I was thinking about a project to keep me interested in my old fortress Swampcavern. My first thought was a mushroom park with fountains, a river, some kind of water feature. Then I realized that this fort had only just been clawed back from being unplayably slow. And it had been pointed out that my idea for a water fountain was more like a 1 water level random sprinkler. So I thought of a large, ambitious project that would take me a while to do.
Picture a vast rectangular room, 45 blocks long, 36 blocks wide, 19 dwarf stories tall. The bottom is almost all giant mushroom trees. There is a platform rising up one story on one end of the room to have a view of it. In the middle is an arched bridge with two perfect mushroom trees growing on the ends of it. On the same level as the bridge - ten stories up - the back third of the room has a second level of mushroom trees on it as a backdrop. It has a piece cut out of the middle in an attempt to make it easier to see the trees distinctly.
The walls of this room will be smoothed and engraved with scenes of things that happened in the fortress. The bridge is missing its middle so it doesn't quite connect. This is so as not to block the view of the trees behind it. I had someone ask why 19 stories tall and it has to do with how tall giant mushroom trees grow. Even given years and years I rarely see mushroom trees grow much more than 5 stories tall. So even if I run the fort for a long, long time they will never grow up to reach the roof. It's also partly to get away from the number 10 all the time, and to make it easier to find a place to build this space.
It really took some searching to find a spot big enough to build this. The dwarves of swampcavern were quite zealous in their search for iron and coal. Many levels are torn up mazes. Then there's the cave layers in the way. I found a couple places that were close to good enough, but there were just too many hallways in the way. I wanted to carve out a fresh space to minimize the chance of cave ins. I didn't want to have to micro manage the digging out process any more than I already had to. I finally found a spot that was large enough, but the trade off was that it's kind of deep underground.
That's fine. This is going to be a dwarves only meeting space I think. We've been having too much trouble with were beasts in the tavern.
To grow the mushrooms where I want I'm going to have to coat the area with mud by doing some plumbing. There are not any conveniently located lakes in the caves above this project. I'm going to have to connect water all the way from the surface to level 150 and then some. Figuring out how to connect it was an interesting three dimensional puzzle. I had to dodge caves and mining tunnels. At one point it's going to pass through an abandoned stockpile area, I just didn't have a choice. But I started with figuring out the ends of the puzzle and then started working towards the middle from each side at first, and then switched to doing the top side down to finish the connection. This was like a too much information puzzle. The trick is to ignore the lots and lots of useless information. I eventually figured out a route that was pretty direct and minimized how janky the path was - even if it starts out by going the wrong direction.
Building a park like this raises a number of logical questions. Can I get the water to fill up the space the way I want it too, or will I have to do it in smaller pieces so that the water doesn't dry up faster than I can get it there? Can I remember to smooth and engrave each level before I dig the next one, or will I have to do it from the other side or make platforms and tear them down again? And the most common question of all big digging, tunneling and water projects is how many people are going to die from falls or accidental cave ins?
Stay tuned, I'll let you know when I find out.
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Topic: The Mushroom Park Expansion (Read 906 times)