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[Urist McCyrilin]

You'd have to have some pretty bizarre biology to get diatomic hydrogen gas, though.

Isn't that the best kind of biology?

[Footkerchief]

If I understand correctly, tissue layers will rupture or split if enough force of the appropriate type is applied. Will it be possible for layers to slough off? As an example, could a limb conceivably be stripped of the muscle and flesh, assuming that the creature somehow survived?

In certain situations, yes:

Toady, with the new tissue layers, will it be possible to 'flay' creatures?

Yeah, sheep shearing was actually one of the many driving forces behind this update.  However, I think flayed corpses in HFS might beat sheap shearing into the game.  Wounds with high angle variables can also lead to flayed parts, but that's almost strictly descriptive at this point.

"Individual tissue layers on body parts can sluff off or boil now, after suffering melting/boiling effects while remaining intact for a short time."

I wonder if the melting of a tissue layer (e.g. subcutaneous fat) causes subordinate layers (skin) to slough off as well.

It's all a little weird right now -- it will for actual subordinate layers in the raw tag sense (hair on skin), but for skin over fat, which is more of a layering relationship the way things are, it's more like the fat melted first and drained out of the lion's nethers.  I think it'll be better to kind of simulate things further with heat damage from blood in vascular tissues or something, so that temperature damage happens way earlier and in a more systemic fashion for blooded creatures.

Similarly, could an organ embedded in a particular layer fall out due to damage to surrounding tissue?

This already happens with guts in the current version, but that behavior has been enhanced and expanded:

"[...] refined the contents under pressure characteristics for guts; the ability to grab the exposed guts, attack or sever the exposed guts, the guts getting dirty when they drag on the ground and other such things all came basically for free. There are some dev items on that I guess... you can't yet strangle people with the exposed guts, though I suppose that's now within reach (grabbing the guts now would only open up a pinching attack I think, which would be the least of your adversary's problems)."

[Spiders Everywhere]

Now I'm wondering how some of these more exotic injuries interact with healing - like, a limb flayed enough to strip away muscle tissue would realistically never heal enough to be functional again. Would the victim just get bandaged up and go through life with an unusable crippled arm, or maybe your doctors would just amputate it? Or will the game even understand that some kinds of tissue grow back and others don't?

[smjjames]

Now I'm wondering how some of these more exotic injuries interact with healing - like, a limb flayed enough to strip away muscle tissue would realistically never heal enough to be functional again. Would the victim just get bandaged up and go through life with an unusable crippled arm, or maybe your doctors would just amputate it? Or will the game even understand that some kinds of tissue grow back and others don't?

Sounds like something that will have to be tested actually using the new version. I think it would be amputated....

[madjoe5]

After reading some of this stuff, I feel that the more DF progresses, the more it would turn into a torture game, as opposed to the RTL game it was meant to be.

[Chthonic]

After reading some of this stuff, I feel that the more DF progresses, the more it would turn into a torture game, as opposed to the RTL game it was meant to be.

It is not evil in and of itself, but it may be put to evil ends.

[Footkerchief]

After reading some of this stuff, I feel that the more DF progresses, the more it would turn into a torture game, as opposed to the RTL game it was meant to be.

If you're interested in the ethical aspects of disgusting levels of realism, this is the thread for you.

Now I'm wondering how some of these more exotic injuries interact with healing - like, a limb flayed enough to strip away muscle tissue would realistically never heal enough to be functional again. Would the victim just get bandaged up and go through life with an unusable crippled arm, or maybe your doctors would just amputate it? Or will the game even understand that some kinds of tissue grow back and others don't?

I was wondering whether you were correct about de-muscled limbs being damaged beyond repair, and it looks like the answer is yes, even with modern medicine.  The game does understand that some tissues heal and others don't -- omitting the HEALING_RATE tag in the tissue properties will cause it not to heal, as you can see with teeth and nerves.  Anyway, here's the latest word I could find concerning what kinds of wounds will lead to surgical amputation:

Is rotting tissue the only reason they amputate? They should also do it in the case of extremely painful injuries or breaks that won't heal, or when there's a lot of damage to the limb's circulatory structure.

Bad compound/etc. fractures were supposed to lead to amputations but I haven't gotten a chance yet.  That's something that's sort of hanging right now and may or may not happen, but yeah, lots of reasons to amputate.  An I was Bitten guy just lost his leg to a hungry tiger, who only got halfway through the leg itself before being hit by a guy with a pickaxe.  Very proper.  So yeah, not being able to save the limb should happen more often.

[Innominate]

Thanks, Footkerchief!

After reading some of this stuff, I feel that the more DF progresses, the more it would turn into a torture game, as opposed to the RTL game it was meant to be.

The Sims doesn't have any flaying mechanics at all, and look how sadistic people became there.

I distinctly remember somebody... somebody who couldn't possibly be me, I swear... locking children who got bad grades in a room with an unguarded fireplace and thousands of wooden easels. Oh boy did they run around like a digital chicken with its header file cut off.

Imagine what happens when people who play DF and not The Sims get their hands on the ability to flay muscle from the bone. I have a feeling I'm going to end up training hundreds of dwarves in toughness (which could be harder with the new skills system, unless it makes pumping give toughness and strength more often than before for example) and then crippling them in horrific ways. I intend to conduct an experiment - purely for scientific research, you understand - on the relative crippling potential of the different attack types. While a compound fracture could be pretty bad, who's to say that 'ringbarking' would be any better?

You'd have to have some pretty bizarre biology to get diatomic hydrogen gas, though.

I figured helium would be even less likely (unless they replenished it as a food source from radioactive locations?), and that pretty much covered the off-the-top-of-my-head lighter than air gases. Wikipedia suggests ammonia and methane. Methane could be obtained by eating (or collecting the gaseous emissions of ) ruminants (cows, etc.) or harvesting it from decomposing organic matter. For ammonia, it could come from decomposing organic matter and some legumes, though it seems (biologists please correct me) it could be converted into ammonia from some ammonium compounds and so could plausibly be used.

So I guess it comes down to plausibility or having giant spiders with flaming sacks of silk fall from the sky under certain conditions. Methane has an auto-ignition point of 580 degrees Celcius (11044 degrees DFT), which is unlikely unless close to magma. Fortunately the flash point is -188 degrees Celcius (9662 degrees DFT), so it will catch fire in the presence of a flame unless your dwarves are dying on their own anyway.

Then I mod in another caste with a fire-based attack, and presto, we have a set of flying kamikaze ninja spiders supported by fire-powered officers.

[Spiders Everywhere]

The game does understand that some tissues heal and others don't -- omitting the HEALING_RATE tag in the tissue properties will cause it not to heal, as you can see with teeth and nerves. 

Hum, so skin, fat, muscle, eyes, and organs all heal at a standard rate, bone heals slowly, and cartilage, hair, nails, teeth, nerves and brains don't heal at all. I guess nails and hair grow back through cosmetic layer growth or something, instead of healing.

Since organs don't do much now it doesn't matter much yet, but there's an big difference between healing in the sense of a wound sealing up, and tissue actually returning to a functional state. Like if you get stabbed in the eye it might heal up ok in a structural sense but it'd still be blind.

I guess a way to track this sort of thing could be something like:
organ is x% damaged -> organ heals -> organ is x% scar tissue -> organ is x% nonfunctional. Crude, but could produce some decent results.

[Neonivek]

Though an issue may be what we currently know about certain organs and common myths.

To my knowledge the brain does heal, it just is very limited in doing so. Everyone I speak to however believes that the brain has no ability to heal or recover.
-I am not stating to be right... but it may need looking into.

Then there is the different healing rates of ages. Babies and younger children have the ability to heal from injuries others don't. They can for example regenerate fingertips (Mind you, they also have injuries that they can die from that an adult probably wouldn't)

[smjjames]

Well yea, the whole thing is complicated.

In general the nervous system can't heal (a cut or damaged spinal cord will never heal), but the brain has a massive capability to rewire itself from injury. Although this is mammals we are talking about here, if you go look at ampibians, they can regenerate an entire limb.

At best we can simulate it in a basic way.

[Spiders Everywhere]

Brain damage is such a massive can of worms...I guess it could just semi-randomly damage your mental stats and skill levels and stuff. It'd be funny if it changed your personality around some too.

"What is all this crap? I don't remember liking olivine at all!"

[Shoku]

You'd have to have some pretty bizarre biology to get diatomic hydrogen gas, though.

I bet there'd be a way to do it with the voltaic stacks electric eels have.

Now I'm wondering how some of these more exotic injuries interact with healing - like, a limb flayed enough to strip away muscle tissue would realistically never heal enough to be functional again. Would the victim just get bandaged up and go through life with an unusable crippled arm, or maybe your doctors would just amputate it? Or will the game even understand that some kinds of tissue grow back and others don't?

I don't think the distinction is really that important. If your skin gets chopped off entirely it doesn't really matter if it could grown back but if you just get some swatches cut out of it the organ would still be there and provided you survive you'd only need to describe the regeneration in terms of repairing cuts and things.

Regrowing your fingernails after you had some bad luck with a hammergoblin could be tricky to describe in that way but I think for those to regrow you need the root anyway.

I can't say for sure that we'll continue to not actually be presented with information like what fraction of a bone was shattered and scraped out of an entity but with the level of detail I think we've got you only need to recognize that something isn't entirely gone for it to heal, except with those parts that never heal at all.

though it seems (biologists please correct me) it could be converted into ammonia from some ammonium compounds and so could plausibly be used.
[/quote]
I've practically got a chemistry minor but it doesn't tell me enough to say if animals can have the systems for converting things to ammonium off the top of my head for certain but I don't hear any alarms going off in my head so might as well allow it if eating farts and purifying the methane for flight purposes is close enough to reasonable.

Though an issue may be what we currently know about certain organs and common myths.

To my knowledge the brain does heal, it just is very limited in doing so. Everyone I speak to however believes that the brain has no ability to heal or recover.
-I am not stating to be right... but it may need looking into.

Then there is the different healing rates of ages. Babies and younger children have the ability to heal from injuries others don't. They can for example regenerate fingertips (Mind you, they also have injuries that they can die from that an adult probably wouldn't)

Here's the answer on a cellular level: nerves can regrow the little projections coming off of the main body (and frequently do as that's what the "forming connections" thing is,) but if you manage to kill the cell you're ultra-limited in terms of replacing it. Nerve lineage stem cells could turn into proper nerve cells but they don't do it in a way that fixes things like getting your spinal cord cut through. For our purposes they do so little of anything else you can ignore them without losing out on anything you'd notice.

Now glial cells- well nobody knows that there are nerve cells in the brain other than the web kind that send signals down axons so it's kind of hard to explain this. Glial cells do a whole lot and might be doing even more. I can tell I'm on the edge of ruin when I start trying to make sentences to actually describe that though.

[atomfullerene]

Ooo, that's brilliant.  Changing personality with brain damage.  Also, you can get hydrogen from a modified version of photosynthesis (it usually produces hydrogen ions-but some cyanobacteria can be made to produce the gas form).  Still, methane is a more likely float, I think.  It would be amusing to see, but we really need flaming arrows to take full advantage of the phenomenon.

[bluephoenix]

One question
i searched and couldnt find anything on this topic

(question "un-coloured" for obvious reasons)
Would it be possible in the future to designate an "arena" for the dwarfs to admire fights in in fortressmode? unlike now where you build an "arena" it is unofficial and only the player sees it/can admire it or when the dwarfs sees it they run in terror.