Print

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

[tehgr8supa]

I know you can walk over them, but I'm struggling with the reason why... If you go down a level, there is water filling the squares underneath the brook, so what exactly are the dwarfs walking on?

[Girlinhat]

Well, you're aware that every tile has a floor and wall, right?  You can place a floor, or a wall.  A wall occupies the same space a creature occupies, while a floor does not prevent movement.  The brook is a floor tile, and under it is a river "wall tile".  Or, to visualize it...

       @       
WW~~~WW

The creature or building is placed above this "floor tile".  Somehow it's a solid tile, and yet a water and fishing source...

[Vamyr]

That symbolise that the brook is shallow enough that a dwarf can wade through. The "invisible floor" you need to dig out to install water wheels for example seems to be just a workaround to make that happen. As you've pointed out, the tiles on the z-level below are identical to the smalleast stream, which canno't be waded.

[GrizzleBridges]

yeah I dont get them either.
I mean I get HOW they work (as girlinhat described) but I dont get WHY its like that, its not very realistic. It like theres a river with a layer of custard over the top thats thick enough to walk on.

[Christes]

Can you think of a better way?  Until we have a better way of representing "partially filled" tiles, this is probably the closest we can get.

[Girlinhat]

It's from centuries of dwarves washing in the river in the Time before Time.  The gunk runs off their bodies, the primordial ooze and primordial booze coagulating in the water to form a thin sheet of volatile lard which can be walked over.  Year 0 is not the beginning of civilization, it is merely the point at which dwarves realized they shouldn't drink water, because they've ruined the water, and the choose to rely upon booze only.  Many would argue that this did actually signify the beginning of civilized dwarf culture.

[ZCM]

Can you think of a better way?  Until we have a better way of representing "partially filled" tiles, this is probably the closest we can get.

Isn't that what water levels are for? Fill the brook to 3/7, put ramps around the edges, done.

Speaking of ramps, shouldn't rivers and muddy pools have ramps at the edges? In real life, if you can swim to the edge of a river or pool, you can generally haul yourself out...

[Jelle]

Yes brooks don't make sense, there's water levels to simulate exactly what brooks try and accomplish. I'm guessing brooks are a relic of a time long ago or would I be mistaken?

[VDOgamez]

Speaking of ramps, shouldn't rivers and muddy pools have ramps at the edges? In real life, if you can swim to the edge of a river or pool, you can generally haul yourself out...

I think a novice swimmer or better can just climb out.

[Girlinhat]

Notice or better can climb out, dabbling need a ramp.  Think of dabbling swimmers as those people who are hydrophobic and pass out at the sight of water.  They get in it and they don't know what they're doing!

[ZCM]

Notice or better can climb out, dabbling need a ramp.  Think of dabbling swimmers as those people who are hydrophobic and pass out at the sight of water.  They get in it and they don't know what they're doing!

So why are most animals unable to fall out of a murky pool if they fall in? That's just silly.

[Girlinhat]

...how... wait, what?  Fall out of a murky pool?  How, exactly, does one fall down out of a hole, without simply getting further into a hole?

[Lagslayer]

I always assumed brooks just had rocks sticking up out of them.

[Cotes]

I always assumed brooks just had rocks sticking up out of them.

Although if you channel out just one tile of the brook, a creature can dive in to the brook from there like it were a hole in the ice. I once had a Titan get in there in like that - I momentarily dealt with it by building a floor over the one channeled brook tile, trapping the Titan inside the brook.

You can imagine it brooks as having rocks sticking from them, but in gameplay terms they are rivers with a floor layer on top of them.

[EmeraldWind]

I think the problem here is what a brook looks like in real life...

Brooks generally seem to more or less level with the surrounding ground, about 4 inches below the rest of the ground is what I see around where I live. Brooks around here are also very shallow... rarely more than mid shin in depth. Anymore and you're probably dealing with a stream.
I think Toady was trying to make it so brooks are on the same z-level as the rest of the ground... but the problem is doing that would cause flooding problems. So he put the water down a level and made the brook tiles which seem to be floor grates in disguise on top of them to simulate the brooks not only not being deeply etched, but as a water source as well. 

Granted, Brooks are also usually thinner bodies of water and DF presents them to be the same width as a river, which around where I live we would call a creek.  A creek is usually wider and looks like a river, but the water is only hip deep at deepest and the water is usually slower flowing. This could be the kind of body of water Toady is trying to portray in which case he could have treated like a half-filled river and that would have worked fine.

I'd kind of like to hear what Toady's idea of a river vs. a brook is, so I knew for sure what the game is trying to portray. I used my local area terminology for the different moving bodies of water and I know different areas can have different terms for them as well.