User talk:Quietust

Instructions for a Pleasant Talk Experience

In the interest of keeping discussions in one place:

If I posted a note on your talk page with a question or a comment, please post your response on your talk page. It's easier to keep track of a discussion when it's all in the same place.
If you wish to post a comment on my talk page, add it to the top of the Comments section and begin it with a level 3 header (i.e. "===Subject===", 3 equals signs). As with above, I will keep my replies here on this page.
If you would like QuietBot to perform a bunch of predictable edits, add a comment to the top of the Bot Requests section and begin it with a level 3 header. As with normal comments, replies will also be posted solely on my talk page.

Comments

Please place new comments at the top of this section. If you are replying to a message I placed on your user talk page, please place the reply on your talk page and place your signature in the "Reply Notification" section above. To add a comment, simply edit this section and add a new subsection (with three equals signs around the title).

Template:23a Metal

I was just curious about this new template. Is there a particular reason that a new template was necessary? I had thought that the regular Template:Metal was fully version-independent, but I could be wrong. I'm just interested in helping make templates as reusable as possible. --Soy^(T-C) 15:29, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Metals in 0.23.130.23a don't necessarily use the same foreground color for bars and for background-colored furniture - for example, copper bars are brown and produce brown furniture, but copper barrels are red with a brown background, while bronze is yellow and a bronze barrel is yellow with a brown background. I was also trying to replicate the original infobox template used on the old wiki, since it depicted the source materials as ores rather than metal bars (and in the 2D version, you could only make alloys from ores, never bars). There's also the fact that the newer templates unconditionally include Construction as an option, and constructions did not exist back in 23a. The {{23a Ore}} template was made for a similar reason - the current one doesn't handle the unmined tile and the mined stone being different colors (even in current versions, only a few stones actually behave that way, and none of them are ores), and there was no such thing as an economic stone back then (so it was completely impossible to use ores for masonry or stonecrafting). --Quietust 15:50, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I guess it just irritates me on some fundamental level that all of the templates can't be re-used across all of the version namespaces, but it does not seem like it would be worth the time investment in this case to make the changes. It must be the latent programmer coming out in me. At least it seems like the majority of the templates will work OK between the new version and 40d. One tiny suggention I would make though, you may want to add {{Category|Metals}} and {{Category|Ore}} respectively to those two templates, so the pages get filed appropriately. :) --Soy^(T-C) 18:14, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

It's one thing to have forward compatibility, but given the huge amount of changes between the 2D and 3D versions it's not surprising that some of the current templates don't work with the old stuff. Also, by "those two templates", should I assume that you meant {{Metal}} and {{Ore}} as well as {{23a Metal}} and {{23a Ore}}? --Quietust 18:24, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

speciality

is british english, specialty american english. IIRC, both can be used on the wiki unless it's explicitly a game term. ;)

Non-Newtonian Fluids

To further expound on my edit comments:

For a fluid to be non-Newtonian, one of three things must be true:

1. The shear stress of the fluid is non-linear when graphed against shear rate. (i.e. the fluid gets thicker/thinner depending on how quickly force is applied)
OR
2. The shear stress of the fluid is non-linear when graphed against time at a constant shear rate. (i.e. the fluid gets thicker/thinner depending on how long a constant force is applied)
OR
3. The fluid has non-zero shear stress when the shear rate is zero. (i.e. you have to exert force on the liquid to get it to start flowing, though it may continue flowing normally thereafter)

Magma definitely qualifies, because it's technically a suspension (i.e. a mixture of solids and liquid), rather than a pure liquid. And suspensions are always non-Newtonian.

All the best.

Gamedata

How would you feel about a version of template:gamedata that pulled information from raw files? VengefulDonut 03:58, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Would certainly be interesting, though I can't help but be concerned that this might put a lot of additional load on the wiki. Then again, it seems to be handling the stuff for stones just fine. --Quietust 17:56, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Apparently it's negligible. I was worried about that possibility too but have been reassured otherwise. Supporting previous versions shouldn't be difficult from the place we're at now. It may even just be a matter of passing the right things to the templates. VengefulDonut 02:44, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Namespace Searches

It was set to work properly for new users about a month ago; however, user settings take precedence over system level settings. You might want to check them; if you think it's a problem, though, I can go through and modify everyone's settings globally with a script (but this overwrites all search settings) --Briess 21:56, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, forgot about that. They were indeed set to exclude those namespaces, but no longer. --Quietust 21:58, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Alluvial is not soil

Blaugh, my bad. Read it elsewhere a while back and assumed it was accurate. --Retro 18:39, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Slade / Demonic fortresses

A note on your removal of the 'digging into demonic fortress from underneath' bit - going from this quote on the Slade page ("Slade walls cannot be dug into. However, slade floors can.") it's presumably possible to do this by digging a down-stair into the bottom floor of the fortress. As I haven't found one myself nor did I add the original info I can't confirm, but it made sense to me when I first read it. --Retro 14:05, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

However, the bottom floor of the demonic fortress tends to have solid slade walls beneath it, so there'd be nothing to dig into. It's possible that it could have empty space underneath it, given sufficient randomness, though the fact that it's possible to channel through slade floors (but NOT through the walls underneath them) is probably a bug in and of itself. --Quietust 14:36, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Good stuff, didn't know about the full walls underneath. Glad I ran it by you before just trying to pop it back in or something. --Retro 18:38, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Code stuff

Not necessarily. I haven't really had a chance to look at the code yet (I've been busy all week until now), so I'm going to take a look and see how and if we should integrate that into our codebase. My primary concern is ease of continuing upgrades for mediawiki, but if it's simple enough, it shouldn't be a problem. --Briess 18:09, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Fun -> #REDIRECT cv:Fun

Seems this is going back and forth - see Talk:Fun--Albedo 22:39, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough - I'll leave it alone. --Quietust 02:30, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Bot Programming

What language is your bot using? Because if it's a language I know (which it probably is, because I know a lot of languages) I could definitely help you write code for changing all the links properly. Even though it might be more short term work, I think it's a better overall outcome than having modded files. Modded files make upgrading the software harder, etc... aside from the issue I mentioned about people assuming the links work one way from prior experience. Also, I just stole Wikipedia's Talkback template, Template:talkback something I think you'll like. Emi 18:29, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Just noticed the links up top, and thus why a bot to redo all the links might be tricky. I'll just go ahead and write a python bot to do it. Emi 18:32, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Magma temp

Sorry, it was from a forum post. I realise my mistake now, but I'm too embarrassed to undo it. Could you please fix it? --Eagle0600 03:52, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Tilesets

Oops. Sorry about that. I think I accidentally edited an old revision. VengefulDonut 18:50, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Workshop Pictures

Heh, I was hoping I could bait you into creating the rest of the picture templates. :) Sorry about the +'s-- I forgot I had built those on smoothed tiles. --HebaruSan 04:49, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

chevron/caret

 chevron is << or >>; ^ is a caret

This is minor, but wanted to bounce it off you. A "caret" is, specifically and solely, an editor's mark - it refers to a specific shorthand usage (inserting an edit) and not a shape, and I doubt if the majority of readers would be at all familiar with that term anyway. A "chevron" is either "^" or "v" - a sergeant's stripes are "chevrons". (Not sure where you get your horizontal form from.) I think "chevron" is a more generally recognizable, and thus more useful term, neh?--Albedo 22:21, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm just going by Wikipedia's definitions of caret and chevron. In particular, chevrons most often point down rather than up. --Quietust 22:42, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I would never use a Wiki as an authoritative dictionary, unless I wanted something more vernacular/modern, and then I'd go to urban dictionary.com. It's a function of that (amateur) editor that emphasizes one definition (or orientation) over another. Soldiers' stripes are "chevrons", and they can point up or down (country/era dependent), and the majority of heraldic uses are "up".
merriam-webster online dictinary: "chevron"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevron_%28insignia%29
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/caret (read again - "caret" is context specific. Also, how many DF uses would know the technical ASCII name?)
I'm going to change that one word back.--Albedo 01:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Decorations

Care to explain how I made this?

No, I don't use any mods. --LaVacaMorada 13:43, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I guess I stand corrected, then. It would seem that bone and shell decorations can go on anything. --Quietust 14:48, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Defense Design

Thank you for cleaning up the defense design diagrams. They're so much more readable now! Especially the ballista battery. --HebaruSan 00:55, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Formatting

Thanks for the help with the page format. I couldn't get that link to display properly with one set of brackets because of the | I was using between the link and name, thanks to you I don't have to choose between one unmatched bracket or an undesired pair now.--The Architect 16:59, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

booze hauling

Hm, is anon editing working? Anyway, I can't log in at work. Need to confirm booze hauling behavior, as I don't think it's automatic. Drinking may be a bit strange. One time I dumped a barrel right as a dwarf was running over to it to take a drink. The dumper beat him to it, and hauled the barrel off to the garbage dump. Urist McThirsty followed him all the way to the dump and chugged out of the barrel as soon as it was dropped (even though the barrel was auto-forbidden), then went on his merry way, leaving the barrel there. It's possible the forbidden status canceled an auto-haul. It's also possible that hauling is assigned to the nearest idle dwarf, and a guy that just finished drinking is momentarily "idle" and also closest. They do tend to flash "idle" for a moment before and after breaks, eating, and drinking. -24.154.179.50 14:58, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

The bit about booze being automatically hauled to a stockpile was based on the observation of soldiers, guards, and nobles carrying a booze barrel while performing the job "Store Item in Stockpile", something they would normally never do. --Quietust 15:05, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

(that was me) Ah, works for me then. -Arrkhal 20:19, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

statues

Why would it only be more efficient with copper, silver, gold, platinum, and aluminum ? --Birthright 19:54, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Most of the other metal are alloy I presume, so impossible to use the raw stone. --Karl 20:20, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

No, that would be "possible", not "more efficient". Q is thinking that it's because the value is the same, for both ore/alloy and metal. He's not exactly right, because copper can be made into several alloys that would improve it, and other metal ores rely on becoming alloys - if you're not going to make nickel silver, then garnierite falls into that category too. But for the other 4, there is no possible value advantage to smelting into bars first, and then using three bars to make statues that are worth exactly the same as the one from 1 ore. (Unless your Blacksmith is considerably more skilled than your Mason, which is a stretch to begin with.) Probably should change that to something a bit less absolute.--Albedo 21:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I meant - there's no point in ever making a statue out of copper/silver/gold/platinum/aluminum bars when you can make it out of the native stone instead (which, in those cases, has the same value). Most metal ores are worth less than the metals themselves, though for the really cheap ones (like copper, nickel, tin, lead, and zinc) you'd be better off making the statue out of flux. --Quietust 22:08, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

salt water

the above paragraph already explains how to verify whether or not it is drinkable)

Yes, but it doesn't emphasize the need to not assume you did it correctly. That line was not a redundant "how to", but "make sure you do". The whole issue of a well that was non-drinkable (which worries me as well, re your recent edit) was that the player did not pay close attention.--Albedo 22:03, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

I've readded a statement to basically advise double-checking, though my own testing revealed that a built well works fine for thirsty dwarves, whether from a murky pool or right at the shore itself. It's possible that it's the Z-level of the well that determines whether or not it works - placing a well in an underground cistern might not work as well as one placed on the surface... --Quietust 23:03, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Alluvial vs soil

Good find. VengefulDonut 01:36, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

crop table

I didn't redesign the table. I brought back a previous design since the recent one was too obscure. VengefulDonut 12:04, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

no soap?

Soap needs an alchemist's lab, which needs 3 glass flasks - Are those ever available from caravans? I thought "No, so no sand = no flasks = no lab = no soap" - no? Never spec needed glass flasks from caravans, so dunno.--Albedo 21:51, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

It's fairly well known that you cannot request glass or sand from caravans, so yep - no sand == no soap. --Quietust 22:35, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Aluminum

Holy crap! That aluminum=platinum is huge! I had been playing all this time just assuming that aluminum was cheap (since it is in the real world.) Is there any way we can make this bigger? Noobs need to know about this. --3lB33 13:39, 24 August 2009

Purple Materials

Wonderful, *now* I found out there's a second purple stone after having already made a giant rose gold tomb... I guess I should of looked closer first, man was that a waste of gold. Shardok 01:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

To be fair, you can usually find gold nuggets in much larger quantities than bismuthinite (since the latter only occurs in small clusters)... --Quietust 04:03, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, but I had such better uses for it, like making coins. Yes, we definitely needed more coins. But I know I had found far more bismuthinite on that map than I had gold, then again, I was turning the bismuthinite into bismuth bronze, so I wasn't going to give that up any time soon either. Honestly I should of just not made a giant purple tomb. Shardok 04:43, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Actual character

Quietust (Talk | contribs) (actual character)

Actually, there is no single "actual character" for a bottomless pit - there are two "default" sets of icons for vanilla DF, the ascii and the included tile set. The character I get is like a very thick capital O, but a little boxy. It's certainly not a "o". --Albedo 21:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Bot Requests

If you would like to have a large number of page edits performed by QuietBot, then add a note here.

Fixing Cv: alias redirects

How easy with your bot is it to make sure all mainspace pages that redirect to a cv: page redirect to the same page as their name? Ex: if page Cheese redirected to cv:Cheese Maker, having the bot change it to cv:Cheese. My python bot seems to have trouble processing redirect pages on this wiki. Emi 06:10, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

That should be fairly straightforward (for each page, open "pagename" for editing, check for string "#REDIRECT" and abort if absent, check for string "[[cv:" and abort if absent, check for string "[[cv:pagename]]" and abort if present, then replace page contents with "#REDIRECT [[cv:pagename]]" and save). However, doing that will introduce a whole ton of double redirects which might cause other problems. If that's what we really want to do, then it shouldn't take me long to assemble a script and run it. --Quietust 12:41, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

That's what we want to do. It'll break some redirects (because not every page exists like it should), but broken redirects are a lot easier than red links. And yes, it will introduce double redirects, that's the point. Double redirects work just fine on this wiki (Briess changed the wgMaxRedirect variable) and will save us a ton of trouble. Emi 18:19, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I think I should also be figuring out why my bot doesn't like certain redirects. Because we also need to go through redirect chains and make sure that the talk pages follow the same chain as their respective normal pages. Emi 19:15, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll have it running as soon as I finish changing the "40d Talk" redirects to "CV Talk" as per the task immediately below this one. --Quietust 19:33, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Done. --Quietust 20:17, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Mainspace 40d redirects

Could you have the bot take all the mainspace 40d redirects and change them to cv: instead of 40d:. Effectively the redirects will remain the same, but this way we're prepared for when the new version's namespace takes over as the current version. Thanks. Emi 19:52, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

It is done. Only redirects within the main article namespace have been updated (e.g. ones within 40d itself continue to point to 40d), and talk page redirects have been omitted. --Quietust 23:32, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh I forgot to mention Cv_talk exists too. So that should probably happen too. Thanks! Emi 23:41, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

This one should be done now. --Quietust 19:51, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Broken Redirects

Request: could you go through the pages on Special:BrokenRedirects and for each page, blank the page, then restore it? That will fix the linking engine (it's trying to link to the pages in the main namespace instead of the appropriate namespace, breaking and re-adding the link forces the parser to reevaluate) --Briess 19:41, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

It's in progress and about halfway done. For now, I'm only having it handle redirects that point to the 40d namespace - I'll handle the rest of them in a second pass. --Quietust 20:55, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

All done - the Broken Redirects count is now down to 79, all of which are real broken redirects. However, the double redirects page has now grown to 1666 entries, and fixing those won't be quite as easy - it might be feasible to have a script just follow the redirects manually until it finds a real page. --Quietust 21:16, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Misc

Please do so. All of my script utilities and several attempts at dropping to the SQL layer have failed to move all the pages, so I've been manually moving the broken talk page to the correct page, then deleting the broken version. --Briess 18:32, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

List of still broken pages: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=x8msEevZ --Briess 18:32, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll try to add your bot to a bot usergroup. There doesn't seem to be a way to disable redirect on login, though, from my cursory glance. --Briess 19:53, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Wait, you play KoL? ++rep. --Briess 19:54, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

YAY \o/ --Briess 21:59, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm sifting through the database now and cleaning out the cruft. --Briess 19:22, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

That's an artifact of the caching, the job cache is completely empty at the moment. --Briess 19:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Q - help me out. 40d Talk:Armor piece - where is that page now? And if it doesn't belong under the "new" page, then where? Archived under T:AP? I understand the premise of this migration, but not the mechanics. --Albedo 21:49, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

I moved it back to its "broken" title so it can be fixed by hand afterwards. --Quietust 21:51, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

bar vs bars

It doesn't matter that they're called "bars" in game, since the style guide dictates singular forms

Yes, as the correct game term it does matter, and no, the style guide doesn't "dictate" that. It specifically says "Exceptions are proper nouns and terms that are always plural" - and there is no metal "bar" in the game. And now is the time to change it - just because it was wrong before, doesn't mean it should stay wrong. It is the same as "plate armor" was in 40d - one term referring to more than one item. However, I don't want to get into an edit war, and will leave it. I disagree, tho' - both "bar" and "bars" are metal, and anything else is either, specifically, "vertical bars" or "floor bars".--Albedo 04:33, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

40d:obsidian

I'm pretty sure you meant to be looking at the DF2010 version of this article

<facepalm> Clearly, time to have a beer and get afk for a while. Thnx!--Albedo 04:44, 20 April 2010 (UTC)