Fire and heat¶

Fire


Kind	Hazard and comfort
Starts when	something burnable gets hotter than its kindling point
Spreads by	heat, through walls and open air
Put out by	water; running out of fuel
Felt as	warmth below 40 °C, danger above it
Since	Phase 1
Status	designed · Phase 1
Technical	FireSystem · HeatSystem

There are two fires in Riverside Village and they are the same thing. The campfire at the fire pit is a fire that someone keeps fed and that never gets hot enough to spread. A burning inn is a fire that found fuel it was never meant to. Both make heat, heat is what people feel, and heat is what spreads.

How fire works¶

Everything burnable has a kindling point. A wooden building catches at about 250 °C. The campfire's pit never will.
A fire makes heat, and heat travels. It passes through open air slowly and through a shared wall readily. The inn, smithy and storehouse share walls, so a fire in one warms the next, and when the next passes its kindling point it burns too. That is the only way fire spreads: there is no "fire jumps" rule, only heat and kindling points.
A fire burns its fuel and goes out. A building has a lot of fuel; a campfire has what people put in it.
Water puts fire out. A bucket's worth, thrown on a burning building, is enough.
Heat fades. Once the fire is out, a place cools back toward the day's temperature over most of a day.

How people feel it¶

A villager in a place hotter than 40 °C feels danger, and the hotter the more. The campfire next door adds a few degrees to the square — a pleasant evening, danger nil. A burning building next door is a different matter. Above 150 °C nobody can get close enough to throw water, and even the brave give up and run.

Heat is also how fire is noticed. Nobody sees "a fire"; they feel their place getting hot. People close to a burning building react within a tick or two; people across the village only when the heat reaches them, several ticks later. That stagger — the near ones running while the far ones are still foraging — is not scripted, it is heat taking time to travel.

The fire story¶

The inn catches (you lit it, or the campfire was over-fed and the fire pit's heat crept through the wall).
The five people inside feel it first: the cautious run for the square, the brave look for water.
Heat crosses into the smithy; its people react; the storehouse is next.
At the river bank, three full buckets. More brave villagers than buckets: the first to grab each bucket gets it, the rest go away empty-handed. See Water and buckets.
Water on the inn puts it out — or it doesn't come in time, the row burns, the heat climbs past the point anyone can approach, and someone who stayed too long dies.

Every step of that is something you can click and ask how did this happen.

What you can do¶

Light a fire — at Tinkerer, on any building. The game heats it past its kindling point; what happens next is up to the village. See Tinkering.
Turn fire off — toggle the fire system: a burning building stops spreading, stays hot, and resumes when you turn it back on.
Over-feed the campfire and see what the inn's wall does.

History¶

Phase	Change
1	Introduced: kindling points, heat that travels through walls and air, water and fuel as the two ways a fire ends, danger felt from heat.