Bay 12 Games Forum

Besides the dangerous beasts I was forced to hunt down and kill there were still more hanging out on a ledge in a chasm.  They're completely harmless as they've no access to my level, but they're spooking my workers.  1,000 manhours of mining labor for the privilege of fighting beasts that aren't even a threat until I tunnel down to go fight them?  Ok, map wins.  Time to start over.

Anyway even though I'm a newbie I've got some starting advice: except for your leader and grower put all your skill points into military.  You never know what you're going to run into, and you can learn to mine without losing an arm.

I'll never start another game without 10 points spent on every team member and most of that spent on military training.  And if I have to fight it's going to be with everyone I have except the grower and leader (they need the skill points and I can't risk them being killed.)

If they're already marked for melting they won't appear on that particular list.

What, did I corner the market on Japanese puffer fish?  It's a little weird to be trading stacks of prepared food for things like steel plate armor.  Does anyone else think maybe flour is just a bit overvalued?  Or is it a just reward for going to the trouble of building power systems for milling?

Our goal is to use water logic to control a series of floor grates acting as pixels to continuously scroll the message "SHATAGELOT PWNS" from right to left.

LOGIC & MEMORY, PLAN A:
All logic and memory run on behind-the-scenes water logic.  The grates are just for display.  Each grate circuit would be programmed to copy the bit to its right except the rightmost, the "generators", which would be fed one pixel each from a serial stream of pixels making up a pixel row each of the hard-coded message.
The smallest practical ASCII font I could find was 4x6 (just a guideline -- we're not using fonts, just drawing an image that happens to be text.)  That's 6 pixel rows, then, at a length of 17 ("SHATAGELOT PWNS" + 2 spaces) * 5 (4 font + 1 space) = 85 bits per pixel row = 510 bits of static data.  We may well reduce that number by recording the pixel rows as "pen down" / "pen up" command bits, dropping "PWNS", squeezing some of the letter widths to 3 pixels, or scrunching the height down to 5 bits.
Each generator will need a way to address the next bit in its series.  Using the columns as banks for a single selector seems the right way to go, as the addresses on the generator column are all synchronized.  Ok, all generator rows will share a single input column selector.
The selector needs to increment as well as reset to 0 after it serves the 85th column of static bits.

LOGIC & MEMORY, PLAN B:
The message grates are both display and memory; the entire message is encoded on grates, with "hidden" grates holding whatever portion of the message isn't on the visible ones.  Every grate would have identical circuitry.  There would be no counters, adders, or banks.  There would be only one function: copy from source grate.
The problem with this idea is the copy handshake.  Grate L needs to copy Grate C and be copied by Grate R.  How does it copy Grate C yet still hand off its former state to Grate R?
There are solutions to the problem, but they raise the complexity of "Plan B" to something approaching "Plan A".

MEMORY:
If grates are a good way to store data we might use "Plan B" style memory in a "Plan A" style system design.  510 bits of static data seem a lot less daunting if we can express them as a compact block of floor grates.

TIMING:
It all has to be synchronized, even the copiers, as if they didn't know when to copy they'd make an unintelligible smear.
We might still get away with syncing up just the generator column if we add a "data ready" flag to the copier circuit; however, without perfect synchronization of the "data ready flags" coming off the generator column the message still smears.  Since the generator needs a clock anyway and since every clock pulse moves a bit through every pixel we might as well just make the clock universal and dispense with the "data ready" concept entirely.  Well, we weighed our options, always a good thing to do, but now we've decided: we need a clock and everyone must use it.
Each pixel circuit would either have to latch within the time allowed by an independently-timed clock in the manner of a real computer or the pixel circuits might latch based on a master "AND" circuit of ready signals from all pixels, which would in essence make the slowest pixel in any given cycle the "clock".  We might also do both, of course, latch the ready bit and clock pulse request bit and send a clock pulse when both go true, but given the enormous cost of water logic I'm thinking the traditional clock is best.  If your message smears, you're overclocked.  Deal with it.

"SHATAGELOT PWNS" would so pwn ... I'm sure there are other problems I haven't dealt with yet.  I'll come back to this later and see what you guys have to say.

What I find most interesting about this situation is speculating on the nature of the Archbishop's personality.

Surely for him to have suggested something so outrageous then be completely shocked by the resultant storm of outrage he would have to have been conditioned to a certain mentality, a certain way of seeing things which has worked up to this point.

Consider: he has risen to the top post of his profession; there is no higher office for him than leader of the C of E.  You don't rise to that level by accident, but by acting a certain way better than all others who act that way.

Then comes this trainwreck -- how?  Most people rise to power by leveraging their core competence with Machiavellian calculation, good people skills, and a certain forcefulness of will.  So how did this guy make such a terrible miscalculation?

My theory is that getting promoted at the Anglican Church isn't like rising through the ranks of General Motors or Microsoft.  I think this guy became top dog not by being shrewd and calculating but by being pliable and accommodating.

People who accommodate generally try to avoid any kind of conflict whatsoever regardless of any potential consequences.  They're also completely blindsided when people become angry at them.
I've known people like this personally and found them paradoxically untrustworthy: to even their closest friends they'll tell any lie and break any promise in order to avoid conflict.  If you're friends with an accommodationist he or she simply hasn't been asked to betray you yet.  They can't keep a date, a secret, a promise, sobriety, chastity, or your car keys if anyone else wills it otherwise.
Such a person can seem to be tolerant, patient, and forgiving due to great wisdom, perfect attributes for a church leader.  Accommodationists are very easy to get along with and will promise you almost anything -- promises that vanish at the first sign of trouble.  Accomodationists are loyal to no one but whomever is standing in front of them with a demand; they follow no moral code nor have any principles or point of honor that a choice to acquiesce will not override.

When finally faced with a situation where conflict is unavoidable, where every choice leads to the unthinkable, an accommodationist's circuits fry like the cliche' science fiction computer that handles Godel exceptions by exploding.  The accommodationist will now and only now show anger, frightened confused anger, and you'll get questions like, "Why is everybody so mad at me?  What did I do?"
Hence the surprise of the waylaid Archbishop, who heretofore had accommodated flawlessly.  Lacking any serious moral code the accommodationist has no frame of reference to judge the magnitude and justness of the outrage of others.  It simply appears, a sudden storm, a curse inexplicably visited on the hapless innocent by mean, unreasonable, angry people, and all he can think to do is wonder how it all went wrong.

I almost pity the poor Archbishop.  He found a job that from all appearances was perfect for a pathological accommodationist.  But like most who share his coping strategy he eventually stumbled upon a problem for which accommodation was a catastrophically poor solution.  And he never saw it coming.

They stick to their owners like glue, so smashing them with a drawbridge or dropping them into a pit carry some risk.

Doors with various pet-passable and dwarf-passable settings are one idea.  Any others?

I understand that the passage of time prevents me from starting a new fort on my current world without abandoning my old one.

If I create a new world will it coexist with my old one?  Can I practice various starts in my new world while keeping my old one there for my "serious" game?