Bay 12 Games Forum

Im not sure if you can even mod in siege weapons... Its a very ambitious idea however.
The closest thing to a turret is a weapons trap with a crossow in it.

There's a thread with a living turret creature. They get pastured / chained where you need defences. I think that's the idea here. They can use breath weapons, or maybe webs.

This is the thread :-

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=84218.0

Nice one, that's something that bugged me a while back.

I'm coming along nicely with usable laptop computers BTW, WEAPON_COMPUTER is at the pawnshop for $400, and you find them at sites instead of the LOOT_COMPUTER.

The only thing that I haven't changed right yet is the one's stolen by sleepers, because that code is REAL messy and I'm debating whether I should just re-factor the whole lot with data tables and weighting.

I've noticed someone commented that some of the sleeper's stolen goods are marked to go to "activesquad" rather than "shelter". This is an oversight in my opinion, so I'm just going to simplify the whole lot to go to shelter, to reduce the amount of repeated code. I'm going to copy the method of tracking the types of created objects from site_mode for the stolen stuff in activate_sleeper.cpp (without the variable quality statements though). This change is necessary so I can change the computers without really making the code look ugly. Also, it should speed things up slightly if someone ever gets around to improving the site map system.

So, roadmap :- make sleeper's stolen computers be the usable ones (really mainly cosmetic and so there's not two types floating in there), then make computer skills work better for liberals using a laptop. Or, could be a bastard and make NOT using a laptop worse.

files I've changed (for reference / record of what I changed)

pawnshop.xml - added the new laptop for sale
weapon &  loot xml - made a new weapon laptop type, will remove old loot one
sitemode.cpp - changed LOOT => WEAPON for laptop
sleeper_update.cpp - streamlined loot system here a little based on how it's done in sitemode.cpp

will update this post as I go ...

Ok that's all done, and buying, looting or sleeper's stealing Laptops are all the usable version now. Now, to search out hacking etc, make a difference if you've got a laptop equipped. A laptop can be swung like a club now too it's effectiveness is in-between a spraypaint and a guitar

Dammit, can't the start year be put in the XML or something? Seems like anything hard-coded is not what this needs.

A little off-topic, but one major problem with the 'skill bitmap' is that to find out if a bit is set, you have to :-

- load the 32-bit value
- load a 32 bit mask value
- apply the mask to the value eg "value & mask"
- check if the result is non-zero

At this point you know whether the bit is set or not. All that work to discover "Zero or one?"

It'd be faster to make the value a 32-bit skill by itself, in the first place. Then it would compute faster and give more detail.

Memory is no constraint with a few hundred dwarves. CPU cycles is.

Another issue is that 'adding together # of bits' as the level seriously reduces the total memory you can store in a byte/word etc.

With 32 bits you get 4 billion unique levels. If you consider each bit to be a separate equal value and add them together, you get 32 levels (which basically reduces your 32bit value to holding the same as 5bits of data). Also it's really slow to add bits together like that. You have to do 32 masking operations and additions in a row to calculate the amount. That's 64 maths calculations you didn't need to do before, just to get a number which could have been stored in less than 1 byte normally, and retrieved in a single CPU cycle.

@nanomage: This idea in this current thread is OK, that "skill bitmap" idea though in the other link just cited, while it sounds cool, is actually a totally sucky way to put a real game together, at least as far as DF goes.

You have to get them to stand somewhere dry, then either drop the floor out from under them into a pool or fill the chamber with water.

You'll need a bridge level to even out the second liquid you release, though the first liquid per level will spread out by itself.

The magma will have time to spread while your preparing the water to drop. Since magma spreads slighty slower than water this would be the main reason to drop the magma first.

I alternated the pipes of water/magma in my dispenser idea. Then, magma only has to spread out-sideways a couple of squares. it's dropped in strips.

Warfare already uses "matrix style", I was considering giving it as an example in my last post, but forgot.

e.g. weapon-type(+unarmed skills) vs Fighter/dodger/striker/armor user/shield user

^ That's considerably more complex than the 2 skills per job we're discussing. I can see an armored dwarf needing to be buffed in 6 skills to be an effective warrior.

DT could be modified to give you an overall ability level too. There could be a "view by job / view by skill" option. It won't be hard for the program to give a weighted average which tells you the effective skill level. Anyway, there will overall be less skills to look at as well in a matrix thingy, so that would be less columns to go through.