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Author Topic: Aquifers - a suggestion  (Read 7440 times)

Vargas Gray

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #30 on: June 11, 2012, 08:26:18 pm »

Yes, I agree with you GreatWyrmGold that one can obsoletely embark in a aquifer-free zone and one should if skill is lacking when it comes to breaching aquifers. I also agree that we're comparing, in some sense, apples and peaches when it comes to dwarves and humans but we do actually have many common practices.

Humans dug with simple tools, sometimes with wooden tools only, and when we breached too close to an aquifer there where many deaths and/or abandoning of parts of the mine or the entire mine.

Dwarfs has this advantage that humans didn't: no random cave-ins, well okey there have been some that isn't caused by the mining itself but still they're, the natural ones, so rare that they could be seen as a myth.

It's common practice also to install big industrial pumps in garages that goes below the water table. Like where I live they have built two garages below down in the large valley where 30 000 peoples live and since that valley is a ancient lake the floods are a threat to all buildings with underground levels. this means that all the bomb shelters needs some type of pump or effective isolation to keep the water out. 

And almost all military complex below ground or inside mountains are built with industrial pumps as a must even if the risk of flooding is low.   

On another note about the suggestions about permeable rocks/soils:

That's a way to simulate permeable rocks/soils and the way aquifers are created, be refilled and dried out through natural or industrial causes. It's a very nice addiction and would add inherit dangers with digging below ground, flooding, and would simulate a more realistic mining.

Water should move to an empty area, if there's a empty space, and accumulate over time if the surrounding rocks/soils allow it. The idea with permeable materials would actually allow water to accumulate in the ground and then move through it down to an area which can hold water. It's absolutely awesome idea! !HYPE! !HYPE!  :o :P
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #31 on: June 11, 2012, 09:06:03 pm »

Thank you. It's so nice to see that some people agree with me.
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orbcontrolled

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #32 on: June 12, 2012, 04:28:01 pm »

Let me just quickly clear up one misunderstanding from early in the thread thats been bugging me:
Quote
Of course the reason why DF handles aquifers as being spawned from water producing stones might be because it hits an edge, practically an empty void, and would dry out without these stones.
You're *way* overthinking things. Like so many things in DF, the current aquifer setup is just a placeholder. The reason their behavior doesn't make sense is because Toady hasn't yet gotten around to giving them "real" behavior. He might not have even gotten around to *considering* what that real behavior should be (which makes it *our* job :) ). On the one hand that means that we're basically free to propose any redesign we want, on the other it means that anything we propose is going to take more CPU cycles than "fuck it, just spawn water" currently does.

Also, aquifers don't always stretch all the way to the map edges. The fact that they *usually* stretch that far might indicate some shortcoming in the world geology. If possible, some geology-minded types should get DFHack, embark on some varied locations, run "reveal" on the map, and report back on whether the distribution of liquid-permeable rock and soil is realistic in DF.

I want moving groundwater!

I like the idea of making things permeable to liquid, and then using the existing liquids code to make water move through soil, and letting aquifers be a natural result of that flow instead of artificial constructs. Just for fun, I'm going to throw out a possible implementation to discuss:

Implementation:

Give each map tile a permeability representing how quickly water flows through it. Permeability would be determined more or less by what material that tile is made of. Lets say we have 8 levels of permeability to start with.

When it comes time to run the water simulation, water in completely empty space gets calculated every n ticks, and as tiles become less permeable the CPU calculates their flow on progressively rarer occasions. Try the following on for size (According to the wiki: 1200 ticks per day in fortress mode, 33600 in a month, 403200 in a year.):
  • 0: calculated every n*1 ticks. Water flows freely, as through empty space.
  • 1: calculated every n*10 ticks. Flow is impeded but continuous, like water flowing through a fortification, or a pipe (if we ever get plumbing...)
  • 2: calculated every n*100 ticks. Leaky roof. Loose sand. Will flood a tunnel almost immediately.
  • 3: every n*1000 ticks. Soil. Water filters slowly through. Workable, but requires constant pumping if you don't want the place flooded.
  • 4: n*10000. Loosely packed soil and rock.
  • 5: n*60000. Thicker soil or rocks.
  • 6: n*100000. Thickest soil. Very slow. I've heard that in real life it can sometimes take months for water to seep all the way down to an aquifer, but I can't find any useful sources of information on this. How long does it take water to get through different types of soil?
  • 7: Never calculated. Waterproof. Ex: Obsidian, Resin or tar-sealed walls
Advantages and cool stuff:
Lets combine this aquifer idea with one other simple change: Cause rain to leave behind the occasional 1/7 or 2/7 water puddle on the ground. Suddenly we get some very cool results.
  • Aquifers could be drained for mining, but the difficulty is in proportion to how wet the area is. Armok forbid you try to drain an aquifer on the beach, or on an island.
  • In very heavy rains the aquifer could become fully saturated, resulting in the flooding of low-lying areas. Over-saturated soil would start to exude water, causing stagnant pools to form naturally rather than on embark, and causing the soil to be wet and swampy. Once the microgeology simulation is a bit more detailed we might even be able to get natural springs.
  • Aquifers could be emptied through overuse, allowing wells to run dry. In dry climates the player would have to protect their aquifer and maybe even look for ways to manually recharge it (Like pumping from a  river in a neighboring biome).
  • Picture this: A rainstorm occurs in a mountainous area of your site. Since water can't drain into the impermeable rock, it water builds up and starts flowing, forming a short-lived stream down the mountain (and possibly a mudslide in future versions, once mud becomes a fluid!).

Questions:
  • Should permeability be stored per map tile, or per material? In programming terms, if we're going through every map tile once per tick, is it ok to call better to access tile.mat.permeability a few billion times? Or is it faster to just access tile.permeability? and is that speedup worth adding an extra 200KB per embark-square to a site?
  • How many levels of permeability should there be? This is particularly important if we are storing the information in individual map tiles. Too many permeability levels could push a lot of embarks over the 2gb limit.
  • Is my n*x progression reasonable? It will probably have to be adjusted depending on how long it takes water to flow through different real-life materials.
  • I just realized that I can't think of a way to ensure that flow in a certain tile is only calculated ever n ticks without putting a counter on each individual tile, which would be a nightmare. I'm going to post this anyway, and really hope that someone can think of a way to make it work.
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #33 on: June 12, 2012, 05:26:28 pm »

Let me just quickly clear up one misunderstanding from early in the thread thats been bugging me:
Quote
Of course the reason why DF handles aquifers as being spawned from water producing stones might be because it hits an edge, practically an empty void, and would dry out without these stones.
You're *way* overthinking things. Like so many things in DF, the current aquifer setup is just a placeholder. The reason their behavior doesn't make sense is because Toady hasn't yet gotten around to giving them "real" behavior. He might not have even gotten around to *considering* what that real behavior should be (which makes it *our* job :) ). On the one hand that means that we're basically free to propose any redesign we want, on the other it means that anything we propose is going to take more CPU cycles than "fuck it, just spawn water" currently does.
Aren't we already pretty much doing that?

Quote
Also, aquifers don't always stretch all the way to the map edges. The fact that they *usually* stretch that far might indicate some shortcoming in the world geology. If possible, some geology-minded types should get DFHack, embark on some varied locations, run "reveal" on the map, and report back on whether the distribution of liquid-permeable rock and soil is realistic in DF.
Wait, hold on, I would have thought that groundwater would spread out to more or less wherever it could. Why shouldn't the aquifers spread to the map edges, barring impermeable rock or something in the way?

Quote
I want moving groundwater!

I like the idea of making things permeable to liquid, and then using the existing liquids code to make water move through soil, and letting aquifers be a natural result of that flow instead of artificial constructs. Just for fun, I'm going to throw out a possible implementation to discuss:
Pause: I suggested pretty much this a bit ago.

Quote
Implementation:
Give each map tile a permeability representing how quickly water flows through it. Permeability would be determined more or less by what material that tile is made of. Lets say we have 8 levels of permeability to start with.
When it comes time to run the water simulation, water in completely empty space gets calculated every n ticks, and as tiles become less permeable the CPU calculates their flow on progressively rarer occasions. Try the following on for size (According to the wiki: 1200 ticks per day in fortress mode, 33600 in a month, 403200 in a year.):
  • 0: calculated every n*1 ticks. Water flows freely, as through empty space.
  • 1: calculated every n*10 ticks. Flow is impeded but continuous, like water flowing through a fortification, or a pipe (if we ever get plumbing...)
  • 2: calculated every n*100 ticks. Leaky roof. Loose sand. Will flood a tunnel almost immediately.
  • 3: every n*1000 ticks. Soil. Water filters slowly through. Workable, but requires constant pumping if you don't want the place flooded.
  • 4: n*10000. Loosely packed soil and rock.
  • 5: n*60000. Thicker soil or rocks.
  • 6: n*100000. Thickest soil. Very slow. I've heard that in real life it can sometimes take months for water to seep all the way down to an aquifer, but I can't find any useful sources of information on this. How long does it take water to get through different types of soil?
  • 7: Never calculated. Waterproof. Ex: Obsidian, Resin or tar-sealed walls
Why not just every n(10^x-1) ticks, and have 0 be impermeable?

Quote
Advantages and cool stuff:
Lets combine this aquifer idea with one other simple change: Cause rain to leave behind the occasional 1/7 or 2/7 water puddle on the ground. Suddenly we get some very cool results.
Pause: I think that, rather than having every tile checked for a chance like I suggesed above, every 6X6 or 12X12 tile should be checked every so often and have a chance to put a puddle there.
Quote
  • Aquifers could be drained for mining, but the difficulty is in proportion to how wet the area is. Armok forbid you try to drain an aquifer on the beach, or on an island.
  • In very heavy rains the aquifer could become fully saturated, resulting in the flooding of low-lying areas. Over-saturated soil would start to exude water, causing stagnant pools to form naturally rather than on embark, and causing the soil to be wet and swampy. Once the microgeology simulation is a bit more detailed we might even be able to get natural springs.
  • Aquifers could be emptied through overuse, allowing wells to run dry. In dry climates the player would have to protect their aquifer and maybe even look for ways to manually recharge it (Like pumping from a  river in a neighboring biome).
  • Picture this: A rainstorm occurs in a mountainous area of your site. Since water can't drain into the impermeable rock, it water builds up and starts flowing, forming a short-lived stream down the mountain (and possibly a mudslide in future versions, once mud becomes a fluid!).
Heh. All of those sound...amusing. You've really thought this through.

Quote
Questions:
  • Should permeability be stored per map tile, or per material? In programming terms, if we're going through every map tile once per tick, is it ok to call better to access tile.mat.permeability a few billion times? Or is it faster to just access tile.permeability? and is that speedup worth adding an extra 200KB per embark-square to a site?
By material. It's probably easier to remember. Maybe giving each tile a specific value on embark would make it faster; I don't know. If so, try that, but I think that, for reasons of simplicity, each soil or stone type (as well as everything else that walls can be made out of) shoud have a specific permeability number.

Quote
  • How many levels of permeability should there be? This is particularly important if we are storing the information in individual map tiles. Too many permeability levels could push a lot of embarks over the 2gb limit.
  • Is my n*x progression reasonable? It will probably have to be adjusted depending on how long it takes water to flow through different real-life materials.
Hm. Well, I suppose it could be something like...well, one level for impenetrable, and a total of 2^n-1 others, so...sand, soil, clay, permeable stone, stone, wood, metal...seven layers of permeability plus impermeability should work fine.

Quote
  • I just realized that I can't think of a way to ensure that flow in a certain tile is only calculated ever n ticks without putting a counter on each individual tile, which would be a nightmare. I'm going to post this anyway, and really hope that someone can think of a way to make it work.
Maybe...no, if it's calculated at varying speed that won't work. I have no idea.
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Evil Knievel

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #34 on: June 13, 2012, 03:51:27 am »

some info

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_conductivity#Ranges_of_values_for_natural_materials

that's basically a velocity value. The range is huge.
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orbcontrolled

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #35 on: June 14, 2012, 12:04:04 am »

Wait, hold on, I would have thought that groundwater would spread out to more or less wherever it could. Why shouldn't the aquifers spread to the map edges, barring impermeable rock or something in the way?
They would. What I'm wondering is if the distribution of permeable/impermeable rock and soil is realistic. If you could "reveal" the area underneath a given stretch of land in the real world, would the water-bearing soil layers just go on homogeneously for miles? or would they be more broken up by other (possibly impermeable) types of earth?

Quote
Pause: I suggested pretty much this a bit ago.
Damn.
um...  :-[
Ok. I admit it: I only really skimmed a lot of this thread because it looked like the whole thing was just about the feasibility of building with an aquifer, which wasn't the topic I was interested in. I knew permeability had been mentioned, but I didn't see who first mentioned it. Looking back, I see it was in fact you, and you did in fact make most of my points already.  :-[
Alright then, consider my previous post to be an elaboration on paragraph 5 of This excellent post by GreatWyrmGold which everybody should now go back and read if you haven't already.  :D

Quote
Why not just every n(10^x-1) ticks, and have 0 be impermeable?
Yeah, that would simplify things. My math intuition isn't great; It never even occurred to me to subtract 1 from x.

Quote
Heh. All of those sound...amusing. You've really thought this through.
:)

Quote
Pause: I think that, rather than having every tile checked for a chance like I suggesed above, every 6X6 or 12X12 tile should be checked every so often and have a chance to put a puddle there.
Yeah...  um... yeah... :-[

Quote
By material. It's probably easier to remember.
Oh, absolutely, each material should have a permeability defined in the raws. I was more speculating about the quickest way for the fluid simulation to *access* that number during gameplay.

Quote
Maybe...no, if it's calculated at varying speed that won't work. I have no idea.
I know right?  :(
I'm really hoping there is a better way to do it than attaching a counter to each tile. If that were the case, then the extra overhead per map square probably wouldn't be worth the CPU cycles saved, but at the same time I would really hate for an aquifer to take up just as many cycles as a similar amount of freestanding water, despite flowing so much more slowly. I'm basically hoping someone with some crazy knowledge of optimizing C programs wanders in here at some point.

some info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_conductivity#Ranges_of_values_for_natural_materials
that's basically a velocity value. The range is huge.
Oh that is beautiful! And they come prepackaged with exponential values too! It looks like 4 bits per map square would get us all 13 of those values, with 3 left over for whatever we can think of.  :)
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Vargas Gray

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #36 on: June 14, 2012, 08:00:11 am »

I can't keep up with the discussion... the speed is too much for me ><. Well, okey, the truth are that I'm a bit rubbish at programming even if I might understand some of the underlying mechanics I usually wander away in speculations and whatnots.

Although I like to try to contribute to the discussion, really loves where this is going, I'm going to keep an eye on it instead and see if I can find away to contribute.

BTW: why haven't the 2gb limit been raised to 4gb? 

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10ebbor10

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #37 on: June 14, 2012, 08:23:11 am »

I can't keep up with the discussion... the speed is too much for me ><. Well, okey, the truth are that I'm a bit rubbish at programming even if I might understand some of the underlying mechanics I usually wander away in speculations and whatnots.

Although I like to try to contribute to the discussion, really loves where this is going, I'm going to keep an eye on it instead and see if I can find away to contribute.

BTW: why haven't the 2gb limit been raised to 4gb?
Because then the game wouldn't run on lower end computers anymore? You can do it manually anyway, if you want to do a 5000 year giant worldgen or something. You only need to change a single thing, and there's an utility to do that for you.
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #38 on: June 14, 2012, 08:49:40 am »

Wait, hold on, I would have thought that groundwater would spread out to more or less wherever it could. Why shouldn't the aquifers spread to the map edges, barring impermeable rock or something in the way?
They would. What I'm wondering is if the distribution of permeable/impermeable rock and soil is realistic. If you could "reveal" the area underneath a given stretch of land in the real world, would the water-bearing soil layers just go on homogeneously for miles? or would they be more broken up by other (possibly impermeable) types of earth?
Oh, I see. Currently the latter.

Quote
Pause: I suggested pretty much this a bit ago.
Damn.
um...  :-[
Ok. I admit it: I only really skimmed a lot of this thread because it looked like the whole thing was just about the feasibility of building with an aquifer, which wasn't the topic I was interested in. I knew permeability had been mentioned, but I didn't see who first mentioned it. Looking back, I see it was in fact you, and you did in fact make most of my points already.  :-[
[/quote]
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Quote
Alright then, consider my previous post to be an elaboration on paragraph 5 of This excellent post by GreatWyrmGold which everybody should now go back and read if you haven't already.  :D
Alright, then. Thanks for the compliment.

Quote
Quote
Why not just every n(10^x-1) ticks, and have 0 be impermeable?
Yeah, that would simplify things. My math intuition isn't great; It never even occurred to me to subtract 1 from x.
Everyone has their strengths. It's important to be able to listen to those whose strengths are your weaknesses.
Wow, I'm really full of philosphical stuff today.

Quote
Quote
Pause: I think that, rather than having every tile checked for a chance like I suggesed above, every 6X6 or 12X12 tile should be checked every so often and have a chance to put a puddle there.
Yeah...  um... yeah... :-[
This wasn't a critisism, merely an idea to help reduce FPS load. The idea is that fewer random numbers needed == less FPS drain.

Quote
Quote
By material. It's probably easier to remember.
Oh, absolutely, each material should have a permeability defined in the raws. I was more speculating about the quickest way for the fluid simulation to *access* that number during gameplay.

Quote
Maybe...no, if it's calculated at varying speed that won't work. I have no idea.
I know right?  :(
I'm really hoping there is a better way to do it than attaching a counter to each tile. If that were the case, then the extra overhead per map square probably wouldn't be worth the CPU cycles saved, but at the same time I would really hate for an aquifer to take up just as many cycles as a similar amount of freestanding water, despite flowing so much more slowly. I'm basically hoping someone with some crazy knowledge of optimizing C programs wanders in here at some point.
I don't. About all I know about computer speed is that fewer calculations == faster computations == higher FPS == :)

Quote
some info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_conductivity#Ranges_of_values_for_natural_materials
that's basically a velocity value. The range is huge.
Oh that is beautiful! And they come prepackaged with exponential values too! It looks like 4 bits per map square would get us all 13 of those values, with 3 left over for whatever we can think of.  :)
Wow.
Probably one value for "effectively impenetrable," one for "like open space," and one to stick on whichever end of the scale has a bigger gap between those extremes and the normal values. Or something like that.

I can't keep up with the discussion... the speed is too much for me ><. Well, okey, the truth are that I'm a bit rubbish at programming even if I might understand some of the underlying mechanics I usually wander away in speculations and whatnots.

Although I like to try to contribute to the discussion, really loves where this is going, I'm going to keep an eye on it instead and see if I can find away to contribute.
Hey, I'm none too good at computer programming either. I'm still sticking around. You know why? Well, in part because of the big, complex posts I made, but also in part because every debate needs someone who doesn't know enough to know that an idea is stupid, just in case it's not. Two is better than one. You can stay. Heck, maybe you'll even learn something!
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Vargas Gray

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #39 on: June 14, 2012, 09:17:30 am »

Would the raise to 4gb really slaughter computers around the world? Because it's a limit that wouldn't be utilized right away, it's a limit the game reaches the more resources it craves. Most computers are built with, in most cases if it's a gaming rig, 6-8 gb ram minimum.

Also if Toady and co. wish to implement a more advanced system for aquifers with permeable/impermeable ground the game would absolutely need more ram available, aka a higher limit.
 
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10ebbor10

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #40 on: June 14, 2012, 09:31:27 am »

Would the raise to 4gb really slaughter computers around the world? Because it's a limit that wouldn't be utilized right away, it's a limit the game reaches the more resources it craves. Most computers are built with, in most cases if it's a gaming rig, 6-8 gb ram minimum.

Also if Toady and co. wish to implement a more advanced system for aquifers with permeable/impermeable ground the game would absolutely need more ram available, aka a higher limit.
Quite a lot older computer only have 2gb ram availeble. Raising the internal limit to 4gb, would let the game think the computer has 4 gb, then try to use some of it and promptly crash(Even if it would run fine if the game was only effectively using 2gb). So yes, while it will eventually be needed, going up to 4 gb will effectively cut off support for those computers.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2012, 09:34:19 am by 10ebbor10 »
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Vargas Gray

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #41 on: June 14, 2012, 09:38:51 am »

Would the raise to 4gb really slaughter computers around the world? Because it's a limit that wouldn't be utilized right away, it's a limit the game reaches the more resources it craves. Most computers are built with, in most cases if it's a gaming rig, 6-8 gb ram minimum.

Also if Toady and co. wish to implement a more advanced system for aquifers with permeable/impermeable ground the game would absolutely need more ram available, aka a higher limit.
Quite a lot older computer only have 2gb ram availeble. Raising the internal limit to 4gb, would let the game think the computer has 4 gb, then try to use some of it and promptly crash(Even if it would run fine if the game was only effectively using 2gb). So yes, while it will eventually be needed, going up to 4 gb will effectively cut off support for those computers.

Sad to be them.  ;D
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GreatWyrmGold

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #42 on: June 14, 2012, 09:48:25 am »

Maybe two versions could be released, one with the allegedly easy 4-GB RAM and the other with only 2? Kinda like how there's already soundless and stuff. Or maybe easy instructions on how to change it on the download page.

...Say, how do you figure out how much RAM your computer has if you don't know?
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Vargas Gray

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #43 on: June 14, 2012, 10:04:13 am »

...Say, how do you figure out how much RAM your computer has if you don't know?

Start > computer > right click > properties > look at total RAM available and there you go.  ;)

And yes! There should be two different version with different ram limits. That's a good idea that I would support wholly.
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byrnsey

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Re: Aquifers - a suggestion
« Reply #44 on: June 20, 2012, 06:40:33 am »

Here's something I haven't seen mentioned:  The height of the watertable should pressurize the water.  (as in it rises aboe the level it's breached at, disregard the flowrate for now)

We keep mentioning that Aquifers are only 1z level thick.  I'm positive I've seen multiple z-level aquifers.  (I haven't done it in recent versions, but having a breached aquifer directed into an aquifer in the level below (down stairs, channels) was my standard way of getting limitless power/running water.

Assuming it's still that way, breaching an aquifer level *should* flood the fort up to the highest level of the aquifer.  Not sure how hard that would be to implement, but as things stand, just locate for each aquifer on the map, the highest point of the aquifer.  I'm not sure how pressurized water is coded, but just treat all water out of an aquifer as pressurized and the watertable height as the pressurizing water level.

Whatever the flowrate, I think we can agree this is a sensible and realistic shift, especially since Toady's already included pressurized water in the game.  And for people worried about Aquifers getting nerfed, having that slow leak eventually flood your deep fort as well as a z-level or two above might be enough extra !!FUN!! to make up for it.
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