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[Shazbot]

Reading the new features made me excited about the possibility of using alcohol's increasing exposure code to create a syndrome for miasma. Unless I am mistaken, miasma in the current release is a hard-coded thing like dragonfire that generates unhappy thoughts. I do not, however, recall anyone throwing up due to miasma. I would love to see exposure to miasma treated as a non-contagious syndrome with progressively higher amounts of exposure causing nausea and vomiting as the stench of a rotting yak cow in the dining hall puts all the dwarves off their biscuits, in addition to the unhappy thoughts. 

[Devin]

This is a great suggestion, I really like it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Progressive syndromes could be useful for a whole host of things...

Right now, syndromes tend to be either harmless or a guaranteed death sentence the instant you brush past someone carrying the syndrome in the hallway. 

Likewise, if we're talking about noxious gasses, then there are topics of air quality I remember on topics like phlogiston, or "depleted air" which this seems to play into well.  (I.E. dwarves hit trapped pockets of toxic gases, and/or we get closer to concepts like the need for ventilation shafts and re-oxidizing subterranean "plant"life.)

[Putnam]

Progressive syndromes could be useful for a whole host of things...

Right now, syndromes tend to be either harmless or a guaranteed death sentence the instant you brush past someone carrying the syndrome in the hallway. 

Yes, and the next version is fixing this, as shown in the devlog, thus the existence of this topic which suggests to use the new system for miasma.

[Aquillion]

Likewise, if we're talking about noxious gasses, then there are topics of air quality I remember on topics like phlogiston, or "depleted air" which this seems to play into well.  (I.E. dwarves hit trapped pockets of toxic gases, and/or we get closer to concepts like the need for ventilation shafts and re-oxidizing subterranean "plant"life.)

I'm not sure too much realism with regards to ventilation is a good idea.  The problem is that ultimately, traditional fantasy Dwarf Fortresses are not plausible; there are a few changes (requiring that people move all that dug-out dirt somewhere, realistically modeling underground ventilation, etc) that would functionally make Moria impossible.

I don't think that's a good idea.  The game is meant to be realistic, but I think it's meant to be realistic to the fantasy universe it's intended to generate, which includes subtle changes from our own to make fantasy stuff plausible.

[Shazbot]

I recently built a forge and wrestled with problems of chimney drafts. I don't think it would be impossible to build an natural-draft fortress, particularly when we consider the height difference our chimney can have from the gate when building in a mountain. Its also a good reason to build large vaulted chambers with sunwells. You guys carve your dining hall out in huge multi-Z dome shapes, right?

Back on track, if miasma is reworked so can smoke be reworked. I would really like to see all the forges and smelters put off smoke. If it naturally rises all the better, because then there's a reason to build chimneys.

[NW_Kohaku]

Likewise, if we're talking about noxious gasses, then there are topics of air quality I remember on topics like phlogiston, or "depleted air" which this seems to play into well.  (I.E. dwarves hit trapped pockets of toxic gases, and/or we get closer to concepts like the need for ventilation shafts and re-oxidizing subterranean "plant"life.)

I'm not sure too much realism with regards to ventilation is a good idea.  The problem is that ultimately, traditional fantasy Dwarf Fortresses are not plausible; there are a few changes (requiring that people move all that dug-out dirt somewhere, realistically modeling underground ventilation, etc) that would functionally make Moria impossible.

I don't think that's a good idea.  The game is meant to be realistic, but I think it's meant to be realistic to the fantasy universe it's intended to generate, which includes subtle changes from our own to make fantasy stuff plausible.

Actually, I'd quite like both of those to be in the game. 

All that mullock having to be moved would prevent people from just digging straight to the magma sea, and would make minecarts actually useful for their intended purpose.  All we need is code to let the moved mullock consolidate into a waste gravel wall again to make it not kill FPS. Starting fortresses can find ways to just shove it off-site (hey look, catapults are useful again!) and at the same time, fully mature fortresses can probably find ways to dump mullock to the magma sea, which would avoid the problem of an "anthill" fortress. 

As for ventilation, it can help recreate an actual reason for different stages of excavation.  The 2d game had three obstacles in the path of the fort, with different threats emerging from each that couldn't be easily sealed off.  Each threat had to be dealt with in succession.  Now, you can just dig around the caverns and not worry.  If you make it so that the caverns are pockets of oxygen-producing subterranean plants, there's reason not to just turtle up and cut it off entirely.  In the long term, you can set up oxygen-refreshing plants in safe locations, but since that takes time, it can be a risk/reward trade-off that challenges players with more threats if they want to dig deeper faster.

[Shazbot]

Of course the problem with air quality tracking is that it requires a lot of CPU power, possibly handled alongside temperature checks, which I would rather see used on sewers, but the miasma change itself is a much smaller thing.

[NW_Kohaku]

Of course the problem with air quality tracking is that it requires a lot of CPU power, possibly handled alongside temperature checks, which I would rather see used on sewers, but the miasma change itself is a much smaller thing.

It would be a good time to revisit flow calculations in general. 

Fluids are handled brute-force, currently, and making a proper method of abstracting fluid flows so that they don't cripple the CPU would help make a lot of good fort concepts possible. 

[Putnam]

How would they be handled in a way that isn't brute-force?

[NW_Kohaku]

How would they be handled in a way that isn't brute-force?

I tried my hand at diagramming a "body"-based system in the Volume and Mass thread. 

As it stands, DF has to have at least some crude understanding of super-tile bodies of water to have pressure.  What this basically does is try to make water motion more regular through the use of turning water into bodies that act more like minecarts do than tiles that randomly see if they can "pass" some water to a neighboring tile.