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Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: PDF urist master on December 07, 2015, 09:48:46 pm

Title: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: PDF urist master on December 07, 2015, 09:48:46 pm
So far cat deaths are an epidemic in dwarf fortress and from what I've seen in the combat logs there are no prior report to a cat death, meaning their death aren't tied to any monster attacks.

Based on my observations in my fort, cats often carry the syndrome dizziness with them now, and their death always leave a pool of vomit with them. These are synonymous with the effects of alcohol poisoning, but I did not have my suspicions confirmed until I stumbled upon this log:

(http://s15.postimg.org/c8m447sd7/Dwarf_cat.png)

As you can see, the cat is covered in vomit and dwarven wineMy working theory is that there's a bug with taverns right now that lets them serve alcohol to animals that are present in the tavern, which I confirmed with the following screenshots:
(http://s2.postimg.org/52n14lcnt/dwarf_sheep.png)
(http://s7.postimg.org/6ocrg9lzf/dwarf_dog.png)

This has happened for every animal inside the tavern, with the odd exception of this goose
(http://s2.postimg.org/ozsydjvix/dwarf_goose.png)

EDIT: DeKaFu has found the Issue: Tavern floors are often covered in alcohol due to splashes, which then cover everyone in the tavern. Cats have a self cleaning interaction that also lets them ingest syndrome causing substances, like forgotten beast goo. This coincidentally includes alcohol and the effects of inebriation. This means cats covered in alcohol will clean themselves and get drunk, due their small size and the [SIZE_DILUTES] tag for alcoholic beverages, they're very likely to die from alcohol poisoning. A working solution right now is to keep them away from taverns. This could be done by pasturing them, which unfortunately takes away their invaluable contribution to vermin control.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Yoink on December 07, 2015, 09:57:17 pm
I haven't played enough Fort mode yet to test it, but from what I've read dwarves often pour their drinks on the tavern floor- perhaps these critters are just being caught in the crossfire?
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: PDF urist master on December 07, 2015, 10:10:11 pm
I haven't played enough Fort mode yet to test it, but from what I've read dwarves often pour their drinks on the tavern floor- perhaps these critters are just being caught in the crossfire?

Checking the raws for inebriation caused by plant alcohol, it can only happen via ingestion or injection, not via contact, meaning the animals must have drank it to be inebriated. you can check it in the PLANT_ALCOHOL_TEMPLATE under material_template_default in the objects folder for raws.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Shonai_Dweller on December 07, 2015, 10:20:52 pm
What if cats are eating vermin who have been at the booze pile/spilt booze pools? Would that 'infect' them?
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: DeKaFu on December 07, 2015, 10:21:56 pm
Having looked into it, it looks like the reason this is affecting cats is because they have a self-cleaning interaction using their tongues that includes a tag that makes it trigger ingested syndromes. Previously probably only would've come up if they got themselves covered in forgotten beast goo, but now that there's booze splatter all over the taverns, they're walking through it and licking it off themselves and ingesting the drunkenness syndrome.

Only other animal I could find with the same self-cleaning interaction is red pandas, so someone could probably do some science to confirm.

Edit: Relevant bits of the raws

Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: PDF urist master on December 07, 2015, 10:24:16 pm
Having looked into it, it looks like the reason this is affecting cats is because they have a self-cleaning interaction using their tongues that includes a tag that makes it trigger ingested syndromes. Previously probably only would've come up if they got themselves covered in forgotten beast goo, but now that there's booze splatter all over the taverns, they're walking through it and licking it off themselves and ingesting the drunkenness syndrome.

Only other animal I could find with the same self-cleaning interaction is red pandas, so someone could probably do some science to confirm.

I think this supplements my theory. I could not explain why other animals like dogs never experience alcohol poisoning like cats do. More testing is needed but I do not have access to red pandas at this fort.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Putnam on December 07, 2015, 10:30:32 pm
It's almost definitely the CLEAN interaction on alcohol spatters.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Shonai_Dweller on December 07, 2015, 10:33:41 pm
So....feature, not bug, I guess?
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: PDF urist master on December 07, 2015, 10:36:42 pm
I guess. I have the issue marked on bug tracker as Tavern Keepers serving alcohol to animals. I don't know how to remove the issue so I added a note specifying the self-cleaning interaction was the cause.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Broseph Stalin on December 07, 2015, 10:41:15 pm
So the cats are being splashed with dwarven strength alcohol by patrons spilling in the tavern and when they try to lick themselves clean they die of alcohol poisoning? That is absolutely fucking wonderful and I don't want it to be fixed.

Yes, I will have to keep a much larger population of cats which comes with and it's own difficult and is almost certainly not intentional but I need this delicious madness in my life and fortress.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: PDF urist master on December 07, 2015, 10:44:45 pm
you could stop the issue entirely by quarantining cats to pastures so they don't get splashed with alcohol. Also Larger cat populations means more adoptions means more cat deaths means greater stress levels and tantrum spirals.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Darkwood71 on December 08, 2015, 12:38:25 am
This is amazing. Can we keep it? Call it working as intended ;).
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Talanic on December 08, 2015, 12:43:59 am
I'd say it's working as intended.  Cats are vulnerable to such things in general - they warn that a cat stepping in a puddle of antifreeze once is enough to kill it if you don't wash its paw off manually.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: InsanityPrelude on December 08, 2015, 02:06:23 am
Put doors on the tavern, set them to pet-impassable. Might still have a few sneak through with the patrons but it should reduce the casualties.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: FoiledFencer on December 08, 2015, 03:55:23 am
So the cats are being splashed with dwarven strength alcohol by patrons spilling in the tavern and when they try to lick themselves clean they die of alcohol poisoning? That is absolutely fucking wonderful and I don't want it to be fixed.

Yes, I will have to keep a much larger population of cats which comes with and it's own difficult and is almost certainly not intentional but I need this delicious madness in my life and fortress.

I agree and now that we have gelding, catsplosions are much less of a danger.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Yoink on December 08, 2015, 03:58:20 am
This is dwarven alcohol we're talking about here... I imagine it would be highly toxic!
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Naryar on December 08, 2015, 07:36:12 am
this is the greatest anti-catsplosion feature yet

Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Puzzlemaker on December 08, 2015, 07:44:56 am
This is absolutely hilarious!

The only thing that makes this a "bug" is the high level of occurrence.  Maybe some tweaks to make it so splashed syndromes aren't as "strong"?
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: wobbly on December 08, 2015, 07:55:21 am
I'd say it's working as intended.  Cats are vulnerable to such things in general - they warn that a cat stepping in a puddle of antifreeze once is enough to kill it if you don't wash its paw off manually.

Except cats in an old fashion pub or inn is a normally thing. I mean presumably they do end up ingesting alcohol in just this kind of manner & it's not really healthy for them, but they don't constantly drop dead. I'd say keep it but tone it down a bit.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: PDF urist master on December 08, 2015, 09:41:43 am
Since Cats use their tongues to clean themselves, another solution to this is to remove their tongues.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Yoink on December 08, 2015, 09:51:23 am
Since Cats use their tongues to clean themselves, another solution to this is to remove their tongues.
Might as well do it when you geld 'em.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: steel jackal on December 08, 2015, 09:58:26 am
you could stop the issue entirely by quarantining cats to pastures so they don't get splashed with alcohol. Also Larger cat populations means more adoptions means more cat deaths means greater stress levels and tantrum spirals.
why not just set cats to "pet not available" in the animals section of the Z menu? if that is how that works anyway

or you can just cull ALL the animals that arnt pets and gelid all the ones that are

in my fort i kill every animal but a breeding pair of the largest species i have for their meat and other products
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: martinuzz on December 08, 2015, 10:12:18 am
Wow, just wow. I'd say working as intended, I suppose people really caring aout their felines could always remove the cleaning tag from the cat raws.

I wonder what will happen if you were to add the tag to dwarves.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: zeves on December 08, 2015, 10:12:41 am
hahaha Dwarf fortress never disappoints.i suppose a temporary fix would be to have car wash mists outside the taverns.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: suburbanplankton on December 08, 2015, 12:21:52 pm
hahaha Dwarf fortress never disappoints.i suppose a temporary fix would be to have car wash mists outside the taverns.

I saw mention in another thread of 'banisters' being something that we can build now...if that's the case, then we should be able to place multiple waterfalls at strategic locations within the taverns, so that the mist keeps the floors clean (or at least dilutes the spilled alcohol), with the banisters keeping drunken revelers from falling in.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: miauw62 on December 08, 2015, 12:31:27 pm
emergent gameplay :V
I'd say it's working as intended.  Cats are vulnerable to such things in general - they warn that a cat stepping in a puddle of antifreeze once is enough to kill it if you don't wash its paw off manually.

Except cats in an old fashion pub or inn is a normally thing. I mean presumably they do end up ingesting alcohol in just this kind of manner & it's not really healthy for them, but they don't constantly drop dead. I'd say keep it but tone it down a bit.
yeah but people in pubs dont generally pour their drinks on cats, which our taverngoers appear to be doing.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: PDF urist master on December 08, 2015, 12:31:56 pm
banning pets from the tavern or removing tongues from cats would still be the optimal solution, but that's a very dwarven idea and I could see it improving the reputation of the tavern
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Broseph Stalin on December 08, 2015, 12:54:31 pm
why not just set cats to "pet not available" in the animals section of the Z menu? if that is how that works anyway

or you can just cull ALL the animals that arnt pets and gelid all the ones that are

in my fort i kill every animal but a breeding pair of the largest species i have for their meat and other products
The source of Catsplosions is that cats unlike other animals choose their owners instead of the other way around. Before gelding this meant keeping the population low and quickly culling the young before they found someone to follow around.

In any case keeping the cats out of the tavern is a limited solution, I've taken to penning them up in the food stockpiles because the above ground section of the fortress is coated with alcohol thanks to the duplicating smears and pools deal.

Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: therahedwig on December 08, 2015, 12:56:57 pm
I'd say it's working as intended.  Cats are vulnerable to such things in general - they warn that a cat stepping in a puddle of antifreeze once is enough to kill it if you don't wash its paw off manually.

Except cats in an old fashion pub or inn is a normally thing. I mean presumably they do end up ingesting alcohol in just this kind of manner & it's not really healthy for them, but they don't constantly drop dead. I'd say keep it but tone it down a bit.
I suspect it might be that alcohol in real life evaporates pretty quickly, if not gets stale. If you have alcohol thrown over yourself, you'll end up as a sticky mess because of the left-over sugars inside the drink, but you won't be able to get buzzed of your sweater in a few hours time.

So real life cats that would get splashed just wouldn't ingest so much alchohol due to there not being enough on them by the time they start cleaning.(Also, I imagine real life cats are much better at avoiding drunk tavern goers splashing drinks everywhere.)
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Deon on December 08, 2015, 01:00:06 pm
You can also mod in dwarven cats and make them immune to alcohol poisoning.

P.S. This is why I love this game
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: schlake on December 08, 2015, 05:53:44 pm
You can also mod in dwarven cats and make them immune to alcohol poisoning.

P.S. This is why I love this game

A small, four legged creature of sleeping and haughtyness, with a beard.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: thriggle on December 08, 2015, 07:05:28 pm
Cave cats? Quarry kittens? Mountain meowers? Rock... uh... rock... dogs?
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: FortunaDraken on December 08, 2015, 10:27:38 pm
Yeah this has been noted on the bug tracker as a thing since the initial 42.01 release. If you don't wanna pen up your cats to the food stockpile, you'll probably want to set doors to keep pets out of the tavern, alcohol stockpiles, and the hospital (since for some reason when a dwarf spills his booze, someone will immediately carry him off to the hospital, which results in alcohol smears). That should save a majority of cats, aside from the occasional accident.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Shonai_Dweller on December 08, 2015, 10:44:32 pm
Dead-cats-in-vomit-pools feature nerfed! Boo.

Well, the effect is now 'reduced' rather than removed, so I guess that's OK. How much reduced will require some kitty Science. :)
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Ysyua on December 08, 2015, 11:42:06 pm
Dead-cats-in-vomit-pools feature nerfed! Boo.

Well, the effect is now 'reduced' rather than removed, so I guess that's OK. How much reduced will require some kitty Science. :)

I was a little disappointed to see the nerf. I was actually beginning to factor it into my tavern design. With some pasturing and stockpile tweaks I was able to keep my kitties alive and my dorfs (and friends) liquored up.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Uggh on December 09, 2015, 04:19:02 am
Maybe burrowing some dwarf with only cleaning labour enabled in the tavern would be close to a "real world" solution. Maybe someone should cleanup behind those drunks anyway.

Best emergent behaviour since killer carps!
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: Ysyua on December 09, 2015, 11:33:13 am
Maybe burrowing some dwarf with only cleaning labour enabled in the tavern would be close to a "real world" solution. Maybe someone should cleanup behind those drunks anyway.

Best emergent behaviour since killer carps!

The clean job has some weirdness about it. It will only happen if a dwarf finishes a job in a given vicinity of an unclean tile. I think if you have cleaning enabled on your tavern keeper, access to water or a well then they should take care of cleaning. I would have at least 2-3 tavern keepers to keep a decent rotation in a mid-sized fort.
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: BigD145 on December 09, 2015, 11:46:52 am
Maybe burrowing some dwarf with only cleaning labour enabled in the tavern would be close to a "real world" solution. Maybe someone should cleanup behind those drunks anyway.

Best emergent behaviour since killer carps!

What self-respecting tavern keeper would ever clean up their floor? That's good booze in those floor boards! Are you saying the tavern keeper serves bad booze?!
Title: Re: Mysterious Cat Deaths
Post by: LlamaLlord on December 09, 2015, 12:54:15 pm
Maybe they just want some booze.