0000883: Creatures made from flame exhibit strange/unexpected properties

Notes
(0002485) Khym Chanur (reporter) 2010-04-09 18:29	In arena mode I had two fire men fight each other. According to the combat reports, each punch would break off a bit of flame from the punchee, but examining the detailed wounds list (the "z:St" screen) shows nothing wrong. This might be intended, since disturbing the air around a flame might cause a small wisp of fire to peel off without really damaging the flame.

(0002574) SirPenguin (reporter) 2010-04-10 08:25	I'm not sure if it's intended. I think it's more than both fire creatures have that strange "attack passes right through" bug, which seemingly makes them incapable of damaging anything with normal attacks. After breaching into some special caverns I'd say this problem extends to steam creatures as well, though I believe they could still attack.

(0002575) Alloy (reporter) 2010-04-10 08:30	A similar event happened to me tonight where a forgotten beast composed of steam rampaged into my fortress and then promptly exploded after a few hits from my critically inexperienced military. Same 'caught in a cloud of (self-material)' messages, same fragility. When it died it exploded quite forcefully - which was pretty awesome to see even if the beast made no sense in the first place - and knocked everyone back, but it left a couple of 'Utesh's steam' and a water which is not muddying the floor tile.

(0002585) SirPenguin (reporter) 2010-04-10 09:10	I was actually JUST coming in here to say that steam monsters exhibit the same properties. In my case it was a few steam HFS guys, which made that whole HFS "event" a lot less scary/difficult

(0003252) SirPenguin (reporter) 2010-04-13 07:49	Also happens with "slush" demons. I'm wondering if it'd be possible to edit the title to reflect that creatures made out of non-solid materials are not performing properly

(0004898) Blah (reporter) 2010-04-24 11:16 edited on: 2010-04-24 11:18	"A great blob composed of flame. It has a long tail and it undulates rythmically." This forgotten beast was somehow hurt while chasing a civilian for a while, while being unkillable by my militia (which are trained and armed with steel axes). Ttemperature is enabled in my init.txt. The blood spatters of a goblin caught in the fight boiled and injured my militia though.

(0008969) RusAnon (reporter) 2010-06-22 13:04	31.08, Magma men keep spamming me with '<creature> is caught in a cloud of steam' while they walk in volcano.

(0009612) SirPenguin (reporter) 2010-07-04 05:51	I'm hopeful this'll be fixed in .09, along with the other material creature changes

(0010363) SirPenguin (reporter) 2010-07-15 11:43	Unfortunately, the problem still exists.

(0010541) Netkev (reporter) 2010-07-18 01:22	I know it is not entirely related, but i found a forgotten beast made of Coke a while back, and it seemed that every attack, regardless of who did it, would break parts of the beasts body (making it easily killable), and upon death leave behind "X's Coke".

(0014271) ethanb (reporter) 2010-11-27 21:58 edited on: 2010-11-28 08:01	Yeah, a friend and I have been trying to port spirits of fire forward from 0.28.181.40d - they're not working so well. The "breaking off" is kind of cool and makes perfect sense. I put HEALING_RATE:1 on the FLAME tissue template to counter that, and I imagine it works sort of like an actual flame - if you swing your hand fast over a match, it'll gutter if it doesn't go completely out. I think the main problem is that "passes right through" with the attacks doesn't seem to transfer any heat at all, no matter what the relative temp is (these guys are set to FIXED_TEMP:25000 with a material temperature of 25000 as well.) The weird thing is it was apparently working before 0.31.01 came out - I remember Toady mentioned boiling somebody's brain by holding their head in his magma-man hands in the dev log. Although actually it's possible that it only works for wrestling, when you can hold it for a lengthy duration. Getting caught in a cloud of their own flame doesn't seem to be damaging them, by the way - it's just giving you the message. The good news is stepping into a running stream causes it to dry up as expected, so temp transfer works correctly in at least some, if not most ways. Oh, I haven't checked if standing in one spot for a long time will make a "molten gabbro floor" the way it did in .40d - that might have been scripted behavior especially for the SoF, but I hope not.

(0014334) ethanb (reporter) 2010-11-30 23:46	Update to the above; figured out the two problems with the Spirit of Fire (and all other creatures that rely on heat to deal damage) 1) Melee attacks don't transfer heat; they must be calculated as taking place instantaneously, so no matter how hot the fire there's only a negligible change in temp at the target. You have to make the fiery creatures solid so that they can wrestle. (Giving them NATURAL_SKILL in wrestling helps a lot) This may also be the same reason that FIREBREATH doesn't seem to do any damage; the fireball may dissipate on contact with no heat transfer taking place. 2) The default tissue templates are completely weird with regards to HEATDAM_POINT, IGNITE_POINT, and MELTING_POINT - increasing the melting points for regular living tissues (especially fat) while dramatically reducing the heatdam and ignite points (HEATDAM in particular shouldn't be more than 30 or 40 above body temperature) gives rise to exciting messages like "You are blistering! You are burning! You are being incinerated!" Messing with the SPEC_HEAT may also be necessary to be totally accurate, but it's quite easy to make it better than it is now.

(0032740) Witty (reporter) 2015-05-26 15:12	I've run into this pretty hard in .40.24. Save here; http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=10888 [^] So here's the deal. You'll find him on the 89th Z-level (should be assigned to F7).A giant Forgotten beast composed of flame. From what I can gather - melee troops will simply refuse to engage it in actual combat with it. The creature is literally a few tiles away - but no luck. When I put a station order near the creature, they'll take an extremely long and prolonged route through the caverns rather than pathing a few tiles ahead of them and risk actually getting near the FB. I'm thinking that the heat from the FB is throwing the pathing AI off big time. When I hit the mining designation around where the FB lit the whole cavern on fire, it'll show the walls as extremely hot - usually reserved for when magma is near stone, or so I thought. In the few scenarios I've seen play out, the dwarves don't seem to be able to path near areas where the FB's fire had recently hit. I've seen my entire military starve to death - they simply refused to move once they were actually in the cavern with the FB. On one occasion has the creature actually been killed - a ranger in the caverns managed to land a lucky strike. But as before - he simply starved to death, standing in place while the rest of the dwarves refused to enter the area at all.

(0032743) Loci (manager) 2015-05-27 05:54	@Witty: Sounds like you have temperature calculations disabled. The thing is, temperatures still get "set" (say, from fire-breath attacks) but they won't ever cool down without temperature calculations. Re-enable temperature calculations and your dwarves should be able to path through the tiles once they cool off. You'll still have trouble getting troops to actually attack it, though; that's 0008018.

Issue History
Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
2010-04-09 09:12	SirPenguin	New Issue
2010-04-09 18:25	Khym Chanur	Issue Monitored: Khym Chanur
2010-04-09 18:29	Khym Chanur	Note Added: 0002485
2010-04-10 08:25	SirPenguin	Note Added: 0002574
2010-04-10 08:30	Alloy	Note Added: 0002575
2010-04-10 09:10	SirPenguin	Note Added: 0002585
2010-04-13 07:49	SirPenguin	Note Added: 0003252
2010-04-24 11:16	Blah	Note Added: 0004898
2010-04-24 11:17	Blah	Note Edited: 0004898	View Revisions
2010-04-24 11:18	Blah	Note Edited: 0004898	View Revisions
2010-06-22 13:04	RusAnon	Note Added: 0008969
2010-07-04 05:51	SirPenguin	Note Added: 0009612
2010-07-11 10:10	Profligate	Issue Monitored: Profligate
2010-07-15 11:43	SirPenguin	Note Added: 0010363
2010-07-18 01:22	Netkev	Note Added: 0010541
2010-11-27 21:58	ethanb	Note Added: 0014271
2010-11-27 22:01	ethanb	Issue Monitored: ethanb
2010-11-28 07:27	ethanb	Note Edited: 0014271	View Revisions
2010-11-28 08:01	ethanb	Note Edited: 0014271	View Revisions
2010-11-30 23:46	ethanb	Note Added: 0014334
2011-03-31 16:34	Dwarfu	Relationship added	related to 0004411
2012-01-25 12:54	Footkerchief	Relationship added	related to 0000587
2015-05-26 15:12	Witty	Note Added: 0032740
2015-05-27 05:54	Loci	Note Added: 0032743