Bay 12 Games Forum

http://i.imgur.com/Pd2ijJp.mp4 (gif/vid too large so not uploading directly)

Game still very much under development so open to ideas for weapons/levels/enemies.

Sorry for unclear title (not really sure how to express this idea without examples).

For a personal programming project, I'm trying to find some kind of math function/formula that reduces larger numbers by a greater amount than it reduces smaller numbers.
eg.
function(small number) -> slightly smaller number
function(big number) -> small number
function(very big number) -> small number marginally larger than function(big number)

An example would be getting the square root of a number, but sqrt tends to be computationally slow.
Getting the logarithm of a number also works, but log is even slower computationally than sqrt.

Division doesn't quite reduce larger numbers as sharply as I want.

Does anyone know any functions that can achieve this goal while remaining relatively quick to compute?

I'm thinking of starting a succession game once the new release comes out with the idea that the entire fortress is a giant prison for migrants.

If the only dwarves that are allowed to work were the starting seven, how many migrant prisoners (who can do nothing but sit and be idle) could I realistically support in terms of food, rooms, and booze while also having enough leftover dwarf-labor to dig out the fort, expand, and gather candy/magma?

Has a similar idea ever been launched in the community games before?

If not, would people actually be interested in such a game?

So today I've stumbled upon a particular forum topic on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/249hcu/deathpenalty_analysis_reveals_extent_of_wrongful/

The thread is based on a death-penalty analysis that states that about 4% of US death row prisoners are innocent.

And the comment section is wild about the horrific inexcusable immoralities of sentencing people to death.

As for me, I am perfectly fine with the death penalty. Why?

Because it's more economical than lifetime imprisonment.

4% might seem a little high, but even with a 1:20 innocent to guilty ratio, I'll still stick with my original beliefs on execution (man this makes me sound evil).

So what are your thoughts on the death penalty?

Hello Bay12,

What feature defines an RPG (Role Playing Game)?

I've been thinking about this question for quite a bit, but I haven't come to any conclusion clearer than "it's a game where you play as a main character" and that definition applies for a huge number of games out there. What makes a game such as Skyrim an RPG while a game such as Call of Duty/Battlefield a shooter?

In other words, I only have 12 hours to make an RPG game in an upcoming competition. What should I focus on given my passable but relatively basic game programming experience?

A physics question just popped in my head.

How exactly does a freezer/refrigerator/cooler work?
In order to lower the temperature of an object, you'll need another object that's at a cooler temperature to take away heat. Now this works out fine and dandily when I think about trying to cool down hot objects such as recently cooked food and running engines, but how does it work when trying to cool down already cold objects?

In order to cool something down (lets say a bag of peas in a freezer), I need the freezer to be colder than the bag of peas. But in order to get the freezer to become that cold, I'll need something else even colder and so on. So this is where my brain hits a dead end since I'm not sure how anything can get cooled down to below room temperature without something colder than everything else in the first place.

Yet science makes it happen.

Pretty sure my mental physics simulator is missing something, but how do refrigerators work then?

After I read this article: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-cyprus-sparks-scramble-digital-164900785.html
I have perhaps taken an interest in digital currency, yet at the same time I question whether investing in it is a good idea.
Bitcoins seem to have great potential for future gains, but at the same time it seems really risky to hacking/inflation.

What are your thoughts on Bitcoins bay12?

edit:
When this thread started, the bitcoin value was at about ~$150
Half a year later its at ~$1000.
Quite a curious world we live in.

Today, I tried sprinkling flour into my shoes.

Since flour absorbs water, I thought it would be a good way to keep my feet from getting sweaty. The flour seemed to work quite nicely for the first 30 minutes or so, but after awhile my feet started to feel sticky and my shoes felt like they had sand in them. I was outside at the time so I couldn't change socks. When I came back home and took off my shoes, I found that the flour had somehow turned into dough and was stuck all over my socks in dry, hard flecks. I'm now typing this message while trying to pry out all the solidified dough from my socks with a toothpick.

But at least it kept my feet dry.