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[Uronym]

Here is my tale:

I wanted to build a bridge across a particularly narrow part of the ocean to connect two continents. On embark I brought nothing. Immediately the dwarves were living off of picked plants and fish and various other things they could come by. As soon as possible, wood was chopped for the bridge, and construction was begun.

All was going nicely, and the caravan arrived. However, it brought no wood, and we had cut down all the wood on our side of the ocean... We got some picks, however, which we unwisely did not use to dig out a shelter. Instead, we resolved to dig a tunnel to the other side and chop its wood.

Shortly along the tunnel's excavation the miners ran into damp stone! T'was an aquifer! Entirely decided on our course of action, we were determined to continue our digs in the direction we had begun. However, we were not so adamant as to avoid safety measures: we spent a great deal of time excavating drain canals to direct water from the aquifer to the caverns.

But alas, meanwhile, unhappiness was rising. There was nowhere to eat, sleep or party, and the dwarves' morale was suffering. One day as stone was being hauled out of the tunnels, two workers were crippled by boulders falling from above. One quickly fell berserk and went on a (crippled) rampage, killing several key project directors in their sleep. This is where it snapped. This land, henceforth was cursed...

Unhappiness did nothing but grow exponentially as needs were neglected and drainage canals expanded. One by one each member of the fortress fell to insanity, until only two remained...

The aquifer had been breached and was successfully draining into the caverns, which filled at an alarming rate, but none too much for the drainage canals that were so carefully excavated by the miners, few as they had become.

Only one miner was left, though; he dug and dug, improving drainage systems and attempting to cut through more of the aquifer, every day fighting through rapidly flowing water and mud as the expedition leader hauled corpses of the dead away to where they would be less disturbing. The dead, however, were not restful...

One day as the miner was hard at work, a ghost unexpectedly charged him in the tunnels and ripped a leg clean off of him. He never left that spot, and remained only to die of thirst in the mud, a most disgraceful and depressing death.

Only the expedition leader remained. He himself was forced to pick up the pick and continue the work, never expecting to see another of his kin for the rest of his days, doomed to die in these accursed tunnels at this accursed site, but one day, the unimaginable happened: migrants had arrived.

They helped our expedition leader to clean up some of the mess, and proceeded to assist in carving out some basic necessities that had been neglected for far too long here in Bridgeconstructs.

As the quality of life slowly rose, more work was continuing on the tunnels, with the new population behind the picks. But the caverns were filled ever deeper with runoff water, and a strange slowness was strongly felt by all around.

It was finally deemed that it would be impossible to continue work on the tunnel, due to this strange slowness as well as the maddening flows of water and mud that the miners could not bear nor dig through, and a new plan was erected.

The new plan was to attempt to dig a drainage system into the caverns to drain the enormous amount of water, believed to be the cause of the strange slowness absorbing the land. Work on this was slow, as all things had become in this land. After an agonizingly long wait, though, it was completed. Upon being opened to the caverns, the drainage system immediately flash flooded, killing several miners and various other people working in the drains at the time.

Initially, results were promising: large portions of the caverns were drying up and there was a general decrease in the water level. It did not continue for long; or perhaps it did: nobody knows, as the land had transcended time, and all who entered never came back. Time had slowed to a crawl in this land, scientists theorize. The cause is believed to be the infamous FPS fallout.


Here's the save:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6478

Any ideas for how to reduce the "FPS fallout"? I'm pretty sure it's due to all of the water in the caverns. Running for me at about ~7 FPS...

[GhostDwemer]

Yes. It is due to all the water in the caverns. Next time you need to drain water, especially an infinite amount of water, drain it through a fortification carved into the edge of the map, not into the caverns.

The way to get your FPS back up is to stop pumping water into the caverns and wait a really long time. Or use dfhack to get rid of it all (if you are running a version prior to .11, for which there is no dfhack yet.)

[khearn]

Wow, sounds like a ThatAussieGuy project. Total focus on a big megaproject, no concern for all the unhappiness, death and insanity that results.

[Uronym]

Well, I'd love to but I'm not exactly pumping the water into the caverns. It just falls down really long shafts, straight out of the aquifer, until it reaches the caverns... Not only that, but 5 FPS makes it really hard to do anything in a reasonable amount of time...

[ivanthe8th]

Well your real problem is that you're never going to run out of water from the aquifer. Aquifer tiles will never stop producing water, so all you're doing is creating a ton of fluid motion calculations for your computer to handle. The real solution is to abandon the tunnels, wall them off if possible, and let the aquifer fill what's left. Then your cavern will empty (slowly), and eventually it will be playable again.