Bay 12 Games Forum

As promised, the science has resumed, and I finally got a couple of lucky clouds to wash over some reasonably good test structures. Sorry in advance for the long post, which is long.

@Cyroth

It would appear that some of what you stated is still correct in the current version, and some isn't.

The material about the evil/non-evil biomes looks like it still works. And the clouds do teleport without actually passing through the tiles they're teleporting through, I think. But as far as the path of the cloud inside buildings, there are some disagreements between my test results and yours. (Maybe caused by the different versions?)

Case 1: Raised platform

  _______ 
     W     
GGGGGGGGGGG

The evil cloud does not carry on on its path beneath the platform, even if there is only a 1x1 support in the center of an 11x11 platform. It spawns on the top, just like if the platform were the roof of a close-walled tower (the only difference being some cloud billowing in through the open sides - but no new cloud spawns under there), then continues off the other side on ground level again. This was verified by multiple clouds.

Case 2: Fortifications in a tower's side

I made an entire level of my tower-shack into fortifications (a few levels before the top.) No smoke spawned in these windows or entered the building through them, despite the cloud teleporting to the top of the tower with no issue.

Between this and case 1, it is pretty certain that no smoke will spawn in a window that is in a sheer wall. It could enter from the billowing action if there were a nearby place for it to spawn (nearby rooftops or walltops), but it could not spawn in the windowsill itself or inside the tower if the tower is roofed.

Case 3: Walls around the roof of a tower

The cloud does first teleport to the top of the walls around the tower's top floor before falling into the (open-roofed) top floor. This is strange, since there's significantly more area within the enclosed region to teleport to than there is on the top of the wall itself. It is like the cloud, when faced with an obstruction, does deliberately teleport to the top (or bottom) of obstructions before doing anything else.

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Conclusions:
1) A cloud can never grow inside an area with a roof, but it can and will grow on the roof. Corollary: it is impossible to direct clouds between levels as you were able to in your previous experiences, because all those levels but the top one are inside (as indicated in your diagram by the floors.)
2) It could potentially fall down open-air staircases like you described, but it would immediately teleport back to the roof as it moved forward. Of course, this still means you have a fair amount of cloud inside the base of your tower from that one spawning event.
3) Clouds seem to deliberately teleport around obstacles in a predictable (but not really understood, I don't think) way. Obstacles include open-but-roofed-areas and walls/wall-like buildings, all of which have roofs. Basically, roofs are the obstacle, not walls, to the cloud's forward motion.

Perhaps, if it was a small tower that you had (in length/width, not necessarily height), some of the things you observed were because of the billowing of already-spawned clouds? (Bleeding over from nearby rooftops or walltops, or outcroppings on the tower?) It seems strange to me that the behavior might have changed since you tried it, since Toady was focused on completely different things in all the updates, to my knowledge. Am I correct in assuming (from the wiki article on weather) that evil clouds were introduced in 0.34?

Basically two questions remain:
1) Did the behavior of clouds change between versions, or could your observations be explainable by other phenomena?
2) Why the heck do trees not cause the clouds to teleport? And/or would a treefort be immune? (Probably not.) So what's special about tree tiles that causes the clouds not to recognize them either as obstructions or as valid places to teleport to?

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@TheFlame52

On another subject, with your knowledge of the raws, is there any way to increase the size of the evil clouds? I've started thinking that the current cloud size is highly unrealistic...it would more likely be a fog that blankets the entire landscape before moving on. It's a little gamey, and that's starting to bother me. Any way to change it to this kind of scale?

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So...overall, I'm disappointed in the behavior of the clouds. If they worked like TheFlame52 suggested (still?), it would create much more interesting behavior. The whole teleporting thing is pretty terrible.

If anyone wants the save, lmk what the best way to distribute it is.

Well, zombifying clouds in the middle of a well-populated, exclusively goblin large island are helping. The goblins are no-shows, but that's probably because dorfs are dying, we get 1 migrant a year, and there are 18 dorfs left (max was like 20), including two children. But the fortress is rising back from the shadows, after much construction, and potentially with a megaproject surface fort to come. We shall see.

So yeah, that's how. But I agree; I only just started playing again fairly recently. I eagerly await the next release, even with almost-assured save compatibility breaks.

Thanks, that is useful! Sorry, Goatmann, would have been cool if that worked out.

Mostly, we're trying to determine exactly what conditions a cloud can teleport under, along its path, to determine if a wharf-like fortress could allow the clouds to flow beneath its base level. Any knowledge there? I'll get to testing it soon, but alas, college. Not actually alas, though, because college is the bomb.

And the trap worked perfectly. I had a bunch of doors I could lock for backup, but there was no need. A 3x3 bridge in the middle of a 1-wide hallway. The tile immediately before the bridge has a resetting pressure plate linked to the bridge. Below the bridge is a small pit with no ramps on the sides. Zombie captured. I think I could even use it to capture multiple zombies...

Yeah, that's what I meant. The only open oath into my fortress is through the trap zone. Sorry if I wasn't clear. It works reliably, but the undead move painfully slowly and I usually have issues with military ignoring burrow restrictions and trying to grab clothes off of dead merchants (which I immediately forbid when I notice, but they always seem to find something else...I've taken to locking them in a room during times like that.)

I'm going to try to set up windmills, as soon as I can start a large-scale construction project to protect them.

I hope so, but I doubt it. If it doesn't consider obstacles on the wall on the way up, then what's holding up the roof shouldn't matter (apart from keeping wisps of it out of the enclosed area) - it should just teleport to the top of the roof (or floor, if it's the same thing) on its way across the map.

I could still utilize the mist, could make designated places where it can teleport down to from a high roof (controlled pits for zombification) or something like that. The channels idea is basically that same control-of-where-it-spawns with the wishful thinking that it continues in a realistic path, rather than teleporting to somewhere "outside" - that it doesn't force itself to spawn where it shouldn't be able to, which appears to be untrue.

But only more tests can tell!

As far as distribution of where the clouds start, it seems to be generally within 30 tiles (usually closer) of the edge of the map or the border of an evil biome with a non-evil biome within the map. Which, unfortunately, is most of my map, which both a) makes it hard to tell if that is 100% accurate and b) makes the mist-channeling idea (and anything else, for that matter) more difficult to construct.

Quote from: omega_dwarf on September 22, 2015, 10:35:31 am

@TruePikachu

I mean, I could. I've never done it before. But I'm trying to be non-cheaty about this

Just because you refuse to use glitched ramps to accelerate carts doesn't mean you can't use them in non-glitched configurations for the same purpose.  You just have to manually (or with rollers) reload the launcher.  Or in this case only use it once.  Maybe try rolling a lead or platinum minecart down a three z high straight (in x/y) inclined ramp into a lighter metal cart like maybe tin to get better flight distance.

That would work if this weren't on the level directly below the surface. As it happens, though, I've trapped the zombie via other means and am working on a more permanent trapping arrangement. The surface is mine to venture timidly out onto once again.