Year 12 of Construction
Gosh watching dwarves hauling and digging is incredibly boring.
I decided to haul in all the dead goblin loot. Apparently there were a number of elves among them. It seems I never even noticed them before they were massacred by the traps. The dwarves spent most of the year hauling the trash in. Another couple of squads appeared while this was going on but they were promptly slaughtered by the big spike trap. It nearly caught the human liaison as well but he escaped off the map edge. It seems that bones and skulls rot in the open but I suppose I can get elf skulls anytime I want :P
I decided that since the loot problem can only get worse as the fortress wealth increases, and that they simply just die without providing any FUN at all, I might as well turn invasions off to save myself the trouble.
Well after we finished hauling in the trash, the dwarves started work on the magma chamber. Its a lot less interesting than the tower cap chamber as there aren't going to be any hills and stuff inside. Its just going to be a big magma ocean, with some support pillars sticking out. The idea is so that I can build a magma fleet but thats a very long time from now.
There are still 3 levels to designate and they are all the SAME. Sigh...
Altogether the big dig will holllow out 8 z-levels of space. Hopefully this will look much more impressive in 3dwarf/Khazad than the current 4/5 level tower cap chamber. I anticipate a massive lag fest from the estimated 120000 stones this will produce. Plus it seems that digging ramps causes a lot more lag than normal digging. This could possibly be due to either cave in calculations or ramp calculations.
It seems that dwarf children take a long time to mature. We have been training the children on smoothing floors and most of them are extremely agile already, which is much faster than the stupid cook.
2 more children have been born and the increased population is starting to draw down our moderate food and drink supplies. We briefly ran out of syrup roasts but had a lot more sweet pods in stock so there was no danger of starvation.
Vital Stats:
Population: 17
Built Blocks: 5816
Since the dwarves wasted all year hauling trash, there is really nothing to see. The magma chamber construction efforts are really similar to that of the tower cap chamber, and have only just gotten under way.
You can see the useless dwarf children training up. I don't want to waste their low mining skill when they become peasants, so I intend to use them as haulers to carry out the ore and gems until the magma chamber is finished. - Jong89
There are 26 comments for this map series, last post 2010-11-04
Razorlength
SHIFT + Key doubles keyboard scroll rate.
Don't have Flash?
You can download the compressed map file:
2009-06/jong89-Razorlength-region2-1013-9547.fdf-map
but you will need the .NET version of
SL's DF Map Compressor
to convert to the .PNG image format.
Submitted by: Aristoi - 2009-06-11 to 1001 Early Spring
Best of luck on your plans.
Submitted by: Noble Digger - 2009-06-12 to 1004 Mid Spring
Working deep is not easy for a young fort... Good luck clearing all that stone out. I would build an atom smasher down there and (d)ump the stone on the path of the drawbridge once it's hooked to a lever and raised.
Or build some catapults! It takes a few jobs to get a working catapult but then you have glowing red dwarves after a while. :D
Submitted by: Jong89 - 2009-06-12 to 1004 Mid Spring
Well I think using atom smashers and quantum dumps on such a grand scale would be a bit cheap :P However I've already decided that since the wood situation is not dire, I can afford to delay the tower cap farm and just use magma to melt all the extra rock.
Plus Siege operating skill is not immediately useful for the construction of the fort.
Submitted by: Noble Digger - 2009-06-16 to 1008 Mid Spring
Interestingly, any skill is useful to the fort. Because any skill can cause your dwarves' agility to increase, leading to them doing every job faster (including hauling).
Submitted by: Jong89 - 2009-06-17 to 1008 Mid Spring
True but pump operating levels faster than siege operating
I don't need to haul stone either :D
The only problem is that I don't always get agility. The chef even though he has multiple legendary skills, is only agile :(
[Message edited on 2009/06/17 at 10:47 by Jong89]
Submitted by: RavingManiac - 2009-06-19 to 1009 Late Spring
You have an underground lake or river, right? Tower caps will not grow even on muddied ground until an underground lake or river has been discovered.
Where does the water for the sprinklers come from anyway?
Submitted by: Jong89 - 2009-06-19 to 1009 Late Spring
Ah sorry, I do indeed have a underground river, just that I haven't bothered to breach it yet. All will be made known shortly.
Submitted by: Dakira - 2009-06-21 to 1012 Mid Spring
I look forward to more engineering projects and the completion of the tower.
Submitted by: Quantumplation - 2009-09-23 to 1016 Mid Spring
=( You stopped providing regular updates. Tis a shame. Any news as to how this project is going now? It's quite epic.
Also, Where's your food being produced? I can't see any farms. ^^
Submitted by: Markavian - 2009-09-23 to 1012 Mid Spring
uhh, wow, what a tower ... what a fort! What huge mountains as well... !
Submitted by: Ambivalence - 2010-03-03 to 1029 Late Spring
That's a tall, tall tower!
Submitted by: FJH - 2010-03-03 to 1029 Late Spring
Wow. That's--all that I can say. Wow.
This needs to be added to the wiki megaconstruction page.
Submitted by: Itnetlolor - 2010-03-04 to 1029 Late Spring
Looks like the perfect kind of location for my ship and it's crew to visit.
Submitted by: Retro - 2010-03-13 to 1034 Mid Autumn
I understand next to nothing about dwarven computers and fluid logic, but this looks impressive/scary as hell. Bravo! (cool tower too btw)
Submitted by: Urist McOverlord - 2010-03-19 to 1036 Early Winter
Awesome Computer!
You know the next step, however:
Create a dwarf fortress computer...
capable of running dwarf fortress!
Submitted by: Markavian - 2010-04-01 to 1038 Mid Spring
Kudos for continuing even though NEW VERSION IS OUT.
Submitted by: Jong89 - 2010-04-05 to 1041 Early Spring
Oh wait! I can put my obnoxiously big pics here!
Ground-level perspective of the fort
Close-up of my site symbol
I probably could crop them better.
[Message edited on 2010/04/05 at 12:00 by Jong89]
[Message edited on 2010/04/18 at 03:38 by Jong89]
Submitted by: Ambivalence - 2010-04-05 to 1041 Early Spring
That view of the tower is fantastic.
Submitted by: QMarx - 2010-04-16 to 1036 Early Winter
Have you considered using pressure plates, floodgates, and non-pet-passable doors to have a kitten-based clock? It seems like that would work out.
Submitted by: Jong89 - 2010-04-18 to 1044 Early Spring
Well I didn't. The issue with the clock was that I wanted it to be manually triggered from a single lever. If I wanted to set it up to be automatic, it wouldn't be too difficult to fiddle with it until it became a repeater.
The biggest problem with animal powered devices is that my fort is already very old. All my animals are already dead. Except the mule.
I could get more, but that would lag up the fort even more.
Submitted by: savanik - 2010-04-19 to 1036 Early Winter
What'd you generate that picture of the fortress in? I'm not familiar with the view style.
Submitted by: Markavian` - 2010-04-19 to 1036 Early Winter
Link back from Boing Boing - Colossal Turing Machine.
Submitted by: Markavian - 2010-04-19 to 1036 Early Winter
@savanik, I can't see the image, but I'm going to guess that it was made using one of the 3d Visualiser tools that have been made by the Dwarf Fortress community. Check the dwarf fortress wiki and the bay12games forums for more info...
Submitted by: Jong89 - 2010-04-22 to 1036 Early Winter
Gah! Imageshack ate my pics! I did not expect that to happen.
Thanks for the link Markavian. It was rather surprising to find myself mentioned in a blog post.
I wonder how many people have read the design manuscript though..
Submitted by: Blargh - 2010-05-08 to 1041 Early Spring
This is insane, in a good way.
Submitted by: Quietust - 2010-11-04 - Removed
Submitted by: Quietust - 2010-11-04 to 1044 Early Spring
How exactly was the computer clock generator originally hooked up? It looks similar to MrFake's n-step cyclic repeater, though that design wouldn't have suffered from the flaw of residual pump inertia moving the water multiple cells.