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[Zigzom24]

What if instead of having boring old floors and one central staircase, what if the hallways were made out of up/down stairs? Would it be insanely efficient? Laggy? An eyesore? Discuss.

[Ralith]

Eyesore, and either a godsend or a hell for FPS.

[elf-fondling human]

I feel like it would actually be highly inefficient, since everything paths the shortest distance to its destination anyway.

[Zigzom24]

But the distances would be shorter, thus more efficiency?

[thedryness]

i was honestly JUST thinking the same thing. i know it would be tons more efficient space and distance-between-any-2-points wise, especially in my forts that are usually pretty close to a perfect cube with the walkways on the same exact place on each z-level, but i have no idea what it'd do to the FPS. i could duplicate saves and try this out real quick and record FPS change. my fort is pretty much perfect for it.

[Nagidal]

I have tried a straicase fortress and can tell it's *extremely* efficient. For my workshops, I build 5x5 rooms with a 2x2 staircase in it and its working like a charm. You can see it in the video of the downfall of Wheelhermit where I dug into the sugar cane.

[elf-fondling human]

All I ever really do is dig straight down in a 5x5 square, the outside of which is up/down staircases, and dig out from this central pit. I eventually want to put a glass tube in the middle, so that there is on tile of open space all the way down, and set that as a pit to dump prisoners down. It solves that problem, the bodies are above ground so miasma doesn't rear its ugly head, and my dwarves will become immune to death (as long as they're at the bottom.)

[Girlinhat]

You mean, if the entire walkable floorspace was Up+Down stairs?  In that case your dwarves would essentially become flying creatures inside your fort (able to path along all three axis freely) and pathfinding would explode.  Every dwarf would be able to path through every inch of your fortress, ensuring for the single highest-demand pathfinding possible.

Moving somewhere would be relatively quick, but pathfinding intensive.  You can be the judge of this tradeoff.  Heavy pathfinding might drag your fort down 25% FPS, but the increased walkways might make your dwarves reach their destination 50% faster, making for an ultimately faster fort.  It's up to you to decide on if the movement speed offsets the FPS drop.

Perhaps make some science of it, and compare identical fortress layouts, one with full stairs, the other with "FPS-Friendly" stairs, and see which one takes longer to complete a given task (make brass bars, for instance).

[Psieye]

I have tried a straicase fortress and can tell it's *extremely* efficient

Is that efficiency for dwarves or efficiency for FPS? The way I see it, this is highly efficient for walking distance but extremely inefficient for the pathfinding algorithm as every direction possible now needs to be explored in the calculations.

[thedryness]

I feel like it would actually be highly inefficient, since everything paths the shortest distance to its destination anyway.

yeah, actually that doesn't make any sense. this would make all distances shorter. the problem that might arises is tat there would then be many more possible paths to choose from

[elf-fondling human]

Not time efficiency, but rather aesthetic efficiency. I feel like either:

a) seeing stairs everywhere would slowly drive me absolutely insane, or
b) that it would distract me beyond reason.

Not to mention what I image it would look like to the dwarfy sort.

In fact, I bet it'd be similar to one of Escher's pieces:
http://sparksofgenius.wikispaces.com/file/view/escher-stairs-thumb6306396.jpg/92222708/escher-stairs-thumb6306396.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Zrhyrmq0wr4/TNfd2zE4sII/AAAAAAAAAvs/nM22JUc8Ws4/s1600/escher-stairs-g.gif
http://www.thomasnottveit.com/websites/huin205/innleggBilder/7-LW399.jpg
http://wwwhomes.uni-bielefeld.de/achim/lib/bitmaps/escher2.gif
http://www.maxamania.com/art/WOANTM/Week2/EscherStaircase.gif

[thedryness]

alright, i've set my fortress to replace all it's normal hallways with stairs. that being said my fortress i'm testing it on is a 22w x 23l x12h block and every z-level has only one hall being a 3 wide hallway bisecting each level horizontally. i'll report with the FPS drop when they are done building it. my hypothesis is that the FPS drop will be negligible compared to the walking distance benefit in a fort with such a simple design...

and yeah, it does look a little wonky, but ultimately i think i could definitely get used to the hallway being a line of x's

[Vi Et Armis]

I bet it decreases pathing time and movement time. I need to try this...

[Sadrice]

My understanding is that DF uses A* for it's pathfinding, and thus an increase in the number of available paths does not affect fps, while false paths that go directly towards the destination and than dead end are murderous, so staircases would be very good for fps.  I haven't tested it, though.

[Vi Et Armis]

My understanding is that DF uses A* for it's pathfinding, and thus an increase in the number of available paths does not affect fps, while false paths that go directly towards the destination and than dead end are murderous, so staircases would be very good for fps.  I haven't tested it, though.

That's exactly what I was figuring.