Print

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

[The Architect]

As absurd as it sounds, my dwarfs filled a bucket endlessly from my new 7-deep glacial map water cistern to give water to a poor engraver with a broken lower body. The area I had melted was 125 squares, and in the interest of this guy not dying of dehydration I ordered an iron bucket forged in the magma forge, and a square channeled out above the water to serve as a source until I could divert the water.

After about 10 days in-game time had passed, my bucket was still in the forge, and my engraver had gone from Thirsty to Dehydrated. Annoyed, I added a valid water zone on and around the source and went through the more usual annoyance of every dwarf going to sleep, eat, or on break the moment I removed other labors. Well, eventually my leader got around to it, and used 3 water levels from the 125-square pool before he tried to carry the bucket to the Engraver. I posted about it in our succession game thread, joked, and began digging a well to divert the water and end this glitch.

However, the water never made it to the engraver, and now he's both dehydrated and starving. My carpenter/mechanic is now refilling the bucket and has the cistern down 1s and 2s. I propose that while the bucket was sitting unused in the magma furnace, which is directly above a vent, it became heated and now evaporates all water that comes into contact with it. It is not hot enough to set a dwarf on fire, but hot enough to evaporate endless amounts of water. There is no steam or mist. Besides being absurd, this is also certain death to our engraver and probably the fortress if I don't cheat my way out with a forced abort. I will back up the file and provide it if anyone asks for it.

[The Architect]

Update:
It seems the bug has a very clear cause, that the water freezes the moment it leaves the heated pool. I have an iron bucket on the ground, with a long list of ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice ice when I "k" the square. So no matter how much the dwarfs fill it, all they are doing is creating a pile of ice on the floor. If this is not a known bug, it should be added to the list.

[Quietust]

You might want to try deconstructing your engraver's bed - if he's hungry/thirsty enough, he may just make the trek to your food/booze stockpiles and feed/booze himself.

[The Architect]

Thanks; I managed to save him by dropping some ice blocks through two stone floors, essentially bugging a well for myself. Think the refreezing water that gets dumped on the floor should be reported? I don't think it is supposed to be possible to have 500 layers of "ice" anyway?

[Derakon]

This seems like a side-effect of how wonky ice freezing is right now. I don't know what the right approach here is, but the behavior you're describing is certainly a bug in some sense; either the water shouldn't freeze, or the dwarves should be smarter about obtaining it, or the messaging should be better, or something else entirely.

[The Architect]

From reviewing the way water is treated in the game, I've come to a few conclusions. For one thing, it seems that "it's an alpha!" is a big part of this issue. Handling water as an item hasn't been polished at all, and we can expect great changes in the next release.

Conclusions:
1) As most readers will know, there is a material, be it stone, metal, or water, which is labeled without a capital letter and is usable as a building material, among other things. Examples are "water", "copper", and "microcline".
2) There is a second form for all of these (except bauxite, which never melts) which is the melted (or sometimes melted and cooled) version, which has a capital letter, "Water", "Copper", and "Microcline". This is usually waste, except in the case of "Water", which can be collected and stockpiled as a resource for your dwarves. All are moved with the quirky "Cleaning" labor.
3) "Water" can freeze, forming "ice", which does not follow these normal rules, but is in the same classification as "grass", simply an ambient material with which the game's temperature and environment may react (only, ice melts and grass burns).
4) "Water" is never actually IN the bucket as a container; in fact it merely occupies the same square and is hidden until delivered or consumed. This is seen with a stack of "Water ( 8 )" beside a wounded dwarf's bed when he is brought water and the bucket is moved.
5) Drawing "Water" with buckets from a non-freezing z-level into a freezing z-level nearly instantly creates "ice" on the square the "Water" occupies. Due to the way "Water" is handled, traveling through any freezing square will cause it to become "ice" on the floor.

This problem was not supposed to come up, as dwarves will not attempt to use a water source in a freezing area unless it is designated as a source of water. I wanted my #@!@# engraver to get some water, so when I noticed they were not taking from the hot spring I used "i" to designated it as a source of water.

In the end, none of this should be an issue when Toady gets around to smoothing out the water/ice/melted materials/cleaning/heat transfer/melting point problems. All of which are known quirks. For now, maybe a line or two in the Wiki alerting players to these quirks will suffice.

Edit: Placing 8 in parenthesis creates an annoying unwanted smiley. Added spacing.

[Quietust]

4) "Water" is never actually IN the bucket as a container; in fact it merely occupies the same square and is hidden until delivered or consumed.

Not true - if you view a water bucket up close, you will see that it lists "water [10]" in its 'inventory', just as a bin will list its contents and a sword will list coatings of blood.

[The Architect]

So, at what point is the water freezing and becoming ice on the ground (before/after/during)? And why are my dwarves leaving water lying around without buckets when they bring water to the wounded?

[Thief^]

Maybe the dwarves pick up "water" before putting it in the bucket, and it freezes in their hands?

[The Architect]

It must exist at some point outside of the bucket during the collecting process if it can't freeze IN the bucket, that seems to be clear. Then again, dwarves will start running with what they think is a bucket full of water and then return a few seconds later. I will have to scout around for "ice" elsewhere in the tunnel where they were running.

If it does freeze in the bucket then some mechanic must exist for emptying the bucket before endlessly collecting more water, thus explaining the piles of "ice" on the floor.