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Author Topic: Mining and where to stand  (Read 509 times)

Veroule

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Mining and where to stand
« on: May 04, 2008, 05:58:00 pm »

Not actually a bug, just an irritation.  It is an irritation nearly everyone complains about when they notice a miner walk half way around the world to stand next to his target when all he needed to do was take 1 step.

I am posting this more as a suggestion, and posting it here because the behavior does qualify as a bug under the concept of "not the intended result".

The logic is actually very simple.  We can not path from the dwarf to his mining target because the mining target is not an available place to step.  We do not want to path from the dwarf to each square around the mining target because that takes too long and does not actually assure that the target is reachable from that location.

What can be done is reverse logic.  Path from the mining target to the dwarf.  This gives use a shortest route and ensures reachability.  Then remove the first step and reverse the path.  This provides a route for the dwarf to travel and the final location to stand.

This particular logic design works with a dwarf just finished mining a tile and his new target tile selected him, as well as mining a new channel.  It can work with workshops and picking up items, those require standing on instead of standing next to and would not remove the first step prior to path reversal.

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"Please, spare us additional torture; and just euthanise yourselves."
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Draco18s

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Re: Mining and where to stand
« Reply #1 on: May 04, 2008, 10:47:00 pm »

Known issue, it's been around for a long long time.  It's even documented on the wiki!

W > E > N > S > NW > NE > SW > SE

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awdball

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Re: Mining and where to stand
« Reply #2 on: May 05, 2008, 03:05:00 pm »

Draco18, it doesn't sound like you read the post. They freely admitted this was a known issue and provided an interesting pathfinding logic option that may in fact give Toady a new possibility for implementation. I quite liked Veroule's idea.
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SirPenguin

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Re: Mining and where to stand
« Reply #3 on: May 06, 2008, 10:30:00 am »

I believe Draco is merely reinforcing that this is a known bug, and the post really just belongs in the Suggestion forum.

However, to add my own 2 cents, fixing it shouldn't be hard at all. Dwarves already know what items are closest to them, and use them in that order. Just make it so they can also recognize what designations are closest to them. Then you could add a bit of "forward thinking", so that if faced with a bunch of choices all 1 distance from him, he'd choose the one where there was even crap to dig...so in a 5x5 mining square, he'd dig out the center before finishing off the sides.

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Veroule

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Re: Mining and where to stand
« Reply #4 on: May 06, 2008, 02:03:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by SirPenguin:
<STRONG>I believe Draco is merely reinforcing that this is a known bug, and the post really just belongs in the Suggestion forum.</STRONG>

Actually it isn't considered a bug yet.  It is a known issue, and my reason for posting here instead of the Suggestion forum is to get it upgraded to a bug status.

Supplying an actual working solution is my incentive to Toady to make that change in status.

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"Please, spare us additional torture; and just euthanise yourselves."
Delivered by Tim Curry of Clue as a parody of the lead ass from American Idol in the show Psych.

Goblin Dragoon 085

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Re: Mining and where to stand
« Reply #5 on: May 06, 2008, 02:08:00 pm »

There are several possible solutions, but non will be 100% satisfying.

Lets just say that: When a dwarf dug a field from any direction he will continue digging in the opposite direction, until he runs out of place to dig and then he will search for a new cluster. This helps greatly when digging corridors and big rooms.

Now this sounds like a good improvement/addition to the current system, but I am sure that there is a big flaw which I cannot currently see. Same most likely holds true for any suggested digging system and also every system going to get suggested in the future :P

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