Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: Limited blood tracking?  (Read 1224 times)

musicmastermsh

  • Bay Watcher
  • likes procedurally generated music
    • View Profile
Limited blood tracking?
« on: July 15, 2012, 03:00:17 pm »

In my current fort:

One dog got wounded enough to bleed a single tile's worth of blood, a few years ago.

Nothing else since then has bled anywhere.  No dwarves, no goblins, nothing.

Naturally, half the fort is covered in dog blood spatters.  It'd be great if blood contaminants would eventually dry up and become unable to be tracked around any further - or the amount of blood being tracked around eventually became so spread out that it wouldn't turn every tile into a blood spatter.  There's got to be more blood everywhere than any single dog is capable of holding at any one time.
Logged

weenog

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2012, 03:09:35 pm »

It would be nice if fluid tracking were more realistic.  In the meantime, if you just don't want crap tracked around, open /data/init/init.txt and change the line [WALKING_SPREADS_SPATTER_DWF:YES] to [WALKING_SPREADS_SPATTER_DWF:NO].

I happen to like things drenched in gore if the janitors aren't on the ball, personally.

You might also find the dwarven bathtub to be a useful addition to your fortress.  I use one behind my primary field of traps and one across the entrance to my hospital as a bare minimum.  Gore is fun but there are limits, especially with hazardous contaminants.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2012, 03:12:44 pm by weenog »
Logged
Listen up: making a thing a ‼thing‼ doesn't make it more awesome or extreme.  It simply indicates the thing is on fire.  Get it right or look like a silly poser.

It's useful to keep a ‼torch‼ handy.

JasonMel

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2012, 03:19:59 pm »

I agree, blood should dry and not be spreadable, and there should be a limit on the number of generations of smears a single spillage can generate, based on its type. I don't know how blood tracking works currently, or whether this includes all the types there are in the game, but just as an example,
  • A pool should dry in a month or six, and be able to generate at most N spatterings, after which it should downgrade to a spattering itself.
  • A spatter should dry in about a month, and should be able to generate M smears, after which it should downgrade to a smear.
  • Smears should dry right away and be unspreadable.
Logged

weenog

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2012, 03:22:39 pm »

Maybe it would be better if gore were a proper fluid, like water or magma.  If nothing else, it would be hilarious to save it up and then empty a 5x5x1 7/7 deep reservoir of chum onto the elf merchants.
Logged
Listen up: making a thing a ‼thing‼ doesn't make it more awesome or extreme.  It simply indicates the thing is on fire.  Get it right or look like a silly poser.

It's useful to keep a ‼torch‼ handy.

musicmastermsh

  • Bay Watcher
  • likes procedurally generated music
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #4 on: July 15, 2012, 03:24:22 pm »

Yes!  All of the above.

Apparantly, I've had the blood tracking option disable this whole time, and yet, the blood is still spreading around.  I can't imagine how bad it would be if it wasn't disabled... whoa.
Logged

weenog

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #5 on: July 15, 2012, 03:25:54 pm »

You're sure it's disabled for fortress mode, and not just adventurer mode?

Also, are you sure the dog hasn't been squirting out blood itself in the locations where the blood is?  Some stuff can bleed for a long time without dying.
Logged
Listen up: making a thing a ‼thing‼ doesn't make it more awesome or extreme.  It simply indicates the thing is on fire.  Get it right or look like a silly poser.

It's useful to keep a ‼torch‼ handy.

musicmastermsh

  • Bay Watcher
  • likes procedurally generated music
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2012, 03:28:40 pm »

If that's the case, well, nothing that bleeds for three years and lives... I know there's a joke about that somewhere.
Logged

JasonMel

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #7 on: July 15, 2012, 03:37:57 pm »

A bit off-topic, but it's also a bit silly that the dwarves can always tell which smears came from which individual's blood. I don't have a problem with the game keeping track of this information internally, which is pretty cool, but once the blood is tracked from its original spill, the dwarves shouldn't be able to distinguish Urist's blood smear from Monom's blood smear, especially when there are 14 smears and pools of various kinds of gore in the same tile. Maybe a dog could, but probably not a dwarf.
Logged

weenog

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #8 on: July 15, 2012, 03:42:12 pm »

I doubt the dwarves can tell.  I think openly displaying the information is just a convenience to the player.
Logged
Listen up: making a thing a ‼thing‼ doesn't make it more awesome or extreme.  It simply indicates the thing is on fire.  Get it right or look like a silly poser.

It's useful to keep a ‼torch‼ handy.

JasonMel

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #9 on: July 15, 2012, 03:56:01 pm »

But the player can direct the dwarves based on that player's knowledge, so player knowledge effectively is dwarven knowledge. That's why I don't think we should get into the habit of making distinctions between the two.
Logged

weenog

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #10 on: July 15, 2012, 04:02:39 pm »

I'll buy that argument when you can take direct control of dwarves in fortress mode, or supply them with ideas they wouldn't come up with on their own such as deliberately falling (might kill) to reach a path to food and stop starving (will certainly kill).
Logged
Listen up: making a thing a ‼thing‼ doesn't make it more awesome or extreme.  It simply indicates the thing is on fire.  Get it right or look like a silly poser.

It's useful to keep a ‼torch‼ handy.

musicmastermsh

  • Bay Watcher
  • likes procedurally generated music
    • View Profile
Re: Limited blood tracking?
« Reply #11 on: July 15, 2012, 07:51:05 pm »

At what point does game end and metagame begin?
Logged