Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Neonivek]

Goodness I have a question I am aching to tell Toady but I already used up my 2 question allowance. Curses!

Id put these questions in Fortress Talk but it really drives me crazy when my questions don't get picked (I mean crazy!). So I don't ask them unless I really could care less if they were picked. Actually I had a question I submitted with fancy writing style but I cannot remember what I put down.

Glad to hear Toady is already up and about if a bit lacking any sort of energy whatsoever. (Making one of his symptoms "Fatigue").

How much have you eaten while you had the Flu Toady? If you were like me that one time and you ate nothing (Though I only didn't eat for maybe 5 days MAX but 3 days minimum) that could be what is doing it. Though perhaps not. I am probably wrong.

[Ozyton]

I am curious as to what you wanted to ask now. I don't think it would hurt if you asked here would it?

[NewoTigra]

Just to wind the topic back a few pages, and because here on the internet we can never have too much cat-related information...

...My grandad taught his neighbours cat how to wink. It's both awesome and scary at the same time. First reactions are involuntarily hilarious.

[i2amroy]

I've taught my cats to wink. Its really simple actually. Because if a cat trusts you then if you blink at them they will blink back, so all you have to do is wink at the cat instead of blinking. If you do it often enough, your cats should start to wink at you instead of blinking. It's really cool.

[Shoku]

I've taught my cats to wink. Its really simple actually. Because if a cat trusts you then if you blink at them they will blink back, so all you have to do is wink at the cat instead of blinking. If you do it often enough, your cats should start to wink at you instead of blinking. It's really cool.

They particularly do it when they're entering the room. It's supposed to be a signal to other cats that they're friendly rather than some jerk hunting territory.

[Innominate]

I've taught my cats to wink. Its really simple actually. Because if a cat trusts you then if you blink at them they will blink back, so all you have to do is wink at the cat instead of blinking. If you do it often enough, your cats should start to wink at you instead of blinking. It's really cool.

They particularly do it when they're entering the room. It's supposed to be a signal to other cats that they're friendly rather than some jerk hunting territory.

[SirHoneyBadger]

I'm not quite sure how that would work SHB.

Nice to see you again, regardless.

Thanks, JoshuaFH. It's good to see you too.

What aren't you sure about?

[Neruz]

The piece of rock taken from 1 square of wall can be used to build 1 square of wall. We can logically conclude that unless the rock vanishes, mining out a wall is no different from deconstructing one and both result in the same amount of material.

No, it's different. Just because the game's tiles are quantum, it doen't mean constructed walls are the same. Also, the game takes Acceptable Breaks From Reality for now, because having it otherwise requires comparably unnecessary rewrites. Ideally, the mason constructing a wall out of a mined rock will actually break the rock apart, and subsequently tearing the wall down will produce rubble or small rocks, not a complete usable rock. Blocks will actually be counted (ideally) and carried by the dozen. If it takes 10 blocks to build a wall, tearing it down should produce an amount of usable blocks proportional to the worker's stoneworking or masonry skill, and the rest are turned into rubble.

Ovbiously ideally you'd be able to move the wall somewhere else without destroying it, i'm just saying that as the game is right now, it would be more consistent and probably easier to do if the engraving was just destroyed.

[Rose]

thus upsetting the dorf who created that masterpiece.

Urist McMummy cancels rest: attacking thieving English

[Neruz]

That is, of course, the downside to engraving things. Although i do have to ask why you want to engrave something temporary anyway.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Because sometimes we don't want to plan ahead. A lot of times I have to mine out living quarters to make way for a large corridor or hall/storage place, and they are frequently engraved by that point.

[Neruz]

Sure, fine, but why are you engraving these things?

Engraving is a fairly serious commitment, and unless you have Ledgendary Engravers coming out of your ass (which i will admit is possible) it takes a fair while to smooth and engrave a sizable area. Finally you appear to be suggesting that there should be absolutely no disadvantage to not thinking ahead, which is kind of completely wrong.


If i build a house, and then decide i don't really like it and want it somewhere else instead, i expect the process to be painful, expensive and probably futile, i don't expect to just be able to pick it up and put it somewhere else.



Basically; why are you engraving something you intend to take down later? Especially since if there's enough masterpieces there to really piss your Engraver off, rather than just making him midly annoyed, then that is probably the only area you actually engraved. Why did you engrave the only area that you intend to demolish?!?

I don't know, do you just designate the entire fortress for engraving for the hell of it? Last time i checked things like engraving the walls are usually the finishing touches you put on a structure, you know, after you've decided how it's going to look.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, they're not usually Masterfully engraved by that point. They're usually engraved as part of the effort to raise Legendary Engravers. And you can still move a house unharmed if you really want to, taking it down and rebuilding brick by brick if it's needed. It should be possible to preserve engravings, that's all I'm saying. Also, trade. Dwarves are not humans, they will never have paintings to trade.

[jpwrunyan]

There's going to be a fluid re-write?  That's awesome.  Where can I find out more?

It's this dev item:

# Bloat325, ADDITIONAL LIQUID TYPES, (Future): Candidates for new flowing "liquids" include sand, oil, mud, blood of various sorts, slime, farm products like grain and beer for the beer fountain. Only a limited number of materials from plant raws like beer would be able to be supported as a map flow at a given time.

Toady has often commented on the difficulties:

Toady, which release are you intending to implement custom fluids?

I have no idea.  They aren't crucial to anything, so it's just going to be an act of excess when it happens.  It's something I often want to do, but the technical stumbling blocks which will potential slow down the flow code are the thing stopping me from suddenly doing it.  Getting the flows to run at a decent speed and getting them to interact with each other in any way (instead of just the magma/water interaction) are the issues.

Ah yes, *that*.  I had imagined a re-writing of the current fluid dynamics.  A re-write of just how water works.  Something where hydraulics is actually represented accurately and also where it doesn't take a full year for water to flow through a channel from one side of the map to the other... oh well. 

I don't mean to imply that would be easy.  But man I would be thrilled if I heard Toady was teaming up with a fluid dynamics person to implement the ultimate hydraulics system.

[Willfor]

Also, trade. Dwarves are not humans, they will never have paintings to trade.

I take issue with this statement. You do not know my dwarves. They want to trade paintings.