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[Marek14]

Offshoot of my ideas from the religion thread.

So, would you like books? Three traditional ways of making books (barring stone carvings and clay tablets which are fine by themselves, but get very heavy and cumbersome for larger texts) are:

Papyrus -- either a plant could be added, or maybe we already have a good one. Papyrus is a reed, I don't think we currently have reeds (as in plants that can only grow on banks).

Pergamen -- made from leather

Paper -- made either from wood or from rags. Old, tattered clothes could be recycled!

Something to write with -- inks of plant or animal origin (like squids). Maybe even colored inks.
Quills from various birds. Could be produced on butchering. Would also need alternate way to use them up, for example decorating things with feathers (or making down-filled pillows!).

Someone to write -- no printing presses, books would have to be copied by hand.

Contents -- apart from religious books, there could be historical books -- viewing them would tell you some chapter from legends mode. Actually, a procedural generation might work even for works of fiction (of course it wouldn't write the whole book, but it could write an outline, like "This masterfully written book is about the life of UristMcCrazy. Urist McCrazy went insane after falling into depression and murdered Urist McVictim with a bronze pickaxe. Urist McCowboy went after Urist McCrazy and killed him with a wooden crossbow.")

Also, bookkeepers would now really keep BOOKS

As a new piece of furniture, there would be bookshelf, which could hold a large amount of books (taking into account that hand-written medieval books were larger than today's paperbacks, there might still be place for about 20 books in one bookshelf).

Bookshelf could create a library as a room.

[IT 000]

Suggested many many times before. Searching is advised before you post a suggestion. I'm not seeing anything new here.

[Dwarven WMD]

Actually, for the record, if I remember correctly Bookkeeping is usually figurative for keeping records on something, such as transactions.
Though books would still likely be involved, though they would likely be called records or something like that.
What the hell would then happen if we lost the records? Does Urist McJew go insane because one copper coin is missing? (No one take that offensively PLEASE.)

[Jeoshua]

Rabble rabble rabble!

Urist McJew calls Rakost McRabbi.

See you in court, sucka.

Seriously tho, uncalled for.  Urist McPennypincher would have had the same connotations and no anti-semitisim.

[Dwarven WMD]

Well the first idea was Urist McCountant. I didn't think anyone would get the joke.

Since we're on the topic of Books, and therefore, Writing, wouldn't bureaucracy come about somewhere on DF?
I mean seriously. I'm sure that books and papers would be involved in the daily operations of a lot of entities. As far as I can tell, the only time something close to that exists is when we make it happen. That might be slightly entertaining, to go into a castle and see a bunch of humans running around with various papers.
Though I don't see how adding pencil pushers would help the game.

Hello, The Dwarven Office.

[sockless]

We already sort of have books modded in to the game. But not really.

I think that books would be a great addition to the game, we could then have a historian noble who writes out the history of the fortress. We could also have an accountant, which would be good when the economy gets added back in.

For inks we can use dyes as they currently exist, plus we could use charcoal pencils.

[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, for the record, if I remember correctly Bookkeeping is usually figurative for keeping records on something, such as transactions.

You mean "accounting".

What we have now is basically a combination of accounting and simple inventory management.

For someone who actually keeps books... I'm not really sure "keeping books" is a skill, per se.  Sure, there's putting books back on the shelves in libraries, but that's more of a standard hauling job, anyway.

[NW_Kohaku]

As for the OP...

IT 000 is completely right - this is a common suggestion that does not add anything to the game.

I don't just mean that "this isn't suggesting anything new", but also that "this suggestion would serve no function in the current game".

Why do we need to add paper and books and bookshelves and libraries as rooms to the game?

What purpose does this serve in gameplay?

At what point in the game will a player go, "Oh, in order to solve this problem, I will need to construct a library?"

There is a problem with adding, functionally, bees to the game ad infinitum - if all you are doing is adding more and more random structures and industries, but never actually making a function for those things, are they anything more than a minor gimmick that you use once, before growing bored of?

Sure, bees give you honey, but that's just food, you already have plenty of that.  Sure, you can make mead from honey, but you already can make alcohol from the absurdly abundant food, too.  Bees give you wax, which is only useful for the sorts of things you can already make from stone, and stone is something you have in such abundance you just make stone crafts to get rid of stone.  While adding nothing that you couldn't already do, it also adds the complications to your game of having to create several additional workshops and protect an open-air area (vulnerable to aerial siege) against enemies for a very limited amount of a resource that only replicates the function of resources you already have, anyway.

Bees are a neat gimmick, but they don't really add much to the game.

So again, what problem do libraries solve?  If necessary, you might just have to create the problem you then get the player to solve using the libraries.

[IT 000]

What purpose does this serve in gameplay?

At what point in the game will a player go, "Oh, in order to solve this problem, I will need to construct a library?"

Honestly I was in support for libraries until I read this. I will have to reorganize how I would like libraries to be brought in keeping this in mind.

Out of curiosity NW_Kohaku, do you support a sort of 'Annual Report' kind of option? The bookkeeper would do it automatically while he was bookkeeping. Basically when you hit the z key a new tab appears called 'Annual Report' this report keeps track of stocks that happened on the selected year. This could come in handy so that a player could see how he has been doing throughout the history of his fort and plan for the future.

The first menu would allow you to view the past and present years. It would just be a list of the year numbers. But years should be named, after an artifact or a major incident like a passing of ages or something. I suppose they could also be named in other ways, like if 10 dwarves died of Famine the year would be named after a Famine related word. Such as Blackwither or Duskstorm.

Code: [Select]

100, Year of Ironcode
101, Year of Silverdusk
102, Year of Greenback
103, Year of Redriver
104, Year of GoldenCurry
Upon selecting the year you wish to view you are given the overall stats of important things like food and such.

Code: [Select]

103, the year of Redriver
   Named after the artifact Redriver created by xxx (If the year is named it should explain why, otherwise left blank)

Overall Food +60
  Plant Stocks +40
  Meat Stocks -120
  Other Food Stocks +20
Booze Stocks +100
Population +1
  Dwarves Died 8
  Migrant Dwarves 5
  Births 2
There will also be an option to view monthly stats. At which point all the months will pop up and you can select the month of your chose.

Code: [Select]

Limestone, during 103, the year of Redriver
  10 Masterpieces were created
  1 Artifact was made
     -Redriver the Toad bone axe
  14 Goblins were killed
  2 Kobolds were killed (Kills will only count entity related creatures)
  The Elves from xxx came to trade
  7 Elf Merchants from xxx Died on their way to the depot
  We have struck Adamantine! Praise the Miners!
What do you think?

[Patchy]

That would actually be kind of cool. And might be a reason to build that library, so your booky can store all that information. Could even have a library be a requirement of "highest precision". It is decidely easy right now to get perfect stocks records.

Though even if the library had no use I'd still build them in my forts. Patchouli must have her library to lock herself away in.

[NW_Kohaku]

What purpose does this serve in gameplay?

At what point in the game will a player go, "Oh, in order to solve this problem, I will need to construct a library?"

Honestly I was in support for libraries until I read this. I will have to reorganize how I would like libraries to be brought in keeping this in mind.

Glad to hear it. 

Giving someone reason to pause and re-evaluate their assumptions and outlook is perhaps the greatest goal I have in making these comments on the Suggestions Forum.

Out of curiosity NW_Kohaku, do you support a sort of 'Annual Report' kind of option? The bookkeeper would do it automatically while he was bookkeeping. Basically when you hit the z key a new tab appears called 'Annual Report' this report keeps track of stocks that happened on the selected year. This could come in handy so that a player could see how he has been doing throughout the history of his fort and plan for the future.

I support some form of an "annual report".  It was part of the dwarven kingdoms suggestion, although that had to do with the baron or other noble calling an annual meeting. 

Toady, however, may take some convincing.

[The conversation was on taverns and how to build them]
There's obviously going to have to be a new kind of screen or options menu for the new stuff but it should all come right off of that screen. When you get into this economic stuff there's also this desire to jump into, 'I want my guest list with their winnings tab and how many drinks they've bought' and if for some reason you set up two inns you could have charts saying how well they're doing. I don't know how much we want to jump into Theme Park type of stuff, but it's reasonable ... Like, if you decide to start your fortress and you just set up this giant gambling hall and you attach some stockpiles filled with all kinds of stuff that's brought in and it becomes a big part of your fortress and basically booze is your main export straight to people into their stomachs and then they export it out of their bodies when they walk off the map or whatever, and that's your main source of income, then it would be reasonable to have tracking information for that kind of thing. But if it's just a small little place you use to make your diplomats and merchants more happy and more likely to have good trade agreements and that kind of thing then it doesn't need to be something that's in your face all the time. We're certainly not planning to have it at the end of the year pop up your earnings; that's not what we're going for, I don't want to scare people into thinking we're doing something completely off base and stupid with the game.

To properly describe the impact that an annual report would have, I think the best way to describe it is to talk about interface.

DF right now is currently most like a Real Time Strategy game. 

In a RTS, you have only a few important resources (like gold, wood and oil in Warcraft 2), and you have those prominently displayed at all times, because those were your most critical tools, aside from the units actually on the map.  Aside from having a menu to tell your buildings or units to do things, you pretty much otherwise had a big open view of the map, and the physical layout of the gameworld, and could push your units around and mash your big stack of units into the enemy's big stack of units, and watch the units in the stack fall down until only one stack was left, and that player wins. 

Right now, DF is all about physical layouts of your embark, physical locations of your dwarves, and the resources they are extracting and shoving around on the map.

Adding an annual report changes that dynamic - it pushes the game more in the direction of being a sort of SimCity-type game or Rollercoaster Tycoon game.  It changes the information you give the player from an immediate-need-and-resources-to-manage-those-needs type of information layout to a long-term-careful-management information layout. 

I believe this is a great direction for the game to go in (there is only so much depth and complexity in an RTS, after all, and we don't even have a serious enemy in fortress mode to pit our fortress against), and I've been arguing for this specific form of change in the game in many different ways in virtually all of my major suggestion threads.

There is, however, a bit of a problem explaining how, exactly, libraries actually fit into all this.

Do we need to only produce one book as a tool for bookkeepers to use in an accounting workshop, rather than simply giving them a table and a chair?  If so, that's not really a "library", now is it?  If we are going to be producing a library, it probably should involve books that more than just one dwarf will ever want to look up.

[sockless]

Tying into the whole idea of classes here:

Upper class dwarves could be able to read, which means that they would want a library to read books at. They would also write books, which means that the fortress could produce its own books. Books could also be imported as well, maybe some of them have special things in them, like the location of a FB lair or something, this would be good when the army arc is released. They might even have details on a FB's weaknesses, if they get implemented. Books would also cause a happiness benefit.

Books would be made in a workshop, but they would also be made in dwarves spare time. Books written in spare time would be of far better quality than those churned out of a workshop (like in real life!).

Bookkeepers would also require books to keep records, to get a certain level of accuracy. Maybe the manager would require them as well somehow, maybe to increase the number of jobs they can handle.

[Jeoshua]

A good reason for books to be used it to train skills that otherwise one would not be able to use, except in a cheaty way.  For example, imagine a military academy set up with libraries, sparring rooms, and archery targets... instead of autorepeat spikes.

Or training an architect up without making him waste his time designing things that won't ever get built.

Or skills which we have no way of training up, like Teaching or Military Tactics.

The possibilities are endless.

[NW_Kohaku]

Tying the whole thing to classes is one solution, but then you have to go into the construction of social classes, and how different classes demand different things, and in order to make that matter, you have to create the problems that arise if you just don't care whether you are satisfying what each class demands.

You also have to make clear when the upper classes who will be demanding these things will start arriving.

That's not an argument against it, of course, I've been championing the Class Warfare idea for about half a year, now. 

It's just that, in order to make a suggestion like "we should have libraries" make sense, you have to then start playing the game five moves in advance - In order for libraries to make sense, you have to have a purpose for libraries to fill, which means you need to create the problem that libraries solve, which means you need to create the situation that demands the libraries as a solution, which then requires the creation of the punishment for not building a library, and the steps to achieve the situation where you will have the choice of either building the library or facing the punishment for not building it. 

This is why I tend to have suggestion threads that can become very massive - when you start asking the "why" questions, and working out all the implications, you wind up building a very massive and unwieldy chain of cause-and-effect. 

The Improved Farming thread started out about farming, but it became about how players should interact with their resources - farming is not just a source of food, but a give-and-take balancing act.  After extrapolating time and time again, I found that the game was fundamentally broken in the way that it approaches how players acquire and spend resources, and argued for a cyclical system, rather than a something-from-nothing system.

Class Warfare started as my own "I want decorative objects" thread, not unlike an "I want libraries" thread, but I realized there was no purpose in the current game for those items.  I could make my fortress "a nice place to live" if I wanted to, but there was no real in-game recognition of it or need for it. 

In order to create the problem that "nice things" would solve, the game first has to create internal fortress strife and deeper psychological traits in dwarves.  You can't have a complex society with just the starting seven in an outpost, but if you make the game gradually shift from focusing on external threats to maintaining a more complex and civilized society, you can shift the game away from being about immediate survival in the first portion of the game, and into being about managing a growing society with complex individuals whose interactions, if badly managed, may be more dangerous than the external threats.

It's just that it's often hard to explain to people what you're doing when you are playing the game five moves ahead.  I spent the first post of the Improved Farming thread trying to make the argument for what I saw was the actual problem with farming (or rather, resources in general), rather than simply being a matter of farms not being large enough.

[Gloster]

Just an aside - bees make wax and that should eventually lead to candles, solving the darkness problem which has so far been ignored.

I otherwise tend to generally agree with Kohakus point of view, but I think the tiny gimmicks permitting you to do almost anything in an infinite variety of styles do add something to the spirit and enjoyment of the game. All within reason...