So yeah, you're bound to have seen the MATERIAL_EMISSION interaction that's now possible. I've been doing a bit of !!SCIENCE!! (quite literally too) with it, and here's what i've found out so far:
- Breath types are the same as before (as seen
here), but with the new SPATTER_LIQUID and SPATTER_POWDER types. They follow the same syntax, except with CDI instead of MATERIAL_BREATH_ATTACK. An example is seen in "file changes.txt".
- Emitted vapors (and possibly gases) are as hot/cold as the materials boiling temperature, meaning that rock vapors will melt your shit pronto, now that temperature works properly. Freezing cold substances will also freeze you over rather quickly, as my poor dorf found out with the worst teeth icings ever. In fact, his whole face froze over, including eyeballs, which rendered him completely blind.
- Any of the TRAILING breaths are almost impossible to control, since you also get hit by the vapors. It may kill foes, but you're going down too.
- SOLID_GLOB and LIQUID_GLOB work as described on the wiki; they're projectile attacks. Sadly, LIQUID_GLOB remains a solid glob. I suspect either of them might be able to impart contact syndromes, but i haven't tested that yet.
- The new SPATTER breaths just place a liquid/solid pile of the material in question on the target. As in, SPATTER_POWDER with basalt creates a pile of basalt powder, and the liquid version creates a harmless pile of molten basalt. This also has potential for contact syndromes, but it doesn't seem to cause injury when done with hot/cold materials. It doesn't seem to create spatter on creatures either.
- The FLOW type of emission seems to only work with fire-type breaths, like FIREBALL, FIREJET and DRAGONFIRE. It's kind of hard to explore without a list of other possible breaths. I tried putting in the other breath types from the wiki, but nothing happened. It doesn't seem to support materials either, since it calls for a breath token immediately after FLOW.
- The fire breaths seem to override any other tokens in the breath attack, turning it into the given fire breath, even when not preceded by FLOW. It is also entirely possible to incinerate oneself with these if one isn't immune to fire.
I can't seem to make dorfs breathe proper magma, though. I have succesfully made them fire a blast of dorf alcohol (which probably has the side effect of making dorfs brewable, but i digress), but actual liquid breaths/controllable vapors evade me. Any input on that part? I'd quite like to have this interaction explored, since i believe it has crazy potential.