Editing v0.31:Bedroom design

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There are many ways to design the layout of [[DF2010:bedroom|bedroom]]s. Simplicity, ease of designating, efficiency, and aesthetics are all important factors in designing dwarven housing. The ability to modify the design to enlarge, improve, or add rooms can be important as well. Proximity of the rooms to [[DF2010:noise|noise]] should also be considered.

The simplest approach resolving dwarven sleeping requirements is to have all your dwarves sleep in a large communal [[DF2010:dormitory|dormitory]]. The smallest ''bedroom design'' possible is a corridor with with notched spaces for beds.  

Players frequently want designs which maximize positive thought and minimize the path distance between a dwarf's food, drink, job and home. This process is further complicated when the [[DF2010:dwarven economy|dwarven economy]] kicks in, and a wide range of "[[DF2010:Room#Specific_room_quality_grades|room qualities]]" are needed, and low-budget dwarves are kicked out of any over-priced quarters. To this end, a number of solutions, some surprisingly elegant, have been produced.  

Many of the designs shown here were taken from [http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=16901.0 this forum post].

The simplest form of dwarven housing.  Stick a bunch of beds in a room, designate a [[DF2010:dormitory|dormitory]] from one of them (do not assign the bed to anyone), and, voila, instant flophouse.  On maps with no [[DF2010:tree|tree]]s, this is pretty much your only option for sleeping quarters before breaching a cavern or importing large amounts of wood.  (Dwarves will sleep on the floor of the dormitor if no beds are available, which at least keeps them from sleeping in the wilderness.)

This setup only causes a single negative thought ("slept without a proper room recently"), although you miss out the benefit of the happy thoughts generated by personally-owned furniture.  However, as long as you compensate by offering your dwarves high-quality [[DF2010:food|food]], [[DF2010:alcohol|alcohol]], an expansive [[DF2010:dining room|dining room]], and other luxuries, your dwarves will remain happy enough to be productive throughout the life of a fortress.  (You may still wish to give [[DF2010:noble|noble]]s their own rooms, however; they tend to get upset when their [[DF2010:Noble#Room_Requirements_Summary|requirements]] are not met.)

Line designs have the advantage of being very space efficient and very adaptative. From 1×1 to 1×4 and longer, it can fit almost anywhere, can be upgraded later on as long as you have the space behind your first original line and do not need excessive corridor space for the bedroom access. Simply dig a few lines out of an access tunnel already in use in your fortress and voila, you have new living quarters. This kind of minimalistic design is perfect for when the economy kicks in, as it can be adapted in a flash for any kind of low wage citizen.

In this image, the access stairwell (blue fields in the center), spread out in all directions to a public dormitory and dining room for poorer dwarves on the left and right to 3x3 private rooms to the top and bottom.  The design allows for two small stockpiles of food (gray fields) to minimize the walk to a dining hall.

There's also built-in areas for impressive things like statues and cages (for zoos) to keep dwarves admiring your handiwork.  The 3x3 rooms are easy to get up to Decent or higher to keep your most useful dwarves happy as clams.  They're also conveinent for impromptu noble housing, since you can just knock out a wall between two rooms and convert one into a dining room for a whiny noble.  You could even expand the corner rooms a bit more on both the X and Y axes to make four 3x3 rooms to give the noble a dining room, tomb, and office all in one area.  This is especially useful for the mayor, who gets replaced every so often.  When a new Mayor is elected, one can reassign all the trappings to the new mayor in one go.  If you want an even more decentralized and calm traffic pattern, put tables and chairs in all the private rooms; dwarves will prefer to eat in their quarters.  The walls between the doors leading to the dormitory and Dining Room allow for 2 entrances and 2 exits to each predictably higher-traffic room while leaving a pillar of rock for an engraving.  The main corridor also allows you to branch off into 4 restraints per floor in a private 1x2 prison.  Since it's flanked by an animal cage and a statue (or, alternatively, 2 statues. This may be better because Statues block movement and is effectively the same as surrounding the prisoner with walls) and in an area you want smoothed and engraved to begin with, it gives prisoners a leg upon their happiness immediately and -- once again -- prevents traffic jams from convicts being brought food and water in larger prisons.

There are 7 6-room clusters here. If 5 Z-Levels of this is built, that's 5*7*6=210, which is plenty for most any fortress.

This design is compact and allows for a large number of rooms. Each room has 3 tiles plus a door. To add to the complex build an apartment level one level above or below the lobby - the stairs allow direct access. The design can be stretched to make the rooms 3x2 or 3x3, or to allow more rooms per floor, depending on your preference. Though not as visually impressive as the fractal patterns it is very efficient in that it can allow for large numbers of dwarves to easily access the main hallway.  The pods are very quick to deploy as the interior (mined out) width of the pods exactly equals one {{k|Shift}}+move of the cursor.  Highlight a full squar with a horizontal shift+move then a vertical.  Then ''un''mark the 3 internal walls in both horizontal and vertical directions (each also 1 shift+move distance long), and finally mark in the four staircases. Sixteen bedrooms with extremely efficient pathing laid out in as many seconds.

Upper/lower Apartment Level:    Lobby Level:

+-----------+                   +-----------+..

¦..¦..¦..¦..¦                   ¦..¦..¦..¦..¦.. O

¦.+-+.¦.+-+.¦                   ¦.+-+.¦.+-+.¦.. u

¦-¦X¦-+-¦X¦-¦                   ¦-¦X+---+X+-+.. t

¦.+-+.¦.+-+.¦                   ¦.++..O........ e

¦..¦..¦..¦..¦                   ¦..¦........... r

¦--+--+--+--¦                   ¦--¦O...O+--+..

¦..¦..¦..¦..¦                   ¦..¦.....¦..¦.. H

¦.+-+.¦.+-+.¦                   ¦.++..O..++.¦.. a

¦-¦X¦-+-¦X¦-¦                   ¦-¦X+---+X¦-¦.. l

¦.+-+.¦.+-+.¦                   ¦.+-+.¦.+-+.¦.. l

¦..¦..¦..¦..¦                   ¦..¦..¦..¦..¦..

+-----------+                   +-----------+..}}

:<nowiki>#</nowiki> = [[DF2010:grate|grate]] or floor [[DF2010:bars|bars]] over drain

:O = [[DF2010:statue|statue]]s (though a [[DF2010:zoo|zoo]] or booze stockpiles could work as well)

:2) A size 15 room is ample for any noble, with the possible exception of a [[DF2010:king|king/queen]].

''(Note - It's easy to [[DF2010:flood|flood]] an area with a waterfall such as this - be sure you are familiar with the technique before risking an entire dormitory (or the lower parts, at least) on it.)''

Minimizing walking distances requires good use of vertical space. This plan is simple, scalable, and only takes up a few floors- 6 if you have 32 per floor, 4 if you have 48. The maximum walking distance should be less than 20 (walking up/down stairs counts as one distance.).[[image:VaniverGreek32.png|center|thumb| 32 tile design]]

The Shaft design allows various options for entry direction and central "shaft" use. The central shaft may be altered to create bedrooms, dining rooms and offices for minor nobles, "deluxe" bedrooms, hospital beds, or simply more bedrooms. The design can easily accommodate several different room sizes while maintaining efficiency. However, the design utilizes Z-levels for efficiency, and you must build several levels of Shaft designs to accommodate a fully grown fortress.

The tileable shaft design is a further expansion of the general shaft design above, coming in somewhere between the simple geometric designs and the vastly more complex fractal designs. These are designs that can be symetrically tiled, that means concatenated in all six directions and are thus suited both for manual design as well as macro-automation. They allow the user to extend the same pattern over very large areas and to easily extend the available space per room up to a given size by tearing down just a few walls. Additionally, they can be suited for bedrooms as well as work and storage.[[Image:tileable_shaft_big.png|thumb|Tileable shaft design with a few possible variations.]]

The downsides are that they're not especially optimized for walking distance or large hallways, and the necessity of the main access shaft on the z-level (stairs) having to be in the centralmost tile (marked red in the examples) to allow z-level stacking.

Betting on design beauty and on geometrical symmetry first, fractal designs can also be at the same time very space and walk efficient. They however require a lot of time and space both to plan and execute and are most likely out of reach of all but the most serious players. Most players however agree that they are the most incredible of all the designs around, if not for the sheer challenge of successfully executing something as complex, as for the extra touch it gives to the fortress as a whole once it is done.

This was created by palin88 from [http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=17784.msg17413 Bay12Games forum] in order to make a three-dimensional version of Raynard's Fractal Design.

[[Category:Design]]