Bay 12 Games Forum

It has long been known that on occasion creatures will somehow slip passed a fortification in a water (or magma) channel. Some people believe these creatures are pushed through by the current, others believe they can freely swim through. Well at long last, thanks to the testing arena, I think I can provide the answer: Both, in different circumstances.

Here's what I discovered, and how. I assumed control of an aligator in a custom made arena, with water flowing in a horseshoe shape through some fortifications. I quickly discovered that, yes indeed, water can and did push my through fortifications, however I was not able to move through voluntarily. So I thought that settled it, and knowing that only diffusing water I set about creating a creature proof-barrier. The plan was to put it at the bottom of a U-pipe so the water would always be 7/7. But what's this? Now I can swim right through! Apparently if (and only if) the water is 7/7, creatures can simply swim over the fortification.

Also if we assume that fortifications represent castle-wall–style crenelations, swimming over them in deep water isn't necessarily a bug, but the pushing effect shallow running water pretty clearly is.

Unfortunately it is not possible to avoid both of those situations at once. Nor does installing multiple layers of fortifications provide any added protection. Now an interesting question is how these limitations apply to vertical bars, horizontal bars and grates. But those can't be placed the arena, so someone will have to test it in Dwarf Mode, or perhaps Adventure Mode after building special testing area previously.

Actually you can make the game quite a bit easier just by tweaking the init file a bit. I suggest the following:

[INVADERS:YES] → NO
[POPULATION_CAP:200] → 40

Urist Vespasian (UristV for short) is an experimental "editor" for the testing arena template. What this does is translate that into a bitmap image (and back) for easier editing. For example, here's what the original arena looks like as an image (at 3x magnification):

Download Urist Vespasian

And here's a map I made with a whole bunch of mini-arenas:
It's included in the main download as "multi.txt", along with a couple of simpler samples:

• A mostly open field divided by a canyon.
• A chamber that slowly fills with magma until only a small central island is safe.

Personally, I don't think it's a bad idea, in principle, but it should only be a very minimal amount, like one or two lines, and clearly set off from the game-relevant content. My reasoning is that (to me at least) it would add some value to the game just to have even the roughest idea what orthoclase or marcasite is. In the game, they're just yellow rock and a white rock, which doesn't go very far to help my visualize my grand hall lined with orthoclase pillars.

Having a link the the "other" Wiki is nice, but I don't think including a capsule description in the article itself would be amiss. It's not like the rock articles are excessively long at present...

I was running around, stabbing the peasants as is customary, when an archer shot out one of my teeth. Quite a shot if I say so. For the hell of it I ran up and grabbed my tooth and proceeded to try and eat it. I got this as a message

Huh.

Obviously it was the friction from when it was knocked out that made it hot.

I'm trying to figure out what i can get from dead creatures that I can eat. I haven't had problems with thirst though, I can go on the blood of the slain alone. Is there a way to mod it so you (or your race) can only drink blood (and eat flesh/didn't have to eat)? That'd be pretty cool. Can carnivore characters eat raw corpses?

I wish you could "wear" (i.e. intentionally cover yourself with) blood, mud and so forth. It would be a cool berserker-ish thing to to do.

Ugly blinking ramps. (Hatches too, for that matter.)

I really think there must be something abnormal about your web server's settings. It's like it's rejecting my headers or something. I think I've narrowed it down some. I do normally use a local proxy (Privoxy by name) for ad blocking and such-like and it seems related to that. But even if I configure my proxy to do nothing, it somehow gets in the way. Only when I have my browser bypass it completely does it works... except ironically if I use a web proxy on top of the local proxy (what I'm doing now) it also works.

But I never had this problem before April 1 and I don't encounter it on any other sites. So it's not just on my end that something strange is happening.