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[Misterstone]

Observe the above screenshots:  image one shows an ingenious contraption I have assembled for the purpose of demonstrating the dwarfly way of fishing... through spring-loaded bridges of course!  The patch of dark blue water is a lowered bridge covered by water from the adjacent river.  The river has stingrays, milkfish and tiger fish, all of which are big enough to be shown as units in the "u" screen.  Image 2 shows one z-level above the bridge.

So a couple of times I have managed to flip the lever on this bridge when a large fish was on top of it (swimming, in water).  What I observed is that the fish gets stunned, but does not (most dissapointingly!) go flying up... up and out of the water onto shore, there to die and be collected by my hungry dwarves.  So I am wondering...

1)  Does flingify not work under water?
2)  How can I get more fish to swim into the special area for more "testing"?
3)  Is there a setting on the bridge or level that might be messing this up?  I made the raise direction to the north, and it presumably is flipping upwards and to the north.
4) Can you think of any other reason this would not work?
5)  Might there be a better area (besides a river) where I can coerce more fish into my fish flinger (tm)?

As a final note, I found that micro-sized fish (guppies, clown loach) are not affected at all by the bridge- they are neither flung, not atomized when the bridge crashes down.  The stingray I try to fling was annihilated by the closing bridge however.

Has anyone ever done this successfully before?

And to think I had dreams (impossible no doubt, but worthy) of flinging sharks and carps out of the water to be skinned, butchered and eaten by seafood loving dwarves. 

[Fossaman]

I'd suggest testing a submerged drawbridge's flinging ability on terrestrial animals first, using the pit command. If those are successfully flung, mod in domestic fish that you can purchase and release in the water. Set the drawbridge as a meeting area so they'll swim on top of it.

[Tallefred]

You can only fling things on the same z-level, not up. The bottom of the river is one z-level below the ground, so whatever gets flung is not going to leave the river.

[Doomshifter]

You can only fling things on the same z-level, not up. The bottom of the river is one z-level below the ground, so whatever gets flung is not going to leave the river.

Creatures can be flung z-levels. I've seen it happen. Items can also get thrown z-levels.

[Retro]

Sadly, someone did a great bridge test and found that objects will be flung in all directions but creatures could not be flung up z-levels. I think I've seen creatures get thrown upwards in the dust clouds that follow cave-ins, but it's hard to confirm since dust in a block makes the rest of that block hidden. I don't think this will work at all using a bridge, but I do think that this is a crazy awesome idea and complement you on your inherent dwarfiness.

Ed- Sphalerite did it, and I now recall this because he linked to it a few posts down

[Kanddak]

That's a wonderful idea!
I don't know if it will work with a creature at all, but going up z-levels is random anyway. You'd have the best chance doing it with a retracting bridge so that you can flip it over and over again without crushing the fish.

[blue emu]

A bridge that raises to the North will never fling creatures Northward... the raised bridge itself blocks that direction.

[Brody]

So if you made a space that was like

O=Open area
W=Wall
B=Bridge
X=Water
P=Pump
F=Floodgate


WWWWWW
OPOOPO
OFOOFO
OWOOWO
WWBBWW
XXBBXX
XXBBXX

[Misterstone]

Too bad about creatures not flinging properly.  I guess the only way to do this is to make a device that sucks all the water out of the area then flips the corpses up out of the pit.  But what would be the point then? 

I guess flinging north into drained area is the best we can do.
*sob*

[Retro]

I've actually been thinking about the idea of a cave-in flinging creatures, and if it's possible, you may be able to do it with a series of dropping floor tiles. That's based on whether this would work at all, of course - but to my knowledge it hasn't been tested and documented, so I'll give it a shot later when I have some time. There may still be hope yet!

[Sphalerite]

Bridges, whether retracting or raising, do not fling creatures up Z-levels.  Creatures on a raising or retracting bridge will be thrown around but will stay on the same Z-level.  Objects can be thrown up Z-levels, but not creatures.

See the following for experiments demonstrating this:

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=42111.0

[Misterstone]

How about a weapon trap, then?  Is there any way to predict which way a critter will be propelled by, say, a weapon trap loaded with hammers?  I'm thinking, they swim into a channel, get hammered, go flying through a short corridor onto the bridge, which can then flip them (once dead and no longer a "creature" onto the river bank.

[Sphalerite]

I don't know about hammer-loaded weapon traps, but I can tell you that the direction of an object flung by a bridge is completely random and not at all determined by the direction the bridge raises.  You can't reliably use a bridge to throw an object in a specific direction, or up onto a river bank.

[Misterstone]

Never one to give up on an epic undertaking, I realized recently that I could probably get fish to be flung out of the water IF and only IF being thrown into an upwards ramp would cause them to go up rather than "splat".  Does anyone know if someone hit with enough knockback would go up when propelled beyond an upward ramp?  If they would in fact go up the ramp, can someone recommend a good setup for an automatic fish/critter harvest facility involving hammer/mace weapon traps?

[Loyal]

I'm quite sure ramps will not 'nudge' a propelled creature upward. I had my hunter employ a warhammer for awhile in a very hilly map before I came to the realization that more body parts flung by splatting against the wall = less wholesome butchering.