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[Syreniac]

In my current fortress, I've decided that I want to build part of it submerged in the local volcano, and to achieve this, I've drained 20~ z-levels of the volcano of magma and sealed the bottom with cast obsidian so I can start work.

However, as I was building a staircase down I ran into what I assume must be a bug. I was building a 2x2 vertical staircase down, and at the 7th z-level, when first half the staircase was marked as having access to a building material. Two more levels down, and as far as I can tell, every square is marked with this and I can't continue any further.

It's not a design flaw (I'm literally just building a 2x2 Up/down staircase on every level), so I'm assuming it's some bug to do with pathfinding. Is there any way I can get around this?

[Corai]

Volcanoes refill, is there lava falling down the staircase?

[Syreniac]

No, I've drained it all the way and sealed it at the bottom by using the remaining lava to make an obsidian seal. There's no magma above this new obsidian floor.

A diagram to show what I mean:

Code: [Select]

|   x   |
|   x   |
|   x   | <- bug starts here
|       |
|       |
|_______| <-obsidian plug in the volcano
|MMMMMMM| <- magma


[Urist Da Vinci]

How did you drain it?

[Syreniac]

I dug down around the edges, tapped the volcano as normal, built a set of pumps and drained it off the edge of the map.

My eventual plan is to hollow out a large cavern above the plug I've placed in the volcano, something like this

Code: [Select]

    |     |
    |     |
    |     |
____|     |____
|             |
|             |
|             |
|_____________|
|MMMMMMMMMMMMM|

And then exploit the refilling of the volcano to force it up through pipes through the middle of this cavern:

Code: [Select]

    |MMMMM|
    |MMMMM|
    |MMMMM|
____|MMMMM|____
|   |M| |M|   |
|   |M| |M|   |
|   |M| |M|   |
|___|M|_|M|___|
|MMMMMMMMMMMMM|

Mainly because I want to say that I built a fortress in a volcano.

[Urist Da Vinci]

I dug down around the edges, tapped the volcano as normal, built a set of pumps and drained it off the edge of the map.
...

OK, so we can rule out it being a dfhack bug. How about trying to go around (in a 3D sense) the invisible problem? Perhaps you can connect the stairs from below.

[Syreniac]

I dug down around the edges, tapped the volcano as normal, built a set of pumps and drained it off the edge of the map.
...

OK, so we can rule out it being a dfhack bug. How about trying to go around (in a 3D sense) the invisible problem? Perhaps you can connect the stairs from below.

I've tried to dig a set of stairs into the side of the volcano, and whilst I can actually reach to the new artificial bottom of the volcano, I can't get the dwarfs to actually do anything on top of the plug, either with designations or constructions. It still gives the same message of not having access to building materials.

[DTF]

Any similarities:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=111361.0
?

[Syreniac]

Any similarities:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=111361.0
?

Maybe. I've definitely got a similar problem in that I can't get my dwarves to receive tasks that are on top of cast obsidian floors.

The difference is that this extends several levels up, where there never has been cast obsidian as well. It is possible (and indeed, probable, that the root cause of both of these problems is the same however.

[Syreniac]

Ok, so in the interests of trying to get around this, I reloaded an earlier save and was getting ready to repeat what I did so that I could see if this was somehow lucky based, but now one of the tunnels which I used to drain the volcano has become spontaneously impassable to dwarfs in a similar way to before.

This is very weird...

I'm starting to think that the game isn't recognising that a square doesn't have magma in it anymore and keeping it flagged as impassable. Will test and see if there is a chance at fixing it.

1st observation: at the of the magically impassable zone is a square that allows me to place a wall, but all the materials are noted to have -12700 distance from the square. Attempting to get dwarves to actually build on that square is impossible, they pick up the materials and walk towards it, only to stop one square before it, drop the materials and walk away. This will continue for some time, before a dwarf pauses the task, saying that the area is inaccessible. Dfhack probe reveals nothing unusual about the square.

[Brandstone]

Just for completeness of data, are you using compressed saves? Are you using a graphics package? What do your unit files look like? Would you mind sharing your save and/or complete game folder?

Edit: I think this may be related to how freezing water occasionally does not create a floor above it.

[vjek]

I've run into this before, and my solution was to build constructed floors over the area (yes, even though there was obsidian floor there already).
then everything worked normally.  You have to designate the floor from the edges, toward the center, one tile/row at a time.

It seems the interior of the volcano is marked as "empty", tilewise, and until you build a floor manually, it doesn't recognize it's existence, and refuses to permit dwarves to path there.

Once the floor is built, everything appears to work as expected.  You could try and see if that solves the problem for you, Syreniac.  If you can't build a floor, even on the edge of the volcano interior, then this is not the same problem I ran into.