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[NW_Kohaku]

Actually, a magma dimension is the most likely explanation, given that the only other materials in the game that I know of that maintains constant temperature are Nethercaps, which are explicitly drawing magical power from another dimension, and magma men/fire imps/dragons/etc. creatures that are also magma/fire-related magical creatures. 

Unless you think magma crabs and dragons are powered by demons, too, it's likely magic has its own indistinct sources from multiple dimensions. 

Anyway, this all has nothing to do with the idea of whether or not eruptions or at the least, magma updrafts should occur.  Volcanoes now are static and relatively boring structures. 

If Toady wants to make some eruption mechanics later, then tying how much junk you dump into magma into how likely it is to erupt when we actually have volcanic eruption mechanics is perfectly fine as a suggestion.

[Sadrice]

Actually, a magma dimension is the most likely explanation, given that the only other materials in the game that I know of that maintains constant temperature are Nethercaps, which are explicitly drawing magical power from another dimension

Where is this explicitly stated?  I thought we had no information about Nethercaps other than that in the raws.  It is an obviously magical organism, but nothing about its power source is at all explicit.

[Sadrice]

Ultramafic is extraordinarily rare to occur in the current state of the Earth, but existed in the ancient past before the crust of the planet fully cooled off.  Today, the only real vestiges of ultramafic rock are deep near the mantle of the Earth, or in a few special Kimberlite pipes.  (These are, notably, where most of the world's diamond mines occur.)

Ultramafic volcanism, and directly igneous ultramafic rocks are pretty damn rare at the surface (though they make up a large portion of the mantle), but metamorphosed ultramafic rocks are not that uncommon.  I live in an area with scattered areas of ultramafic rocks (and soils) in the form of serpentinite with with serpentine chaparral.  They are bizarre places, with near barren oddly colored soil, with lumps of serpentinite that, depending on weathering, can be anywhere from waxy textured almost turquoise-like blue-green to hard iridescent purple-black spheroids.  All of the plants are a ghostly pale greyish cast from the toxic soil.  There are also cinnabar deposits, though to my annoyance I still haven't found any.


Also, I was most of the way through writing a post of indignant nerdrage before I realized you didn't mean to say hawaii and iceland had mostly felsic magma.

[NW_Kohaku]

Also, I was most of the way through writing a post of indignant nerdrage before I realized you didn't mean to say hawaii and iceland had mostly felsic magma.

Oops.  Yeah, I didn't mean to write "felsic volcanoes are unlike felsic volcanoes because..."  I corrected that. 

Where is this explicitly stated?  I thought we had no information about Nethercaps other than that in the raws.  It is an obviously magical organism, but nothing about its power source is at all explicit.

Strangely enough, I'm having a search fail right now on this topic... apparently, Toady has never mentioned the word "nether" anywhere in the forums, DF Talk, or Threetoe's stories. 

I do remember talk about how they were supposed to be channeling energy into/out of an alternate dimension that is always the same cold temperature, but I can't find where right now...

This, however, from the Analysis of "Cado's Magical Journey" should give an idea where I'm coming from with this...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Analysis

 Magic in Dwarf Fortress, like other elements in the game, should be tied in closely to how the overall world is put together. In the case of magic in particular, this includes the larger universe metaphysics and other planes of existence. These can include places where the dead go after they pass on, having being judged or some other process, as well as parallel universes or places that answer questions such as "what happens when we dream?". All of these places and their interconnections should be randomly created with each world generation. Once they are created, the sorts of magic that exist in the world can be generated. Example planes from the story include the Imaginary (from which telekinetic, time-slowing, and transformation powers could be drawn), Faerieland (which had its own sort of critters and associated magic, reachable through the grove), the Shadow world (adjoining the regular world at night), the Underworld (a place where some dead go, with native creatures like goblins) and the land of dreams (where the dreaming souls are, but it is also parallel to the Underworld, and possibly also the fair shore and bountiful forest that Sasmar mentioned). None of these worlds are intended to be permanent examples in every setup, but this sort of thing should be common.


 In terms of the game itself, planes are not only intended to be explanations for some of the magical effects, but also places that you can go in either mode. You can already visit a simplified Underworld, but in order to be satisfying, multiple worlds will need to be generated and stored. Due to the size of the main world, the other worlds will not be as rich as the main world in terms of sites and so on, but they should make up for it in other ways. In any case, even fully parallel worlds can be handled if they have fewer Z levels than the standard world (e.g. if they are just used over the contours of the land and a few Z levels below and above). Having extra worlds freely available will also allow for visiting gods in their homes and it would allow player wizards to make their own pocket dimensions, for example. Not every world will be related, but there should be a healthy number of relationships, so that for any two planes, there could be no connection, communication-only connections, or travel connections, as well as things like the "veins and arteries" of magic in the story, etc. Interplanar travel might only be possible at certain times or at certain places. Travel might be physical, or you might travel with your soul only (much like the current ghosts), and you might form a temporary body upon arrival (as with the bogeymen in the story). This could leave you with an uninhabited body elsewhere, which could become inhabited or otherwise troubled while you are away, perhaps.

[Sabreur]

At the risk of offending people, rubble sounds boring and largely pointless. If it does get added to the game, the first thing I'd do is toggle it off (if possible) or mod the raws so it boils away at room temperature.  Lack of rubble management strikes me as an acceptable break from reality.  I always assumed clearing rubble was an abstract part of the "mining" skill anyways.

[EpeeGnome]

I just read through this entire thread, and there is a missing argument in favor of rubble that I'm surprised, and slightly disappointed no one has made yet. Simply: Crapping up the pristine landscape with a metric butt-ton of rubble is a very dwarfy thing to do. Never mind that it will add depth to both realism and game-play(and I agree that it would), because it would add dwarfyness! Now not only will the landscape be denuded of vegetation, but it will also be covered in river choking piles of mine tailings. And then the river floods, perhaps into the fortress. Oh, I like this proposed idea very much.

As for specific implementations, I don't have huge opinions. I guess I'm in favor of the sand physics idea combined with the amalgamation solution. Mining just turns a square into 7/7 rubble or boulder and 1/7 rubble (or into ore/gem and rubble). 7/7 rubble turns into a gravel wall if it's sides and bottom are not air, and vice versa if those neighbors become air. This works with uses such as building dams and sapper resistant walls. As for magma destruction exploits, make rubble displace liquids, so dropping into a 7/7 magma channel will just raise the magma level to 1/7 magma and 6/7magma+1/7 rubble. (dropping it on SMR would still destroy it). If you went with that, you could even get fancy with fluid-rubble interactions, and allow water movement to encourage rubble movement. This would mean you can just dump it all in the river on the map edge to get rid of it. Just brainstorming here.

Automated dumping using designated drop sites, loading sites, and a stone clearing labor would prevent micromanagement from becoming a problem, but for those that can't stand it anyway, a simple off toggle would work wonders. Sapper resistant walls might be enough to get them to turn it back on when sappers are added one day.

[Buttery_Mess]

Hah, I live on chalk hills. Our 'rubble' is an endless source of cheap graffiti material.

[NW_Kohaku]

Crapping up the pristine landscape with a metric butt-ton of rubble is a very dwarfy thing to do.

Amusingly, that was part of how I tried to sell the Improved Farming concepts of soil erosion and pollution: That you could make your embark an unlivable Hellscape if you so chose.  (Bonus Megaproject: Create a Black Blizzard to choke your elven neighbors.)

It didn't really seem to garner comment among the people who actually read the thread, though, so I guess I didn't try to carry it over for that reason. 

Hypothetically combining the two, you could heavy metal poison the waterways, clear away mountaintops and wash down slag with the rains, clear-cut the forests, promote wind erosion, and sweep away all the arable soil from the surface, making a pristine forest into a mud-and-gravel desert.

[Arkenstone]

If Toady wants to make some eruption mechanics later, then tying how much junk you dump into magma into how likely it is to erupt when we actually have volcanic eruption mechanics is perfectly fine as a suggestion.

The demons are not happy about all that orthoclase you dumped on them...  It clashes with the adamantine.

[vidboi]

It seems that this thread has gone quite a way off topic with all the talk of magma and eruptions (not that that's a bad thing, as they would make awesome additions to the game) but I'd like to take us back to rubble again.

Initially I have to say I was dead against the addition of rubble. Partially because I couldn't see how shifting huge amounts of rubble around would be much fun (I'm not a dwarfcraft style player and I like a challenge, but this just seemed too menial) but mainly because I saw it causing most of a problem at the start of the fortress rather than towards the later years (which as many have stated is where challenges need to be added). Now, I'm sure experienced players could quickly get around this problem, but as others have stated slowing down the rate at which you can get your fortress started and having to deal with rubble straight away would make the learning curve "supervertical" and likely scare off new players. Just think of it this way:

The new player designates a tunnel into the mountain, after all the intro message said "strike the earth". Their miner gets 5 tiles in and stops for no apparent reason. The new player doesn't have a clue why and doesn't know that they have to move the rubble, assumes the game is broken and quits thinking that it was all a waste of time.

After reading through the thread however and considering the various arguments I slowly became more in favour of rubble and I believe I worked out a system where starting your fortress would be only mininmally hindered but as your expansions became bigger the difficulties would rise exponentially.

-Firstly, one mining designation, as there is now. Adding multiple designations performing subtly different tasks would add too much complexity with little depth gained. I don't want to spend too much time considering what exactly I'm going to use this rock for I want to mine out a room; the system right now works fine in that regard.

-When a square is mined it produces between 1 and 7 units of rock. These will be by default rubble, but as miner skill increases there is a greater chance that these will be boulders. I propose that a legendary miner would have a 25% chance of producing a boulder, as on average this would produce 1 boulder per tile (average 4 units of rock, 1 of them a boulder).

-Rubble is a pseudo-liquid, essentially a liquid with a very high surface tension, allowing it to be dumped into mounds instead of tall stacks. I cose 7 units per tile max to fit with other liquids so that they can effectively mix in one square. In this way rubble would limit the flow of water or magma through the square if it is left uncleared, possibly interfering with magma forge systems. Different types of rubble in the same pile would slowly settle, with the more dense ones moving to the bottom, and rubble in the way of liquids may be pushed around like other objects are now.

-A 6/7 or 7/7 tile of rubble blocks movement, with 6/7 acting as a fortification and 7/7 acting as a wall.

-Rubble will fall down stairs, causing blockages much faster (on average every 2 Z-levels). This makes digging down a much more arduous ordeal than digging sideways, and should help slow the rush to the magma sea.

-Dwarves will automatically try to spread 6/7 or 7/7 tiles of rubble to nearby less full tiles in order to prevent blockages. Rubble is dumped just like stone would be now by using d-b-d (in order to prevent the fortress coming to a halt as every dwarf is carrying rubble instead of performing more important tasks) or can be automatically jumped in zones via the job orders menu (if you really want your hauling to come to a halt).

-A wheelbarrow carries 1 unit of rubble or a single boulder at a time. A minecart I expect will act like a moving bin and can carry 5 units at a time.

-Rubble as mined can't be used for anything except dumping. Rubble can however be refined producing rubble that is stored in bins in stone stockpiles can be used for building roads, crafting and in the case of ores smelting (I'm thinking multiple pieces of rubble for one bar, perhaps an entires bin (5) to make it less profitable). Although this would make it easier to dispose of than dumping, it would require just as much if not more work.

-Rubble will work as boulders do now and have to be moved for anything to be built on the tile. This can be carried out in the builder such isn't too much of a hassle for setting up your first bedrooms, but would make setting up legendary dining rooms a bit more of a task and rewarding those with a good removal system.

Overall the aim of this was to allow players the option to ignore rubble without too much of an inconveniance until they really began large, later game projects, whilst still allowing plenty of scope for those who want to have to deal with rubble the whole way through to really challenge themselves (after all, my main complaint at the current 25% drop rate of rocks is that I won't have enough to test out the limits of efficient minecart systems with). It also allows players part way between the two camps to have some time in which to set up other parts of the fortress before setting up systems to remove rubble rather than that being the first concern. I'm sure it's in no way a finished proposal ready to be implemented, and I'd be greatful for other player's input.

[xeniorn]

-Firstly, one mining designation, as there is now. Adding multiple designations performing subtly different tasks would add too much complexity with little depth gained. I don't want to spend too much time considering what exactly I'm going to use this rock for I want to mine out a room; the system right now works fine in that regard.

Having 2 designations could actually be implemented without any added complication. Say we have the mining implemented as you proposed, with intermittent boulders and mostly rubble. That would be equivalent of the mining I proposed, with the added 25 % boulders bonus, which is completely fine by me. A second designation, quarrying, wouldn't then be perceived as something you use to dig out rooms, it would be used exclusively to produce quality material, i.e. boulders, with a 100 % drop rate, albeit at a time cost - it would be as slow as it is required for it not to be a viable option for digging out your fortress. The reason I'm so much pro-quarrying is mostly immersion. I don't feel it to be quite right if my dwarves when desiring to get large stone blocks for use in architecture decided to chuck away most of the stone into rubble, leaving only intermittent boulders. It would also require me to dig out larger amounts of stone to acquire the required amount of boulders, decreasing the potential to build small.

There's appeal to not being able to "have it all" - fast digging and efficient digging.

-Rubble will fall down stairs, causing blockages much faster (on average every 2 Z-levels). This makes digging down a much more arduous ordeal than digging sideways, and should help slow the rush to the magma sea.

This is definitely something I would support.

[NW_Kohaku]

One of the things I thought about, but never expressly stated, I don't believe, is that to make things easier, we could have miners move rubble the same way that workers move boulders or loose junk out of the way when making a workshop - they will stop mining, grab a wheelbarrow, and move the rubble themselves if all areas they are trying to mine are stuffed with rubble, to the nearest point they can without blocking passage. 

It would still be better to designate a dumping zone, and have haulers working the dump circuit to be faster, but it would allow for a very slow completely hands-off approach, especially for new people until they can figure out what's going wrong, or for people who just don't care how slow progress is so long as they don't have to pay the slightest attention to something.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Rubble seems kinda silly, even if we did have to deal with it we could just stuff our walls with it, like medieval walls.

[Leafsnail]

It would still be better to designate a dumping zone, and have haulers working the dump circuit to be faster, but it would allow for a very slow completely hands-off approach, especially for new people until they can figure out what's going wrong, or for people who just don't care how slow progress is so long as they don't have to pay the slightest attention to something.

Yay constant micromanagement is now required to get anything done.

[Arkenstone]

All right, now I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that whatever form rubble takes, we won't have to micromanage its disposal.  I highly doubt this will be the case, but for the purpose of argument I'll yield on that point for now.


Rubble Implemented as Item:

First off, if rubble is an item then there must be much difficulty traversing rubble-strewn landscapes in order to prevent people from paying it as much attention as they do with stones in the current version.  This includes an anti-quantum stockpile method, including a way to prevent dumping all that rubble into a 1x1x1 hole.

If more than one tile's worth of rubble can be compacted into a single tile, including via the dump method, then one may simply build everything wider then pack the rubble in the sides.  This defeats the purpose of having rubble entirely, except for making mining a slower process (which could have been done more easily by making tiles take longer to mine).

I cannot think of a way which this would work without either:

• a) the miner going back to idle until someone comes and hauls the rubble away, or
• b) the miner himself interrupting his work to haul the rubble away.

At least when trying to dig out hallways, without a job rewrite that lets multiple dwarves work together on a task.


Rubble Implemented as pseudo-fluid:

This method has some advantage over the previous, in so far as much that a miner could conceivably work continuously by spreading out rubble behind him as he goes.  However, as rubble will need to come 7/7 or suffer the compaction problem mentioned above, he will need to be constantly supported by rubble haulers or have to stop repeatedly.

This will require that the haulers stay on task and work efficiently, which in order to prevent micro would be a huge require an AI overhaul.

And of course, let's not forget the rewrite necessary for pseudo-fluids to exist in the first place. Or the lag they are likely to cause.


Personally, I think rubble would be cool but I don't see a way to implement it that would work as part of the game.  Of course, I'm sure I didn't think of everything so feel free to enlighten me.  I'd like to be proven wrong here, but right now it looks like the fruit at the very top of the tree, if you understand what I mean.  Even if it can be done, if it can't be done easily I'd prefer that something else (maybe even two or three somethings) be done in the time which would be spent on it.

EDIT:
I realized I should've been focusing on my main issue (not fitting in gameplay) more than how much effort it would take to implement (which I'm not really one to judge anyways).