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[schm0]

Dear Santa Toad:

I have only one thing that I would like for Christmas this year, and I think that in comparison to years past, my request is rather humble. It has to do with an annoying little occurance in Dwarf Fortress that has caused me some distress.

Mud.

It's everywhere.

It expands almost exponentially.

A virus.

A plague.

A monstrosity.

I hate it.

I loathe it.

It... must... be... stopped.

P.S. I already have plenty of bituminous coal already on my current map.  

</bad>

Seriously, mud is getting to be an extreme annoyance and is making the game very unenjoyable for me. I know it doesn't cause the game to crash or my dwarves to die, but it bothers me to no end. On top of that, it hardly ever seems as if my dwarves ever want to actually use the 'Cleaning' job. Can you fix mud so that it doesn't spread like a wildfire in California, or at least enable a dwarf with ONLY Cleaning to actually clean?

P.P.S. For all of you out there that say all I need is floor grates and channels to stop the spread of this vile disease, I don't want to build channels and floor grates just to stop something as silly as mud. That's way too much work for something that I can wipe off on a rug. Roads don't work, smoothing the stone is like taking a piss on the aforementioned wildfire, and building constructed floors on top of mud only works 33% of the time.

[Geofferic]

A wee bit anally fastidious, are we?

[Entropy]

It is a minor thing, but should also be an easy fix.  While it may not be very important, it is still a little annoying.

BTW, channels with grates over it didnt help me.  It still spread throughout my fortress.  one spot of mud will eventually grow like the blob and cover every bit of floor in the fortress.  Its like every muddy floor can create an infinite amount of mud to be spread around and each of those newly muddied floor tiles can themselves generate enough mud to muddy many others... it doesnt take long for everything to be coated in mud.

I have no internal source of mud - some dwarf must have dragged a bit in from outside before i had a chance to get my drawbrige in place.  I guess a hunter was wearing a magical shoe of mud holding.

[Jreengus]

i suppose the main problem would be dwarves cleaning up your farms mud...

maybe some kind of clean designation so dwarves know to keep that area clean.

[Name Lips]

The problem is that there's only one kind of "muddy" in the game. Once a patch of ground is "muddy," it is considered to be SO MUDDY you can farm on it, grow tower caps on it, etc.

The most accurate way to fix this would be to add a "dirty" designation for tiles in the world. A dwarf leaving a muddy patch would have a chance of "dirtying" a limited number of squares as he left. "Dirty" squares would be "cleanable."

[Shadowlord]

Mine started when some dwarf dumped out a bucket of water or something. I saw piles of water on the ground, and then some time later the halls began to change color...

It is an interesting indication of traffic patterns, though. The dwarves never use the leftmost column of my N/S 6-wide hallway leading to the magma work area (which is on the right). The entrance to this 6-wide hall from the main fort is only 3 tiles wide, and on the right side of the hall. The dwarves also only rarely step on the second column from the left. About 30% of the tiles in that column are muddied. Every tile in the other three columns is muddied, along with all the tiles in all the other halls, the dining room, bedrooms, stockpiles, workshops, most of the brook, much of the ground outside...

[SoloDwarf]

I've found that if I start on a map that has any part of it with a cold temperature, every season my blood and mud all disapear.  Also, if you are getting mud from rain, you can turn the weather off and if you are getting mud from your farms, bridges will clean off your boots.  With a little different design, or picking a cold temperature, you can make your Christmas the best Christmas ever.

[Wiles]

It would be nice if you could designate areas to clean.

My newest fortress has been safe from mud so far due to grates and bridges.

If I were to ask for a bugfix for christmas it would be the fixing of siege AI  

[ November 29, 2007: Message edited by: Wiles ]

[Durnheist]

I just put little bridges in front of my barracks, my entrance, and the hall just outside indoor irrigated farms which I typically don't use until late in the game, soil/sand farming is much better imo. The only thing I use mud for is underground tree farms really.  You don't even need to dig a channel to build the bridges or anything, you can just lay them down on solid floor, rough or smoothed or soil doesn't matter.  I just consider them mud and blood mats for dwarfs to wipe their feet on.

[Morkilus]

Perhaps a Masterwork Mop could improve your cleaning rate, or something. I'm curious why mud isn't treated like blood, where you can have a smear or a pool.

[Red Jackard]

quote:Originally posted by Durnheist:
<STRONG>I just put little bridges in front of my barracks, my entrance, and the hall just outside indoor irrigated farms which I typically don't use until late in the game, soil/sand farming is much better imo. The only thing I use mud for is underground tree farms really.  You don't even need to dig a channel to build the bridges or anything, you can just lay them down on solid floor, rough or smoothed or soil doesn't matter.  I just consider them mud and blood mats for dwarfs to wipe their feet on.</STRONG>

How do you get rid of it after the fact?

[herrbdog]

mud and blood are tribbles   :roll:

[schm0]

quote:Originally posted by Geofferic:
<STRONG>A wee bit anally fastidious, are we?</STRONG>

A postulation not far from the truth, my friend.

 

quote:Originally posted by Entropy:
<STRONG>It is a minor thing, but should also be an easy fix.  While it may not be very important, it is still a little annoying.</STRONG>

Precisely why I asked for it.

 

quote:Originally posted by thatguyyaknow:
<STRONG>i suppose the main problem would be dwarves cleaning up your farms mud...

maybe some kind of clean designation so dwarves know to keep that area clean.</STRONG>

My solution would be two-fold.

1) Stop mud from spreading so often and so rapidly. I've watched a single horse or dwarf singlehandedly spread three (3) tiles of fresh mud across previously clean tiles in so many steps.
2) Fix the cleaning task. It is hardly ever implemented, and when you designate your dwarves to do nothing but, they sit idly on their hands. The only time I had them actually start cleaning is when mud infiltrated an underground portion of my fortress. Even then, they quickly grew bored of the task and went back to idling.

 

quote:Originally posted by SoloDwarf:
<STRONG>I've found that if I start on a map that has any part of it with a cold temperature, every season my blood and mud all disapear.  Also, if you are getting mud from rain, you can turn the weather off and if you are getting mud from your farms, bridges will clean off your boots.  With a little different design, or picking a cold temperature, you can make your Christmas the best Christmas ever.</STRONG>

So, the only ones who should enjoy mud-free fortresses are those who are limited to a specific design regiment or a particular region? This "solution" is much akin to the "just build channels with grates over them" remedy.

I suppose in a way it was my own fault for wanting to build my fortress in an area with lakes... I could have made the entrance to my fort a lot more narrow, but what's the fun in that? There's no point in playing with a bunch of dwarves if the goal isn't to completely alter the landscape to your own liking.

 

quote:Originally posted by Wiles:
<STRONG>It would be nice if you could designate areas to clean.

My newest fortress has been safe from mud so far due to grates and bridges.

If I were to ask for a bugfix for christmas it would be the fixing of siege AI    

[ November 29, 2007: Message edited by: Wiles ]</STRONG>

I would much like to see this as well, but Toady has already said this will take place *after* bug fixes and a stable version is finally in place. (I could be wrong about this point, but I remember hearing something along these lines.)

 

quote:Originally posted by herrbdog:
<STRONG>mud and blood are tribbles      :roll:</STRONG>

An apt comparison.

::sigh::

Currently, this is not a reported bug, but is it really something that should be reported? What if this is what Toady had in mind all along? What do you guys think?

[ November 29, 2007: Message edited by: schm0 ]

[Keldor]

I think mud isn't cleaned because it might be there on purpose, i.e. for farms.  I'd suggest that you have a "dirty" designation that makes dwarves not clean mud in the designated area, if, for instance you want a farm, but clean it elsewhere by default.  You could also have the designation have settings for bloody areas or  vomit covered areas, though I have no idea why you'd want the latter...

[Darktongue Breakbone]

They get up and kill. The people they kill, get up and kill!