have to be truly ancient trees, the kinds of which you don't find every day, especially not growing right alongside one another, anywhere but in very old-growth rainforests.  Even then, elven tree-protection would likely mean you couldn't simply drive nails into the stupid tree, and it would likely have to be a very narrow building that leaves little room to live in.

[Foamy]

I think a redwood forest would work. the trees there are close enough together so that structures could be built between them. they'd be multi tile but not by much. DF is fantasy too so the trees don't have to be completely realistic.

Also there are techniques to build large treehouses with no nails and i'm sure an immortal race who only live in trees would be able to work it out.

[NW_Kohaku]

Also, a few numbers:  Going by my general "tiles are 3 meters cubed" measurements, and the measurements of real-world trees...

Most rainforests will have a maximum tree height of around 45 m or 15 tiles, but will have a tree diameter of only about 2 tiles at its base even at that height.

The largest trees in the world, Giant Sequoias, can grow as much as 3 tiles in diameter at the base, and 32 tiles tall, with an overall volume of 1,487m³, or enough to completely fill 55 tiles.  (Keep in mind, these take three thousand years to do so, and elves tend to build in more than one place.)

Basically, this means that treehouses would have to be something like a "U" shape that would look something like this:

Code: [Select]

T = Tree,  W = Wall, + = Floor, D = Door, X = stairs (vines)

   XX
WWDTTDWW 
W++TT++W
W++++++W
W++++++W
WWWWWWWW