Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Lymojo on May 28, 2009, 05:36:04 pm

You're removing the magma pipe one layer at a time?
Why not just do this on a map with a bottomless pit or chasm and just dig a massive tunnel connecting the bottommost layer of the pipe to the pit and let it drain out that way?
Obvious answer is probably that you like the fort or the challenge, but I'm asking it anyway.

As far as the OT thing you said in the spoiler. Yes, you're right. The game stores what's called a "connectivity map" of the entire fortress. It evaluates whether each square is accessible to dwarves, so that the computer doesn't waste time calculating nearly limitless pathfinding options for each unit individually before determining that a certain route is impossible.

From what I understand it's somewhat optimized so that entire regions that are completely accessible or completely inaccessible aren't re-evaluated every tick. Just as you said, every time you pull the lever the game suddenly has to re-evaluate a whole section of the fortress.

Quote from: peterix on May 28, 2009, 05:09:41 pm

I wouldn't consider the game broken. That's Toady's decision. I just like to poke around the dimly lit corners and see what crawls out of them Besides, I'm not there yet. There are three levels of magma and a magma-man remaining. I'll drop some well-constructed floors on its head.

OT, but maybe interesting find:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I found what causes (at least a *big* part of) the terrible slow-down:
It's the dwarf opening and closing the door. It looks like the game keeps track of areas of tiles which have clear paths between each other.... or something like that. This theory can also describe well the slowdown caused by digging ramps. Maybe the same slowdown could happen when you connect separate areas by digging... it wouldn't be so clearly evident though, only triggering the slowdown once.

Would a door built *next* to a wall instead of separating a corridor from the rest of the game world cause the same slowdown?

Since magma isn't normally pressurized just having a drain tunnel means you'd probably drain the pipe slower than it refilled.

He's not doing "one level at a time" though. He's got a pump pretty low and it's sucking up a lot of air because magma has to flow from the narrow level above over to where he has the pump hanging over part of the pipe.


-does the game reevaluate the pathability if you're changing stuff somewhere that's already behind a locked door?

Okay, that makes sense about the pressurization.

As far as your pathability question, you're talking about maybe remotely flooding/unflooding passages or locking/unlocking doors within vast areas that are already completely inaccessible? And how that would affect your framerate?

I could really only guess meaninglessly.

The computer science of DF is something I'm not intimately familiar with, but there are others on this forum - many of whom have posted in great length in other dedicated threads - who probably know.
You should do a forum search for "pathfinding" or "connectivity map".

You're removing the magma pipe one layer at a time?
Why not just do this on a map with a bottomless pit or chasm and just dig a massive tunnel connecting the bottommost layer of the pipe to the pit and let it drain out that way?
Obvious answer is probably that you like the fort or the challenge, but I'm asking it anyway.

As far as the OT thing you said in the spoiler. Yes, you're right. The game stores what's called a "connectivity map" of the entire fortress. It evaluates whether each square is accessible to dwarves, so that the computer doesn't waste time calculating nearly limitless pathfinding options for each unit individually before determining that a certain route is impossible.

From what I understand it's somewhat optimized so that entire regions that are completely accessible or completely inaccessible aren't re-evaluated every tick. Just as you said, every time you pull the lever the game suddenly has to re-evaluate a whole section of the fortress.

I wouldn't consider the game broken. That's Toady's decision. I just like to poke around the dimly lit corners and see what crawls out of them Besides, I'm not there yet. There are three levels of magma and a magma-man remaining. I'll drop some well-constructed floors on its head.

OT, but maybe interesting find:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I found what causes (at least a *big* part of) the terrible slow-down:
It's the dwarf opening and closing the door. It looks like the game keeps track of areas of tiles which have clear paths between each other.... or something like that. This theory can also describe well the slowdown caused by digging ramps. Maybe the same slowdown could happen when you connect separate areas by digging... it wouldn't be so clearly evident though, only triggering the slowdown once.

Would a door built *next* to a wall instead of separating a corridor from the rest of the game world cause the same slowdown?

Quote from: zchris13 on May 27, 2009, 08:46:02 pm

They adopt by spores.  Proximity is no concern here.

Actually they breed by spores, but they can only adopt a dwarf after they have seen him for enough time (Wiki, Cats 2nd sentence). How long that amount of time is is dependent upon the dwarf's personality, but you can throw a cat into a 1x1x1 square room and it will never adopt as long as it can't see dwarves. I have been doing this for a long time with my breeding pair, throwing the male into a small room and then just caging male kittens and then later some of the female ones. Then I only have to kill pets if an immigrant with a male cat shows up. This also lets you instantly stop all breeding if you just kill or cage that one single male cat.

You should do that the other way around; kill all the females. If you accidentally let one male through he could potentially impregnate your entire cat population. If you have all male cats and one female accidentally gets through, so what? You have only one accidental litter.

I don't think that it's as much of a matter of people wanting pooping dwarves as much as people wanting a new source of fuel and fertilizer.

Definitely not the case for me. The most fun I've had in this game comes from digging a home out of the rock and making neat mechanics and architecture and water-based mega-projects. It's the idea of needing to build a functional sewage system that appeals to me. In fact, I'd probably feel cheated if dwarf waste were just an easy fuel source, rather than a source of miasma and death.

So far i have discovered a decent vein of hematite, and loads of obsidian. Another BIG plus is that i could trade for bauxite with the dwarf caravan! (however, bauxite is still not available on embark)

I wonder if different Dwarven civs have access to different things. Which Dwarf Civ did you embark from?
Or did you do a different history seed, somehow?

It sounds like the OP solved his problem, but I find that dwarves don't spar unless they have someone to spar with. From what I've seen, a sword dwarf won't spar with anyone but another sword dwarf. You need to make sure you designate your weapons in even (or large) numbers.

Just had a new one recently.

Did not realize you could easily drain water off the map by carving fortifications into an edge tile.