A new spring, a new year. The freeze wasn't so bad this year, and farming of plump helmets continued right the way through to the end of winter. Construction of the pump system to the east was finally completed after much fiddling and dwarves getting themselves trapped behind walls. Trading went very well this year, with elves, humans and dwarves kept happy with large stocks of prepared food. Legendary meals all round for the citizens of the fort. Two waves of migrants has brought the population up over 30. Sadly, a child was stolen by goblin thief, he was too quick to be chased down. The escape route used, sneaking behind the trade depot has now been cut off by digging away the cliff. All entrance to the fort should now be through the front past the dogs and the traps. Another goblin was captured, now on show on the cage level. Two babies have been born, one to a herbalist, the other to a peasant.
There are 18 comments for this map series, last post 2008-03-11
Rivergears
SHIFT + Key doubles keyboard scroll rate.
Don't have Flash?
You can download the compressed map file:
Rivergears-region1c-1054-7.fdf-map
but you will need the .NET version of
SL's DF Map Compressor
to convert to the .PNG image format.
Submitted by: Markavian - 2007-12-16 to 1052 Early Spring
And I had instant trouble here, a swift thawing of the river dumped my wagon into the icey depths. I restarted and straight away dug out blocks of ice from the river. I then dammed the river with wood I'd brought with me and surrounded the caravan. It still collapsed in a heap, but at least I was able to get at the goods, and no one drowned.
Submitted by: Lacero - 2007-12-22 to 1052 Late Winter
The drain is very cool, if massively overengineered :)
I'm looking forward to seeing it finished.
Submitted by: Markavian - 2007-12-22 to 1052 Late Winter
Lol, thanks. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the water so I made sure there were plenty of alternatives- the drain was an afterthought. You should see the new version at the end of this year, I've made diversions at the base of the water towers to pump water back into the dried up river.
Submitted by: Lacero - 2007-12-23 to 1054 Early Spring
I spy an army of masons making stone blocks in the housing area :)
Submitted by: Markavian - 2007-12-23 to 1054 Early Spring
Hi ho hi ho its off to blocking making work we go... I'll soon have all that excess stone blocked and binned! The mightiest constructions require blocks, not rough stone!
Submitted by: Panda_ - 2007-12-24 to 1054 Early Spring
I'm miles away from those engineering skills, and i've a lot of questions:
How could you know the water was going from O to E ?
What did you originally construct at the entrance of your fortress ? Did the water flow under ?
What is the purpose of the water pumps ? Could you have the same benefit changing them into floodgates if your fortress was a level below ? If i follow the water route in the fortress, i see that it irrigates farms before falling into some other pits. But you don't have any mechanism to remove those stagning waters. How do you control the quantity of water send to the farms ?
I don't see any grouped food processing area. I thank it was important early. But you have small very distinct area (some small dining rooms, 1-2 stills with a small food stock pile nearby, a second food stockpile). Why ?
The sphere is perfectly designed. How did you ?
[Message edited on 2007/12/24 at 10:29 by Panda_]
Submitted by: Markavian - 2007-12-24 to 1054 Early Spring
Hey Panda, kind of you to take interest, I'll try my best to answer your questions. First I should explain: When I started the map for the first time, the wagon was placed ontop of the frozen river. Within a few minutes of playing the river defrosted and all my starting gear was swept downstream. I restarted.
The second time I started, I immediately dug out the frozen river and built a dam using wood. I then instantly knew which way the river was flowing because water stopped moving on the left, but continued to flow downstream on the right. After the second winter the river dried up.
The entrance was built below the wagon out of convinience rather then design.
The purpose of the water pumps is to lift water up into the towers. The towers themselves hold a fixed amount of water (3x3x5, or 45 tiles). This is just enough to flood the farms several tiles beneath. When I flood the farms, I stop the pumps and open the floodgates. Yes, I could have used underground water towers without pumps, using floodgates to control the flow of water in and out.
The water that falls to the west of my fortress down into the pits will become water pools for drinking water. I have no plans to pump this water out, I will attempt to release as much water as needed to fill them, but leave them as drinking water. Later, perhaps, I will build a pump to lift water back out of this area.
I am very tight on space underground, what with all the spare rock, so the workshop layer is very crowded. My main resource for trading is prepared food, so I constantly have farmers and herbalists, brewers and cooks hard at work. The stockpiles are necessities to prevent food decaying in the workshops. I would prefer to put all the food and plant processing on one layer, and move other craftshops to their own layers, but there are other plans afoot right now.
The sphere, (thanks), was drawn by eye. I marked out an approximate square and symetrically added points to be dug out until I was happy with the layout. It took a lot of planning and switching between layers to get right.
Submitted by: Lacero is lazy - 2007-12-25 to 1054 Early Spring
I use this webpage to draw circles:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~mcmillan/comp136/Lecture7/circle.html
If you draw one and use that as the width of circles on each layer you could do spheres as well.
Submitted by: Luckymoose - 2007-12-26 to 1054 Early Winter
Awesome, I have yet to make anything this cool looking. Hope to though.
Submitted by: Turgid Bolk - 2007-12-26 to 1054 Early Winter
Wow, so many nice features. I like the layout and shape as you go down. I like the central shaft staircase, and the dome is great. Along with the roof over the depot, it adds to the realism, I think. I like the water tower spiral design, too, but I don't understand how you got the water to your farm over there. Anyway, the housing dome is indeed epic. I'm working on a little dome of my own, I can't wait to show it off now :)
Keep us updated on this fort!
Submitted by: Corbine - 2007-12-26 to 1054 Early Winter
The colors.. dear lord the colors! :P
Chaos confined in a small dwarven fortress. Guess we all have our own method to the madness, yet your method makes it look good. :D Keep up the good work.
[Message edited on 2007/12/26 at 06:38 by Corbine]
Submitted by: Lacero - 2007-12-27 to 1055 Early Spring
oh dear :O It looks like you've got enough space for it to settle out and evapourate, but you could always designate it for drinking and get the dwarfs to drink it out :)
Submitted by: erendor - 2007-12-27 to 1055 Early Spring
Ahh, that's a bug, isn't it? With water 1/7 in depth freezing into ice, then thawing into 7/7 depth water?
If that's not what happened here, disregard. Sucks, though. Very nice fortress you've got :D
Submitted by: Markavian - 2007-12-29 to 1054 Early Spring
Random link Lacero, but useful! Maybe we should write some key macros to layout circular and spherical rooms? There's some on the wiki already...
Submitted by: Genuine - 2007-12-29 to 1055 Early Spring
Looking good, Markavian. I really like the designs you've got going with this fort.
Kinda sucks about the flood, though. I hope it doesn't totally the effort you put into this fort.
Submitted by: Markavian - 2007-12-29 to 1055 Early Spring
Hey, thanks for the input... it took a couple of restarts to get it right, but I disconnected the water tower pumps and rewalled several key areas to protect against the melting ice. It turned out to be the pumps that were causing the infinite flooding, the water was pressurised at the top, and spewing 7x7 tiles out the top making water go everywhere, and slowing the game down to a crawl.
Submitted by: Lacero - 2007-12-29 to 1055 Early Summer
I really like the way you've got your entrances set up.
Circle macros would make my life a lot easier. I've not used the macro tools yet, I'll have to have a look.
Submitted by: Rodwin - 2008-03-11 to 1056 Early Autumn
Terrific layout!
I love your water systems!