Redesign: Clarify deep mining as an obstacle

[com1clyf3]

Currently the new harder resources are not sending as clear a message as it needs to about being a challenge/limit to the player. It should be a clear obstacle to low level dwarves. One block for a low level dwarves should take several days to mine. Currently it takes half a day or so to mine to bedrock.

In addition, there's not a clear enough visual marker to what it is. Here are my suggestions:

1) Make the first hard resource player encounters take several days to mine. This gives a beginning player enough time to try and mine lots of these blocks, uncovering this layer, and learn about it as an obstacle. This will also discourage the complete mining of the world.

2) The hard resources, especially the first one encountered, need to be a clear visual message.

New resources on the left. Stone on the right. They look too similar.

Whatever first hard resource the player encounters, it needs to be visually new and not easily confused with stone. I'd suggest maybe making it uniformly slate and then make the visual something like this" https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fixlbuild.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F02%2FStacked-Stone-Slate-Gray.jpg&f=1

I'd suggest making it much darker though, like onyx black, to make it as clear as possible this is a border of some kind.

3.) There should be a hierarchy of difficulty that's created by the layers. This creates a feeling of player progression. For example: Dirt/stone = low hp Shale = 300 hp Granite = 1500 hp Slate = 5000 HP Marble = 10000 HP Obsidian = 20000 HP

This motivates the player to keep experienced dwarves if they want to mine deep.

4.) The deeper the resource, the more valuable. Right now there's no real reward other than exploration for mining hard resources. They're all essentially worthless:

06c9d3dd

[com1clyf3]

@Makeshiftrobot Added you since we'll prolly need some new art here.

[com1clyf3]

778

[mklingen]

The resources are more visually distinguished now, and have higher HP. Take a look and tell me what you think.

[com1clyf3]

Regressing. Assigned more dev on this to September polish phase. In the meanwhile, Joe's new art is helping.

[com1clyf3]

778 popped back up. Maybe some push got looked over or something?

[mklingen]

I think #778 is a misunderstanding. Here's how the layering system works. Imagine this is a 1D chunk in the top-bottom direction, with each row being 4 voxels;

.   .
.   .
x   d
x-> s
x   S
x   g
x   o

with:
. = air    d = dirt    s = shale, S = slate
x = occupied,   g = granite,   o = obsidian

If we change the height of the terrain so it's lower, it looks like this:

.   .
.   .
.   .
.-> .
x   d
x   s
x   S

with:
. = air    d = dirt    s = shale, S = slate
x = occupied,   g = granite,   o = obsidian

So you may never see granite, obsidian, etc. if you happen to be in lowlands. Would you prefer it work differently? If I did it the other way, from bottom up you would never see shale or slate for example.

[mklingen]

Okay @com1clyf3 I have implemented height normalization. What this means is that no matter where you spawn, there will be at most 6 air blocks above the highest point in the map. That means in most places, the ground will be significantly deeper, but it does completely eliminate the possibility of building structures higher than 6 units. Tell me what you think.

[com1clyf3]

So! The main issue is that getting to bedrock is supposed be a challenge, so right now low terrain is essentially breaking that design.

Instead of layering from the top, can we layer from the bottom starting with the hardest material and going to easier? That would ensure the bottom is always the hardest digging area.

[mklingen]

With height normalization there should be a few layers of obsidian before bedrock in most places now. I can also do the layering from the bottom instead of the top like you suggest but it would take a little bit of code surgery (since I would have to do soil differently from how I do rock).

[com1clyf3]

Height normalization seems to have pretty much fixed the layering design in 90% of usual cases, but so far I've found a few exceptions that bottom to top layering would fix. There's likely more hiding.

1. Mountains are now completely made of obsidian.

2. Lower terrain (this example's dirt starts at layer 19) still isn't producing obsidian above their bedrock.

0c9a7de8

[Blecki]

That is a volcano, not a mountain.

On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 5:54 PM com1clyf3 notifications@github.com wrote:

Height normalization seems to have pretty much fixed the layering design in 90% of usual cases, but so far I've found a few exceptions that bottom to top layering would fix. There's likely more hiding.

1.

Mountains are now completely made of obsidian. [image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6562812/45389035-c52e8300-b5e8-11e8-8672-e6118369a99e.png 2.

Lower terrain (this example's dirt starts at layer 19) still isn't producing obsidian above their bedrock. [image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/6562812/45389969-92d25500-b5eb-11e8-9b27-fee7648d5460.png

0c9a7de https://github.com/CompletelyFairGames/dwarfcorp/commit/0c9a7de8f294341a61eec7889af26ffdb810802e

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[com1clyf3]

Should a volcano be obsidian all the way through?

[Blecki]

Should probably be rebranded as basalt, and then add some random obsidian and pumice layers. However we have a very short time frame and this would be a NEW FEATURE!

On Wed, Sep 12, 2018 at 12:22 AM com1clyf3 notifications@github.com wrote:

Should a volcano be obsidian all the way through?

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[com1clyf3]

Sure. Wasnt't suggesting that. I was talking about how it's possibly an outcome of the height normalization.

[mklingen]

Mountains are now completely made of obsidian.

Volcanoes are obsidian all the way through yes, they are supposed to be.

Lower terrain (this example's dirt starts at layer 19) still isn't producing obsidian above their bedrock.

Eh, ok. I will think about it.