Greetings my fellow Urists,
Today I want to present to you my first ever Megaproject: Irtirrimtar, sometimes better known as Danglecastle!
IMG: Top floor of my fort!
The origins of this project date back to over a year ago (Hence why it was made in 0.31.25), where talks about megaprojects with a fellow student and Urist enthousiast sent me into a strange and secretive mood. Ideas started forming about large castles, bridges and towers. Only these weren't your average towers and bridges. No. These were buried underground. Upside down, suspended from the ceiling of a gigantic cavern.
The cavern is really where the MEGA of the project comes into play. in a crude estimation, I reckon around 350.000 tiles were dug out during construction. To some of you this might seem like a paltry number, but due to my studies, I was forced to use the computing power that was available to me. Carrying this gem on my USB stick and starting it up whenever I could find a computer helped somewhat, allthough having to dig out 300.000+ tiles at 10-15 FPS takes a while. Actually, make that QUITE a long while. Even with my 24 dwarf mining crew, off of a population of 69 dwarves.
The design and execution was tremendous fun for me. I have a nice little irrigation system for my suspended farms and hanging mushroom forest, luxurious hanging appartments for my dwarves, and well... everything a dwarf can desire!. A flooding mechanism was also put in place to allow me to flood the cavern with water to create a beautiful pristine lake underneath my dangling castle. I daresay I have some extra space left, but hey, at least the dwarves have some breathing room right?
Without further ado, let me present to you, in all its dwarfy glory, Danglecastle!
http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11880-danglecastleFeedback and/or ideas for the future are always welcome!
PS: Full disclosure: DFhack was used for two things in order to save the fortress from FPS death: Moving the UNGODLY amount of stone that was produced, and to help me fill up the cavern a little bit: with all the evaporation and FPS maiming that unleashing the stream did to the PC's I used, it would have taken several months of real time running to fill them up to that degree.