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[Spish]

^ The only mod we've agreed on is the Display Case. If anyone has any other good suggestions, we might use them.

The issues with the ogres and caverns are being dealt with summarily. I'm contemplating GIH's suggestion about a material that will break down at the temperature of a floor overlaying magma, to be used in display cases to hold artifacts or other highly valuable treasures.

Can't you just take the object out of the display case as an adventurer? Or are you planning on doing something special with this feature?

I don't think having them be destroyed in order to get the item is a good idea, at least in the case of artifacts (which behave very oddly after abandonment). When you drop an artifact in adventure mode, there is no way to pick it up. But if you go back to the building from which it originally came, it will still be there in essence, and you'll be able to pick it up an infinite number of times; causing the version you dropped/are holding to disappear from existence. Yeah, I don't get it either; do you think Toady knows about this?

"Display" Pedestal sounds redundant; I'm pretty sure the whole point of pedestals is to display things. I do like the idea though.

[Graebeard]

Yeah, I can confirm those results. Can't fibnd any curious structures in any areas. with 12x16+4x16 embarks, no less.

Poor GIH will have to deal with a full three cavern layers

I thought about piping in when this was originally discussed, but it seemed like it was resolved by the time I showed up.

Are there any problems with having three cavern layers other than the fact that it puts the magma so far away?  Building a 150 z pump stack is a serious feat of patience and engineering, but I don't know of any other problems with a third cavern layer.

Instead of cutting out a cavern layer, why don't we just shrink the size of each cavern down?  It's been a while since I've genned a world, but can't we limit the size of each cavern layer and the number of z levels between each layer?  Caverns don't need to be 30 stories high to be awesome, and it's easy to fit three cavern into as little as 30zs above the magma sea.

I'd also recommend bumping up the number of levels above ground.  As far as I can tell, lots of sky doesn'e really impack FPS.  If this ever actually makes it around to me I'm thinking of doing a DF take on the Alastair Reynolds Diamond Dogs deadly maze concept.  Gonna need lots of zs for that.

[Eric Blank]

We can -kinda- control the size of each cavern layer and semi-reliably the number of z-levels between layers (sometimes it likes to ignore orders...)

Basically, maximizing openness and minimizing passage density results in flat, open caverns that are relatively short vertically. The number of levels between layers seems to be harder to control, but it's set for 2 right now, except the magma sea which has 3-4 on top of it for extra magmatic happiness space. The z-lvels above ground is 35, but if it honestly doesn't affect FPS until you actually build that high, then there's no excuse not to raise it.

^ The only mod we've agreed on is the Display Case. If anyone has any other good suggestions, we might use them.


Can't you just take the object out of the display case as an adventurer? Or are you planning on doing something special with this feature?

I don't think having them be destroyed in order to get the item is a good idea, at least in the case of artifacts (which behave very oddly after abandonment). When you drop an artifact in adventure mode, there is no way to pick it up. But if you go back to the building from which it originally came, it will still be there in essence, and you'll be able to pick it up an infinite number of times; causing the version you dropped/are holding to disappear from existence. Yeah, I don't get it either; do you think Toady knows about this?

"Display" Pedestal sounds redundant; I'm pretty sure the whole point of pedestals is to display things. I do like the idea though.

The display pedestal/case is to prevent them scattering/disappearing when the adventurer comes a runnin' to steal away with them, but destroying the building is the only way to get the artifact out of it. It also permits such !!FUN!! as pressurized magma traps just as you're about to snag the loot.
Of course it isn't necessarily necessary to use them. Now how does this bug you're describing work? I'm very confused. I'd wager Toady has gotten reports of that bug before, at least.

[Spish]

Why don't you just try it out yourself? I'm sure there are plenty of forts with artifacts in the pocket world.

Good grief, building a path to Hell Temple is taking unbelievably long. It doesn't help that the map is well over 200 z-levels deep... Probably going to have to resort to DFhack at this rate, since my turn is already late enough as it is. The embark is way too peaceful, and I haven't seen a single goblin in my entire run, which kinda sorta completely ruins my endgame plans. It's a good thing this is a practice run

[Eric Blank]

I succeeded in finding an artifact in earthcheerful, and promptly being smashed to death by the forgotten beast strabo. I see what you mean now. Wonder how that will play out... Some artifacts could become entirely unrecoverable if the workshop they're made in is torn down!

[Pranz]

But if you hold on to the one artifact you get first that wouldn't be a problem right?

[Kassil]

As a Discordian, it amuses me to no end that I got place #5 on the list. clearly, I'll have to make my fortress a temple to Chaos when my turn rolls around. Hopefully it'll end up being timed for my 'holiday' in mid-March, but we'll see what happens.

[Eric Blank]

I've actually run into something moderately more concerining than buggy artifacts or elves with steel pickaxes; The addition of every 5x5 fortress adds 30-120mb to the size of the file. The world I genned recently swelled from 221mb to 485mb with 4 fortresses. On none of these fortresses have I actually built or dug anything. After 40-50 fairly mature fortresses of 2x2-7x7 embarks, we could have a 2-4gb folder when unzipped, and still be too large for the DFFD when packaged. We may need a file service with a higher ceiling

I wouldn't suggest capping the size of an embark or maturity of a fortress, though. This may actually be a way to determine the endpoint of the project and beginning of a new one, by stopping the world just before it becomes too large for the DFFD when packaged.

[Poindexterity]

I've actually run into something moderately more concerining than buggy artifacts or elves with steel pickaxes; The addition of every 5x5 fortress adds 30-120mb to the size of the file. The world I genned recently swelled from 221mb to 485mb with 4 fortresses. On none of these fortresses have I actually built or dug anything. After 40-50 fairly mature fortresses of 2x2-7x7 embarks, we could have a 2-4gb folder when unzipped, and still be too large for the DFFD when packaged. We may need a file service with a higher ceiling

I wouldn't suggest capping the size of an embark or maturity of a fortress, though. This may actually be a way to determine the endpoint of the project and beginning of a new one, by stopping the world just before it becomes too large for the DFFD when packaged.

with nearly 60 people waiting on turns, maybe we SHOULD split this up into 2 or maybe even three worlds, with like 20-30 people in each?

[Eric Blank]

That would basically mean starting multiple succession-world projects at once, and they couldn't necessarily be directly associated with this one.

[Kibstable]

Why not branch the world after turn 1.
Round 1 played by 1 player, round 2 by 3 players, then you have 3 worlds from the one seed running concurently, 61 players would play this way in 210 days - at the end there would be 3 different world historys for the same world - If you don't do something like this someone may just start a copycat world anyway and you'll lose the centralised feel that this idea currently has.

Or split into 4 and get 61 players done in 160 days - it also covers you from terminally currupt saves, as there will be other worlds still running. Judging by the growth in save file size a 15 embark save might be unmanagable anyway.

I'm planning to only be an adventurer so I'll have some fun all the way along, but I'd still like to see this succeed.   Testing the idea is certainly proving to be worthwhile.

[Spish]

If the size of the file has an adverse effect on the loading/saving times, then we may have to. If not, I'm sure we can afford to have a huge file in this case. Let's give it a few years before the split.

I'm pretty much done with my fortress, but since Poindex hasn't been prodding me to put up the save (Community Fortress 101, bro), I've been testing out a few things. Mainly, how the way you retire a fortress affects the people and items within. DFmode makes this very easy, because when you sleep or enter a fortress in adventure mode, it offloads the fortress and does essentially the same thing it does when you abandon the site (although I'm skipping a few of Rumrusher's steps, for now); so I don't have to deal with back-up saves and copypasta this way.

Some research observations:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. Lairing makes a huge difference. Everything seems significantly less buggy this way, and there's a lot less lag when the player loads the site.
2. All creatures will start gathering at meeting hall zones one by one (This also counts structures designated as meeting halls. It won't remember their owners, though).
3. Dwarves and other sentients will only be scattered into places they can path to from the above-ground map edge (same with subterraneans and the underground map edge. If this includes massive open caverns, or, say, a ridiculously deep curious underground structure, then practically the whole fortress will end up down there. Recall that NPCs cannot path through water or open spaces, but adventurers can
4. Fortunately, you can keep dwarves and siegers out of undesirable regions simply by walling them off, building structures in their way, channeling out pits or pools of water and retracting any bridges over them, using floodgates, raised bridges, or even forbidden doors. However, you have to make sure that dwarves can reach the meeting hall from the edge of the map, otherwise they'll just appear outside and be stuck there. Unfortunately, this means locking dwarves/monsters in rooms or isolating the fortress and its inhabitants from the outside world will not work. You can still fill them with monsters from the deep though.
There could still be problems if the adventurer decides to take a nap after opening the way.
5. Dwarves in active soldier mode at the time of retirement will stay that way, and thus behave like soldiers. Incidentally, they will also be easier to recruit as a result.
6. Dwarves will automatically be given weapons befitting of their profession. Peasants will be given knives and soldiers will be given weapons and ammo.
7. Many of the undead in the circus tent get scattered into hell, and the HFS beneath get pushed all the way to the bottom, regardless of whether or not you can get into the place. Meaning nobody pops out when you grab the sword
I suppose you could get around this by finding the tent via embark, embarking near but not on top of it, and opening a path to it through the caves.
Demon infested fortresses are more fun, anyway.

[Eric Blank]

Wow, that's actually really nice data. Someone should make sure it's all available on the wiki, because that could affect a lot of design decisions for succession games like this, or normal single-player play.

Also, I found a tiny, tiny volcanic island on the world I genned recently that fits within a 13x12 area. My poor RAM can't handle it all, though. :c

I blame the huge number of z-levels from the volcano...

[Poindexterity]

what do you think of feasibility of everyone using a 2x2 embark instead of standard? Could that cut down enough to make a difference?

[Rose]

I like that idea.

Though... wouldn't all the npc humans die after a couple forts?