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[furrot]

When I read this this morning I thought of DF. Now that I have my Fort on my Laptop I wonder, is this possible?

http://xkcd.com/505/

[Skynet 2.0]

You can already build simple computers in Dwarf Fortress, by using pipes, water, pumps, gears, etc to make basic logic gates (AND, OR, NOT, XOR, etc.). However, these have to be very simple, but can automate some tasks that you would normally assign dwarves to do, i.e. build a repeater to continually trigger a row of spike traps. It wouldn't work with rocks though, unless a collision system was set up in which you could move rocks by throwing other rocks at them. Still, any computing system, at all, would be overly complex, ridiculously impractical, only able to do simple tasks, and keeping them from clipping into each other would, by itself, be a challenge.

[DuncanFrost]

Still, any computing system, at all, would be overly complex, ridiculously impractical, only able to do simple tasks, and keeping them from clipping into each other would, by itself, be a challenge.

A perfect Dwarven task!

[Spud]

tasks that you would normally assign dwarves to d, i.e.

Thats the first thing i saw in that sentence. Stupid Migrants.

[Jay]

tasks that you would normally assign dwarves to d, i.e.

Hah!  Typos can be hilarious.

[Draco18s]

When I read this this morning I thought of DF. Now that I have my Fort on my Laptop I wonder, is this possible?

http://xkcd.com/505/

In theory, but remember, he's doing it as if he was a Turing machine, that is can only read one bit at a time and can only move left and right one bit.  2 symbol 2 state Turing machines are simple.  2 symbol 100-billion-billion state machines might be complex enough to simulate particle physics.

Of course, the right way to do this would be a series of Turing machines (that is, 1 per "row" of rocks) where each row is a particle.

No.  That wouldn't work either.

I don't know.  Keep in mind that the Desert Computer has no RAM, no cache, and no registers.  It only has the infinite expanse of (basically) hard drive space and a magnetized needle.  The guy doesn't have enough room in his head to keep track of enough states to simulate a universe, he'd have to rely on some system in the rocks to do the functions of RAM and registers without having to run back and forth between the locations (i.e. the function that the Front Side Bus performs).

[shadow_archmagi]

Yes. One day, dwarves will play dwarf fortress.

[Yanlin]

Yes. One day, dwarves will play dwarf fortress.

Why stop there? We need dwarves playing dwarf fortress, and those dwarves would play dwarf fortress too!

[ChJees]

Yes. One day, dwarves will play dwarf fortress.

Why stop there? We need dwarves playing dwarf fortress, and those dwarves would play dwarf fortress too!

World of World of Warcraft

[Soralin]

It's a cellular automata, rule 110 specifically.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110

current pattern          111 110 101 100 011 010 001 000
new state for center cell 0   1   1   0   1   1   1   0

So if there's a rock at a current position, depends on if there's a rock in the square directly above it, above and to the left of it, and above and to the right of it, following the rules above.  The wiki link above shows some of how you can get a turing-complete system out of running it like a cyclic tag system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_system