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[Stove]

You already have a bullet time button, of course. It's the period key.

As I said earlier, there is precedent for fast mode in many other games. It's an intuitive gameplay device that works quite well in those games I've encountered it in. Just to name a few: Total War (I think all the games have this in battle mode), X-Com, Uplink

This is different, Total War just speeds everything in the game up because the game normally does not run at the maximum possible speed that the CPU is capable of handling.  Speeding up the game in that case simply means making everything run in the exact same way that it would run otherwise, but with a lesser delay to give the player chances to react.  Total War does everything that it would do in regular speed when it runs at triple speed.

It's only different in terms of how it works in the background, which is irrelevant to why I cited it, which is as an example of the gameplay device.

What you are talking about is radically altering the timescale of everything DF runs upon, and in order to do so, breaking and abstracting multiple key features of the game. 

To say "breaking" is presumptive. If it's done well, nothing breaks. Being a radical change is not a fault, since radical changes are normal in DF's development.

I still don't see this as being worth such a radical change in the game that would require abstracting out a huge number of game functions. 

It isn't a huge number. It's a small number. It's little more than creature movement and liquid physics, by my estimation.

The game simply needs to be unrealistic in some ways simply to function as a game.

It's also a world simulator, and it's unrealistic in a way that breaks its world simulation.  With a system like this, it would still function just as well as a game, and function better than it does as a world simulator.

So again, what are we really gaining for all this trouble that makes it worth even attempting?

Consistency with timescales and world simulation.
While discussing whether an idea is a good one or not is important, I think we should establish how the idea can actually be implemented before shooting it down as "not worth it".

If one game speed worked at 72 times the speed of another gamespeed, and was the only way to actually get the game moving at a rate that was even playable, then why would you ever want to play anything at the so-called "normal" speed at all?

Certain parts of gameplay would take place in 'realtime' mode such as combat/sieges, as well as any event that the player would want to observe at a slower speed.

click that comment by Sowelu and read the discussion.

I searched for previous threads on this topic before posting. I wish I had found that one. I'll be reading through it.

[NW_Kohaku]

when being besieged by goblins and managing your defences

Why?  You can't control your squads in a meaningful way, anyway.  As soon as the two sides see each other, you're just a spectator.

[Granite26]

click that comment by Sowelu and read the discussion.

I searched for previous threads on this topic before posting. I wish I had found that one. I'll be reading through it.

I wasn't trying to give you a hard time, it's a really old thread.  There are some really smart people fleshing out stuff, though.

[NW_Kohaku]

It's only different in terms of how it works in the background, which is irrelevant to why I cited it, which is as an example of the gameplay device.

That's still different.  You can't say that the simulations that DF does in the backgrounds have absolutely no impact on the game at all.

Total War is literally exactly the same mechanics running at regular and triple speeds, they just render less frames, because the only real bottleneck is graphics.  You're talking about abstracting out the simulation, and there's no way to make the simulation the same when abstracting it.

To say "breaking" is presumptive. If it's done well, nothing breaks. Being a radical change is not a fault, since radical changes are normal in DF's development.

Then how is it going to be done?  How can you promise to completely rewrite the entire timescale of the entire game without changing anything major?  Do you even have a plan for how it can be done?  If not, your assertions are far, far more presumptive than what I have been saying.

It's also a world simulator, and it's unrealistic in a way that breaks its world simulation.  With a system like this, it would still function just as well as a game, and function better than it does as a world simulator.

Then have the visiting caravan only take up a week "in your fortress", regardless of how much time it takes them to get trading done so they can be calculated as going off to the next location.  That maintains the integrity of the world simulation without radically altering everything else in the game without really giving much consideration to how much unbalance it causes.

[Stove]

That's still different.  You can't say that the simulations that DF does in the backgrounds have absolutely no impact on the game at all.

Total War is literally exactly the same mechanics running at regular and triple speeds, they just render less frames, because the only real bottleneck is graphics.  You're talking about abstracting out the simulation, and there's no way to make the simulation the same when abstracting it.

If abstraction is done well, then the simulation would be close enough. I brought up Total War as an example of how different modes of speed work well as an intuitive interface feature, not as an example of exactly how it would work.

Then how is it going to be done?  How can you promise to completely rewrite the entire timescale of the entire game without changing anything major?  Do you even have a plan for how it can be done?  If not, your assertions are far, far more presumptive than what I have been saying.

This isn't a rewrite of the timescale of the entire game-only what happens within fortress mode, to bring it into the same timescale as the rest of the game. As for how it can be done--that's the point of this thread: To discuss how it can be done. You are not being constructive. If your intention is only to be contrarian, then you aren't contributing anything. It would be nice if you would contribute constructively to the discussion as you do in most threads. Your posts are normally well thought out and constructive.

Then have the visiting caravan only take up a week "in your fortress", regardless of how much time it takes them to get trading done so they can be calculated as going off to the next location.  That maintains the integrity of the world simulation without radically altering everything else in the game without really giving much consideration to how much unbalance it causes.

Unfortunately this would just shift the problem into another spot. You'd have a caravan existing in two places at once. In the most recent talk, Toady discusses the weird time-bubble fortresses exist in and how it pertains to caravans at around 1:12:00.

[Granite26]

The point is, you can't speed up without losing detail, and detail is what makes the game special.  Other games speed up by losing detail or because they weren't running as fast as possible.

If you can abstract and still get the same answer, thats not abstraction, thats optimization.

[Stove]

The point is, you can't speed up without losing detail, and detail is what makes the game special.  Other games speed up by losing detail or because they weren't running as fast as possible.

If you can abstract and still get the same answer, thats not abstraction, thats optimization.

Dwarf Fortress already has abstraction, though, on a much larger scale than what might occur here. World gen and everything that happens outside of the fortress is abstracted.
If you can abstract and get only a small margin of error, then perhaps it is an acceptable cost of solving the time anomalies.

[Granite26]

...  it's not abstracted from the best simulation there is for it.  Tthere are no steps bakcward from the bewt simulation df has to offer.  Just places thqt haven't been fleshed out yet.

[Stove]

I don't quite see what you're getting at.

[Kogut]

I suggest to imagine single farmer as group of farmers, single farm tile as large field, single squad as army etc. Everything is scaled down to make it possible for player to control it and CPU to simulate it.

[Stove]

The problem with that interpretation is that the fortress is on the same physical scale as the rest of the world, and an individual in the fortress is no different from an individual encountered in a village in adventure mode.

[NW_Kohaku]

One of the things they mentioned in that other thread was that you can't have dwarves teleporting in some super-speed version of the game, because then pressure plates and traps won't work.  Just as an example of what sorts of things break when you try this sort of thing.

Let's sit down and be serious about what it is you are suggesting, here - you want to adjust the timescale so that it's 72 times slower, without really making any mention of how long it takes to complete a year, so I'll assume it's the same, without losing any sort of detail for doing so.

Basically, you're just asking Toady to make the game run at 7200 FPS at the push of a magic button.

Unless your plan involves the TARDIS or that wardrobe that leads to Narnia, that's just not going to happen. 

You either have to talk about what you are willing to break to make that happen, or you are just asking for the impossible.  And if you want the game to run 72 times faster, you're going to have to break a MASSIVE number of things.

[Stove]

One of the things they mentioned in that other thread was that you can't have dwarves teleporting in some super-speed version of the game, because then pressure plates and traps won't work.  Just as an example of what sorts of things break when you try this sort of thing.

It still has to find a path to the destination, during which pressure plates and traps can be detected. There is the option of automatically switching to realtime mode when this happens, although this could be problematic if a system is created that is meant to be in constant use.

Let's sit down and be serious about what it is you are suggesting, here - you want to adjust the timescale so that it's 72 times slower, without really making any mention of how long it takes to complete a year, so I'll assume it's the same, without losing any sort of detail for doing so.

Basically, you're just asking Toady to make the game run at 7200 FPS at the push of a magic button.

Unless your plan involves the TARDIS or that wardrobe that leads to Narnia, that's just not going to happen. 

You either have to talk about what you are willing to break to make that happen, or you are just asking for the impossible.  And if you want the game to run 72 times faster, you're going to have to break a MASSIVE number of things.

Again, you aren't being constructive. The point of this thread is to figure out how this idea can be made feasible.

[NW_Kohaku]

It still has to find a path to the destination, during which pressure plates and traps can be detected. There is the option of automatically switching to realtime mode when this happens, although this could be problematic if a system is created that is meant to be in constant use.

In other words, you'll just remove pressure plates from the game unless they are used as traps, since there's no reason to ever want to run in real-time mode.  That breaks all of dwarfputing, repeaters, and most advanced mechanics in general.

Again, you aren't being constructive. The point of this thread is to figure out how this idea can be made feasible.

Then do it. 

You can't "make a suggestion" that something essentially impossible happen (make the game run faster without sacrificing any of its calculations or detail), and then demand the people who tell you why you are asking too much to make it feasable for you so that you don't have to. 

Again, you haven't even done the job of telling me why the different timescale is even a problem to begin with, much less convinced me to work on finding a solution.  I see no problem at all with different timescales being in use, since that's just a necessity of having a game that is playable.  I see differing timescales as a solution to the problem of keeping the game playable when it is supposed to involve such large timescales to begin with.