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[Girlinhat]

I think a brook is simply "a less dangerous piece of flowing water".  Less danger of carp, no danger of drowning, and you can pop them open for waterwheels, or just leave them be and put a screw pump by them.

[krenshala]

Actually, the difference between a river/stream and a creek is that a creek does not contain water year round.  the most common creeks are, iirc, just brooks/streams that flow only seasonally (e.g., in spring/summber, but not autumn/winter).

DF does not include creeks at this point, and I have not seen whether it is something that is planned or not.

[ZCM]

Anyone who tells you they know the difference between a stream, a brook, and a creek is wrong.

[krenshala]

Anyone who tells you they know the difference between a stream, a brook, and a creek is wrong.

While it seems I was mis-remembering what a creek was, your answer is not exactly correct either.  I checked again, and while I can see some references to a creek being intermittent, I can't find any authoritative references to this fact (when I could have sworn I found the information in a reputable source when I looked it up before).  I hate it when I think I'm remembering a fact correctly, but I'm not.

The difference between them is quite easy to determine, however.  All flowing water is a stream, with differing names based on relative size, speed, volume and language/dialect.

[GrizzleBridges]

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.

Yeah but usually (in real life) even small brooks have banks, or run along small valleys because at one time they were a river... so even if the brook were at 1 z-level below ground-level, with ramps along the sides (making a small valley) and it acted like a regular river but 2-3 deep... that would make more sense i imagine....

Anyone who tells you they know the difference between a stream, a brook, and a creek is wrong.

While it seems I was mis-remembering what a creek was, your answer is not exactly correct either.  I checked again, and while I can see some references to a creek being intermittent, I can't find any authoritative references to this fact (when I could have sworn I found the information in a reputable source when I looked it up before).  I hate it when I think I'm remembering a fact correctly, but I'm not.

The difference between them is quite easy to determine, however.  All flowing water is a stream, with differing names based on relative size, speed, volume and language/dialect.

I recon this kind of thing has different meanings to different people depending on where they are from. Creek/stream/brook, it doesnt really matter. I noticed people have different names for different types of wooded areas depending on size and features. Where I am from, deep wooded valleys are called 'cloughs', but elsewhere the name is different. Im guessing its the same with rivers/streams

[krenshala]

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.

Yeah but usually (in real life) even small brooks have banks, or run along small valleys because at one time they were a river... so even if the brook were at 1 z-level below ground-level, with ramps along the sides (making a small valley) and it acted like a regular river but 2-3 deep... that would make more sense i imagine....

This is what I'd like to see as well ... the brook having a 2 or 3 of 7 depth, the stream being closer to or at 7/7, and rivers always being 7/7, and possibly more than one z-level deep.  And all of them having ramps as the banks.

Anyone who tells you they know the difference between a stream, a brook, and a creek is wrong.

While it seems I was mis-remembering what a creek was, your answer is not exactly correct either.  I checked again, and while I can see some references to a creek being intermittent, I can't find any authoritative references to this fact (when I could have sworn I found the information in a reputable source when I looked it up before).  I hate it when I think I'm remembering a fact correctly, but I'm not.

The difference between them is quite easy to determine, however.  All flowing water is a stream, with differing names based on relative size, speed, volume and language/dialect.

I recon this kind of thing has different meanings to different people depending on where they are from. Creek/stream/brook, it doesnt really matter. I noticed people have different names for different types of wooded areas depending on size and features. Where I am from, deep wooded valleys are called 'cloughs', but elsewhere the name is different. Im guessing its the same with rivers/streams

This is pretty much what I saw when I just went looking for a reference to what i was remembering.  (The closest I found was that apparently at least some Australians consider a creek to be an intermittent stream, as I originally described. /shrug)

[kaenneth]

Expect the same type of questions when boats/ships are added...

(In my mind, a 'Ship' travels to multiple ports, hence, 'Shipping', while a boat generally returns to the same docks/mooring (even if that mooring is another, larger, ship/boat (like Life-boats on a Cruise-ship).

ANYWAY. I was think about this earlier, what would be cool is if terrain and constructed walls had a 0-7 height like water/magma; so you could build a waist-high (3) wall around an area for a wading pool without complex machinery. Brooks would just be 1-3 height water contstrained by 2-4 height terrain.

 (Creatures would have different abilities to climb up gradients , like dwarves could easily walk up a 2 height differance, and climb with difficuly over a 4; while those freakishly tall humans could go up 3/6...)

The problem comes in when n/7's of fluid runs over n/7's of terrain; code starts getting complicated, and fluid movement code is already a major cause of FPS loss. I think brooks are fairly easy on the FPS as they are.

[tehgr8supa]

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.

Yeah but usually (in real life) even small brooks have banks, or run along small valleys because at one time they were a river... so even if the brook were at 1 z-level below ground-level, with ramps along the sides (making a small valley) and it acted like a regular river but 2-3 deep... that would make more sense i imagine....

This is what I'd like to see as well ... the brook having a 2 or 3 of 7 depth, the stream being closer to or at 7/7, and rivers always being 7/7, and possibly more than one z-level deep.  And all of them having ramps as the banks.

If we could get ramps underwater, that would be ideal. Glad to know it's just something that doesn't make sense, and not something that only I didn't understand.

[Funburns]

Keep in mind that water of less than 7/7 depth has flow, which costs significantly more computing resources than making it 7/7 does. Water of less than 7/7 depth can also have some unusual effects on its usability, such as:

• Being unable to support even small fish and functioning water wheels (<4/7 depth). Wells may also have this restriction.
• If a brook was uniformly 2-4/7 water, it would still need to be in a channel a Z below ground level to keep from spreading and evaporating. This would make even the smallest rivulet of water an accomplished canyon carver; as mentioned, lining the river with ramps would justify this.
• I think that, in order for a creature to drink from a fresh water tile, it needs to be either at least 6/7 depth or 7/7 exactly, but I can't find a reference for that.

I imagine a brook as being the smallest kind of stream. When I see a dwarf is walking on the light blue brook tiles, to me they're also walking on the bottom of the "7/7" water tiles underneath: The depth of a Z level is a bit shorter around the brook than anywhere else. Time and space are only illusions your mind creates...

[BulMaster]

In order for fisher-dwarves to fish in the brook, do i need to channel it first? Is there even fish in a brook?

[EmeraldWind]

You don't need to channel it, I pretty sure they fish through it. I pretty sure floor grates have a similar behavior. The wiki says you can fish through the brook.

I'm also pretty sure the brooks get fish in the under river... as my current fort has a brook and I had a booming fishing business at one time... but I can't confirm as currently the brook is dry. (Which is my fault, I'm building and artificial lake.) 

[Wiro]

It would be pretty neat if ice would work like brooks. 

[Nameless Archon]

You don't need to channel it, I pretty sure they fish through it. I pretty sure floor grates have a similar behavior. The wiki says you can fish through the brook.

Just wanted to chime in and report that unless the behavior has changed since .18, you can fish in a brook or through floor grates over water. I regularly embark on brooks, and I routinely create indoor fishing ponds by flooding a room and building a set of holes with grates on the floor above the room. Fisherdwarves will fish in the grated holes just fine.

Note that the "fish count" issue is applied as though you were fishing on a point on the surface above where you're fishing, so if the artificial pond is in the north-central part of the map, you may see "there is nothing to catch in the northern <terrain>", even though you're fishing ten levels below that area in an artificial waterway.

As an amusing sidenote, I've had fisherdwarves successfully fishing in my water reactors on some occasions...

I'm also pretty sure the brooks get fish in the under river... as my current fort has a brook and I had a booming fishing business at one time... but I can't confirm as currently the brook is dry. (Which is my fault, I'm building and artificial lake.)

Brooks can have visible fish in the water, but note that these are VERMIN, and have NO relationship to the "catchable" fish, which are not represented by a visible figure on screen, only a total number remaining somewhere in DFs memory.