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Author Topic: Explosive body part ‼science‼  (Read 2040 times)

vyznev

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Explosive body part ‼science‼
« on: September 27, 2011, 03:04:07 am »
I was playing around with giving my dwarves a body part that would explode if damaged.  (This was really just groundwork for a science-fiction themed mod I was planning, where I wanted some creatures to be powered by a "reactor core" that could be breached, with predictably destructive results.)

After many, many failed attempts (it seems that HOMEOTHERM overrides MAT_FIXED_TEMP), with occasionally hilarious results (if you give dwarven brain tissue an IGNITE_POINT below their HOMEOTHERM value, then yes, their brains will spontaneously catch fire and burn away), I finally managed to get the result I wanted completely by accident: I made a typo in the tissue layer definition, causing a leaky gaseous layer to be made out of a nonexistent material.  As soon as they got into a fight, the gas leaked out and everyone nearby was covered in searing hot clouds of "dwarven n/a".

With a little more experimentation, it turns out that this happens whenever a gaseous tissue is made out of a material with no boiling point: the tissue is just fine and stable within the body, but once it leaks out the game glitches and seems to assume that the vapor must be extremely hot.  Curiously, though, DFHack shows no actual change in the ambient tile temperature; it's only creatures and objects caught in the blast that get burned.

So, in case anyone else finds this useful, here are the raws:
Spoiler: Explosive body part (click to show/hide)

One minor issue with this kluge is that butchering the body part might sometimes leave a chunk of apparently inert "explosive vapor" (which then condenses into liquid explosive) lying on the ground.  Reducing the relsize of the "bomb" from 100 to 10 seems to have made that less likely, but I'm not sure if it can still happen sometimes.  Adding HEATDAM_POINT:10000 to the material did make it disappear eventually after butchering, but also caused the tissue to take spontaneous damage in vivo.  ("His bomb is burned.")  More experimentation is clearly called for.

Also, I'm still somewhat unhappy with the way this is basically abusing a bug, and there's always the possibility that it might just stop working in a later release if Toady makes some small change to temperature handling.  So if anyone can think of a way to achieve this kind of effect in a less klugey way, please tell me.

(I know that one could design a fast-onset syndrome to mimic the effects of burning, but I haven't really managed to get a really good match for the effects, and in any case a syndrome won't actually set anything on fire.  Also, setting a high FIXED_TEMP for the whole creature works, but apparently makes the creature immune to heat as a side effect.)
« Last Edit: September 27, 2011, 09:10:18 am by vyznev »
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Deon

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Re: Explosive body part ‼science‼
« Reply #1 on: September 27, 2011, 03:08:23 pm »
Yep, that's a great find. Thanks for reminding me, I forgot how did I achieve this effect! I need to make a baneling-like evil monster who has a bladder filled with very toxic and dangerous liquid. This is what I need.
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Necro910

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Re: Explosive body part ‼science‼
« Reply #2 on: September 27, 2011, 03:15:02 pm »
Is there a way to make a creature actually explode apart, other than cave-in dust (By explode, I mean fall apart outwards, like when something is dropped 50 z-levels)? If there is a way, the explosives and the scorching hot gas would be a lethal combo
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Karakzon

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Re: Explosive body part ‼science‼
« Reply #3 on: September 27, 2011, 03:45:33 pm »
could use this to make WARHAMMER trolls.

I know that in a WHRP game i did, something akin to a greater deamon got dissolved into goo because it killed 2 trolls via a crit to the stomach.
Unforchunatly a greater deamon is acid immune so.
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narhiril

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Re: Explosive body part ‼science‼
« Reply #4 on: September 28, 2011, 08:41:21 pm »
If I had to venture a guess, it's possible that setting [BOILING_POINT:NONE] is actually just a shortcut for "take the material's boiling point and set it to something above the highest possible temperature the game will allow." 

This usually means that "the material will never be a gas," but you got around this by making it into a gaseous tissue, where the tissue state and homeotherm tokens override the material properties, resulting in an otherwise impossibly cold ("cold" being a relative term) gaseous version of the material.  When it leaves the body, it's forcing the game to try to set the temperature high enough for the material to continue to exist as a gas, which it can't do, resulting in it dropping below the impossibly high boiling point and condensing. 

It's interesting because this allows you to essentially combine the effects of a gas and a contaminant - since it's technically a gaseous tissue, it will obey the properties of leaking gaseous tissues until it actually leaves the body, where it will become a liquid contaminant.  The effect would probably be similar to a cave-in or undirected dust blast, without the knockback and with a lethally hot contaminant.

I would be curious to learn more about how this contaminant behaves.  When attempting to wash it away with water, does it evaporate the water?
« Last Edit: September 28, 2011, 08:45:17 pm by narhiril »
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Necro910

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Re: Explosive body part ‼science‼
« Reply #5 on: September 29, 2011, 10:48:44 am »
Quote from: narhiril on September 28, 2011, 08:41:21 pm
If I had to venture a guess, it's possible that setting [BOILING_POINT:NONE] is actually just a shortcut for "take the material's boiling point and set it to something above the highest possible temperature the game will allow." 

This usually means that "the material will never be a gas," but you got around this by making it into a gaseous tissue, where the tissue state and homeotherm tokens override the material properties, resulting in an otherwise impossibly cold ("cold" being a relative term) gaseous version of the material.  When it leaves the body, it's forcing the game to try to set the temperature high enough for the material to continue to exist as a gas, which it can't do, resulting in it dropping below the impossibly high boiling point and condensing. 

It's interesting because this allows you to essentially combine the effects of a gas and a contaminant - since it's technically a gaseous tissue, it will obey the properties of leaking gaseous tissues until it actually leaves the body, where it will become a liquid contaminant.  The effect would probably be similar to a cave-in or undirected dust blast, without the knockback and with a lethally hot contaminant.

I would be curious to learn more about how this contaminant behaves.  When attempting to wash it away with water, does it evaporate the water?
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Necro910

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Re: Explosive body part ‼science‼
« Reply #6 on: September 29, 2011, 05:53:53 pm »
Hey ya'll, I just made a fortress destroying creature that uses this material. You can use it to experiment with the effects. It's pretty much a flying cave blob on meth, that bursts with plasma when punctured.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Have Fun  ;D
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