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[Dorf and Dumb]

As in life, more fluids = more !!FUN!!

* Make exposed bituminous coal/lignite/oil shale (perhaps not anthracite?) into a sort of aquifer that oozes out blackdamp.  Dorfs in more than about 3/7 blackdamp start drowning.  The ooze should be much slower than water but it shouldn't evaporate.  Also, blackdamp should move upward under pressure.  However, any tile that is regarded as "outside" would consume any blackdamp that moved onto it.  (Hello ventilation shafts... hello flying invaders...)

* Fossil fuel layers should contain clusters of flashdamp.  When flashdamp is at more than 3/7 dorfs also start drowning.  When it is at anything but 7/7 and there is heat, each 1/7 bit of flashdamp transforms into blackdamp + fire + 50% cave-in gas + 20% afterdamp spreading further out.

* Rock salt layers should occasionally overlie sizable layers of petroleum.  When petroleum is at less than 7/7 and heated, the same thing happens as with flashdamp, but only 1/7 at a time and with sufficiently low probability per tick that it gives a lovely burning look.

* Mining into pyrites should make something called "sparks", which have no appreciable effect except they set off the two above.

* Historically combustion products were called "afterdamp" in total, but for the game I might make that two separate components: ordinary blackdamp, and a gas called "afterdamp" (i.e. carbon monoxide) that causes a syndrome in dorfs.  Wood burning and any reaction using fuel or flux would produce it, and as with blackdamp any outside tile would use it up.

* Also there's another game fluid to be called "stinkdamp" (hydrogen sulfide) that might occur in small clusters near sulfur bearing minerals.  When at less than 7/7 it should react (no heat needed) to produce miasma and a chance of evaporation.  Dorfs contacting the fluid (representing in essence a high dose taken in) would get a syndrome.

* All these fluids should if possible not coat body surfaces and objects, or at least evaporate from them very quickly.

[Skullsploder]

I love this suggestion. It's always irked me that a game as detailed as Dwarf Fortress has no ventilation requirements, no natural gas pockets, all in all no real dangers to mining underground - I mean sure, there's the HFS, but there's a pretty clear warning implied there. Mining IMHO is far too unchallenging and this would go a long way to fixing that.

The only question is, how would the fluids interact? I mean, IRL water goes to the bottom and oil types go to the top, but can the fluid system model that? I remember seeing that crop up a lot with the "liquid sand" suggestion...

[SixOfSpades]

IIRC, Toady has explicitly said that he will NOT be doing oil / natural gas. Which pretty much negates this variation. Sorry, I'd like to see it too.

As for the dynamics of things like an oil/water mix, or quicksand, I think incorporating water's more mundane properties (buoyant items like empty barrels should actually float on it, you need to aggressively irrigate crops grown in a desert) should be a far higher priority.

[Dirst]

IIRC, Toady has explicitly said that he will NOT be doing oil / natural gas. Which pretty much negates this variation. Sorry, I'd like to see it too.

As for the dynamics of things like an oil/water mix, or quicksand, I think incorporating water's more mundane properties (buoyant items like empty barrels should actually float on it, you need to aggressively irrigate crops grown in a desert) should be a far higher priority.

I wasn't aware that oil had been specifically kaboshed, but I figured it would be in the far-off-future because incorporating a fluid is a helluva lot of work.  Every interaction that water has with its environment (damp stone, muddied tiles, etc.) is hard-coded, as is every interaction that magma has... and the interactions they have with each other.

Until there is a vast generalization of "chemistry" in the game, adding a fluid is a huge endeavor.  And that, boys and girls, is why you can't have cisterns of dwarven beer.

[SixOfSpades]

Well, I know he said that gunpower won't exist, I might have gotten that confused with oil. (Though I admit it would be great fun to douse a siege with distilled petroleum before loosing the fire arrows.) But even so, oil & gas reserves are almost always highly pressurized, which is a huge can of worms all by itself, and one that I imagine that Toady wants to perfect with water & magma before introducing any other fluids like that.

[Bumber]

IIRC, Toady has explicitly said that he will NOT be doing oil / natural gas. Which pretty much negates this variation. Sorry, I'd like to see it too.

Oil's planned: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html

Bloat325, ADDITIONAL LIQUID TYPES, (Future): Candidates for new flowing "liquids" include sand, oil, mud, blood of various sorts, slime, farm products like grain and beer for the beer fountain. Only a limited number of materials from plant raws like beer would be able to be supported as a map flow at a given time.

[JohnieRWilkins]

If he makes it that complex he might as well just buy an Aspen Hysis license and start simulating crude for real. With that said the biggest sell of oil is mods. Futuristic mods can add in distillation columns/coal liquefaction and make the spice truly flow.

Well, I know he said that gunpower won't exist, I might have gotten that confused with oil. (Though I admit it would be great fun to douse a siege with distilled petroleum before loosing the fire arrows.) But even so, oil & gas reserves are almost always highly pressurized, which is a huge can of worms all by itself, and one that I imagine that Toady wants to perfect with water & magma before introducing any other fluids like that.

That's not true either. Toady has stated in one of the podcasts that he plans on adding methods of creating explosions - he isn't a particular fan of gunpowder in the game but it's something that's too fun to pass up. He said no to firearms though.

[Dorf and Dumb]

I wasn't really picturing having the fluids interact much, only the specific effects I listed.  I would be willing to put up with having 4/7 water, 3/7 blackdamp, 2/7 firedamp, 1/7 stinkdamp, and (no level needed) afterdamp, and miasma (from the stinkdamp), also maybe some steam and Steam and Mist, all piled up in the same square, and for the air still to be breathable (but you get a syndrome from the afterdamp, and the stinkdamp, the 4/7 water interrupts your task, and if you make a spark the firedamp explodes into flame, but at least you get a happy thought from the waterfall).

[Bumber]

Maybe just use clouds instead of the fluid system for gases?

[Dirst]

Maybe just use clouds instead of the fluid system for gases?

A gas is a fluid in the physics sense, but it is not a "fluid" for game purposes.  A DF cloud will diffuse pretty much the way it wants to with no real flow to it... all gasses are neutrally buoyant in air and there and the "wind" on a map doesn't seem to actually move anything but windmills.  So there's no way to cheat a "liquid" into the game by making a heavier-than-air gas.

But for things that are supposed to be smoky/misty/cloudy gasses, the DF gas system is perfectly fine.

[Bumber]

Maybe just use clouds instead of the fluid system for gases?

A gas is a fluid in the physics sense, but it is not a "fluid" for game purposes.  A DF cloud will diffuse pretty much the way it wants to with no real flow to it... all gasses are neutrally buoyant in air and there and the "wind" on a map doesn't seem to actually move anything but windmills.  So there's no way to cheat a "liquid" into the game by making a heavier-than-air gas.

But for things that are supposed to be smoky/misty/cloudy gasses, the DF gas system is perfectly fine.

I'm fairly certain the new tree fruits are clouds, so I think they're capable of more than might be expected. The primary issue with the fluid system is that we're going to be limited to a few simultaneous types per site for the foreseeable future.

It should be trivial to adjust the inclination of a gas cloud to diffuse upwards or downwards based on the cloud type's density. It should likewise be trivial to add an inclination to move in the direction of wind. (Wind certainly isn't set up to be able to move fluids right now.) If we keep track of the amount of gas, as we would with an item or vermin, we can determine if it is sufficient to suffocate. We can thereby also determine if the volume is considered small enough to diffuse into nothingness. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to pressurize clouds as it is fluids. (Flow-wise. You could very well put an arbitrarily large volume of cloud in a single tile.) Gases would have to spread outwards rather slowly from the tile of origin.

As it stands, the current fluid system seems less suitable to modeling a gas than the cloud system. Leave that to model cohesive liquids such as water, oil, alcohol, and (Armok's) blood.

[Cobbler89]

Let us not forget Greek Fire, a compound that burns underwater and was, IIRC, invented back in the dark ages and therefore way more fitting for DF than gunpowder. (I think it's oil-based, but don't quote me on that one. If it is, it might go well with adding oil...) Imagine your trebuchets lobbing fireballs that simply cannot be put out even if they land in the ocean... and now imagine that you have a menu command for it instead of having to use stupid dwarf tricks just to light artifacts on fire and things like that...

[ETA:] I might be wrong about it burning underwater. It might have been that it floats. Also, note that Greek Fire is a liquid, so when I refer to catapulting it I'm thinking of either coating logs with it or filling jars with it. This may not be the most historically prevalent method of use. In other words, almost everything I've said above is pretty much hearsay and not historical scholarship, so don't take me too seriously on the details!

(Off-topic: when I read the title, I thought this post was going to be about plump helmets and rotting nethercap logs glowing. Alas, I had firedamp mixed up with foxfire... which, actually, would be cool stuff to have once fort mode gets proper lighting mechanics, but I'm sure there's some other thread it belongs in.)