Building
From Dwarf Fortress Wiki
A building is a structure that can be placed from the build menu. Some buildings are made with furniture from a workshop, which can then be made into rooms. Building tasks and preferences are changed with the building tasks/prefs command q.
Buildings are distinct from constructions.
Building Technicalities
- This section is valid as of versionv0.28.181.40d
The current system works something like this: Tiles can have one of three states, wall, floor, and empty space, along with some attributes, like what items, buildings and constructions are in them, as well as their material. Toady hasn't implemented constructions that actually act as terrain, they are merely part of a "construction" attribute.Verify When you build a down stair over a terrain down stair, for example, the down stair is added as a "construction" attribute. Tiles with a construction attribute of a tile type (as in wall/floor/empty space) identical to their terrain counterpart will hide the terrain counterpart, both in the view tile screen and when building something like a workshop over it, otherwise the construction simply imitates it's terrain counterpart.
The reason you can't build a wall on a constructed floor is that though the constructed floor is supposed to only overlap it's terrain counterpart, DF doesn't allow for having more than one construction in a tile, hence there's a conflict. Walls are a special case, you simply can't build anything in them, and you can only build floors, walls, and a few other buildings like wells in empty space. Constructed walls have some kind of floor on top of them which is linked to the wall, it seems that the wall-floors ARE constructions, but they don't overlap anything and don't conflict with other structures. It was likely a quick hack by Toady.Verify Up/Down Stairs are identical to Down Stairs, as far as what can be built on them is concerned.
The table below details which building and constructions will prevent the construction of certain other buildings and constructions, since the system isn't always consistent. This table isn't necessarily complete, there's probably more buildings which are inconsistent.
Legend
| Yes | Constructions can coexist |
| No | Constructions conflict |
| !! | Construction conflict, building in the tile will completely overwrite it |
| X | Not vertically supported by construction/terrain |
| Z | Not horizontally supported by construction/terrain |
| ? | Untested, undetermined, or not applicable |
| Workshop | Other buildings | Natural | Constructed | Open Space | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Floor | Up Stair | Down Stair | Up Slope | Down Slope | Floor | Up Stair | Down Stair | Up Ramp | Down Ramp | ||||
| Workshop | No(XZ) | No(XZ) | Yes(X?) | No(XZ) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) |
| Other Buildings | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) |
| Constructed Floor | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(XZ) | Yes(??) |
| Constructed Wall | No(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | !!(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(XZ) | Yes(??) |
| Constructed Up Stair | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(XZ) | Yes(??) |
| Constructed Down Stair | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(Z) | No(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??)* |
| Up/Down Stair | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??)* |
| Ramp | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | Yes(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | No(??) | Yes(XZ) | Yes(??) |
- note that constructed down and up/down stairs must be constructed 1 z-level above an existing up stair if you wish to build them in open space.
List of buildings
| Buildings | |
|---|---|
| Workshops - Furnaces | |
| | |
| Rooms | Barracks - Bedroom - Dining room - Jail - Meeting hall - Office - Sculpture garden - Tomb - Zoo |
| Furniture | Animal trap - Anvil - Armor stand - Bed - Bin - Bucket - Cabinet - Cage - Coffin - Container - Restraint - Seat - Statue - Table - Weapon rack |
| | |
| Access | Door - Floodgate - Bars - Grate - Floor hatch - Bridge - Road - Window |
| Constructions | Fortification - Floor - Stairs - Ramp - Wall |
| Mechanical & Trap | Axle - Gear assembly - Millstone - Screw pump - Water wheel - Windmill Lever - Pressure plate - Trap - Support |
| Other Buildings | Archery target - Kennel - Shop - Siege engine - Trade depot - Wagon - Well |
| Related Articles | Architecture - Bedroom design - Cave-in - Computing - Furniture industry |
