Talk:SMOKBIT.DAT
Don't suppose you have any more info on the format used here, Quantifier? Bit fields typically only allow for two possibilities per index, but with fire and smoke there are three: Fire, smoke, or nothing at all.
Memory is a bit foggy but I think it's also possible for smoke and fire to inhabit the same map index.
- Bomb Bloke 04:28, 14 September 2006 (PDT)
For now I don't know how this file works. I didn't notice in-game effects of editing it.
When I filled it with some values, they stayed through end of turn, and changed only around actual smoke clouds, so it's not rebuilt from scratch every turn.
It is possible to have fire and smoke at the same tile, but you will see only flames. Smoke will show next turn on adjacent tiles.
--Quantifier 07:35, 14 September 2006 (PDT)
My two cents worth...
Ordinarily, 2 bits would be enough to indicate fire, smoke, or nothing... 00 would be nothing. But 1,250 bytes only allow 1 bit per tile for a full map (50x50x4=10,000; 10,000/8=1,250). Could the bits simply be a flag for the game to take a look in SMOKREF? (Pardon if that's what you were saying.)
I'm pretty sure I've seen fires spread. Also I'm pretty sure it destroys whatever burnt (=death tile) and/or the object becomes the death tile as soon as it starts burning (isn't that what happens with Mountain Madness?). You might use MapView to find some highly-frequent object/wall that's real flammable (wheat in wheatfields?), then load up an autocannon.
Not sure how to determine whether fire produces smoke per se, or it's just the already-present smoke moving around. Wait... doesn't the smoke from burning engines in a crashed UFO persist longer than smoke alone (from e.g. an explosion)? Doesn't that mean fire produces smoke? Also, it gets pretty thick in engine rooms, indicating new production. If you can figure out how to make fire (alone), that'd test it with finality. I forget how long smoke persists, but I remember from explosion testing that it has a definite lifetime (6 turns?).
If you do find a way to hack fire to turn on, it might not be a good test of whether it destroys stuff - if that happens when the fire first starts via game processes.
If fires spread, one would think the game has a way it keeps them from spreading forever, eh? Like a "generation" counter (as in, descendant count) or something. Or maybe there just isn't enough tinder packed closely enough for them to go far.
Somewhere mention that rule about the maximum number of smokes allowed (400?). I've seen it happen before when going wild with the blaster for explosion testing... past a certain point, new smoke isn't produced. If it helps, I can pretty easily generate numbers for, the number of tiles within the blast radius of the various exposives in the game.
Apologies if you folks knew all this already. :P --MikeTheRed 22:13, 14 September 2006 (PDT)