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Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by Houshalter on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @05:15AM (#14030778)
I was just reading about a bunch of weird bugs found in dwarf fortress. For instance, someone found all the cats were throwing up all over the place from alcohol poisoning. They looked into it and found the dwarves were spilling alcohol on the floor of the tavern. The cats didn't drink it though. No, they walked through it and got it on their fur. Then when the cats went to clean themselves, they ingested the alcohol. The game then calculated their blood alcohol content to be very high and gave them alcohol poisoning. Because it counted it as one standard of unit of alcohol, and the cats have much smaller body mass than dwarves.

All sorts of amazing, um, features, have been found in that game.

Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by logfromblammo on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @05:15PM (#14037283)
Here's a neat dwarf trick:

  1. Obtain a vessel capable of holding liquids.
  2. Drink from the vessel until it has one unit left.
  3. Empty the vessel onto the ground.
  4. Refill the vessel to its maximum capacity from the puddle you just made.
  5. Drink from the puddle.
The problem was that puddles and spatter and liquid coatings did not have a volume.

So you can also quench your thirst by swimming in a river, then drinking the coating of water stuck to your own ear.

So the cat thing was exactly the same problem. An infinite number of cats could walk through one puddle of spilled alcohol, and then ingest enough alcohol to get poisoned by licking each body part. Lick first toe of right foot? That's a shot. Lick second toe of right foot? Another shot. Lick third toe of right foot? We're having a party now!

On the one hand, it seems like there should have been some additional effort there. But on the other, the game actually simulates that when you dunk something in water, it gets wet, and then stays wet until the water evaporates. I don't know of any other game that not only does that, but also handles dusts and powders, and things falling from the sky due to weather, and even getting diseases by inhaling vaporized droplets of a contaminated liquid.

You would think that with all that incredible detail, the pathfinding AI would not kill the framerate just from two dozen pastured sheep all trying to find their next clump of grass to eat.

Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by Houshalter on Wednesday April 05, 2017 @04:34PM (#14045367)
It's crazy that the game simulates spilled alcohol, and that you can get it on you by walking through it, and that cats clean themselves by licking, and that they ingest whatever they lick, and that it computes blood alcohol content and simulates the effects of alcohol poisoning... DF is insane.

The pathfinding is pretty inefficient because it's entirely invented by the guy who wrote it. Who doesn't know anything about pathfinding algorithms. Also it's entirely single threaded.

Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by PhasmaFelis on Sunday April 09, 2017 @02:29PM (#14073632)
> You would think that with all that incredible detail, the pathfinding AI would not kill the framerate just from two dozen pastured sheep all trying to find their next clump of grass to eat.

Dwarf Fortress is kind of the ur-example of passionately solving the wrong problem.

It's a fantastic game, and it's heartbreaking to me how much more fantastic it could be if the author adjusted his priorities a bit.

Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by adrianN on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @08:36AM (#14031869)
I don't see the bug there. Maybe you mean that the cat simulation is not accurate enough: cat's wouldn't walk through puddles if they could avoid it.
Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by StavrosK on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @10:51AM (#14033218)
I think the bug was that it counted as "one mug of alcohol" on the floor, and the entire thing stuck to their fur, which wouldn't happen in real life.
Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by Tyr42 on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @10:42AM (#14033110)
One lick of alcohol soaked fur was the same amount of alcohol as a full tankard of beer. There was only one "unit" of alcohol. Hence dead cats.
Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by pbtflakes on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @08:47AM (#14031956)
Unintended behavior would be more accurate.
Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by adamrezich on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @10:55AM (#14033272)
Maybe you don't realize just how much dwarves drink :v
Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by gideonparanoid on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @10:27AM (#14032939)
Sounds like the kind of thing I'd read on The Strange Log [0]

[0] https://twitter.com/thestrangelog

Re:Why F.E.A.R.’s AI is still the best in first-person shooters by kbenson on Tuesday April 04, 2017 @02:30PM (#14035817)
That is hilarious. I can't believe I haven't heard of this before.