Bay 12 Games Forum

I've been thinking about additional fluid types lately, and I certainly do not envy Tarn Adams for the headaches he must get while trying to figure this kind of stuff out and code for it.

First of all, here are the liquid types that have been requested in the past (I may have missed some):

-Blood
which might have to include:
-gray goo? (fire imps)
-ichor? (from trolls and stuff)

-Alcohol
which could be divided into the various types:
-beer, wine, ale, rum, spirits, sunshine, cruor, whiskey

-Oil (crude)

And here are the liquids which already exist:
Magma
Water
Ocean water
Muddy water (sort of)
Bloody water (sort of)

Well, first of all, there is no way that there should be that many liquid types for alcohol. Having to handle the ways those things could be mixed together would just be ridiculous, especially once you see my little pictures below.

I'm also going to ignore gray goo and ichor for the time being.

So basically, let's see what happens if we try to add blood, oil, and a generic booze.

First of all, it needs to be established to what degree these liquids should be allowed to mix. If you tip a barrel of wine into a large lake, should it distribute itself across the entire lake? I say no, because that would require lots of decimal places and expensive computing.

I think liquids would have to be allowed to mix only to a point. Allow me to explain with this picture:



Get it? It's pretty simple. But the problem is that even if you allow only a SINGLE mixture of liquids, you still end up with a huge amount of combinations. You guys were probably aware of this, but it still helps to visualize it.
I've started out with water, blood, booze, and ocean water on the four cardinal points. Just look at the mess which springs forth:



I've crossed off some of the double mixes. There are also some double-mixes that seem necessary, like "watered-down, bloody booze." Should this be a liquid type? I don't know. I mean, some ancient cultures found out that mixing wine into the drinking water would make it safe to drink. And I guess someone could bleed into that?

Note that I didn't even consider the addition of mud, ichor, or puke. These would have added waaay more pointless sub-liquids.

So because of the combination annoyances that mixing liquid invariably leads too, we have to start cutting out the unnecessary liquids. And I don't think alcohol should be a liquid. Yes, it would be cool to have a wine fountain in your dwarf's dining room, or a beer or whiskey fountain... but the beer would lose its carbonation and go flat, the wine would oxidize, and the whiskey would slowly evaporate. There are reasons we keep all that stuff in bottles.

Oil? Definitely. It's explosive and you don't have to let it mix with stuff.
Blood? Yeah, that would be pretty cool to have as well.

You may have noticed that I stuck sand in that last picture as well. You can read about my sand idea here, but basically sand would have some behaviors of a liquid, and some behaviors of a solid. Go read it if you haven't.

If sand is added as well, there's two and only two options for how it should interact with the other liquids. It either displaces them or it absorbs them - there can be no middle ground. If sand absorbs liquids, you could have "bloody sand" instead of just some blood sitting on top of the sand. Water would also be able to percolate through sand - (but perhaps at half or one-fourth the speed as usual?) There's also the problem of figuring out when/if water should be able to push sand around. Water doesn't really have any kind of velocity variable right now from what I understand. But anyway, sand stuff can be discussed over in the sand thread.

Sand would always sink and oil would always rise.

I have one more idea which I think is instrumental for mixing liquids and for having oil in the game: cohesion!



It would not be limited to oil. Let's say that someone bleeds 2/7 of blood into a lake. There would be a patch of four 1's of "bloody water" which would stick together, instead of there being four separate pieces floating around.

I guess that any amount of bloody water would randomly distribute itself vertically and horizontally while remaining in a blob form, and possibly sucking up a lot of processing power unless it's programmed to stop moving somehow. I think this would be the biggest problem to overcome - when two liquids cannot mix any further, will they keep... glorping around each other forever? Maybe blood should just sink... or not be a liquid type at all.


Another possibility... have as many liquids as you want, but no liquids may mix with any other liquids. It would work, but it wouldn't be very realistic.

And an alternative to everything: scrap the X/7 liquid system altogether and handle liquids differently. I have no idea how or if this would work. Maybe entire bodies of water could be done with various percentages? I read a bit of the speedy fluid mechanics thread and it seemed like an interesting alternative. I'm not sure about the plausibility of such a system, though. But I think it deserves a mention.

Quote from: Tehran on July 20, 2010, 12:19:01 am

As an aside, I've come across one other non-DF story in my searches. It's hilarious: http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=631191

I love how the only thing that makes this such a good story is the fact the author apparently had no control over the events (no memory of them, similar things.)

Exactly. I was just thinking that if it was simply, "Hey guys, look at how many dudes I killed," that nobody would care at all. It's the single element of drunken forgetfulness which makes this a good story worth telling.

This is, honestly, probably the most elegant solution.  I have no idea if this would be difficult for Toady to program, but making a dwarf pathfind to the spot where he is building, and then having it rewind to just being at the closest space away would be one way to do this...

I had to read that again to get it...
That is exactly how it should be done. I just now realized why Toady programmed the weird W>E>N>S dig priority thing. It's because, if you're pathing to a tile that needs to be mined out, you can't actually stand on the tile to do it. Instead of pathing to the tile, you have to path to one of the 8 adjacent tiles. And that's why the W>E>N>S>NW>SW>NE>SE thing has to exist.

You're absolutely right. This problem could be solved (easily, I think) by pathing directly up to the dig-designated tile, and then sort of ghost-pathing ONTO the tile, and then taking a step backwards / "rewinding."

Quote from: Lawec on July 19, 2010, 06:50:10 am

Sorry to tell this but, many of the things that happened in that Sims 3 story is pretty simple to reconstruct. I own the game, and I've tried combining two people, that didn't like each other, pretty often. But Dorf Fortress on the other hand, it is incredibly hard to recreate some situation between two dwarves.

Again, I contribute that to the difference in target audience, and nothing more.

I think it's an important observation. The ideal storytelling game, in my opinion, is one where the player has very little control over how the computer people interact. If the player has too much input, you're just playing with sock puppets.

Basically, dwarves prefer to construct from the left side, then the right, then north, then south.  (This is the same as http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/40d:Mining#Dig_Priority

I don't know if you're telling this to ME, or just everyone, but I already know how it works. And I honestly cannot see any good reason as to why it is done this way. You've probably watched your dwarves mining something out, getting to the very last designated tile, and then walking for a huge distance ALL THE WAY AROUND through your mining tunnels so that they can dig it out from the other side. It's just silly, and I don't see why it has to be done this way. Maybe the stay-on-the-side-you're-already-on thing IS difficult to program. Or maybe he simply hasn't gotten to this thing yet.

but dwarves cannot construct diagonally, and support does not work diagonally, even though for almost every other intent or purpose, they are basically the same.)

[/quote]

This also perplexes me. It seems like the game was deliberately designed this way, but I'm not sure why. When building something like an aqueduct with a bend to it, you're required to build a floor, build the wall on the corner, deconstruct the floor, and build a wall there.
It wouldn't be a problem, except that Dwarves can walk through a diagonal, and liquids can flow through a diagonal. So it's weird to me that you can't construct on a diagonal. The only reason I can see fo rthis is because structures are not supported on a diagonal - but hey, that's an easy fix. If you order something built on a diagonal that has no support and will fall down the instant you build it, then the dwarves will suspend work on it until you get something next to it. (Or, diagonal supporting could simply be allowed. But that might interfere with future cave-in models) The downside is that every single construction would have to check to make sure there are supports, slowing the game down a bit. The way this is handled currently is when you select the building materials - If you can get to building materials, it can be supported. However, this doesn't seem to slow the game down because the game is already paused. So I suppose that the is-this-going-to-be-supported check could take place as you are designating the construction. I don't think that would be much of a problem.

Build priority is also [last in, first out]. This means you want to basically figure out what you want to build, and then command it be built in opposite order (or just suspend anything you want to be built last, if it doesn't matter what order most of it is built in).  This also means that you should make the last piece of wall you build be the wall you want your dwarf standing on the left side of when he/she builds it.

When learning how to construct walls, I remarked to my brother that it should be as easy as digging out a hallway. Now that I know more about the game, I know that this is pretty much impossible - not only because your dwarves need to be able to get to every single part of your wall, but also because you need to tell the game what materials to use, whereas with digging, the materials are already there.

An annoying but probably necessary part of this system is when the game says you can't construct something because there is no path to any building materials. I understand exactly why this is, but that doesn't mean it's not still annoying...
There could probably be a programming workaround for this... (something like, "when the dwarves get to this, construct it out of a common and nearby stone type") or people could just learn to build more scaffolding, I guess.

I found out about this game because that comic was posted on Digg.

This makes me happy
Even though it was not I who posted it on Digg.

Sorry about the ridiculous title.

I would like to have a discussion with all of you regarding the as-yet untapped possibilities for dwarf emotions, personalities, relationships, and free will.

Some of you may have already visited me and my brother's website, http://dfstories.com/. While out looking for stories for the site, I came across a fantastic story which was, surprisingly, NOT from Dwarf Fortress.

I say "surprisingly" because I've never come across another video game besides DF that's even remotely able to tell good, procedural stories - until I read this one, set in the world of The Sims 3.


http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/
Go ahead and read it. Do it now!


After reading it, I realized that there is something missing in many Dwarf Fortress stories. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but The Sims 3 has it* and we don't. So why let them hog all the fun?

I'm not sure how personalities, moods, and relationships could possibly be implemented in DF, which is why I'm putting this thread in the general discussion forum instead of the suggestions forum.

I do have some vague, half-baked ideas, though - and tell me if you've heard 'em before:

Instead of the single, crude "happiness" variable that dwarfs have now, they could have a variety of emotions, each one with its own variable - such as happiness, rage, boredom, and blood-alcohol-level (this one can be either too high or too low!) ...I'm sure there are some more, but I can't think of anything else.

Currently, the only emotions that a dwarf has are very limited and predictable. There's only one variable for general happiness, and, of course, the three big moods:
-tantrum
-Insane/berserk
-melancholy

I feel like there could easily be a whole smorgasbord of moods - a spectrum of interacting variables which would allow each dwarf to express themselves uniquely. Like a dwarf who is angry enough to smash stuff, but not SO angry as to do it haphazardly - not breaking his own things, and/or only smashing stuff when out of the sight of others (although that would require all dwarves to have a sense of ownership, and a line-of-sight).
Or maybe a dwarf who is feeling kind of depressed, but not SO depressed as to stop eating entirely. Or perhaps a dwarf who eats MORE when depressed, to the point of sluggishness or even death - or a dwarf who DRINKS more when depressed, leading to all sorts of fun like liver failure, blacking out, vomiting, and death (all of which are already programmed!)

There's also the distinction between one's normal personality, and the mood which one is currently in. I'm not sure how that could be coded.


* I'd very much like to hear from someone who has actually played The Sims 3. (I have only played The Sims #1.) How much of that story do you think came from the game? How much of it was being controlled by the author? (He does, after all, have control over both Kev and Alice. How much, I don't know.)
You can also tell, in some of his screenshots, that he crops off the picture balloons, possibly because the picture is not in line with the story he is telling.
Furthermore, the expressions of the characters are fantastic, but I can't help wondering if they were simply engineered that way by selecting one conversation option over several others which would have garnered much different results - like a little puppet show. But I dunno.


Anyway, what do you guys think? Procedural personalities and interpersonal (interdwarfnal?) relationships... How should they be done? Should they be done at all? How much of this is already planned? Discuss!

I play it in braille.