Dwarf Fortress > DF Suggestions

Lighting and oxygen, or architectural freedom vs botanical realism

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Starver:

--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 23, 2018, 01:59:48 am ---Ah, but (AFAIK), the airflow doesn't need to actually divert into the room, merely flowing past it should be enough, and diffusion will do the rest. I say this because I am still alive: Although I freely admit that I do not live in an underground fortress or cavern, I do keep my bedroom windows and heater vent closed pretty much ALL the time, meaning that the only openings for oxygen to diffuse into the room are the cracks around my door. And yet I keep waking up every morning. The house itself is kept sealed up pretty tightly as well, especially during the colder half of the year. So when I keep believing that a small vent in stationary air should be adequate, I'm speaking from experience, not stubbornness.
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Sealed enough to currently guarantee against flooding? Or ‼Flooding‼?

Apart from relative intentions and abilities to create aboveground structures imperveous to all fluid flow, we know it's something that needs to be worked against in extensive belowground excavations in realworld applications.

Flowing past a singular aperture isn't going to work well with just diffusion. Several apertures (like insect spiracles) don't work well at room-size scales (assuming we can leave the breathing in the room to the inhabitants, if we can ensure the air is refreshed enough). You either need lung-like drawing in and out (movable partitions at the opposite wall, or maybe between two different rooms for double action, themselves impermeable diaphrams) or gill-like flow (fed through, although not strictly like gills, where you send oxygen-enriched/low-CO2 air in opposition to the CO2-enriched/oxygen-depleted bloodstream, which is clever but not easily applicable here).

Seriously, get small amounts of nice fresh air pumped into the rear of rooms, because the alternatives are going to be much more mechanically involved and/or breezy to implement effectively to aerate those same backs of rooms, and it'd be like living in a wind-tunnel elsewhere, even if it's possible to do.


(I keep my house sealed up too. Modern double-glazing, and no forced AirCon because it's Britain. But I don't live in a sealed tank by any means. There's at least a noticeable flow of air through my roofing (at times like these opening the loft hatch reveals significant cool air flowing down from under the rafters, if I'm below, and warm air flowing up from the living areas, if I'm above), which combines with the route allowed for by chimney-breast etc setting up circulation systems sufficient to cycle air around.)

You'd also probably die (as a typical human) of excess CO2 before you would of insufficient O2. Assuming that's the only pair of gases you have to worry about.

Bumber:

--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 23, 2018, 01:59:48 am ---Although I freely admit that I do not live in an underground fortress or cavern, I do keep my bedroom windows and heater vent closed pretty much ALL the time, meaning that the only openings for oxygen to diffuse into the room are the cracks around my door. And yet I keep waking up every morning. The house itself is kept sealed up pretty tightly as well, especially during the colder half of the year. So when I keep believing that a small vent in stationary air should be adequate, I'm speaking from experience, not stubbornness.
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But how many people do you live with? Back in the early days of New York, there were huge problems ventilating apartment buildings. (To be clear: They had open windows to an "outside" area, but they're encircled by the O-shaped building so air can only get in from above.) There might've been oxygen, but the air quality was terrible. Unfortunately, dwarves deeper in the fort don't even have that luxury. Take that nasty air and send it down to even more people. You really must have sufficient air flow proportional to the number of residents.


--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 23, 2018, 01:59:48 am ---
--- Quote from: Bumber on June 21, 2018, 07:11:24 am ---
--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 20, 2018, 06:55:36 pm ---To me, it seems analogous to building a fallout shelter in your basement: Yeah, it might come in useful someday, but if your city does get nuked, chances are you're fuckin' dead, fallout shelter or not.
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Yeah, why bother packing a parachute?
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Are you equating the combined odds of mechanical failure / pilot error in a small plane with the odds of a nuclear strike? I guess I shouldn't mark you down as an optimist, then.  ;D  Although you do have a point in the "safety belt" factor of draught-passable doors, I have no argument for why it shouldn't be an option.

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That depends. Are you equating the odds of flooding / deadly vapors inside a dwarf fortress with the odds of a nuclear strike? I notice that part of your quote is conveniently absent in your reply. ;)

SixOfSpades:

--- Quote from: Starver on June 23, 2018, 06:28:35 am ---Sealed enough to currently guarantee against flooding? Or ?Flooding??
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Well, let's examine the situation, with 3 variations. (I'm ignoring factors like being trapped long enough to die of thirst.)
1) The room has the fanciest of doors (watertight and magma-safe, with a draught vent that can be opened & closed), as well as ventilation provided through a secure backchannel isolated from the flooding. If the vent is closed, this will indisputably save the dwarf's life. If it's open, some magma might spill over the vent while the dwarf is asleep--quite possibly killing him with fire or smoke--but if it's only water, it'll just get him wet & wake him up, at which point he can just close the vent & wait for rescue, unless he'd prefer to open the door & swim towards an exit.
2) The room has the same fancy door, with no other ventilation. It has the same risks of magma / water spilling through the vent as before, except now there is no such thing as long-term safety, giving him the choice of A: Open the door and swim for it, or B: Shut the vent, wait until the air still in the room has been depleted of oxygen, and then swim for it. (Option A is likely better, as right now there's still a little air in the hallway--later, there might not be.)
3) The room has a door that is not watertight or magma-safe, and the room has no other ventilation. If the hall is flooding with magma, the dwarf is flat-out dead, no question. If it's water, the rising water level in the room will wake the dwarf up, giving him no choice but to open the door & swim for dear life.

So, Variation 1 is the only one that can (not necessarily will) save the dwarf from magma, and also the only one that allows the "sit and wait" option. Variations 2 & 3 are virtually identical, whether the flooding is of water or magma. So, all in all, it boils down to which is easier, and/or safer, to set up?
A) An entirely separate ventilation system connecting all occupied rooms in the fort with the outside, or
B) A water or magma project that doesn't overflow into the dormitory areas.
Personally, I'd go with B. But if you prefer A, that's fine too.



--- Quote from: Bumber on June 23, 2018, 11:06:52 am ---Back in the early days of New York, there were huge problems ventilating apartment buildings.
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That link is more about residents complaining about garbage than an actual lack of adequate ventilation. Better research material can be had at the links off of this wiki page, as well as others, I'm sure.


--- Quote ---Unfortunately, dwarves deeper in the fort don't even have that luxury. Take that nasty air and send it down to even more people. You really must have sufficient air flow proportional to the number of residents.
--- End quote ---
Oh yes, I'm in agreement there. A few dwarves a short distance from fresh air can usually get along on diffusion alone; but anything more than that (for any length of time, at least) should require some form of directed air flow.
(Oh. Great. Another thing I have to worry about in the first year. Yaaaaay.)


--- Quote ---Are you equating the odds of flooding / deadly vapors inside a dwarf fortress with the odds of a nuclear strike?
--- End quote ---
In one of MY forts? Yes, I am. In a fort in general . . . ah, no, unfortunately.

Starver:
I don't even think you're discussing what I'm discussing, any more.

It is a current fact that dwarven construction is impermeable where not by design (or jamming open) explicitly non-blocking. You can decide to have 'vents' , right now, by fortification carving/construction and grate-placement (or, for doors, get something dropped in it but that's even more 'venty' than a vent). If you want fanlights, airholes or extractor fans or self-sealing stembolts conduits between voids that shut in the event of liquid flooding then fair enough. Get someone to code it (probably someone whose name is an anagram of Oatydone) to add to your need for realism.

But then realise that it's not enough to just have "open to ventilation" pathing all the way to the surface to establish if a place has enough fresh air. It'd be easier computationally (just put extra burden on the current pathing check... if a dorf can establish a path through to <random surface/outside tile> through flyable+vent_passing squares, then it resets the asphyxiation counter back to nil, otherwise up the distress value and reassess for 'injury' from that value) but it would mock the apparent realism being added.

A better alternative might be to use fluid-level calculations (freed from purely horizontal flowing) where the 'sploshing' algorithm shaves and moves higher levels of breathability and/or unbreathability and/or explodability/etc onto adjacent (including vertically adjacent) tiles, perhaps adding local slosh-cycles to sporadically follow movements of beings if you want traffic to stir things up, with each dorf occasionally 'drinking' a level of breathable/'filling' a level of unbreathable (with vice-versa for plants suited to the conditions?), and any other gas-fluidic effects also applied as far as seeps being concerned. But it'd need to be tuned to be playable (not virtually insta-death once seven 'breaths' were taken) while still a challenge (realism demands that diffusion is not enough for the kind of fort I currently dig). Computationally expensive (imagine a whole-fort flood constantly going on, even if you 'tick' it only every hundred or so base tick-cycles, for both sloshing and breathing) and a one-entrance dorm (even with multiple vents onto the same group of several adjacent tiles) could easily suck the oxygen out of the air and thus the life out of the sleepers if it has an affect anywhere.



So, back to 'realism', whether done by sloshing or pressure-related movements(/dependencies) of air, also borrowed from the liquid algorithms, to simulate air-flow tracks (trace up-stream to see what has done what to the air-quality, each time you test), I contend that encouraging flow in the back of a room and out of the front (or vice-versa, but with other problems in that case) is the hypothetical better solution than the hypothetical diffusion-venting method for the hypothetically new ventilation system that is hypothetically more realistic.


And, while we're at it lets ensure that our habitual belowground plants are radiotrophic (or something similar) and allow them to act as dark-enabled 'photo'synthesisers to freshen up air. Maybe all that is needed is sufficient built-pots of collected sand/clay(/soil) growing a stand of dimple-cups in the corner of a vulnerable room, howevermuch ventilated or not. Perhaps requiring some ground granite (or, for extra oomph, pitchblende) to work properly.

This would explain some of the belowground respiratory bioligies possible, I imagine. Both figuratively and once gas-content became an actual calcuable issue.

GoblinCookie:

--- Quote from: SixOfSpades on June 23, 2018, 01:59:48 am ---Very true, but then again this is one of those needs that can be subjective. If the need for oxygen can be met simply by building your fort close to, and with good ventilation to, the surface world or a lush cavern, then your dwarves will most likely never feel the need for fans, bellows, or even chimneys. But if the fort has to be dug deep (say, the upper layers are all sand, clearly unsuited for structural purposes), then eventually some creative soul will get sick of being short of breath all the time, & try to do something about it.

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Is that not really a distinction between hillocks and fortresses?

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