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[Frumple]

*coughs* Unless the save file only holds the demon species' description and the number is controlled by something along the lines of {No demon on map? Make more demon.} (& = &+1, heh) in the code. Alternately, it's just a number, yes, and technically finite. I wonder how many digits could be fit in a single file...

Honestly, the boss Toad's a mathematician, innit he? I can only imagine the number he can pull out of the air is truly and incredibly large, if not, yanno', procedurally infinite.

[RedWarrior0]

So? Your computer only has a finite number of bits of hard disk space. It'll still have an ID for the (u)nits screen and in the kills, and probably Legends. It's almost, but not entirely, quite unlike finite.

[Ilmoran]

It doesn't really even matter if the number is just a parsed string in the txt file.  It doesn't take a whole lot of room to write DEMON_COUNT = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.  The thing that matters more is the type of variable the value is read into.  Using C++, the biggest integer data type would be unsigned long long, which would accept values from 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.  18 quintillion demons.  Have fun with that.

[Blackburn]

It doesn't really even matter if the number is just a parsed string in the txt file.  It doesn't take a whole lot of room to write DEMON_COUNT = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.  The thing that matters more is the type of variable the value is read into.  Using C++, the biggest integer data type would be unsigned long long, which would accept values from 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.  18 quintillion demons.  Have fun with that.

Practically infinite.

[LordSlowpoke]

It doesn't really even matter if the number is just a parsed string in the txt file.  It doesn't take a whole lot of room to write DEMON_COUNT = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.  The thing that matters more is the type of variable the value is read into.  Using C++, the biggest integer data type would be unsigned long long, which would accept values from 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.  18 quintillion demons.  Have fun with that.

Practically infinite.

Practically.

[Blackburn]

It doesn't really even matter if the number is just a parsed string in the txt file.  It doesn't take a whole lot of room to write DEMON_COUNT = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.  The thing that matters more is the type of variable the value is read into.  Using C++, the biggest integer data type would be unsigned long long, which would accept values from 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.  18 quintillion demons.  Have fun with that.

Practically infinite.

Practically.

Yes, practically. That's why I said practically; it's practically infinite. As in, in practical terms, it pretty much is infinite. In mathematical terms, it's not infinite. But in practical "applied to the reality" terms, it is.

[LordSlowpoke]

It doesn't really even matter if the number is just a parsed string in the txt file.  It doesn't take a whole lot of room to write DEMON_COUNT = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.  The thing that matters more is the type of variable the value is read into.  Using C++, the biggest integer data type would be unsigned long long, which would accept values from 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.  18 quintillion demons.  Have fun with that.

Practically infinite.

Practically.

Yes, practically. That's why I said practically; it's practically infinite. As in, in practical terms, it pretty much is infinite. In mathematical terms, it's not infinite. But in practical "applied to the reality" terms, it is.

Sir, I manage to get 100 FPS with the carnival open, and clowns filling my traps all over and pushing the repeater by itself. All I need to do is to make sure the bait is still alive, and that the dorfs are self-sustaining.
I could go on like this. Ad infinitum to say. Over ten thousand of in-game years, and with the possible kill count of over 100 demons yearly, I would get what? A million demons.

They say the first million is the hardest.


And no, this won't qualify as a decent test sample for my project. The maze...is incomplete.

[RedWarrior0]

If you manage to get DF to have a fortress-running AI, multicore, a liquid-helium cooled overclocked processor complex (Suppose 7 gigahertz with 128 cores... holy shit), and a gigabyte of hard disk space beyond what DF uses (not taking into account OS and other background programs) with quite a bunch of FPS, well...

I'm not planning on calculating it. Fuck that. But 1,073,741,824 bytes divided by 8 bytes is... 134,217,728 unsigned long long integers.

Note that each count would need to be separate for each type of demon, and each demon would require coordinates, a (u)nits status, and, if dead, a spot in the killer's profile. If you had 1 dwarf killing demons, that would be another data piece.

But it's still a shitload of demons.

[LordSlowpoke]

If you manage to get DF to have a fortress-running AI, multicore, a liquid-helium cooled overclocked processor complex (Suppose 7 gigahertz with 128 cores... holy shit), and a gigabyte of hard disk space beyond what DF uses (not taking into account OS and other background programs) with quite a bunch of FPS, well...

I'm not planning on calculating it. Fuck that. But 1,073,741,824 bytes divided by 8 bytes is... 134,217,728 unsigned long long integers.

Note that each count would need to be separate for each type of demon, and each demon would require coordinates, a (u)nits status, and, if dead, a spot in the killer's profile. If you had 1 dwarf killing demons, that would be another data piece.

But it's still a shitload of demons.

Two major flaws.
1. DF can't run multicore.
2. Even Toady wouldn't run a fort indefinitely. Nobody can. Losing is fun, y'know.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Now I'm going to breach Hell with a 1000-tile spike hall and see how long my fort can last. I'm aiming for infinity.

[Blackburn]

It doesn't really even matter if the number is just a parsed string in the txt file.  It doesn't take a whole lot of room to write DEMON_COUNT = 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.  The thing that matters more is the type of variable the value is read into.  Using C++, the biggest integer data type would be unsigned long long, which would accept values from 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615.  18 quintillion demons.  Have fun with that.

Practically infinite.

Practically.

Yes, practically. That's why I said practically; it's practically infinite. As in, in practical terms, it pretty much is infinite. In mathematical terms, it's not infinite. But in practical "applied to the reality" terms, it is.

Sir, I manage to get 100 FPS with the carnival open, and clowns filling my traps all over and pushing the repeater by itself. All I need to do is to make sure the bait is still alive, and that the dorfs are self-sustaining.
I could go on like this. Ad infinitum to say. Over ten thousand of in-game years, and with the possible kill count of over 100 demons yearly, I would get what? A million demons.

They say the first million is the hardest.


And no, this won't qualify as a decent test sample for my project. The maze...is incomplete.

Good sir, when I said the number of demons is practically infinite, I included four factors that could end your fortress before you ran out of demons:

1. Demons killing your dwarves.
2. Your dwarves killing your dwarves.
3. You killing your dwarves.
4. Your boredom killing your dwarves.

There may also be a fifth factor that reads: "All of the above."

Either the demons win, you get a tantrum spiral, you kill your dwarves for fun, or you get tired and abandon the fort.

Or you get tired, let the demons in on purpose, leading to a tantrum spiral and your fort crumbling to its glorious end. This is a combination of all other factors, and may possibly be one of the most likely possible scenarios.

The chances of one of these happening before the game ran out of demons is really, really close to 100%.

[Astarch]

Two things:
1) A great many portions of mathematics rely on the ability to define infinite quantities of different size. There are tons of examples, but probably the easiest one is the transfinite numbers, which are non finite, but smaller than absolute infinity.

2) An infinite number of demons just means your marksdwarves have a higher chance of hitting something you want to kill.

[Firnagzen]

Christ, are you dwarves or are you elves? If you think Hell has too many demons, then you kill them till the population reaches an acceptable number.

Sigg'd for a succinct summary of DF players.

[Kuraudo]

Christ, are you dwarves or are you elves? If you think Hell has too many demons, then you kill them till the population reaches an acceptable number.

I think this is worth repeating (again) for those of us who seem to have been hanging around with the elves for too long.

[Man In Zero G]

Hell does not have too many demons. It has exactly the right number: "more".
Because if it needs more, it just makes more. At any given time, there are not "infinite" demons - there are only the ones you've released so far. If those weren't enough to kill you, the game makes more. It's not keeping track if 18 trillion (or whatever the current theory is) individuals of each demon species sitting around in the slade - it isn't keeping track of ANY except the ones who've already escaped - and even then, I doubt it keeps track of unnamed demons after the fort crumbles. When you reclaim, it just makes more.
In other words, until you breech hell, there are no demons except the ones in world gen. Once you breech it - there are always more.
That's what makes it Fun.