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Poll

How 'open', typically, do the underground sections of your fortress end up? Is this how you like it?

My fortresses typically have compact, distinct rooms and/or narrow, neat hallways. I usually don't feel the need to change this.
- 83 (38.4%)
My fortresses usually end up pretty closed in, but I'm usually not happy with it.
- 12 (5.6%)
My fortresses typically have sprawling, expansive chambers (walls and specific rooms optional). I am generally happy with this.
- 46 (21.3%)
My fortresses usually end up with many large, open sections, but I often find myself wishing I could somehow undig stone.
- 14 (6.5%)
N/A; My fortresses are typically a more-or-less even mix according to my taste, built above ground/in the caverns/at the circus, and/or Mr Frog sucks at making polls.
- 35 (16.2%)
Evenly-mixed, but I'm cursed and the parts that I want closed-in turn out spacious and the parts I want open end up all claustrophobic.
- 26 (12%)

Total Members Voted: 216


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Author Topic: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll  (Read 18084 times)

Fishbulb

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #45 on: December 12, 2011, 05:33:21 am »
The asymmetry is making my eyelid twitch. Thanks a lot.
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Fluffkind

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #46 on: December 12, 2011, 08:53:12 am »
Imagine sleeping in a room where the floor is covered in fungus and there's a giant mushroom in the middle.

Also, seeing Runescape made me slightly nostalgic, haven't played that in years. Although i know I'll be bored very quickly if start again.

As for me, I usually have wide open corridors and tiny economic rooms. Except dining halls.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #47 on: December 12, 2011, 01:28:22 pm »
Guys... If you don't want to floor/pave your room walls, you can always use statues/stockpiles :P
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Minnakht

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #48 on: December 12, 2011, 01:28:39 pm »
I start by constructing the Planespine.
...that's a fancy name for a 2x2 string of up-down stairways from the ground down to magma if feasible.

Then, at some z-levels, long, long corridors pop up, splitting the level into quadrants, which typically get dug out to accommodate huge stockpiles.
Aside from that, dwarves get living quarters - and those are pretty cluttered and such, as every dwarf gets a room and so on.

I really want to improve the design somehow.
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Quote from: Splint on January 25, 2012, 05:22:22 pm
Giant badgers are cruel saddistic balls of fur and hate. Did anyone know they could paint a wall with a single dwarven baby?.... You know what, I made the Giant badgers sound like sane DF players.
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King DZA

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #49 on: December 12, 2011, 02:00:39 pm »
Quote from: Fluffkind on December 12, 2011, 08:53:12 am
Imagine sleeping in a room where the floor is covered in fungus and there's a giant mushroom in the middle.

Also, seeing Runescape made me slightly nostalgic, haven't played that in years. Although i know I'll be bored very quickly if start again.

As for me, I usually have wide open corridors and tiny economic rooms. Except dining halls.

I imagine it as soft and natural carpeting, with the trees and shrubs being similar to house plants. They're features!

And I don't actually play RS all that much these days, I just use it as a way to stay in contact with certain people(though that doesn't mean I don't still kick ass at it).

Quote from: Fishbulb on December 12, 2011, 05:33:21 am
The asymmetry is making my eyelid twitch. Thanks a lot.

It kind of annoyed me at first, too. But after a while I simply started adapting to it.
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Noodz

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #50 on: December 12, 2011, 07:34:11 pm »
I am a mental slave to the grid layout, where 3x3 vertical stairs are set on a grid of 20x20, accommodating 17x17 cells containing 16 3x3 rooms. I am now attempting to move to vertical fortresses, where a single central spiral ramp (currently using a 9x9, 4 ramps 2 tiles wide with a single central vertical stair) gives access to 4 main hallways, 3 tiles wide, which then gives access to individual rooms.
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Duntada Man

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #51 on: December 12, 2011, 07:54:54 pm »
My fortresses are very compact with narrow hallways that are only begrudgingly expanded when forced to by traffic. It's easier for me to set kills zones  for groups of archers if I can be sure any missed targets have others behind the first that may be hit.

Also, I dislike the grid pattern, so while my fortresses are compact, and narrow, they tend to be built almost entirely out of the stalactites and columns found in the cavern layers. It seems more asthetically pleasing to me to have my fortress built around the naturally occuring veins of metals and with the rise and fall of the earth below.

Plus I like the idea of random cave dwellers milling about in caverns thinking everything is okay, only to get 100 angry armed dwarves all in their face for walking to close to a town no one could even see.
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Girlinhat: The biggest issue seems to be size.  A 1x1 room would allow for maximum child desecration.

armeggedonCounselor

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #52 on: December 12, 2011, 11:08:51 pm »
My prior designs tended to be very rough. This is mostly because I think I've had maybe one or two fortresses that lasted into their second year. This is because I suck at farming, and get very bored with my dwarfs being little pricks all the time.

I really need to get back into this....
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Quote from: Mego on January 08, 2012, 02:12:57 pm
Quote from: Stargrasper
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proxn_punkd

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #53 on: December 12, 2011, 11:21:00 pm »
My basic floorplan designs are usually centered around a central staircase three tiles wide, a hallway three tiles wide to accomadate traffic (sometimes with additional staircases at both ends), and 11x11 storage rooms bordered by interconnected 3x3 workshop chambers. Bedrooms are usually according to the "Greek Cross" plan detailed on the DF Wiki page for optimized bedrooms, though in Whisperbolt I am using a more gridlike bedroom system. From there, I expand as needed for space, or find mineral veins that I want to dig out regardless of how they'll mess up the symmetry (I then typically use the mineral veins as burial grounds for my dorfs).
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KoffeeKup

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #54 on: February 12, 2012, 04:15:47 am »
I designate everything before digging anything so there are no mistakes or wasted space.

I'm really into making stair step like entrance halls down ward then making a huge dining/meeting hall. This becomes the heart of my fortress. I try to make it 3 z levels. I make a kitchen with food stockpile then a still with drink stockpile, both near the center. I then design hallways branching out from the center great hall 2 wide. Sometimes a 4 wide or 3 wide main hall. I try to make up down stairwells where they intersect and then areas for bottle necking enemies into traps and ballistas.

Living space is planned next. Anticipating traffic, I will make multiple connecting hallways at right angles. I give each dwarf a 2x3 room so they feel like a king. Living space for important people is reserved deeper into the wall opposite the main stair/entry halls. 
 
2 z levels under this becomes the great public tomb. Every dwarf gets a cubby hole and a rock coffin. A large section is reserved for important peoples personal tomes. Pet cemeteries are just extended down the hallways with a similar basic set up.

I realize I have a doctor dwarf by now and he needs a hospital, so above the living space I make hospitals and stockpile areas for medical furniture and supplies. The dwarfs get 4x4 rooms for this. they can fit a bed, table and traction bench with one square left over.

I begin planing my workshop area now which is just below my great hall, and then put the jail and animal areas below the tombs. Most crafting rooms are just 2 12x15 areas with a stockpile area betwixt them with long halls separating the stocks and the shops.

I then find magma for furnaces and make it under all that, sometimes just past the first cavern layer.

I then quit after 3 hours of meticulous obsession, because something happens right after, !!FUN!! or otherwise (computer crashes, dwarf fortress freezes solid, battery of laptop dies because I didn't notice it was unplugged) and I lose everything... :'(
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...and as all life ends
As elves and trees burn,As goblins are butchered
As humans are slaughtered,As the legions of hell lay waste to the world
Knock back a few drinks and tell yourself:T'was fun while it lasted-The writing on the Adamantine hatch to hell in Gemclod, Armok rest their valiant souls.

Montague

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #55 on: February 12, 2012, 05:06:26 am »
My main hallways, either runs left to right on every main level, or form a cross running from the central staircases. Hallways are 3 wide. Branching hallways for apartments and workshop areas are two wide. Rooms are more or less compact with intact walls. I don't like the idea of expansive rooms underground. I use up/down stairs a lot, efficient means building vertically in DF.

I'm not a big fan of hallways in architecture, they are almost like wasted space, so I'm thinking of ways to eliminate them by making series of rooms that connect together and a few things in the fortress I use this, like my "government complex" is a series 5x5 rooms connected by doors on each side set up in a grid. Connected compact rooms sans hallways are actually how many historical real-life underground complexes are set up. However, the practicalities and asthethics have bothered me in my experimental attempts. I sort of stuck in my fortress building patterns.

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NinjaBoot

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #56 on: February 12, 2012, 05:20:08 am »
Have a main stair-well that is either 2 or 3 wide, with 3 wide hallways all around, everything vital located within a stones throw of the stairs, but after that it goes into how I see fit.  It all depends on the layout of the embark site as to how the final fort design will come out.

Symmetry is a must tho, I can't seem to stand forts that are not symmetrically laid out :/
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Hotaru

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #57 on: February 12, 2012, 07:05:02 am »
What's a hallway? Why would you need designs other than

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

for anything ever? Actually I haven't done an underground fort in a while, but it used to be just z-levels of that. So I wouldn't get confused scrolling, I would draw what the floor is for in unmined dig designations next to the floor (easier than notes). So, scrolling down, it would look to the player like

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As you scroll down. That was really enjoyable.

Well, as of now, they're disorganized messes due to wanting to look like this.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2012, 07:06:34 am by Hotaru »
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Chattox

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #58 on: February 12, 2012, 07:15:11 am »
Mine tend to be 3-tile wide hallways for the arterial routes, 2 tile for the moderate traffic lanes, and 1 tile for little backalley corridors. Rooms are generally slightly larger than they need to be (5x5 rooms for 3x3 workshops, etc) but are never really "open" as such. The only rooms I have open are stockpiles, the kitchens, barracks and the great hall. I occasionally build arena-type rooms for my militia to fight unarmed, unclothed, terrified goblins for sport, but I put odd walls and whatnot in there to make it more interesting for everyone involved, so they're not really "open". I'm happy with this :)
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"10 z levels down, 10 tiles north is some blood, i shall go clean it before it drives me to insanity with it's crimson color"
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bombzero

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Re: Narrow Hallways Vs. Expansive Corridors: A Poll
« Reply #59 on: February 12, 2012, 07:23:29 am »
I always start with some GRAND design for a symmetrical, amazing looking fort, and it always ends up a sprawl of rooms crammed where they fit at the time of their building.

(P.S. my kings bedroom is the best rating possible at a size of 3x3 its inside a fully engraved diamond cluster.
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