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[EyeOfNundinate]

Hmm.. this ould be a neat idea but it would, as someone else said, make the game lag quite a bit.
Also, whatabout sand around a chasm or a bottomless pit? That would be.. interesting to see.. And very laggy I bet.

You know this game has two fluids, and an uncountable amount of semi fluids, you would expect it to lag like hell.

It can be offset with the optimization and accelerators that are provided.

[culwin]

I like this idea.
It's a good place to start, anyhow!
Since when does hardware demand prevent a great concept from being done anyhow?

[EyeOfNundinate]

I like this idea.
It's a good place to start, anyhow!
Since when does hardware demand prevent a great concept from being done anyhow?

When people see it as a problem, cling onto it with adamant fortitude, and then other people follow in suit.

[LegitMacgyver]

I like this idea.
It's a good place to start, anyhow!
Since when does hardware demand prevent a great concept from being done anyhow?

When people see it as a problem, cling onto it with adamant fortitude, and then other people follow in suit.

I agree, and I think this has already been said but maybe FPS would drop during interactions with sand but the OP says that these flows stop after reaching a certain point meaning they wouldn't be always flowing like water or magma do currently.  So even if your machine is a $hit box it would only lag during the interaction with the sand, not constantly like with water or magma.  No big deal, so get over it.

[Kilo24]

I like this suggestion.

CPU-taxing would be not that big even if it was just a duplicate of the water implementation, really.

That picture of sand-stacking bugs me as to whether or not that's a realistic representation, but oh well.

...I feel the urge to complicate the suggestion by developing a system that would allow it to be blown around by wind.

[EyeOfNundinate]

Hmm, you know those scenes when sand floods a room, and completely seals it off, I would love to see that.
It would be even better if we could reenact the Sharia Law of half-burial them death by stoning.

[Morrigi]

I like this idea, and from the way it sounds, it will NOT (repeat, NOT) be as bad as water is, and in fact much less taxing, since it has no pressure and won't flow as far.

[Vertigon]

Hmm.. this ould be a neat idea but it would, as someone else said, make the game lag quite a bit.
Also, whatabout sand around a chasm or a bottomless pit? That would be.. interesting to see.. And very laggy I bet.

It's not as bad as draining a lake into a chasm, because the sand will actually stop once it gets low enough.

[EyeOfNundinate]

Think of it, giant pillars of sand falling from above, a room flooding with sand, so much death, and such a good way to prevent infiltrations.

[G-Flex]

I like this suggestion a lot, and I think more suggestions should be written like it: It identifies an issue, draws up a proposal, includes neat visual aids, and addresses what issues it may have.


I think that, provided it's programmed properly, this wouldn't impact CPU usage TOO much as long as the game doesn't check things unnecessarily. After all, sand flows would settle fairly quickly, although breaching into the bottom of a sand dune might result in something amusing.


Another problem is how you handle a creature inside a tile that gets flooded with sand. Does he get buried by it, similarly to being submerged in water? If so, how easily should he be able to get out?

[Joakim]

And what happens when water and sand mixes? Do we sandy water first, then a mud wall maybe? I dunno. Magna + sand should give green glass.

[EyeOfNundinate]

And what happens when water and sand mixes? Do we sandy water first, then a mud wall maybe? I dunno. Magna + sand should give green glass.

This is why we can't have good things.

Sand gets wet, but it doesn't become mud, it becomes wet sand, one is a type of the other not both.
Magma melts sand and probably makes it into some crappy rock.

[Osmosis Jones]

Sand is fairly porous. If you dump water on sand (or at least the type of sand we have here, it's fairly coarse), it will pool for a bit, but eventually drain through. As such, I would suggest you thus approximate sand as non-interacting with water (eg a tile can have 7/7 of both water AND sand, though this may screw up murky ponds and similar. Alternatively, a simpler simulation may be just have one displace the other, as Tehran suggested in his 2nd image.

EDIT: Also if magma is involved; they should definitely displace rather than ignore each other, and if they do share a tile make 1-2/7 sand becomes a glass floor, 3-5/7 becomes a glass ramp and 6-7/7 sand is unaffected.

More interesting though is the replacement of ramps; maybe make every tile of 3, 4 or 5 act as a ramp does now; an 'empty' tile that allows passage onto tiles above or level with it. Tiles of 6 or 7 could then act as full tiles for purposes of pathing etc. Also, you'd want to make a ramp prevent sand flow (or at least limit it), or in the case above magma would slowly eat into sand, turning it into a room full of green glass ramps. Then again, that may be desired behaviour.

Finally, re: the drowning. If a dwarf is on a tile when the sand level changes by >4 in one tick, he is entrapped. If the total sand level is >4 AND he is entrapped, he starts drowning. If he is entrapped he needs to be dug out by someone else (remember, 4/7 is neck high on a dwarf; if you got buried up to your neck in sand, you'd be unable to free yourself in any short timeframe). Going by Tehran's animation, the effect of this means it's impossible to get buried in sand unless multiple z-levels are involved, but if they are, it would be quite likely.

Man, I can't wait to see creatures with the 'sand-swimming' tag :p

[culwin]

We then need creatures that can swim freely in sand.
Sand worms.
Dune.

[scira]

I think we are all missing the important question.


Should sand crush or suffocate?