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[SirHoneyBadger]

This is probably a better topic for the Suggestions Forum Organization, but I'll mention it here because it's currently on-topic: I think this is a good illustration of the need for a list of "core" mods that concern simply completing the game itself, and that are intended to benefit everyone.

There should also be a way for everyone to potentially contribute to each such mod, as time and mood allow (with ofcourse checks and balances).

There are 11548 registered members of this Forum. 274 of those were on today. If every person who visited the Forums today contributed 1 single animal in a 24 hour period, the Arc mod would be done far beyond it's stated ambition, by Tuesday.

[Footkerchief]

There are 11548 registered members of this Forum. 274 of those were on today. If every person who visited the Forums today contributed 1 single animal in a 24 hour period, the Arc mod would be done far beyond it's stated ambition, by Tuesday.

That's kind of like saying "There are 1000 words in an essay, so if 274 people each type one word per day, it'll be done by Tuesday."  Sure, it would be possible to get 1000 animals in a brief period of time, but there would be redundancies (20% of the submissions would be whatever animal was last featured on the Discovery Channel), gaps, failures to use essential new tools like body detail plans, creature variation templates, tissue/material templates, etc., and generally enough inconsistencies to make the mod an unmaintainable mess.  I've been periodically ranting about this in the Ark Project thread, but an undertaking like this is essentially a collaborative software project -- maintainability rules like Don't Repeat Yourself apply strongly here, and various hassles like project management, version control, etc. are indispensable.

A mod that diversifies material properties for existing minerals is much easier to tackle as a community project, for several reasons:

• the number of existing minerals is at least one order of magnitude smaller than the number of creatures a full zoology mod could add
• the material templating is already done for existing minerals, so people would have to go out of their way to violate DRY
• a material's properties have very little structure or interdependence, making unnecessary the tools that are essential for creatures, and making it much easier to update their properties in a piecemeal fashion
• there's no ambiguity about whether/which new minerals should be added
• probably other stuff I forgot

[dreiche2]

Alright seems like the discussion is about DF again... I'll write a PM about the relativity stuff.

[SirHoneyBadger]

Well, the idea is that very large, imperative mods could, and possibly should, be partitioned, and sometimes, or somewhat, made more accessible to casual modders, quite possibly to the benefit of all concerned.

[Footkerchief]

Well, the idea is that very large, imperative mods could, and possibly should, be partitioned, and sometimes, or somewhat, made more accessible to casual modders, quite possibly to the benefit of all concerned.

Partitioning them is a given, but making them "accessible to casual modders" can be difficult, depending on the nature of the mod and what kind of "casual" we're talking about here.  In the case of the Ark Project, any contributors will need to work not only with the heinously complicated new creature raws, but also with other contributors (for reasons I explained above).  It's almost as inherently non-casual as DF mods can get (surpassed only by maybe a collaborative total conversion), so it's not a good fit for what you're describing.

The mineral properties mod IS a good fit, but this discussion is premised on there being other mods like it, or at least potential others.  Did you have some mods in mind?

[Sean Mirrsen]

I REALLY need to get something done about Modbase. If we could get a sneak peek at the finalized creature raws for the future version, it'd help very much.

Basically, with Modbase, you avoid a lot of the hassle with duplicates and additions in disparate files, because it can compile everything as one set. It just won't currently work with the various changes in creature definitions.

[DreamThorn]

I've created the physics and maths thread:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=47532.0

[Footkerchief]

Basically, with Modbase, you avoid a lot of the hassle with duplicates and additions in disparate files, because it can compile everything as one set. It just won't currently work with the various changes in creature definitions.

Well, the next version will directly support a lot of that functionality, at least for creatures.  Did Modbase do anything that the new creature variation templates can't?  Anyway, there's still the issue of getting contributors to use each other's templates intelligently.

e: I think I misread, did you mean Modbase avoids duplicate creature parameters e.g. putting HOMEOTHERM on every single mammal, or that it avoids having duplicate creatures e.g. two different entries for grizzly bears?

[Sean Mirrsen]

Yes, take different files and compile them together into a DF-readable set of raws. That was its chief use, the variable templates were just a tack-on addition. For example, you can have several dozen files submitted by different people, with possible duplicates in them. Feed those into Modbase, and you'll get, ideally, one file with all creatures and no duplicates.

edit to the above: it does both, if told so. It leaves no duplicate entries (creatures, items, etc), and does different things depending on the first tag in an entry, which acts as a key. If the tag tells to overwrite, the duplicate completely replaces the existing entry. If it tells to add only, it does not touch existing tags, only adding missing or multi-applicable ones (ATTACK, BIOME, PREFSTRING, etc). If there's no key, it overwrites any present tags and adds any multi-applicable ones. There are special syntax tags to delete existing tags or parts of tags by filter. Plus, "species handler". You can make a new creature with a new name, but tell Modbase to copy all tags from another creature, and treat all tags in the new creature as if it was a duplicate. For example, if you were to make a different species of shark, you could use another shark and just state everything that changes in it - size, color, biomes, etc. It was/is a powerful tool, it just won't work with the new version. And it's in VB, so it's terribly slow at times.

edit2: oy, almost forgot. Footkerchief, can you dig up links to all preview raws of the next version posted to this day? I'll need to begin building listings of "duplicateable" tags and formats for the new structures like attacks and castes.

[Areyar]

Introducing ecologies worth of creatures is premature IMHO.
First have creatures behave like organisms, requiring nutrition and dieing, not just replicating and eating CPU.
(It would be so nice to have pigs run loose in the tunnels eating debris and cats eating their vermin, not just killing it to make miasma...though cat-gifts are a cool detail.)

[Lawec]

I'm quite concerned with Toady right now 

[Quatch]

Get well Toady!

This sickness is going to ensure that release day will take place after my thought that we'd only get 700 pages in this thread beforehand

[Mephansteras]

I'm quite concerned with Toady right now 

Sounds like he's recovering ok. (Check out the Get Well thread). He's just wiped out from the flu, which is pretty normal. Once he has taken a week or so to just rest up he should start to get back to normal and work will continue. Until then, we'll just have to be patient.

[Shoku]

To hopefully move away from the theoretical physics*, I have a question about the water-flow diagrams that were getting tossed around.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I tested with an underground pool, there were probably some strange things going on there...

Code: [Select]

OO77777777777777777OO
OOO7777777777777OOOOO
OO7777777777777777OOO
OOO7777777777777OO __←mined out with open (channeled floor)
OO77777777777777777OO
Anyway, got no love from that.  Unfortunately, I don't have the save anymore to go back and check.  So I might be wrong.

edit: mispelled "tiles"

Ya, that's not working as intended. If you dump a single unit of water on top of it I bet it would all start rushing in though.

I'm not sure I follow this diagram, but I am fascinated by funny quirks in simulations. They entertain me just as much as the meticulous details represented properly. How does this water quirk work, can someone explain? I am even having trouble telling if that diagram was intended as a horizantal or vertical 'slice'.

Vertical slice if there's any reason for the water to flow there.
It looks suspiciously like a magma pipe to me but that's such a huge difference I'm sure he'd mention it.

He said he tested with an underground pool, so that's horizontal; he probably channeled out water from the top level and thus his system has only the rest pressure of the even level, which is why it's not flowing up to the next level, as water at rest pressure (unpressurised basically) only ever flows to z-1, for some strange unknown reason.

He mentioned it one of the talks. You don't want water teleporting back and forth forever.

Spoiler: more physics (click to show/hide)

If you going fast enough, it will seem to you that you traveled faster than light.

Why would it seem that way?? Relative speed is always symmetrical. If you travel almost at c from an outside observer, the outside observer will travel with almost c from your viewpoint...

That's not necessarily true. Why does relative speed have to be symmetrical? The fact is that if you are traveling near the speed of light your seconds become much longer than a stationary observer. Your meters become much longer than a stationary observer's. Because the basic units you measure speed in are different, there is no reason you must calculate the same value for your speed. This means you would calculate your speed to be faster than the speed of light, while a stationary observer would measure your velocity to be below the speed of light.

Sigh

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Actually you don't see yourself as going faster than light speed. The space in the direction you are going gets smaller and the space behind you gets longer. This is necessary for light to seem to go the same speed in either direction despite your motion.

but that can get a little complicated for this forum, I think.

Really? A forum where discussions of quantum physics come up from discussions of throwing mechanics can't handle tough math? This forum has some of the most complex discussions I have ever seen on the internet.

You just haven't been around the right people on other forums. This sort of thing pops up almost anywhere that people start talking about unrealistic situations.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't wrap my mind around infinity, I just kinda let it wrap itself over me instead. If you imagine infinity (+infinity, specifically) as the endpoint of a hypothetical infinite real vector, it makes sense to have 0 times infinity to make 0, since multiplication by a zero vector will invariably produce a zero vector. In a way, a zero is "more powerful" than infinity, the two are not opposed as the unstoppable spear/unbreakable shield are. In regards to photons and lightspeed, I have two opinions. First, why would anyone assume that the speed of a photon is the actual maximum relativistic speed? It's the fastest thing we know, but if it's a particle (part-particle) with infinitessimal mass, then it moves at a speed that is below the relativity threshold - just enough to make the multiplication "horrendously large" instead of "infinite". Second, and this has no relation to this discussion, I don't think a photon actually exists as a particle, it simply shows particle-like behavior. Not being a particle allows it to trump known laws regarding mass and lightspeed, the particle-like effect is simply moving along with whatever underlying system that causes it to manifest.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I have a distaste for multiplying by zero because of basic arithmetic. a*b=c means c/b should =a but that would mean dividing by zero and blech.

As for photons ya. The double slit experiment is enough to show that they must be waves but various other things show that they must have distinct units so the end result is that it's a particle and a wave but not a particle or a wave. A wave-particle or a particle-wave that doesn't really have an equivalent at other scales.
But as for c being the speed limit that's easy to see with something like a linear accelerator. Any decent university or such can usually afford a linear accelerator strong enough to get an electron right up to virtually light speed. You get it to 90 percent or so and the double the power but it doesn't go twice as fast. Ten times the power, one hundred times, a thousand- but you reached the top speed ages ago and unless you've got really expensive equipment you've probably gone way past where you can even measure the tiny difference in arrival time too.

Here's the sort of data a student would probably get:

And like I said a really over-sized linear accelerator could put so much force behind an electron that you'd have to squash that graph down to almost nothing to make room for the rest of the data. Even so it's plenty clear at just 5 megaelectron volts.

I was wondering the other day, while watching a show on string theory and alternate universes: How come they don't teach the physics "alphabet" in highschool?


Atleast they didn't do so a million years ago when I was there (that I noticed).

The table of elements, yes. The Greek alphabet I picked up on my own. Spanish and German were easy, and I atleast can muddle my way through Chinese and Japanese, with lots of translation support, but considering that I'm older than Toady One, I've barely even been exposed to this type of formulaic heiroglyphics.

For that matter, I've got a larger background in ancient Egyptian heiroglyphics, than this stuff that's used every day in modern times to explain the Universe I'm living in.

I realize that as an adult, I'm now responsible for my own education, but someone dropped the ball somewhere, and I'm not taking all the blame for it. I should have been forced to learn it by mandate of the State, along with algebra, and knitting.

I took a little interest when I was zoning out during things like driver's ed but other than that my only exposure to Greek letters as used in physics has been as I was introduced to equations that used them. It's definitely made them harder than they had to be but I guess it's not important enough that we want every voter knowing it.

The Ark Project is cool. We need an equally cool Fantasy Ark Project to bring together various magical beasts from all known creation, and balance them together.

I vaguely recall there being a mythological creatures wiki that had details about the monsters of every culture I could think of and tons more.

Deciding on which ones were duplicates would be the biggest trouble in a project like that since there's rarely a clear relation and you have to look really close to decide what's different.

There are 11548 registered members of this Forum. 274 of those were on today. If every person who visited the Forums today contributed 1 single animal in a 24 hour period, the Arc mod would be done far beyond it's stated ambition, by Tuesday.

Disregarding problems like making sure everyone defines reasonable and consistent attributes for animals it's difficult enough to just organize well enough to pass assignments out to people (and with pages and pages of people picking there own you'd also have to expect the to carefully read a whole lot of posts to make sure what they were choosing wasn't picked so we can basically rule out that method as being at all functional.)

I've created the physics and maths thread:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=47532.0

I'd feel bad about about not plucking out the parts from this post to stick in there but my vision has been going blurry when I strain my eyes the last few days and I really need to get some work done today. Hopefully anyone feeling the need to respond to what I've said can do it there.

[smjjames]

I'm quite concerned with Toady right now 

I've seen him pop by the forum once in a while for a short bit, so he's okay, just needs some rest.