Computing in Dwarf Fortress | Hacker News Reader

Computing in Dwarf Fortress

dwarffortresswiki.net

52 pointsreq212 comments

It's amazing just how nuts you can go within the Dwarf Fortress game engine. I spent ages building my wooden stilted fortress entirely out of lumber. Farms were created by hauling buckets of water up onto the roof to make mud and plucking wild berries for seeds to plant.

Another fun consequence of the game engine is how the creature generation created Zombie Sharks all by itself. According to the game's rules, any creature can be zombified, and one of the results of this is that the creature no longer needs to breathe. You haven't known fear until you have seen zombie sharks flopping along on land, heading your way.

If someone can figure out how to implement a flip-flop, then we're in business. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_%28electronics%29)

There's already a mechanical implementation:

http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Mechanical_logic#Flip...

I can't tell if those are diagrams of what the circuit should look like, or actual in-game implementations.

Exactly.

One of the best things about dwarf fortress is that playing it using that initially-confusing interface rather than shiny graphics is like doing math using symbols and equations rather than paragraphs and paragraphs of words.

Except the diagrams I saw didn't look like the other in-game circuits I saw. So, I'm still unsure if those are diagrams or in-game implementations. If you know, please tell me.

They're in-game inspired diagrams. The key is in the paragraph above the start of the 'Unclocked Logic' section.

     A
  →o * o→M O
   o * o
     B

The mechanical power goes in the first →, and the [M O] part is the output. A and B are the AND inputs. Gearboxes actually look like *, but o is also being used for gearboxes, albeit gearboxes that are just there to drain power.

The colored gif image at the top of the page is an in game implementation. The black and white characters are diagrams, but are quite accurate to what the game would show.

Those are not in-game implimentations. They might be diagrams of the linkages necessary to impliment it, though, but I can't understand them.

I get the impression that only some of the basic logic gates have been implemented yet, and that the rest is still theoretical.

Please be careful. I find this game maddeningly addictive.

This makes me enormously happy.

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