Bay 12 Games Forum

However, the biggest reason for this scare was the fact that the black hole, at the predicted rate of expansion, would take 4 years to completely devour the earth, and the experiment was undertaken in 2008... Coincidence?

No.  They quite obviously said "Hmm, I'm convinced the world's going to end in 2012, I'm also convinced that the LHC is going to end the world with a singularity, which gets switched on in 2008.  Thus I must necessarily calculate a 4 year timespan in-between the black hole creation and its final consumption of the Earth."

And I suspect that this is the total limit to the mathematics applied in order to derive any "predicted rate of expansion".  i.e. 2012-2008=4.

(IMO, a picoscale-singularity that forms and does not evaporate will exponentially grow in size, as it consumes the planet, so to last an entire four years inbetween creation and devouring the Earth it must basically sit there doing (virtually) nothing for 1460.95 days, or thereabouts, with imperceptible increase in size (perhaps barely fighting the avaporation by Hawking Radiation) until the rate of mass increase becomes immediately and radically noticable in the last few minutes or so of the Earth's existence, as the growth rate finally accelerates out of control as more and more mass finds itself accreted.  You can probably do some maths to come up with any growth curve you like, as long as you don't mind having to make wild assumptions due to surprisingly little practical study of black holes at the short-range/small-scale relevent to this situation...  Not that some won't suggest that someone hasn't already 'tamed' a black hole, that it's sitting in a jar (metaphorical or otherwise, this isn't my conspiracy theory...) on a shelf in some lab, but that in four years' time some over-eaget assistant will knock the jar over while dusting, thus initiating The End Of The World.)

Just a 3x3 channel to start with. As you've probably figured out by now, middle part plummets down,through the food stockpile, into the mining tunnels, killing the two immigrant miners there and crippling one of my two founder miners.

Never leave dwarves alone with channeling projects.

Try...
.....
._._.
.._..
._._.
.....
Then when central tile is dug (usually after the two westernmost corners, but depending on Dwarfs Available and Job Allocation Order and Abandoning For Food And/Or Drink Issues that might arise) designate the edges that would have supported it.

For larger expanses, you could:
.......            .......            .......
._..._.            ._..._.            ._____.
.._._..            ..___..            ._   _.
..._... => then => .._ _.. => then => ._   _.
.._._..            ..___..            ._   _.
._..._.            ._..._.            ._____.
.......            .......            .......
(Other combinations possible, depending on circumstances, just never designate any channel anywhere unless there is no possibility that there won't ever remain a hanging area of ground at the point it gets channelled away.  (Also, that no dwarf finds themselves isolated on a stable but disconnected platform against a wall.)  Yes, it'd be nice to have them work this out for themselves, but in leiu of that it's not as if you can't anticipate the situation.


(Or use a convenient ramp-based method, instead, and avoid all the hassle.)

Although you couldn't have Dwarven-style nobles in Ankh-Morpork, because there's no way in hell Vimes would ever enforce mandates.

On the other hand...

Patrician      Vetinari, Patrician   [REQUIRE][DEMAND][MANDATE][HAPPENED TO IDLY MENTION IN PASSING]

(Are you going to wait for that to turn red?

Learn Brainfuck.

(That falls foul of this system's web filters, for obvious reasons.

Or maybe Whitespace...

1. Go back in time, become own grandfather.
2. Go to future, have a sex change operation.
3. Go back in time, become own grandmother.
4. ???
5. PROFIT!

c.f. Robert Heinlein's "All You Zombies"

Ah, appears to be linkable

Can I suggest Perl?

You can use it with a pure fucntion-orientation just like a script, but it has an OO structure that you can use to learn what OO is all about.  (It's looser than C++'s and Java's Object Orientation, frexample, but because you're can poke the internals and 'break' classic inheritences you can get to know what works and what doesn't, and learn some of the reasoning behind C++/Java's constraints...  As long as you don't expect to have the same leeway if you move on, of coruse.)

It's also useful as a .cgi language (IMHO better than PHP, except that instead of the "HTML containing code that makes more HTML" idea, it's just "code that you make produce all the HTML").

The flexibility of data structure will mean that you're able to do anything you want[1] once you know how to use it, but you can work your way up to that level in stages, with that time, aptitude and curiosity.

Again, the disadvantage is that when transferring skills to something more tightly typed you're no longer free to store array references in any old static, etc...  (See [2] for one where I did.)  Though you do have the ability to define types that have variable record layouts, so it shouldn't stop you if you're determined enough to continue, and you're not too bothered about readability.  (Noting that I stripped the examples of the comments and excess whitespace, so they're scarier looking than they are in my code.

[1]It can look scary, at first sight.
 e.g. "CULL: while ($i < $#{$_[0]}) { if (Feature(${$_[0]}[$i],@{$_[3]})) {$i+=2; next CULL} splice @{$_[0]},$i,2;}", is a slightly obfuscated code from a recent project of mine meant to remove pairs of elements from an array where the first of each pair does not match a criteria.

"sub TakeJob { my $J = (sort {Weighting($b) <=> Weighting($a)} keys %JOBSET)[0]; if (int(@{$JOBSET{$J}})) { return ($J,shift @{$JOBSET{$J}}) } else { return () } }" is part of another conceptual project where I was implementing my own threading model, for 'LOLZ'.

"sub dos { unless (defined wantarray) { map { y/\//\\/ } @_; return } my @r; for my $i (@_) { my $j = $i; $j=~y/\//\\/; wantarray?push @r, $j:return $j } return @r }" is something I bashed up to handle flexible conversion of directory path styles (as unary operator or straight function, for both scalar or array variables).

Yes, I know that there are already modules that give those functionalities, but I like tinkering. [/1]

[2] map { $_ = [split("/",$_)]; pop @$_; $_ = join("/",@$_) } @_;

I've just delved back into Adventurer Mode (I meant to make a post over on that section, but it can wait) and I wandered in and (accidentally, at first) recruited all the military/non-Guard dwarfs from a place where the temple priest(esses) were all Goblins and it appeared that all the other inhabitants were second-or-more-generation from kidnap victim immigrants.

They seems rather eager to leave the place, while I appeared to have little to give in service (the usual "praise for the dark god <foo>" from the Goblin High Priestess, and a random encounter way over on another continent that I may fulfill for the Dwarf 'king' of the site after I've exhausted this isthmus).  Which is in obvious contrast to the original starting location in the Dwarven capital of this area, even though this is only my second settlement of visit and I've only killed a couple of dozen wild animals and some cave-swallows in an otherwise empty cave inbetwentimes, while wandering, so I can't ascribe it to any Titan-killing reputation.

So...  As applied to the above, if one doesn't accept the warrior, do you feel there should be a chance that underappreciated members of your population (or perhaps just those with military training of some kind) could decide to up-sticks and leave alongside him?  It would make the double-edged sword a bit more of a double-edged sword, potentially.   (Just saying "no thanks" and avoiding all the hard work seems to be a bit too much of a way out, and the alternative of him/her coming back with the next invasion wave, in their pay is the only other answer I have to that problem.)

Well, realism is the theme of the game, fantasy or not. I think seeing through stone just because they're dwarves is a bit contrary to the spirit of the game.

I think the approach (which is obviously not the "partial but global reveal" of the OP) that involves the proximity radar 'hint' could be justified.

Digging through various rocks, an experienced dwarf could spot tell-tale signs of nearby metal veins (perhaps seeing non-viable 'feeler' veins intruding out beyond the eventual mining site into the surrounding rock), or just know that it's likely that certain layering has something (giving false positives/inexact final locations), or detect some mild metamorphosis of the rock to indicate, prior to hitting the obsidian, a hint of active or one-time magma in the vicinity.

Give or take the dwarf's experience, the rock being dug through and the (potential, as it may not be there) target feature it could go from identifiable "There's Gold! in tham thar hills!" (but not sure where) to feature-only "the rock will change character in 'N' more tiles" indicators that can't be specific about what.

And of course the chance of being wrong.  Missing things like gem clusters (maybe less likely to have an 'indicative' feature other than "there will be gem clusters in this layer, but who knows where") and tempting one with veins of ore (it could be that the 'leader' veins terminate at a natural fault, or a perhaps a surprise igneous intrusion if you don't want to keep open the possibility that they can still find the mothervein).

Of course, it works differently from 'evidence based information', as the game would propogate clues and falsehoods from the known internal reality according to a randomness surrounding the individual (and/or collective) dwarf's experience in mining, not distrubute those truths and falsehoods around the map to be directly discovered and revealed (and/or discounted) to those of sufficient proficiency.