Hey cool! Assuming an infinite supply of water, you could conceivably build AND, OR and NOT gates in Dwarf Fortress using only flood gates and water-sensitive pressure plates - which means that the game itself is semi-Turing complete!
Actually, on further thought, I think it would only work with a "chunky" liquid like magma, that will only go down z-levels and not back up them. I'm not entirely sure it works this way, but in any case you must make sure that the input on one path does not contaminate the input on another.
code:
Legend:
-, +, | : liquid path
# : Flood gate
> : Down a level
_ : Pressure plate
~ : some water source
* : water-impervious wallAND gate:
--_-+
|
>--##--
|
--_-+
The pressure plates each open one floodgate, and hence must both be activated in
order to pass liquid.
OR gate:
--_-+
|
>--#
|
--_-+
Both pressure plates are linked to the one floodgate, making it so that
activating either one will open the thing. Honestly, the floodgate is sort of
unnecessary here.
NOT gate:
--_-*+-#---
|
~
I'm not certain if floodgates will work like this (I haven't played around much
with pressure plates) but in this case you need the floodgate to default to
open, and only close if water comes in. I think doors work like this.
And there you have it, a fortress that exhibits both Turing and NP completeness (assuming infinite tape- err, I mean depth)
Edit: it was messing with the page width.
[ November 16, 2007: Message edited by: Tacroy ]
