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[darklord92]

dev log just confirmed carts skipping across fluids as well as filling with them muhahahahahah.

Projectile units and vehicles have more resistance moving through water and magma now, and they can skip across the surface of liquids. That'll leave intermittent splashes at the points of contact depending on the speed and nature of the objects. There are also splashes now when a creature or vehicle falls into a liquid. The carts currently fill up with liquid when they are in a liquid square, but the future of that depends on it being given a use through the hauling interface and having carts being empty-able so they can be reused later. We'll have to see how that plays out.

[FearfulJesuit]

Splashes.

So what happens if a creature drops into a 1x1 tile of 7/7 water that's surrounded by wall? It can't go out, so presumably it would go...

...up a Z-level?

Friends, I think I've found a new magma-moving device for the powering of our magma smelters- a system where goblins are thrown into a square of magma, with a bunch of hatches continually closing and opening, so that the magma ends up as high as you want with sufficient numbers of goblins.

[Captain Crazy]

dev log just confirmed carts skipping across fluids as well as filling with them muhahahahahah.

Projectile units and vehicles have more resistance moving through water and magma now, and they can skip across the surface of liquids. That'll leave intermittent splashes at the points of contact depending on the speed and nature of the objects. There are also splashes now when a creature or vehicle falls into a liquid. The carts currently fill up with liquid when they are in a liquid square, but the future of that depends on it being given a use through the hauling interface and having carts being empty-able so they can be reused later. We'll have to see how that plays out.

fill a cart with caravan-bought GCS venom and a bunch of spears

make it hit a bump at hi-velocity towards goblin scum, watch as their once-intact bodies get swiss-cheesed by venomous spikes of Dwarven Hospitality

[Sadrice]

I think I have a pretty good implementation of a stack data structure via a newton's cradle type thing.
The elements of the stack are binary bits, though the carts themselves are ternary, to distinguish data carts from hammer carts, which are used to pop an element.  0 carts are empty, 1 carts are partially loaded, hammer carts are fully loaded.  If you can fit more than one detectable state between empty and fully loaded, the data need not be binary. It uses the cart gun mentioned earlier in the thread, with a vertical stack of carts as a 'clip', with the bottom one resting on rollers that can briefly to dispense one cart at a time.  Any device that dispenses a cart whenever signaled would work.  Sending a signal to the cart gun is the pop operation, while sending a cart into the input is a push operation.  It will halt and send an error in case of overrun if you push more data carts than there are hammer carts loaded in the device, and do nothing if you try to pop an empty stack. 

Code: [Select]

lowercase - pressure plates
UPPERCASE - hatches linked to corresponding plates
^ - up ramps
# - wall
= - tracks
+ - corner tracks
| - tracks
 

z


Input>>==Rr=Aa========00000000=bB=eE==<<<Cart Gun


 r - triggers on any cart (data carts only, hopefully)
R - drops data carts to cart reader
a - triggers on fully loaded hammer carts (only happens if stack is empty and pop is called, can also send null signal if desired)
A - drops hammer carts to be reloaded into the cart gun
b -  triggers on fully loaded hammer carts (happens whenever a cart is pushed)
B - drops hammer carts to be reloaded into the cart gun
e - error plate triggers on any cart (in case of overrun error)
E - drops cart to deal with overrun error


z-1     


       #######                 ########
       #+^#+^#                 #^+#^+#
       #|##v##                 ##v##|####
       #|##########             ####+=oX#
       #+===pP=m===Wherever used data goes
       ############


v - downramp to hammer cart reloader
p - triggers on partially loaded carts (should only be 1 carts)
P - drops cart to wherever used data goes, pressing output plate 1 as it goes
m - output plate 0, triggers on any cart (should only be empty 0 carts)
o - overrun plate, triggers on any cart, sends error signal and halts input, linked to a latch, since it needs a continuous signal until reset
X - restart hatch, in case of overrun cart comes to rest here, can be dropped by lever or some other input


Initially, there are no data carts and the righthand side of the stack is filled with hammer carts.  The maximum number of elements in the stack is the number of hammercarts initially in the stack.  An input comes into the stack from the left, say, an empty cart.  First it triggers plate r, but it has already passed hatch R, so this doesn't matter (unless another cart comes within 100 ticks.  don't let that happen, though it would probably just bounce back up the ramp and work fine), then it hits the hammercarts, knocking the end one off, which triggers plate b, falls down hatch B, and is loaded into the hammer cart gun.  That can be repeated as many times as there are hammer carts.  To get that bit of data back out, send a pop signal to the cart gun, which will dispense a hammer cart, which will strike the stack, sending the most recently pushed cart (in this case, an empty cart) back the way it came.  The empty cart will not trigger platen a (too light), but will trigger plate r, and will go down hatch R to the reader.  There it will pass over plate p (too light), and will trigger plate m, sending a 0 signal to output. If you exceed this number, the rightmost data cart will be knocked off, and will trigger the e plate, fall down the E hatch, trigger the o plate, signaling overrun error and halting input, and will come to a stop on the X hatch, to wait for the user to deal with the situation. If you attempt to pop the stack when empty, a hammer cart will be knocked off the stack, going to the left.  It will trigger plate a, which could potentially send a null signal.  It then falls down hatch A and is reloaded into the hammer cart gun.  Avoid simultaneously pushing and popping the stack, I'm not quite sure what would happen, but it would probably not be what you intend.


I also designed a queue, but it is more complicated and plagued by problems I'm not quite sure how to solve, like how to enqueue a cart without also dequeueing one, and how to keep the queue from migrating to the left until it jams, and how to easily clear and initialize the queue.  I might post it later.

[King Mir]

A queue would be easy. Just a series of rollers with the first one being controlled by the input circuit. To push a bit on the queue, send it to the back, to pop a bit, send power to the first roller, and turn off power to the other rollers. You may need to tinker with the details to prevent two carst being popped off when you need one. Instead of the first roller, a bridge on a ramp could be used; the cart on it would not go anywhere when the bridge is down, and would roll down the ramp when retracted. This would prevent a problem if rollers transmit power, which they might.

[reilwin]

I also designed a queue, but it is more complicated and plagued by problems I'm not quite sure how to solve, like how to enqueue a cart without also dequeueing one, and how to keep the queue from migrating to the left until it jams, and how to easily clear and initialize the queue.  I might post it later.

Off the top of my head: pressure plates linked to a bridge at one end of the queue? More bridges to just drop all the carts down a level to empty it quickly?

[612DwarfAvenue]

- !!SCIENCE!!ing to weaponize minecarts, before we've even tried them out ourselves -

I love these forums. I really do.

[Supersnes]

Double points if you get 5+ skips off the dwarf in the cart.  Even more if it somehow saves the fort from certain destruction provide superb finding for the !!Scientific!! community.

[i2amroy]

Assuming the total amount of kinetic energy (and therefore the number of "skips") that you get out of a cart is based on the weight of the objects within as part of the speed, then somebody needs to make a device that filters out the larger and more muscular dwarves from the weaker ones. The heavy dwarves have enough kinetic energy to bounce 3x across the magma, where the weaker dwarves only have enough for 2 and fail to make it to the far side.

[Castamere]

oh yeah toady, no more 100z magma pump stacks
no you just use a bunch of haulers to make magma available on the surface even in the first year of the fort
and the wood burning for the metal industry is a thing of the past(except steel)

[xmakina]

Why hatches? Assuming that a cart can't derail into a closed door/bridge/floodgate, you could do this:

Because that's quite an assumption. Doors and floodgates can be taken down by building destroyers, a bridge you might have something with but I'd be curious how the anchor tile is handled (since you'd need the bridge to open away from the circuit if it atom smashes engraved tracks and rollers below it).

And I said railgun in the very literal sense of the word; a gun that is powered by rails. Suggestions of laser or particle cannon are not my own.

[Rose]

Bridges would atom smash tracks just as much as they would atomsmash smooth and constructed floors. I.e. Not at all.

Bridges would atom smash rollers just as much as they would atom smash other buildings, i.e. the buildings can't be there in the first place.

[SmileyMan]

Oh dear, I feel sorry for the poor dwarf in my next fortress who gets the job of hauling a cart full of magma up 100 z-levels.

Actually, I don't feel sorry at all.

[Geb]

It's looking likely that cart-based mist generators really will work. I really hope that the whirlpool design will work, because that would be a very neat, compact addition to any dining hall.

It's good to give the dwarves something to raise their morale, now that their existence will be filled with hurtling doom-wagons, and rollercoaster rides that take them flying through air, water and magma on a simple food hauling run.

[Girlinhat]

Stage 1: Tap magma, use pump to fill a small reservoir.
Stage 2: Send cart through reservoir.
Stage 3: Send cart up to the surface.
Stage 4:

Code: [Select]

#####
###.#
===<#
###.#
#####Stage 5: Cart runs headlong into a wall, causing it to spill its contents and derail, where it will then be caught by a roller and sent back down to the magma.
Stage 6: My medic is a legendary wound dresser.