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[MrWiggles]

Skipping on Liquids! Holy crap!

I smell a new dwarven past-time. I can't wait to see transport systems that require a cart to skip across a lake.

Skipping across a lake, and also hitting rollers along the lake.

[Cobbler89]

Minecarts full of magma skipping across a lake...

...because we can.

Maybe have it all calculated for the minecart to finally fail to skip and fall in instead (realistically an object eventually either slows down or drifts in angle to the point where it fails to skip; you might quibble with the realism of skipping minecarts in the first place, but if you ever go and try skipping big, heavy but flat rocks you'll find it's possible, they just don't skip as many times because they lose more momentum and have greater angular drift per skip due presumably to their greater mass interacting with the water) at a point where you want to cast obsidian in the middle of the lake? Not sure what good could be done, but it might be amusing to build up an obsidian pillar in the middle of a body of water without piping magma through a hole in the ceiling above.

Also, maybe someday magma forges can have a stock of hot magma that can be dumped from minecarts to refill when the current stock gets cool, but so far we haven't heard of any such thing and that would unambiguously be a suggestion and therefore ungreenable. (Maybe I should make it red? I jest.)

[rex mortis]

Moving water and magma with carts would be a nice alternative to pumping. At least, moving small to moderate amounts of liquids might be easier. Or when great precision is required. This would help isolate magma critters from the forges at least. And setting up isolated pockets of water below the water source level without pressure problems would be easy.

[Naryar]

A steel minecart skipping over a volcano and going all the way, then locking itself into the tracks at the other side of the volcano. Most awesome dwarven rollercoaster stunt ever.

Also, new trap potential ! Make a goblin ambush pass between 2 tiles of magma, drop the former captured ambush in the magma tiles, rejoice as it splashes over passing ambush !

I shall call it the Fires of Irony. Not the most efficient or pratical trap ever, but wicked fun ! Imagine the terror we put the goblins though ! First they will hear the screams of other goblins falling, not that they would care for their well-being but they WILL imagine this happening to them, then slosh ! Gobbo covered in magma ! !!FUN!! for the whole dwarven family !

Now ima go twirl my nonexistent mustache and cackle in a corner, if you permit.

[BinaryBeast1010011010]

Ah crappit, I'm sure now the release will be out when I'll be back in flippin paris with no internet access... It's just to awesome to be another way.

[Knick]

So what about splashes?  Are they like mists, or something else?

Because I can totally imagine having a watertrap whereby goblins plummet several Z-levels, splash in the water, and make a pleasing mist.

[Rose]

I think they're mists. Some other people seem to think it's actual water movement.

[Sizik]

What tile do minecarts use?

[Rose]

they use an inverse wall tile

[BinaryBeast1010011010]

inverse wall? what is it?

[rhesusmacabre]

Inverse wall = unobscured engraved wall, i.e. dark double lines on a light background.

And that's the tracks, not the cart.

[Rose]

Oh, right, nevermind then.

Though, that said, all indications seem to point to it being A: moddable. and B: another type of unit. (First is confirmed, second is my guess.)

if B is right, then we'll be able to put unique graphics for it.

[Sizik]

He said they're a type of tool, so the symbol can be changed in the raws.

I'm guessing it's either going to be µ or ◘.

[greenskye]

What happens to a magma filled minecart that passes under a waterfall? Does the minecart break? If obsidian is formed, can it be removed from the minecart?

[NW_Kohaku]

What happens to a magma filled minecart that passes under a waterfall? Does the minecart break? If obsidian is formed, can it be removed from the minecart?

Amusingly enough, if a liquid is a content of a minecart instead of an actual liquid on the map, it may be possible to put magma and water in the same cart without interaction until Toady actually specifically codes it in.

The obsidian reaction we have now is partially because the map data is hardcoded and so crunched that magma and water cannot coexist in the same tile at any time.  When magma is merely the contents of an extensible item vector, Toady will need to generate an entirely new set of reactions to deal with this. 

Of course, it would cause serious consistency issues if magma and water did not cool to obsidian, but right now, glass objects don't melt in magma when built, but do melt in magma when merely lying in stockpiles, so it's not like there isn't precedent.