User:Eddie

After about a week of playing (and poring over the Engravings on the walls of this site), I feel I'm ready to make some additions of my own! ..or at least learn how to do that. I'm terribly new to this. Hell, I don't even expect my links to work. But I'll at least strive to keep my information accurate, and my typing form proper.

Now, on to some research about artifacts. *Cracks his knuckles, and heads into the game.*

Current research projects:

Dwarven Waterway Statement: Attempting to redirect a brook, and while there is a lot of data on the site about this already, it's my own little pet project, and something I'm performing for kicks. Objective: To watch the flow speed of water in different size channels, to see if water spreads at a significantly different rate from smaller or larger apertures into large spaces; To see if water without an exit will spill over onto higher Z-levels or not; To see if the brook itself will empty out in the process of spilling into the new area. Status: Main waterways established, Z-level of the brook's water cut off from map exits (excepting the brook itself), series of floodgates established for fortress use (hey, practical applications of research are always best!).

Artifact craft items Statement: Dwarf crafted a "Perfect Aquamarine" and I intend to find out the details about such a thing. Objective: Find out if the perfect gem can be placed in a noble's room using a specific stockpile to elevate the room to "Royal" status. Find out if the gem can be set into an object, such as a throne, and determine the results of such; will the chair become extremely valuable? Will the furniture be trade capable? Will the artifact crafter throw a tantrum? Will placing the furniture in a room elevate the room to "Royal" status?

More on this later as the results come in. If anyone has insight to provide on this, feel free to add it to this page. I won't mind. Honest. --Eddie 14:26, 2 July 2008 (EDT)

I've finally broken the dam for the water test; the water is flowing down the constructed waterway at a surprisingly slow rate, taking roughly 3 seconds to move to another square. The spreading seems to be a continuous rate regardless of how many squares it is filling; a 3x10 room fills at the same speed as a 5x10, for example. It takes longer, yes, but the water "grows" in tiles surrounding the areas already flooded without concern for how many flooded tiles it is connected to.

Also of note, on a whim I looked to the part of the brook beyond my artificial branch, and noticed that those tiles were all but dry--it seems the water spreads out evenly between the two branches, thus reducing the majority of the squares to depth 3 or less. Not surprising really, but worth noting.

What may be interesting, however, is that a pit in the ground does not slow water advancement if there is a way around it. Water will begin to fill the pit in a waterfall (side note: producing mist, which gave my poor thirsty dwarves a happy thought when the observed this), but will also spread around said hole without slowing. In fact, the area surrounding the hole flooded before there was even more than muddy floor at the bottom of this pit. Perhaps this is because the pit was an Up/Down stairway, it somehow stunted the downward flow of water? Hmm. Regardless, said pit still went to 7/7 full shortly after the water began to pour in, so while this is an interesting sidenote (to me anyway), it doesn't have any practical purpose, unless you were hoping to use the edge of a chasm as an exit flow for water. But this requires testing of its own before a conclusion is drawn.

Obstacles blocking water flow leave a "tail" behind them as water advances, in which the water fills much more slowly than surrounding regions. I wish I'd been timing this, but it's a bit late in the game to lament over this fact. In any case, water flows are very realistic so far with water pressing forward around walls, and moving in to fill that gap later.

Looking back along the water flow now, the brook has entirely resumed its 7/7 depth, and the starting stretch of my constructed waterway is also the same depth. It's not even halfway along the (fairly long) stretch I've created, which took a little over 2 years for my dwarves to tunnel out between their various other tasks, and it's soon to hit the areas of more interest to me: starting with the two-floor cavern.

The purpose of this cavern is purely for aesthetics, but it's a little more than halfway along the stretch, and is a two-level cavern that fills from the water z-level, and has open floor in the z-level above. The upper floor opens outside to grassy fields. The water entry on the bottom floor is constricted, being only one tile in width, and is branched at a 90-degree angle to the main flow. I've noticed that my earlier observation of square entry size may have been inaccurate; the water seems to be advancing along the main path faster than it enters the side-chamber, at a very noticeable rate. Perhaps more study into this is needed.

Now the water reaches the natural canyon that my waterway connects to; normally this canyon would lead off the map, but that seemed so boring in the grand scheme of this research that I decided to build a Shist-wall dam to prevent that from happening. While it would have been advantageous to keep that exit for the water to reduce the risk of fort flooding, there's nothing as satisfying as jumping into the deep end (*Cough*) when doing research.

Besides, I saved before I broke the dam, so worst case, I just reload and remove the dam.

Water advancement slows to a near crawl in this wide valley, further disproving my earlier suspicions about water spread; water advances in a more natural way than I predicted. The highwood trees stand against the water flow, and now my curiosity is piqued on the matter of aquatic flora. Well, more accurately, at what water depth will a tree "drown." Water refuses to enter the same tile as the tree, at least so far, as the water is still only depth 1 surrounding. The slow rate of water advancement is giving me a great deal of time to write mundane details, it seems.

Also, it seems the water is spreading through the canyon at a much faster rate than the water fills the side chamber. Some day this information may be useful to someone! ...probably not though. But I digress.

Now the water flows through the shist fortification that supports the bridge to the aboveground entrance to the fort. The waterway serves as both water supply and moat to my dwarves, or it will if everything goes according to plan.

Hmn. My legendary gemcutter seems to have had no qualms about crossing the flowing water, having walked down the slope of the eastern wall, across the filling canyon, and up to the west. The water was extremely shallow, but it was still disconcerting to see such a large investment tread water like that.

The water is approaching the dam, so I feel I should elaborate on it while I wait. dam is built at a 90-degree angle from two wall sections; the eastern wall is two floors high, and the southern is one floor. The eastern wall stretches from valley wall to valley wall, and surpasses the valley walls in height (the natural valley being only one level deep). The southern wall is only one level high, but it only blocks off a small bulb of the valley, which I consider to be my spillway. The 'bulb' is actually two z-levels high, unlike the eastern wall, and I dug out a trench in the second level of that cliff side that leads past the dam and off the map. In all honesty, I'd forgotten that the section there was carved out; this ruins part of the fun of the experiment, but should make little difference, if any.

From here on, I'm going to resume actually playing the game; the water is just going to continue in to the floodgates of my fortress without interruption, and I hear the war-drums of goblins in the distance. Once the water has had a chance to fill in the valley more, I will resume my writings.