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[zwei]

Some animals are too small to yeild any meat.  Butchers seem to ignore them, probably to make sure they get the actually productive corpses before they rot.  I'm not certain the size of those things off the top of my head, but that may be the reason.

Size may vary for creatures of different body plans, but it's they same limit for butchers ignoring corpses as it is for slaughter jobs only leaving skulls. While a tame creature only leaves skull, the corpse of the same wild creature will be ignored and will never rot.

Supposedly, it will rot to skeleton, but skeleton will take very long time (10+ years) to rot to skull and bones.

Well, people claim that happens. I have never seen that happen myself.

[Sphalerite]

I am not sure if it was asked, but will the carts, loaded with COMBUSTIBLE LEMONS explosive or combustible stuff, like booze or modded material actually combust on collision with something that doesn't burn, but just of force?

There are no explosive materials at all in DF, so there are no impact-sensitive explosions.  Booze doesn't explode, it just burns and boils.

[Putnam]

Are rollers assigned a direction, or do they just accelerate the carts in whichever direction they are already moving?

For example, if I had something like:

      ||
==roller==
      ||
     cart moving up
      ||

could I orient the roller to launch the cart to the right/left, or would it always shoot straight ahead?

There are powered "rollers" placed in strips that increase the speed of minecarts in a given direction

[Footkerchief]

Are rollers assigned a direction, or do they just accelerate the carts in whichever direction they are already moving?

For example, if I had something like:

      ||
==roller==
      ||
     cart moving up
      ||

could I orient the roller to launch the cart to the right/left, or would it always shoot straight ahead?

Toady's wording here ("one of four possible directions", emphasis mine) makes it sound like the rollers are assigned a direction at construction.

Toady, will there be mechanism powered carts? Will we be able to link the carts to a waterwheel or whatever?

The carts can't be linked, but there are powered sections of the track that go in one of the four possible directions.

[Arkenstone]

Hm, follow-up question then:


What would happen if a moving cart hits a roller pointing perpendicular to its pathway?  Does it aquire a diagonal velocity? Does it just slow down, possibly turning if it's slow enough?  Does it instantly stop moving foreward to go in the new direction? Does it just derail then and there?

[Elone]

So, if I got it right, it will look like this, where the arrows are the rollers, the middle is the station, and that is where the kickstart is needed in the first place.
 

 
Can we set the rollers to use a particular force? Just like we can set a variable weight sensitivity to pressure plates? And if no, then please? =3 Otherwise, I imagine them being too strong for some uses and too weak for others.

What would happen if a moving cart hits a roller pointing perpendicular to its pathway?  Does it aquire a diagonal velocity? Does it just slow down, possibly turning if it's slow enough?  Does it instantly stop moving foreward to go in the new direction? Does it just derail then and there?

Possibly it will only add speed if the cart was already moving in that direction, otherwise, if the new speed is applied in any way, a cart will not be able to leave a station from the same direction it entered, instead it will need an entrance and an exit, plus it will need bridge mechanisms to create appropriate junctions. That will take much much more room.

[EternallySlaying]

This aught to be lawlsy...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Cobbler89]

Will it ever be important to see carts or anything else fly in parabolae? 3d visualizers are cool utilities, but part of what makes DF different from Minecraft or Real-Time Strategy is the ASCII graphics (or primitive substitute of the same layout).

Can minecarts crash into the ceiling if sent rapidly off a ramp in a cave only one storey high (at any given point; obviously above and below the ramp the ceiling is a level higher/lower just as the floor is)?

Will whatever replaces happy/unhappy thoughts be equally hilarious? (E.g., will it still be possible to drink off the gloom of a relative's death? I always thought the weirdness of the system was more realistic than people gave it credit for, much like loyalty cascades, which once fixed so they're not inevitable should be brought back as possible since the concept is a feature, not a bug, in a game that models realistic relationships/loyalties along with realistic everything else.)

I think I had another question, but now I can't recall what it was.

[EmeraldWind]

Kohaku, you should still be able to switch tracks by having retracting bridges built over down ramps. Each branch would require another Z level though.

Actually...

Since bridges can act as tracks and pressure plates can be built onto to a track. If bridges can be built over a portion of track with a turn, you might be able to get a switch track going. A 1*N retractable bridge could effectively turn a 90 degree turn tile into a straight or T tile (doesn't matter which as the cart will always go through the straight portion of the T without turning). That way when the bridge is out the cart will continue straight and when the bridge is retracted it will use the turn.

Granted this will only work if you can built a bridge over top of an existing piece of track and have it stay the way it is. But if it does work, it can work in a single z-level.

[SeymoreGlass]

Granite being a very rough stone, one would expect it to make it more difficult to increase a cart's speed and easier to decrease it. Inversly, obsidian is very slick, which would make increasing speed easier, but decreasing speed more difficult. I guess my question is, will track/break/accelerator(roller?) material/quality have any role in minecart physics. And I mean for this release of course, as I'm positive it will come in at that fabled "eventually" down the road.

[Lord Zack]

You're doing minecarts, but are you planning on doing anything with other vehicles? Like the wagons you're dwarves bring on embark?

[i2amroy]

Edit: Ignore my entire previous diagrams. I didn't quite understand what Toady meant with his "dead end into a corner" statement.

Also a question:
Will we be able to have 1-way stops? So could you have a stop that allowed carts coming from 1 direction to shoot through without being stopped or slowed, but carts from another to be stopped and need to be started again? (Potentially in a different direction?)

[Footkerchief]

Granite being a very rough stone, one would expect it to make it more difficult to increase a cart's speed and easier to decrease it. Inversly, obsidian is very slick, which would make increasing speed easier, but decreasing speed more difficult. I guess my question is, will track/break/accelerator(roller?) material/quality have any role in minecart physics. And I mean for this release of course, as I'm positive it will come in at that fabled "eventually" down the road.

No, that won't be in the next version, for a number of reasons:
1. Individual stone types don't have distinct friction values in the raws yet
2. Obsidian can be much "rougher" than granite depending on how they've been smoothed
3. Rolling resistance != kinetic friction

You're doing minecarts, but are you planning on doing anything with other vehicles? Like the wagons you're dwarves bring on embark?

Nope:

Along with minecarts, can we expect the dwarves to use wheelbarrows, handcarts, horse/OX/(other load bearing domestic animal)carts, as well as backpacks. do you plan on giving paved roads a speed increase to these transports(inc wagons).

There will be wheelbarrows and animals will come up somehow.  That's probably it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Kohaku, you should still be able to switch tracks by having retracting bridges built over down ramps. Each branch would require another Z level though.

Actually...

Since bridges can act as tracks and pressure plates can be built onto to a track. If bridges can be built over a portion of track with a turn, you might be able to get a switch track going. A 1*N retractable bridge could effectively turn a 90 degree turn tile into a straight or T tile (doesn't matter which as the cart will always go through the straight portion of the T without turning). That way when the bridge is out the cart will continue straight and when the bridge is retracted it will use the turn.

Granted this will only work if you can built a bridge over top of an existing piece of track and have it stay the way it is. But if it does work, it can work in a single z-level.

If it counts as an engraving, that may well work.  If it counts as a construction, it probably won't.  Cart logic dwarfputing or automated logistics systems may well be a matter of whether or not you are working with natural stone, which means that it may require some careful obsidian casting to get right in other locations.

[Elone]

In response to Roy above, this would be much more easily solved if our levers could send an INVERTED signal to a chosen bridge. Thus one lever could be linked to two bridges, and when you flip the lever, one extends and the other retracts. Looks so easy to do if you're a dev, and so hard if you're a player...