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[Jong]

Update: I've mined out and smoothed all the spaces for the computer. I've also completed 1200+ orthoclase mechanisms for linked gears, 600+ marble blocks to make white screw pumps and the carpenter has nearly finished the work order for the 672 corkscrews and pipe sections after working solidly on it for 3 years. I've still got 700+ logs left, which is less than what I need, but the forest should restock with time.

Progress is slow in dwarf time, as I have only 22 adult dwarves. At least FPS is maintained in the 60-80 range, so real life speed is moderate. Constructing screw pumps is much slower than I am used to because it is a 3 component building. Its nearly as annoying as building water wheels (water wheels have a tendency to collapse suddenly when you are building lots of them).

My strategy to minimize the pain of the linking phase of construction is to build all inactive components first, such as screw pumps, pressure plates, axles and unlinked gears. I will then build and link the active gears one set at a time. This should ensure that the gears I want to link will be at the end of the building list. I also plan to build all the active gears out of orthoclase so I can easily see which gear is being linked. I have a small stock pile of cobaltite mechanisms for use in the adder as it is the most complex gear assembly.

Was it necessary to build a scale Space Needle fort this project?

It was already there!

[Wh1tefang12]

If you complete this we will have to make sure you get some custom title such as Inventor of the DF Computer.

[archivis]

Perhaps one day, dwarves will discover integrated circuits, made by using the quantum-stackable nature of dwarf space to build all of the nescessary mechanisms into a single block dump zone - with leads to the adjacent 10 blocks for I/O!

But very spiffy stuff, I hope you manage to get it completed!  Good luck!

[neek]

Was it necessary to build a scale Space Needle fort this project?

It was already there!

I'm actually quite impressed with the fort design thus far. It's... magnificent. The sprinkler design for the tower cap farm is also ingenious. This computer will also be awesome. I'm curious, because I didn't read it (or missed it), but how do you intend on handling output of processes?

[Scruga]

you need to divide by zero

[seanose]

I know people have joked about the dwarf computer playing another dwarf fortress game, and someone (the original poster?) responded by saying that it would be hard since it had something like 8 bytes of memory.

Would it be possible for the dwarf computer to, say, *unpause* another dwarf fortress?  Or to assign tasks via the manager? Or some other simple interface, where input is passed from the internal-nested-DF-game to the dorfputer, stored in memory, some logic test or somesuch is passed, and the dorfputer sends a simple signal back to the internal-nested-DF-game? 

Maybe using whatever magical interface that Dwarf Therapist et al use.

One could probably (if it would ever work at all) get such a metaputer playing without having a such a "real" computer like this playing the outer role--just a typical logical gate or something.  But with this level of real computer in the outer role, and with good input-output interaction to the inner fortress, I think it might be surprising how much of DF it could play...

[Schilcote]

If it has an accurate clock function, you could set it up to run an automatic sustainable tower-cap farm. I can't really think of anything else.

What I would like to have would be a fully automatic management system, switching pumps on and off, enabling and disabling access to brewries and food stockpiles, and coordinating some form of fortress defense against invaders and flooding.

[Shinziril]

See, the sad thing is that this massive computer is actually less effective for many of the "useful" things like automated door-opening, etc, than a single-purpose hardwired system (the equivalent of "embedded computing" in the real world, I guess).  An automated fortress would be better off working up a clock and figuring out interesting things to hook it up to (such as, say, a device that floods the trade depot with magma at specified intervals). 

Of course, such a clock system would have its own problems (like the access doors to the stockpile closing before all the dwarves have left, trapping them in there until they die).  It's your call as to whether you want to figure out a way to prevent this, or deliberately leave it in to mess with your dwarves. (I'm sorry, Dave Urist, but I can't do that . . .)

[seanose]

Schilcote, by a timed tower farm, are you thinking along these lines?  The inner fortress exports the season (by inner-fortress clock, I suppose, or just by the Z screen) to the outer fortress.  The outer fortress, when the clock flag is recognized as properly triggered, say once every two years or however long it takes shrubs to grow into trees (caps), sends a signal back to the inner fortress to designate an area for tree-cutting.  (If the game required additional muddying because tiles dry out (I don't think they do), the outer fortress could use the timer signal to open floodgates, etc.)

This is really incredibly clunky and complicated, of course.  (Yay!)  There's different levels of clunkiness: (i) you manually do all this inside a single fortress just by spotting that it's time to cut again (very easy and natural); (ii) you set up a clock etc. inside a single fortress timed to open a floodgate or somesuch; (iii) you run this process through an external dorfputer fortress, which is passed signals from the inner fortress, and basically behaves more like the first option, (i) above, such that the external fortress "recognizes" when it's time to do things, and, say designates an area for cutting.

The difference is that, in some meager sense, option (iii) is like artificial intelligence, trying to figure out how to run a game (a game which is separate from itself), whereas (ii) is "just" a game, where you stay in context, and imagine dwarves making machines to do things for them.  In option (ii), the dwarves build a computer they use themselves; in option (iii), the dwarves build a computer which controls a game that you can imagine them looking at and laughing from outside.  ("Mini-dwarves!")

I find this pretty interesting!

[Sysice]

It... how... I... but... what...

There are no words.

Except that you win dwarf fortress if you build this. Yes.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

"This is is a sand box"
"This is a sand castle"
"This is a sand computer"


Damn kids.. and their.. smart.. thinking stuff..

[Naresomez]

It... how... I... but... what...

There are no words.

Except that you win dwarf fortress if you build this. Yes.

This project will only lead to sadness...
I believe he will end up tantruming, sending his family into a tantrum spiral, effecting his nieghborhood, then community, then state/province, then his country, then the world.

[TheDancinZerg]

Destined to violence due to the lack of raw glass and turtle shells.

[Schilcote]

Schilcote,
(BLABLALBALABLBALABL)
I find this pretty interesting!

The only thing we can't (theoretically) do yet with dwarven computer systems is make dwarves do things (and even that's can be done, but only on a level of allowing/disallowing access to a workshop that has tasks queued up on repeat). What I think we should have are "Dwarven PA systems", or very large bells. We'd be able to link the bell up to a macro of sorts, I.E. when Schist bell rings, your tower-cap farm is designated for chopping, when Olivine bell rings, your wrestling squads go on duty and guard the entrances, when Obsidian bell rings, your automatic obsidian farm is designated for mining, and when Microcline bell rings, the magma pipe is designated for mining and the doors to the food and booze stockpiles slam shut. You'd ring the bell the same way as any other mechanical device (with a mechanical trigger).

Also, we should probably have the option to link gear assemblies (or something like them) to mechanical devices, so we don't have to open a floodgate to let water run over a pressure plate, then close that floodgate and then open another one to let the water out, then close that floodgate and wait for whatever your machine wants done to finish, then repeat the process. It'd be simpler to design.

[Jong]

I'm actually quite impressed with the fort design thus far. It's... magnificent. The sprinkler design for the tower cap farm is also ingenious. This computer will also be awesome. I'm curious, because I didn't read it (or missed it), but how do you intend on handling output of processes?

Well theoretically I could hook up the output of say, the accumulator, and link it to a row of powered gears and you could see the output there. But I decided not to bother with that at this point and troubleshoot the computer by staring at spinning pumps

If I was really ambitious I could install a 7 segment display, but one megaproject at a time!

On the subject of using DF to play DF, I think that while it may be possible, you can save yourself a lot of pain and lag by just getting the external program to do it directly.

I doubt that a dwarven computer could perform complex tasks as some of you are envisioning. We are all probably too accustomed to our magic black boxes that a capable of such a wide array of things. The sad truth is that a modern computer is simply an automatic calculator of stunning speed and power. A dwarven computer is not fast, and trying to make it more powerful will simply make it even more laggy. I agree with Shinziril that building a dedicated system is better for doing something actually useful. I believe early computers took a similar approach..

Update: I have completed the first stage of construction. All non-linked components are in place. That was the easy part

Now I need to put in the linked gears. Its going to be a long hard slog, step by step, testing all the way, and backing up in case something goes horribly wrong 

I have also tested my adder and it appears to be fully functional.

The Memory Banks