Cataclysm-dda: Waste-to-energy incinerator

[Regularitee]

So, I figure an excellent way to kill two birds with one stone.

As you may know, having dead bodies and items lying everywhere causes save bloating. But if you bother to actually clean up a map by stacking bodies/items and burning them, you're sacrificing in-game resources (time, hunger, thirst, risk) for an entirely out-of-game advantage. Which doesn't make much sense if you're playing a game in-character with the intent to survive.

So enter the waste-to-energy incinerator:

• It provides incentive to clean up the map, improving game performance without giving the player an in-game penalty for doing so.
• It can fill an otherwise neglected niche: a power source for wilderness survivalists, to generate power via wood burning.

Ideally this would be similar to a brazier or wood stove, where it contains the maximum size of the fire in the tile, and prevents it from spreading. It could then run a check every X seconds/minutes to see if a fire is still present, in which case it generates a a sum of energy to whatever batteries its connected to.

[kevingranade]

As you may know, having dead bodies and items lying everywhere causes save bloating.

Is this actually a problem? If it is there are much more direct ways to fix it than trying to convince the player to deal with it.

[Regularitee]

From discord discussions, it seems common enough. Many players will regularly either try to manually edit save files (and hope they don't break anything), or copy-paste character data into a new world, once a game becomes sufficiently bloated.

I'm not sure if any sort of world cleanup mechanic exists in game, but if it does, it doesn't seem to work effectively or quickly enough to prevent save bloating for some players.

[Maddremor]

Am I the only person that piles stuff up in a brazier and set it on fire? That does provide fire for cooking, although no electricity.

[pingpong2011]

I often find myself eating waste if I have a metabolic interchange. If not, I shred it for thread or burn it. Incidentally, this could be a niche filled by a steam powered generator. Construct a "vehicle" with a water tank (boiler), "burner" (container with wet/dry fuel, maybe made with an igniter), generator/alternator?, battery, and a container+recharger socket, or whatever jumper cables use. If it could all be contained nicely that'd be great. I don't imagine a single-object that could fulfill the roles needed and make sense.

[paulenka-aleh]

I second thought on on steam engines + alternators, would be awesome.

Although it worth mentioning compact devices that does already exist: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flamestower/flamestower-charge-your-gear-with-fire and http://www.engadget.com/amp/2011/06/14/hatsuden-nabe-thermoelectric-cookpot-keeps-your-iphone-battery-c/ (btw, 2nd one specifically mentions zombie apocalypse :D)

Never tested myself, but the game could have inefficient UPS analogs.

P.S. I do clean up cities as I walk though as well unless it's dangerous to stay. I tend to bring all the junk to safehouse, sort it, wash, dissamble, cut, burn, eat or do whatever feasible.

[mlangsdorf]

My proposed steam engine (#25245) is a closed cycle engine that currently only burns coal. I plan to add support for other fuels later. Burning arbitrary things is a problem because you need an energy density for each fuel.

[CoroNaut]

I play with 2.5x zombies and high evo, I don't have time to butcher 100 zombies every couple city blocks, especially the 10-20 tougher ones. Essentially if I ever visit the city again after i look it the first time, everyone just revives. So if there is a way to deal with this many, then I'm all ears.

As for the save bloating issue, alive zombies and dead zombies provide pretty much the same space in memory, so I don't see any greater than 5% reduction in save file size from cleaning up your dead zombies. Just using save file compression will make 10,000's of dead zombies negligible once we get the system in.

[nexusmrsep]

My proposed steam engine (#25245) is a closed cycle engine that currently only burns coal. I plan to add support for other fuels later. Burning arbitrary things is a problem because you need an energy density for each fuel.

Isn't there some kind of material to fuel conversion in fire calculation in field.cpp that you could follow @mlangsdorf?

[Regularitee]

Just using save file compression will make 10,000's of dead zombies negligible once we get the system in.

The save compression does not yet exist. It could very well be years away for all we know. And even if it did exist, that's not necessarily any argument against something to reduce save size overall. Having a bigger bathtub than before doesn't mean it won't eventually overflow if you leave the water running. It just delays the problem. Every little bit helps. And it doesn't just help with the zombies entries themselves, but the several items they each carry, and the additional items they create by smashing furniture.

There might be a case arguing against this concept if it ended up hurting other aspects of the game. But at a glance, there seems to be no drawbacks besides the initial setup. Doubly so since it'd also fill another niche, a low-tech renewable power source.

[kevingranade]

1. you still haven't outlined how this is a problem, "some people complained about it" isn't an actual problem, people complain about anything and everything.
2. IF it's a problem, save compression will almost certainly nail it to the ground, and it's quite easy to do, the only reason we don't have it is there was no evidence that it helped anything.
   2.a If that's insufficient culling unmodified map tiles is going to likewise be incredibly more effective than manual user intervention.
3. Your proposal won't help, at the point when this kind of thing is a problem, there are millions of items that need to be cleaned up, it's completely unreasonable for the player to do that.

[TechyBen]

I get around 50% saved "space" from just using NTFS compression on that one folder. No idea if that's a problem for the SSDs though (multiple access attempts per sector or whatever to compress/save/decompress/amend/etc).

But anything helping save folders not creep up to 500mb and above would be welcome. Problem is, any compression is going to prevent notepad editing, right?

What kind of difference would unmodified tile culling cause? I'd totally forgot this game worked fixed procedurally (though if I save scum, I usually get new generation of data? Plus what about zed spawns?).

[Regularitee]

you still haven't outlined how this is a problem, "some people complained about it" isn't an actual problem, people complain about anything and everything.

Please don't misconstrue what I said. I did not say players have complained about save size. I said others (have claimed) to have either migrated characters to new worlds, or edited saves using text editors, to reduce the save game bloat from prolonged games. That's not quite the same as idle complaining on chat, though whether this phenomena is common enough to justify addressing it is another issue entirely.

I was just making a suggestion to improve game performance marginally, in a way that I thought would also be novel and interesting. I didn't realize it needed to justify it further. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Zireael07]

Performance and saves improvement aside, waste incinerator sounds like a good idea, to eg. get rid of lots of rubbish and/or Z corpses quickly (and get something universally useful out of it unlike butchering)

[kevingranade]

The reason for this change is non-existent, closing.

If you have an impact to the player regarding accumulating map data, feel free to open an issue with your info.
If you want to outline an incinerator item/furniture, feel free to open an issue about that.

[Regularitee]

If you want to outline an incinerator item/furniture, feel free to open an issue about that.

Isn't that what this thread already does @kevingranade ? I mean, it's describing an object and its intended purpose. The discussion may have been sidetracked into save file size, but the original post is a discussion about a suggested item/object. Unless it's missing something that I can edit in?

[CoroNaut]

I have to agree with regularitee, the issue was a suggestion specifically for the purpose of implementing something new. It isn't really a change, he simply outlined some problems this new addition would fix or help fix.