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[Reudh]

Uristocrat, as a result of this research, I believe you are one of the very, very few contributors that Toady has allowed or incorporated.

You should be honoured!

[Uristocrat]

Uristocrat, as a result of this research, I believe you are one of the very, very few contributors that Toady has allowed or incorporated.

You should be honoured!

I am definitely honored, but I'm not the first to have contributed data.  There are several people mentioned as contributors of information in those raws

Speaking of which, other people who have contributed to these raws (both past & present) include:  Dwarfoloid, Bohandas, Jan-Willem "Great Cthulhu" van den Broek, Stakudomer, Kidiri and NW_Kohaku (who gave me a lot of useful advice).  I gather that others before me researched melting/boiling points, which I assume is why many more rocks became magma-safe after 40d.  Hopefully that will encourage any other science-minded individuals to contribute whatever they can to make DF's data better.  I know there's a TON of wood data out there I never quite made sense of, other than to get density data.

Oh, and if anyone ever has cause to research Saguaro wood, I still have a big box full of roughly foot-long sections   If I was more of a craftsdwarf, I could probably make them into picture frames or something.  Especially considering that I could cut (and even temper...) my own glass at work.

[Reudh]

I would be happy to help with this of course, with ongoing research, but I have no experience in that field.

[Uristocrat]

I would be happy to help with this of course, with ongoing research, but I have no experience in that field.

Haha, yeah, nobody really wants Saguaro wood I guess   I actually sent some to Toady, but I also included $100, so that he wouldn't have to be disappointed about getting a "wooden artifact" for his birthday

Maybe I should have made one that menaced with spikes of chert?  But with my luck, Toady likes axes, gold, platinum, rubies and cats for their aloofness.

[Reudh]

I live in an area without saguaro anyway...

I can't remember, does DF have southern hemisphere trees like Eucalypts or similar?

[Redd]

This is terrific.

[skaltum]

And this is exactly why the B12 community is so amazing. Excellent work all of you involved in this project

[Uristocrat]

I live in an area without saguaro anyway...

I can't remember, does DF have southern hemisphere trees like Eucalypts or similar?

There is no Eucalyptus wood in plant_standard, but there are several tropical varieties like mangrove, rubber, kapok and palm.  But pretty much all of those were things you could look up on http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/, though I never did find a way to translate all of the material properties there into things DF uses (other than density, at least).  The V3 raws you can download from DFFD contain a bunch of comments from me listing the exact URLs I got that information from and which species of tree I was basing it on (there are many types of oak, for example).

Overall, we have very few different types of RL trees in game.  The DF-original plants probably outnumber them   Also note that the plant raws from my mod are from a rather old version:  I don't think they have things like evil eyeball grass and whatnot.  That's why I included the original raws from back then with the mod, so that you could create a diff and maybe figure out how to apply it to newer raws.

[Tierre]

Maybe saguaro ribs should be coded by Toady to be only usable as spears? It is actually what seems an only good option for them. For actual undestroyable walls ther are a bit thin:) Also you can't make good barrels with them - but bins should be perfect.

[Uristocrat]

Maybe saguaro ribs should be coded by Toady to be only usable as spears? It is actually what seems an only good option for them. For actual undestroyable walls ther are a bit thin:) Also you can't make good barrels with them - but bins should be perfect.

Saguaro ribs can actually make good fences (by which I mean that people actually used them for that), so walls aren't totally unreasonable.  Barrels would be pretty difficult without binding a lot of ribs together somehow, but I don't know enough about how barrels are made to say how unreasonable it is, given that I thought they were made from many smallish planks and metal hoops.  The ribs would make great spears, though.  They could also probably be made into wooden training swords without much trouble.  Axes seem unlikely, as do bins and quite a few other objects.  Beds might be doable, depending on the design.

[Jwph]

I'm not really a geology person but I figured I might share what I did find in case it's useful.  I noticed the questionable number for siltstone so I did a bit of looking around.  The 16MB pdf mostly went over my head but there wasn't any specific references to an average density value for the stone.  Most online references simply say it's between sandstone and shale/mudstone in particle size.  There's a QFL diagram here that shows some sort of relationship.
http://csmres.jmu.edu/geollab/fichter/SedRx/Rocks/Silt1.html


I was able to find a reference in some USGS drilling paper that mentioned values of various types of siltstone at such-and-such depths but nothing like an average.  I'm not even sure what measuring standard they're using.

http://books.google.com/books?id=pOAqAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA290&lpg=PA290&dq=specific+gravity+of+%22siltstone%22&source=bl&ots=fYqvehJUum&sig=bUH7oAZfQr2riZlEQD6X8S3e93s&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wSSuT9GmOcSfiQLV2dy1BA&ved=0CGEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=specific%20gravity%20of%20%22siltstone%22&f=false


I found someone in africa selling siltstone and they list the specific gravity of it: http://www.capstone21.co.za/specifications.html

Another place to look might be here: http://www.onemine.org/search/index.cfm?fullText=siltstone%20properties&start=30

It seems like the numbers are kinda all over the place and generally close to what's already listed.  I hope someone finds it useful anyhow.

[Uristocrat]

A lot of these are not pure substances, but rather a bunch of random things all squished together into a rock.  Siltstone refers to silt-sized particles all fused into a rock.  Sand, silt & clay refer to the size of the particles and there are standards for each (more info can be found in the "Petrology of Sedimentary Rocks" which I linked to in the OP).  So yeah, basically, the best you can do for things like that is try to pick out a reasonable average value.

Puddingstone, for example, has huge rocks embedded in other stone.  Nothing we can do but try to average things out.  And all those soil types taken out of the soil triangle?  You see where I had to pick representative compositions then use an estimation tool to get a mostly-reasonable value.

Anyhow, it's good to know that the number used is in the right range.  While the pure substances like gold can be pinned down, most other things have a range of a few hundred kg/m^3 or so.  More research is always good!

It's really hard to make out, but it looks like most of the numbers in that book were in the 2500-2700 range and the guy selling it thinks his is about 2800.  I have 2500 down and we could probably go ~100-150 higher to make it 2600 or 2650, but rocks like that are variable enough that I doubt it makes much difference.

[Daenyth]

You guys are fantastic. It's people doing work like this that really make this game shine.

[tfaal]

So, can someone give me the most noticeable effects these new values will have on gameplay? Are training weapons any more deadly? What about catapults? etc.

[eugene]

This is a great work, and I am very happy that it will be added to the next release. I was hoping for something like this for a long time. And it might become much more important in terms of gameplay with the hauling and mining changes.

What little I can offer is the comment that volcanic rock is often porous or even full of bubbles, sometimes up to 75 % by volume in case of basalt. I am pretty sure your data on dacite (2400) and andesite (2430) correspond to a higher porosity than your data on rhyolite (2600), since the three are chemically not that different. I have a book on stones and minerals that lists the bulk density of rhyolite and dacite at 2350 to 2700, with the pure density between 2580 to 2730, and andesite at 2500 to 2750 bulk density and 2580 to 2800 pure density. (All numbers are kg/m^3).

I am not saying you should change the numbers, I would prefer to have a greater variability in the numbers for the game. This is because it should be much more difficult to tunnel into dense rock than porous rock.

Edit: Ok after glancing over the Gerlach et al. paper given as source for the dacite density of 2400, it seems I was wrong. They state the value is for dense, vesicle free glassy dacite. I don't know where the difference to my minimum pure density of 2580 comes from. Not that it matters much, anyway.