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[GreatWyrmGold]

How would the spout be different from a fortification, and for that matter how would a creek be different from a normal tile?

[Damiac]

How would the spout be different from a fortification, and for that matter how would a creek be different from a normal tile?

Uhh... did you read anything I posted?

Water at the same Z level as the floor wouldn't overflow.  If water pressure is too high, due to being fed from greater Z level than the floor, water puddles on the floor (1/7 deep to start), and from there behaves like any other water.  With such a limited depth, you'd get a low flow rate, meaning it really wouldn't be able to deal with any pressure without overflowing.  However channeled (creek carved by the OP's original description) floors wouldn't have to solely rely on evaporation to drain, so long as the water had somewhere to go. 

If you could carve these "creeks" into walls, you could create a flow orifice, meaning a fully flooded room with a "creek" hole leading into an empty room would flood the empty room much more slowly than a full sized carved fortification.

So essentially, you get to direct water flow without digging down to the next Z level or having puddles on your floor.  The "spout" would basically just allow these channels to go through walls.

So like this:
~~|[][][][][]~~
~~!----------~~
~~|[][][][][]~~

The ~ on the left is the source water supply, at Z - 1.  The [] is normal floor, and the -- are channeled (creek) floor, at Z 0.  The | are normal walls, the ! are channeled walls (spout).
The ~ on the right is the destination water, maybe a well or cistern, which will fill up to Z -1, although it will fill slowly. 
The z - 1 below the floors are untouched. 
You can walk normally on the channeled floors.

Now, for this to make sense, the channel should really only move the water from the left if it is at 6/7 or more.  So it's low flow, but allows you to move water around without reserving a Z level for the water to move.

It seems like it'd be too hot to walk over these channels with magma in them though.

It seems quite useful to me.  I would use it in my fortresses.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Would also be a good idea to make brooks function sort of similar, since the way they work currently is I hope only a placeholder mechanic. There's lots of interesting features that could be added by changing up the current "floors" a bit. I'd say for this water channel as well as for brooks it might be a good idea and possibly also required to have them handle water a bit differently than rivers and freeflowing water, and instead have them act something similar to aquifers. As long as they have access to water on one end the tiles they'd be actively leading water approximately corresponding to 1/7, and if blocked or similar would spill out that amount into the surrounding tiles. If the water source disappeared they'd simply change into a dry channel or brook. that would probably save some computer power on water physics as well. They'd also be dependant on there being a filled tile beneath them, as they'd sort of be resting on the roof of the tile below (even though it may not quite work that way with how the game works, but ish), and disappear if the tile below was dug out.

[Damiac]

Eh, they have to be their own tile, or it really gets complicated.  To have them sort of linked to the tile below seems to defeat the entire purpose.  That's why I was talking about how thick a floor tile actually is, since for this to be an independant floor tile feature, it can't break into the wall tile below.

There are only 2 parts to each tile, floor and wall.  The ceiling of any tile is actually the floor above it, so that's not seperate.  You can dig out a wall and leave the floor, although you really (at present) cannot remove the floor and leave a wall, at least as far as I know.  Water fills to 7/7 whether or not there is a floor tile, suggesting a floor tile has 0 thickness, but I think that must be a placeholder or an oversight, because it makes no sense really.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Eh, they have to be their own tile, or it really gets complicated.  To have them sort of linked to the tile below seems to defeat the entire purpose.  That's why I was talking about how thick a floor tile actually is, since for this to be an independant floor tile feature, it can't break into the wall tile below.

There are only 2 parts to each tile, floor and wall.  The ceiling of any tile is actually the floor above it, so that's not seperate.  You can dig out a wall and leave the floor, although you really (at present) cannot remove the floor and leave a wall, at least as far as I know.  Water fills to 7/7 whether or not there is a floor tile, suggesting a floor tile has 0 thickness, but I think that must be a placeholder or an oversight, because it makes no sense really.

Well, the thing is that since floors are supposedly quite thin (or things as you say makes no sense), it'd imo be better to simply acknowledge that and work with it instead of trying to change the foundations of the game with all the extra work that comes with it. As long as the end result of the simulation works. And in most cases a really thin floor on its own wouldn't be able to carry any weight or be thick enough to carve any meaningful water channels into. And whenever we get more intricate cave-ins back in the game the end result would most likely be the same anyway, largely unsupported floors collapsing on themselves. And especially if the same were to be applied to brooks there'd have to be some soil beneath or the water would easily percolate through into the void beneath. I'm also well aware there's no real ceilings in the game, but it's easier to think of it that way. Pretty much everything regarding floors makes more sense if you think of them as the top of the tile beneath, even though water calculations obviously end up a bit funky.

[Damiac]

Well, if you don't consider the floor tiles to be thick enough to support any water on their own, this feature wouldn't make any sense.  If that's the case, you might as well just go with what GWG said, and say it's covered by just digging out the next Z level.  Otherwise we're getting into carving out just part of a wall... and what's the point?

[Cool Guy]

Again, where would the channel go? How think is a floor?
And what happens to keep a channel from overflowing, and what happens when it does?

...If a tile is 3X3X3 meters...

Wait. 3x3x3 meters and 1 dwarf fills the square. Okay, if you say so.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Well, if you don't consider the floor tiles to be thick enough to support any water on their own, this feature wouldn't make any sense.  If that's the case, you might as well just go with what GWG said, and say it's covered by just digging out the next Z level.  Otherwise we're getting into carving out just part of a wall... and what's the point?

True I guess. It'd still have some point in letting us move smaller amounts of water than currently around though. The way the tiles are set up doesn't really allow for any way to have this make sense and still be useful unless a major rewrite were to be done allowing partially filled and dug out tiles and the corresponding effects on water etc.

[Damiac]

Cool Guy:
Actually I was wrong about 3X3X3.  Toady actually said 2X2X3.  Creatures are all one tile, and Toady admits it doesn't really make any sense.  So yeah, essentially, all creatures are big cubes, unless they lay down, at which point they are completely flat.  Giants, dogs, ravens, dragons, dwarves, rats, all take up the same amount of space.

Ramps and stairs are sort of partially dug out tiles, but they still hold 7/7 water, so they don't help in that area.  I believe floodgates can be partially open though, so I think you can use that to control the flow, although not the overall level of water you will end up with.

[AutomataKittay]

Cool Guy:
Actually I was wrong about 3X3X3.  Toady actually said 2X2X3.  Creatures are all one tile, and Toady admits it doesn't really make any sense.  So yeah, essentially, all creatures are big cubes, unless they lay down, at which point they are completely flat.  Giants, dogs, ravens, dragons, dwarves, rats, all take up the same amount of space.

Ramps and stairs are sort of partially dug out tiles, but they still hold 7/7 water, so they don't help in that area.  I believe floodgates can be partially open though, so I think you can use that to control the flow, although not the overall level of water you will end up with.

Floodgates can't be partially open, but they can be linked to pressure plate to control amount.

[Damiac]

Ah, that's what I was thinking of.  I've never used them myself.

[Cool Guy]

Cool Guy:
Actually I was wrong about 3X3X3.  Toady actually said 2X2X3.  Creatures are all one tile, and Toady admits it doesn't really make any sense.  So yeah, essentially, all creatures are big cubes, unless they lay down, at which point they are completely flat.  Giants, dogs, ravens, dragons, dwarves, rats, all take up the same amount of space.

Ramps and stairs are sort of partially dug out tiles, but they still hold 7/7 water, so they don't help in that area.  I believe floodgates can be partially open though, so I think you can use that to control the flow, although not the overall level of water you will end up with.

Yeah, I know. I was giggling to myself for awhile imagining a Dragon or a Roc squished into a tiny little box. Maybe that's why Dragons can't fly, their wings are all pressed to close to their body!

[GreatWyrmGold]

Again, where would the channel go? How think is a floor?
And what happens to keep a channel from overflowing, and what happens when it does?

...If a tile is 3X3X3 meters...

Wait. 3x3x3 meters and 1 dwarf fills the square. Okay, if you say so.

I hate when people justify their points with quirky bits of the current system, and dwarves can move past each other in a tile if one crawls.

Cool Guy:
Actually I was wrong about 3X3X3.  Toady actually said 2X2X3.  Creatures are all one tile, and Toady admits it doesn't really make any sense.  So yeah, essentially, all creatures are big cubes, unless they lay down, at which point they are completely flat.  Giants, dogs, ravens, dragons, dwarves, rats, all take up the same amount of space.

Ramps and stairs are sort of partially dug out tiles, but they still hold 7/7 water, so they don't help in that area.  I believe floodgates can be partially open though, so I think you can use that to control the flow, although not the overall level of water you will end up with.

Yeah, I know. I was giggling to myself for awhile imagining a Dragon or a Roc squished into a tiny little box. Maybe that's why Dragons can't fly, their wings are all pressed to close to their body!

Allegedly, it has something to do with interactions between fire breath and flight in the 2D versions.

[Putnam]

Fixing dragons not flying is as simple as adding [FLIER] to the creature and 2WINGS to the body token.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Allegedly, it has something to do with interactions between fire breath and flight in the 2D versions.

Also, I think that dragons have wings. Not sure though...