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[Diodor]

The two floodgates are connected by a channel. I open them, the room is flooded all the way back to the river. Soon, the corridor on the other side of the river gets flooded as well. I close the flood gates - but the water does not recede.

saved game directory

[UncleSporky]

This is a known bug and will be difficult to solve, as connecting the streams in such a way actually creates a new section of river, which cannot be blocked off.

The moral: Don't cross the streams.[

[Diodor]

The savegame also has a bad case of could not find path...

Perhaps flooding should only create high flooding into channel tiles - and only the cyan low flooding in other tides. That way flooding 'd cost more to use as a weapon and a channel touching the river would become part of the river instantly and logically.

[Toady One]

I wonder if that would work out.  Aside from not being able to build on and fill in channels, which are separate issues...  but it's unfortunate that there could never be accidents outside of channeled areas.  Flooding the world is kind of dumb, but accidentally flooding a room up above dwarf head level is cool.

[Aquillion]

I think that the power of flooding is fun, and really wouldn't want to see it limited to knee high water or only 'true' floods in channels...  but there should be certain limitations.  One slight mistake or clever set-up shouldn't flood the entire fortress and outside world instantly.

A lot of people have suggested using some kind of Z-coord 'depth' sort of thing...  the issue here is that it wouldn't be obvious to the player.  I can't think of any easy way to convey such depth without massively complicating the display...

You know, here's a simple solution: Make it so water doesn't flood too far into tunnels that are only one square wide.  It can be assumed that such tunnels are not 'deep' enough or something like that; it might wash far enough into a doorway or short hall to flood the room beyond, but it would be assumed that other narrow areas are designed to be floodproof.

Wierd though it might sound, I think that that would end up looking intuitive...  Floods would have natural-seeming bounds, and with the ability to go a few squares into narrow tunnels they'd still be able to be a little dangerous.

Possibly there could be pumps to force water or lava into narrow tunnels for when the player wants to do so.  Lava would doubtless require a steel pump at the very least.

I don't know what to do about flooding the outdoors, though.  Realistically, what would happen if you let water out?  It wouldn't explode out everywhere the way it does now... it would flow 'downstream' to the river, forming a new tributary.

[Aristharus]

I think it's cool that messing up (or some demon destroying) a floodgate system kills dwarves, but the complete flooding sucks. I've yet to try Reclaim mode or even see a fortress of mine in Adventure mode, as in the end all of them ended up flooded completely. For one I did it on purpose, but on my last fortress it sucked big time. I had wanted for so long to get to reclaim the fortress, or at least loot it with my adventurer, but after failing to kill the demons the bastards destroyed all my floodgates resulting in the flooding of the whole outside world.

That being the end of the fortress didn't really bother me, after all I had lost to the demons and deserved to die, but reclaiming the fortress was impossible now, and after I found it in Adventure mode, I found myself standing in the same knee-deep water again.

One big part of the game is making the world and it's history as you play. Playing legends and tales of the world and returning to your great fortress later as an adventurer. I haven't been able to do a single abandoned fortress to my adventurer to loot yet. I've only made a couple of these weird knee-deep lakes next to a hole in the mountain.

[JT]

Maybe instead of this, manually-flooded water merely remembers how far it has flowed from the last floodgate, and loses "oomph" as it gains distance, just like natural floods.  If it reaches another floodgate, however, it gains all of its "oomph" back.  (Feel free to use "oomph" as the variable name, Toady. ;-))

This has two advantages:
* Fortress-wide floods are prevented.
* You'll require complex irrigation systems in order to flood huge tracts of farmland, instead of just being able to build two floodgates in order to provide for your needs for all eternity.

[ August 30, 2006: Message edited by: JT ]

[PNB]

Also... can't we build a constant irrigation system using buckets and channels? its what a smart dwarf would do, no fuss, no muss, NO DEAD DWARVES

[Toady One]

I think either/both of these solutions could be implemented in some way.  There could be a notion of a "water permitted" area, which it would calculate out using information possibly including these narrow path/floodgate ideas (whatever things end up looking the best).  It could either store this in the wave fronts or as a map bit... there are pros/cons with both methods, and other ways as well no doubt.  The water would be able to flow unrestricted in the permitted areas and not beyond.  It might end up being jarring when it stops, but that's not a high price to pay, and there are some tricks to get around that without spending more map bits, like having the wave front persist and keep a kind of 'lapping' counter.  If the water makes it to the entrance, the permit area could include a nice meaningful path down to the river, and perhaps some info that allows some moderate temporary spreading.  It could work anyway.

[ August 30, 2006: Message edited by: Toady One ]