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Author Topic: Butcher corpses of tame creatures?  (Read 750 times)

Thundercraft

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Butcher corpses of tame creatures?
« on: October 12, 2017, 07:37:54 am »

May we please have some way to Butcher or otherwise utilize the remains of tame creatures that have died? It seems such a waste that we can't butcher the remains of our own livestock merely because they died before we could slaughter them ourselves. Our fort gets raided or attacked, killing some of our livestock, and we have to leave them to rot because... reasons?

This does not make sense to me and it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Especially in medieval times and especially when a village is isolated from civilization by great distances, it would be absurd to let food go to waste. It's too important.

Granted, if a lot of livestock was killed, it may spoil before it could be processed and either consumed or preserved (such as with salt or saltpeter). But you know that they would try to make use of it. If nothing else, the bones and hide would remain on spoiling remains. The fat, too, could probably be salvaged for making lye, even if it was going rancid.

Was this separation of Butchering and Slaughtering done to prevent players from arranging an "accident" for a dorf's pets (like how many forts had an overabundance of cats) in order to allow them to be Butchered for something usable? That's the only reason which I can think of.
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Butcher corpses of tame creatures?
« Reply #1 on: October 12, 2017, 09:29:42 am »

Also its a known and reported bug on the radar, without meaning to put your suggestion down, im not sure it actually needs so much as a suggestion.

Is there anything else you'd like to add for Toady to consider suggestionwise? This seems more like a bug report complaint.
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Thundercraft

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Re: Butcher corpses of tame creatures?
« Reply #2 on: October 12, 2017, 10:14:19 am »

Also its a known and reported bug on the radar, without meaning to put your suggestion down, im not sure it actually needs so much as a suggestion.

0001275: Dwarves refuse to butcher tame animals unless they're directly slaughtered

Check the most recent comment near the bottom of the page. You wrote:
Quote from: FantasticDorf
This behavior is caused by dead_dwarf=true which assigns the body & the objects (products if exploitatively butchered as extension of body) to be interred into a burial receptacle or remembered via a inscribed slab when it naturally dies/dies in combat, slaughtering doesn't activate dead_dwarf and allows meat industries to work

The corpses will be sorted into the graveyard (now named the corpses stockpile, not refuse/corpses) along with the intentional entity civil members to stop racial self-cannibalism & prepare the bodies (and unintentional sentients via 0009171 post 42.01) the graveyard does not outsource anything because it would interfere with retrieving body parts for burial, as soon as its queued up for the stockpile (products too) it is unusable.

(Information gathered from research conducted on this DF forum thread - http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=161408.msg7341491#msg7341491 [^] )

It's not really a bug, more a unsavory bug-fix to 0000790 [Pet corpses never get buried] that has been misinterpreted. But due to public demand, making a suggestion thread on the forums may help convince toady to offer more control over what happens.
(Emphasis added is my own...)

Toady does not seem to consider this issue a bug. As you said, it's more of an unsavory workaround to another issue. And it may help to talk about it in Suggestions in order to convince him that this is actually a thing that needs to be addressed.

I don't see how this should be difficult to resolve. Why can't the Butcher job's check for whether the target was tame or trained be skipped over (removed)? If the problem is that it checks for whether dead_dwarf=true, then can't the code be changed to ignore this and flip this flag back to false, perhaps canceling any burial jobs associated with it? The behavior of automatically assigning tame animals a burial (dead_dwarf=true) would not have to be changed, would it, as long as we have some sort of butcher command to override this?
« Last Edit: October 12, 2017, 10:40:14 am by Thundercraft »
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Butcher corpses of tame creatures?
« Reply #3 on: October 12, 2017, 03:58:32 pm »

Fantasticdorf thinking that this isn't a bug has absolutely nothing to do with whether Toady thinks it's one or not.

It's a reported bug on the tracker. No need to suggest 'fix this bug' here unless you're adding an actual suggestion in how to do so or how it could be linked to other mechanics, etc.
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FantasticDorf

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Re: Butcher corpses of tame creatures?
« Reply #4 on: October 12, 2017, 06:41:14 pm »

There are other moderators who handle bug/issue reports, and relay that information back to Toady also, its already acknowledged but complaining does not appear to be a constructive use of this thread as opposed to pointing out ways to navigate around it, and would probably be better suited to general discussions or D'Fortress discussions.

I mean i have personally griped about bugs before (like aquatic creatures airdrowning being handled) but i attach relevant ideas where i can (aquarium items, reworked water mechanics etc) in order to navigate around it outside of hard code.
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