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[someone12345]

How hard would it be to smash flesh into gore in real life? Is it realistically possible? What does pulping mean? Smashed into jelly, or just a bit crushed?

[Shonai_Dweller]

I humbly suggest that Toady not go out and research this one, relying instead on the hearsay of fantasy book combat. That being the standard DF is trying to reach, as opposed to the 'real life simulator' some fans are desperate for it to be.

[Dyret]

Smashing a body part up so badly it doesn't work any more is entirely possible. Exploding from blunt force isn't a thing that happens irl, as far as i know, but like Shonai_Dweller said DF is more of a fantasy simulator than a real life one.

[Urist McVoyager]

Well . . .

Maybe he should research it, if it interests him. Remember, he's giving us sliders for all of this. I get the feeling the game's not reaching for just one standard anymore. When the magic stuff comes up, there's going to be a slider asking us just how magical we want the world to be, all the way from unstable Elder Scrolls level down to as close to real life as he can make it, with no races but humans.

[ZM5]

Turning a body part into mush from blunt force trauma is definitely possible - it'd take a really large amount of it though.

Exploding into gore though? Not really unless the person in question was, lets say, hit by a cannonball fired at high velocity.
Interestingly, a part of the danger of old cannons was soldiers simply "exploding" for lack of a better word, and their bones scattering around at high speed like shrapnel, possibly causing puncture wounds.
 
I hope that if anything Toady atleast makes the "exploding into gore" message actually signify the latter happening with bone and flesh bits scattering around instead of merely being flavor text that's otherwise the same as other pulping messages.

[Thisfox]

I'm reminded of the concept of dropping animals off a bridge:

"At this height, a mouse would drop, and bounce, and walk away. A man would break his leg. A horse would splash."

....Pulping would be the "splash" factor.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Well . . .

Maybe he should research it, if it interests him. Remember, he's giving us sliders for all of this. I get the feeling the game's not reaching for just one standard anymore. When the magic stuff comes up, there's going to be a slider asking us just how magical we want the world to be, all the way from unstable Elder Scrolls level down to as close to real life as he can make it, with no races but humans.

PC gamer interview (paraphrase) - "recreating real life is just something fans say".

Besides, there are laws about pulping random people's body parts. Even if it is for the greater good of making a computer game better.

[Urist McVoyager]

Two points: 1. I didn't remember that part of the interview, though I'm right about the sliders controlling different things like magic level.

2. You don't need to pulp random people's body parts at all. There's stand-ins for human flesh, like pig corpses or (more acceptable to use) ballistics gel. That last is what the Mythbusters always used. IF Toady wanted to do that kind of research, there would be legal, harmless ways to do it. Just not cheap ones.

[Melting Sky]

Smashing a body part up so badly it doesn't work any more is entirely possible. Exploding from blunt force isn't a thing that happens irl, as far as i know, but like Shonai_Dweller said DF is more of a fantasy simulator than a real life one.

A body basically exploding from blunt force certainly is possible but the sort of energy and velocity involved are tremendous and not the sort of thing that would occur in hand to hand combat. We are talking about getting hit by a meteor sort of situation. If exploding into gore just indicates complete shattering of the bones and having bone shards from the impact breach the skin resulting in a hopelessly mashed, gory limb then that certainly can and does happen under much more reasonable circumstances. I've seen something that would fit this description occur myself and its a true horror show.

[Astrid]

I've seen images of people 'exploding into gore' because of trucks rolling over them, thanks/curses to lifeleak. Sooo... dont need a meteor for that.

[Wimopy]

Strength in DF goes up to super-racial levels, so real life doesn't quite apply. Creatures generally seem to be stronger on average compared to real life, in my opinion. (Just think of the stuff people can pick up)

Now, for pulping:
Imagine a warhammer from a fantasy setting made from pure steel. Raise it above your head and smash it down at something lying on the ground.
Whatever you hit is almost certainly pulped.

The way I imagine it is that the bone you hit has been smashed into enough fragments that it will never heal.
It does take a large amount of force, but it isn't impossible.

I mean, that's the main effect, isn't it? That part is officially permanently useless, but still attached. Of course, you also need to destroy the nerves and cause serious damage to the other tissue layers, but that's basically guaranteed in a hit like that.
It isn't jelly, necessarily. It's smashed. It's what you get when you squash a bug; a mangled mess.
A better picture is what you'd get if you squashed an orange or something. The skin doesn't even really have to be broken.

Fists wouldn't normally do this by the simple virtue that your fist would also suffer the same force and its bones are less durable than a skull. Basically: you're made to be unable to punch that hard, because your own body would also suffer.
Creatures in DF are obviously exempt from this though.

There's also the fact that, in general, the neck is more likely to bend and break than in DF, instead if the skull breaking (if standing and hit in the head), though I'm not entirely sure how twisting has changed that.

Also, don't forget that we're looking at heavily localised impacts too. A Bronze Colossus can hit a dwarf's upper arm only, even if their fist should probably crush the entire dwarf in one hit. Not sure what the contact area even is in this case.
Point is, you can compare to real life and it can happen, but the physics behind it all might not translate well from DF to RL.

[IT 000]

Hah, there was a point when Dwarves could smack a goblin across a room with a hammer. I kind of miss those days.

But on topic, we actually have discovered some bones from a massacre a while back, This video actually does a great job going into depth about showing off some of the wounds. Some of the skulls have quite a few nasty bashes on them, and I'm sure when they were alive I would describe it as "pulped" as well.

So short answer, yes.

[Timeless Bob]

The thing DF misses in damage assessment is "recruitment". Each body part is its own entity, and it doesn't "pass along" the stresses that pass over a certain threshold to the body parts attached adjacent to it.  Blunt force trauma is different from cutting or piercing trauma because of that very reason: recruitment.  When your fist strikes someone else's leg for instance, there is a "bloom" effect around that wound where the impact damage is lessened by the various tissues adjacent to that area taking some of the damage "load" off of the point of impact.  The affected area becomes the entire body via systemic shock with a large enough blow.  The rib cage is specifically meant to shed blunt force trauma into less important areas of the body because of this specific mechanic.

[King Mir]

"Pulping" was poor word choice to describe the mechanics of blunt weapon attacks. The word suggests that blunt attacks would reduce your body to a pulp-like slurry. This is not what blunt weapons do. A better word would be "mangling".

Fortunately the word "pulping" does not actually appear in the game.

However, word choice issues aside, there is the question of how realistic the mechanism of the game is. The essential change to the game that "pulping" provided is that body parts now have hit points for blunt damage, instead of blunt damage merely causing pain. This is surely an improvement to realism over not having this feature. However, it is still not a perfect model.

[Putnam]

The thing DF misses in damage assessment is "recruitment". Each body part is its own entity, and it doesn't "pass along" the stresses that pass over a certain threshold to the body parts attached adjacent to it.

Yes they do, added in 0.43.04.