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[harborpirate]

Not needed.

Care to elaborate as to why?

[Arekis]

I would like to see the need for a ventilation system as well.  I had to deal with something like that when I dumped a bunch of gypsum powder into a magma channel near my forges which produced a huge plume of smoke.  The smoke dissipated on its own however.

The tricky part would be balancing realism with playability.  A simulated air flow model could bring the entire game to a stop while a simplified model could be exploited or not particularly interesting (like build a "fan" object in a room that magically gets rid of pollutants/smog).  I think an involved and complex ventilation system is well within the spirit of DF.

[Andeerz]

The Implementationof an air ventilation system could be highly abstracted, such as not needing any flow calculations etc.Smoke going up in chimneys would be way cool, and easy to implement and calculate for the computer.

I like this part of the suggestion, at least for workshops. The calculation could be made pretty simple:
A tile either has smoke or does not. Fueled workshops produce 1 unit of smoke for every item created. The next unit of smoke is always generated in the nearest tile with no smoke in it. If the top of the workshop is connected to the outside air, the smoke is not generated in the fort, but instead generated in either the shaft or the air above the shop (whatever is closest). Smoke is not generated if it reaches 3 tiles of open (above surface with no walls touching it) air. It would probably be wise for smoke to "expire" every so many turns.

So, if you build a workshop with a smokestack and it is in continuous use, the stack will always be full of smoke and have a 2x2 plume coming out the top. If you don't, your fort will slowly fill with smoke and give bad thoughts as well as possibly suffocate.

This would also allow early forts to get away with not having ventilated workshops, because as long as they aren't being used, they won't generate any smoke. Once production goes full-bore, shafts (or being built on the surface) will become a requirement.

<3's for you taking the time to search the forums and necro-ing a post.    You'd probably make Footkerchief proud and, for what it's worth, sure as hell make me have a renewed modicum of faith in humanity.  and

Anyway, yeah, I like the idea you present, though ideally a loosely simulated air flow model, in my opinion, would be ideal.  Agh.  Can we have our cake and eat it too in this case?  I hope so.  Ventilation is key in mining IRL, and I'd love to see this logistical concern added to this game.

[Aramco]

I'd only accept this if dwarves would grow accustomed to it quickly and it not affect them after they were.

[PecosBill]

I've thought about this before too.  I would vote "no" to an extensive ventilation system, and just suggest that it's implied: when the dwarves dig, they automatically dig whatever extra holes they may need to bring in air.



That said, I'm not necessarily opposed to mandating a pump.

For example:
For every 300(?) squares of underground area, you need 1 air pump located at a barrier point between dungeon and surface.  You don't actually need to connect anything to it or build some intricate network of vents, you just need the pump to exist on a surface square next to a dungeon square that connects to your dungeon.

First 300 squares are free and requires no pump.

Failure to maintain adequate air pumps will result in miasmas popping up in random locations.


It would basically just be one more thing you have to build and maintain and failure to do so may help contribute to a spiral of unhappiness and doom.  I'm generally in favor of adding a new, simple system that helps cause doom.

[Teamwork]

You know, this does have to be calculated every seconded. You could use a graph system to calculate how much clean air is everywhere. This could mean that every time you pause the game it could be updated.

[thijser]

Well the problem with putting up so many square system is that you need to be able to set a value close to the bottom aswell. That means some 130 squares. I think that completly calculating everything might be doable in a few years or we could try to make this into an additional tread so that another core can be used to calaculate this.

[harborpirate]

Actually I think the scenario that I described above wouldn't use up very much CPU time, and would play out more realistically than it might first appear. I do like the idea that farms could counteract smoke though. That would be very easy to implement as an addition: smoke can't fill tiles within x tiles of a farm plot.

As for worrying about stale air and gasses from breathing, I agree that it would be best to leave that out until some kind of breakthrough in fluid calculations is made.

[thijser]

Well there are a few sides to this:
1 PFS: you will probably lose some but how much?
2 Difficulty: how difficult will the game be if this is added? It shouldn't be the main thing.
3 Acces shafts for enemies: it will defenitly matter if enemies are able to use the shafts to enter the fort.
4 Logic: Well the caverns are able to support live and dwarfs normally live in mines. Maybe letting the caverns produce air aswell.

[Andeerz]

Even with things that eat up CO2, the lack of air flow (if it were RL) would make breathing very difficult.  Perhaps with the extensive cave networks, there would be considerable air flow, though that's just speculation.  Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_mine_ventilation  Ventilation could represent a considerable expenditure of energy and maybe give pump operators something important to do for the fort's survival.  It also makes me think of a pump-operator's guild...  heh heh...

BUT, I also like to think that Dwarves have ridiculous spleens or something with an huge reservoir of blood cells (sort of like a dog's), and that they have ridiculously high blood-cell counts to begin with.  Also, I LOVE the idea that the beard acts as a particulate filter.  Perhaps the microfauna of an unwashed, well cultured beard could filter the incoming air... whee.

[Farthing]

I feel it would function more like muddy water or something. When you breath you don't actually deplete large amounts of air. Sealing up your fortress wouldn't cause a vacuum to be created by breathing dwarves, but it would deplete oxygen they need to breath, like fish out of water.

So there COULD be some kind of atmospheric fluid that exists in game, and when not circulated, it gets "stale" and dwarves start to suffocate when they can't find clean air.

Of course many questions could be raised by this fluid. Will it fall into Chasms and disappear? How will it mix with water? Miasma? Will pumps work on it? What about fans? Does it affect fire? What do windmills have to say about this? How could this have an impact on exploring the oceans, etc.

I like the idea though.

[Andeerz]

Perhaps a solution similar to one presented before could be established.  Each contiguous body of indoor space could have its volume calculated.  Each dwarf or creature and workshop could have a factor of how stale (or unbreathable) it could make the air per unit time.  It all gets added up.  When it reaches a certain threshold, it could start causing problems.  Pumps and fans connected to the contiguous indoor space with clear access to indoor and outdoor could basically undo the staleness at a certain rate.  No flow calculations needed.  A good compromise until the advent of quantum and/or fiberoptic computing...

[ZebioLizard2]

If we're able to eventually implant fungi and other things as decorations, could have possible uses as air producing fungus or able to suck up carbon dioxide. If you don't have or find such fungus, well. Time to dig some new air shafts then!

I rather like the idea though.

[Neonivek]

The easiest way to do it is just for the game to have a check to see if an area has access to the outdoors (ignoring doors but not floodgates) and if it doesn't to treat the room as a suffication zone.

[AxiumCog]

I really like the idea of the existence of an air pump causes smoke/miasma/etc. to path to it.

Imagine a rat your oh-so-loving kitten left under your bed as a present. Eventually it starts to stink, but the gentle air currents caused by the pump cause the stink to stream towards the nearest pump. Once on the other side of the pump it cannot move back through the pump(like water cant backtrack through a pump). I would say it doesnt dissipate until it is exposed to a surface tile.

In this solution, no flow calculations. Just simple pathing like that of the acorn flies. So its only an issue until you remove the source. So only smoke be generated while a forge or smelter is working. when idle its assumed the dwarves shut it down to save fuel or to prevent the magma from cooling and clogging the vents. And only miasma until the carcass is removed.