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Mishrak

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Flabort

2 (66.7%)

HavingPhun

0 (0%)

Gigaz

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 3

[HavingPhun]

   The write up is wierd, I got carried away and wrote about my vampire bookeeper. I also put it in spoilers to shorten this post. I left my previous posts in the second spoiler since they described the happenings of my fort.

 
Writeup:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There I sat in a makeshift cell with several other prisoners. I remember being cracked over the head from behind and blacking out. They others sat there silently as I shook the daze off. I recognized the others as Likot the merchant, Kumil the fishery worker, Momuz the Fish Dissector, Thob the Blacksmith, and Dumed the axedwarf. I asked them how long I have been here. "You were here before all of us." Likot replied. "We thought you were dead, boy. Your skull was cracked right open and you still healed." added Dumed. "How do you folks get here?" I asked. "None of us can remember, its so strange." Likot responded. I sat there. I'm locked in a damp cell and I don't even know how I got here. I do know why though. I am filled with guilt but its not my fault. I couldn't help myself. As I thought about the situation I noticed that the other three dwarfs haven't talked at all. They sit there on the floor some with emotionless faces and some with sad faces. Not saying a thing, not making a move, not reacting to anything. "Whats wrong with them!" Slipped out of me. "We don't know. They just sit there with the same reaction, not moving. As if they are statues." Said Likot. Maybe they are reflecting on thier lives. I decided I would too. To pass the time, to help understand all thats happened.

      I'm only in my early twenties now. But when I was a child I constantly moved from fort to fort with my parents. My father was a professional mason. He worked for a group of masons that would build for hire. Whether the building be big or small. My mother could cook anything and setup a makeshift still with even the most scarce matierials. She sold food and drink to the other stonemasons. Things were good until one day. I was at my fathers work site. They were building a large castle and he was skillfully scaling up and down the walls scaffolding. I sat on the ground trying to redesign the castle with stones and a small batch of mortar my father made me. I finished it. It was a slightly lopsided version of the castle. I also added a magma fountain for extra effect. Later that day when the sun was setting and it was about time to go home, I heard several large snaps. I looked up to see the scaffolding was breaking and falling. I screamed for my father but it was too late. He fell from above and was impaled on stray scaffolding. I ran over to him just as he was breathing his last breathes. I could only hear a faint whisper before a blood streamed from his mouth and left him limp and lifeless. I cried and looked up to the sky asking armok what caused this. Right before I lost all hope I a mysterious man walking away. He dropped a letter with a strange marking on it. I promised myself that my father would be avenged. The group my father worked with gave me and my mother 200 urists as compensation. If only that were enough.

   My mother told me to keep the money and save it. We barely scraped by. When I was a teen I decided to move out. I bought myself some armor and some bolts. My mother gave me her crossbow that she trained me to use over the years. I took the letter around the town seeing if anyone could recognize the marking. I finally found a man who recognized it and he told me I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't care. It was the marking of a vampire who had killed thousands. I spent months tracking him down. All of them were dead ends until I had one more. As I entered the dark cave I found many bones and dead bodies. The beast was surprised when I approached it. It had destroyed the scaffolding to hurt the noble who had the castle constructed reputation. People had claimed he was cruel and unsafe with workers before. That was the last straw. The beast told me I wasn't leaving alive. He dropped so fast when the bolt struck his skull. I drank his blood from its pool. I developed a lust for blood over those years.

   I came to this fort to find a place to finally rest. Make a good living. My life was so volatile before. But I hadn't feed in a long time and when a saw hime sleeping alone in his room I couldn't stop myself. Then I ended up in this dark, damp, lifeless cell. One of the quiet dwarfs was about to speak. Then the most schrill and horrifiying screams bursted through the air. They shook the earth as if they were coming from hell itself. The screams of the dwarfs outside lasted for hours. Until there was only quiet. "So they are all dead?" I spoke out loud. "let me check." Dumed said. "What?" I barely slipped out as he stood up and walked through the wall. They are all ghosts! I am alone and immortal. One of the quiet dwarfs murmured something about not finishing it. I remember those three. Thier moods failed. I just about lost it. I am stuck in a tiny hole with a bunch of mindless ghosts for all of eternity. But then one last hope came through. An iron pick fell through the food hatch above and landed in front of me.

Previous Posts:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm about 4 hours into my fort. It has lots of gold tetahedrite, magnetite, etc. I also found two adamantine viens. I have my magma forges built off of a magma tube. I have a Sinister biome bordering the north so I have undead coming in and out. I built two canals outside. One has a wall so far. I have around 60 dwarfs. I just stopped playing for tonight. Right before I left I got a surprise. A dwarf was drained of blood. My first vampire ever. I put the amount of vampire curses to 1000 in world gen. Now I have to find it. 4 dwarfs are dead. One was killed because undead goats were chasing him through the woods. I couldn't save him without losing my military. They are untrained. Another died after getting a cut on his hand. Before I noticed he was starving and dehydrated in the hospital it was too late. The third got killed saving a caravan and migrants while killing an undead water buffalo. The vampire killed the fourth.

I shouldnt have wood problems now. I surrounded a decent sized area with a canal and filled it with water. I will build my second row of walls soon. Now I want to focus on training my military. Getting adamantine and iron armor and weapons. I have several large deposits of magnetite. The admantine tubes seem to go down pretty far. I dug through the center. But I don't want to dig too far yet. I will probably have an assault on hell as my grand finally. If everything works out I am going to design this fort to kill demons and clear hell. Lots of cave ins and adamantine.

PS: The reason I had wood problems was bacause I had a range of undead outside ready to shatter peoples skulls. But now I have the area outside more secure. I have a necromancers tower nearby. Hopefully they will send sieges.



I am just going to post little updates and then a full write up that kindof summarizes it. I wish I would have taken notes along the way. Kept more track of dwarfs so I could do it from ones point of view. I still might. My fps is lower than usual. Probably since I raised the max number of sites and the max popultation higher than default.

A 1 eyed giant kaola arrived. Beware its webs! I was going to throw my decent military at it but then it killed my outpost liason and half of the caravan. A swordsmen with the caravan killed it but they left with fear. Kept a bunch of things outside. I would grab them but I don't want to keep my fort open for undead assualt.

I dug out 72 new bedrooms. Now they need to be smoothed and furnished. Also built a huge throne room off to the side. I'm not going to get a king but I did it for fun. Probably not smoothing that. have 8 out of 10 full sets of iron armor forged. Ill have two squads of five. 1 as melee and one as ranged. 3 dwarfs have died of failed moods. All of them so far have not gone berserk luckily.

5+ undead eagles have come in and pestered my masons building walls outside. No one got hurt except some bruised muscles and a bruised liver. I got all the migrant waves safely inside. I think thats it.



I finished my 10 hours. I breached hell in the end. My vampire bookeeper was locked up in the first place, he lived. I had some migrants outside that I never let in. Some of them were slaughtered by a kobold ambush. I'll work on a write up tommorow. I will try to upload the save with my dial up. Since thats all I have right now. Can I put it in a zip file? To save a few mbs. Ill also recheck to see how my fps was and upload some pictures. What should I upload them too? tinypic or something? I don't know if I will win anything but it was really fun anyways. My civilian dwarfs killed around 10 demons. My undertrained military killed 2. Ill post again later tomorow.

Pictures

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I started with 100(80) fps. Ended with 90(60). It is usually much higher but I increased max population and max sites.

Fort: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7472

[RockBiterSon]

Here it is. Everything that could go wrong did. Goblins attacked right after all my bolts had been used up, Famine, Well dried up, Alchohol ran out, Tantrum Spiral, I currently have a metric ton of berserk children running amok. At least no one vomitted on the monument. (though they did drop socks on it)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The fort limped into a slow spiral of death. Meanwhile I attempted to build a gold pyramid. Finally a goblin siege came along and put an end to the fort. It ends as every fort should: Surrounded by goblins, Miasma, X-Pig tail sock-X littered all over, and sections of floor torn up by tantruming dwarves.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[flabort]

Haha!  Well, I'm probably not getting the top prize.
Good luck, everyone, I look forward to seeing the results.

[Ruhn]

Here's my submission:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hey Ruhn here, I figured since I was running this challenge that I should participate also.  A single 10 hour chunk of time is something I do not have, but my plan is to play over the next week or so in shorter sessions.

Day1:
Decided to gen a world with Short history, but left everything else default.  Ended up with not less than  8 dwarf nations to pick from, which I think is quite high.  There might be some interesting stories about that in Legends, but don't have time to look right now.  “The Spear of Omens” sounds like a good group to go with.


After hunting around randomly for a few minutes I picked out a 3x3 with a brook in the middle.  Of course it warns me about the Aquifer, but I don't think it will be a problem.  Customizing the dorfs and equipment doesn't take too long so I'll get rid of the junk seeds and extra crutches and all that.

Well, I forgot to look at the personality screen when assigning skills until the very end.  Which means I wasted some time going back and changing almost everyone.  With this small mistake behind us, it is time to found “Keymirrored”.  Strike the Earth!


This place was almost completely flat, but there was one small hill in the NE.  Praise the Lord.  Setup some stockpiles near the new door and unpaused.  I quickly got tired of the miner running off so loaded up Therapist and killed her hauling labors.

After 2 hours I don't have much for progress.  I hit the aquifer after 2 layers and tried the “breach using dirt plug” method to get through but there is a second layer of aquifer.  I started farms before this project but not much else, so it is time to work on living arrangements before unhappy thoughts pile up.  Digging some random shafts down might find me a dry spot.  Maybe on the other side of the river?

--
Day 2:
OK, well I'm going to see what we can do with this place.  My new plan is dig a bunch of explore tunnels with random channels and see if there is a way through the aquifer.

No luck there, a few random tunnels on this side of the river are all the same story as where I tried before.  I dropped a bigger plug (7x7) and setup a pump that dumps back into aquifer.  Since it is all dirt I couldn't smooth, and the water came in too fast to build a wall.  Maybe if I had dropped the ENTIRE HILL into the thing from the start there would be good news by now, but this is more trouble than it's worth. 

Pack your bags everyone!  Let's get out of here and find a better place to set up shop.

Found a new spot, a little different from the last.  The random name generator gave us “Canyonscraped”.  Works for me.  I didn't bother with customizing my setup this time, just going to jump in with the standard. 


At first look there are no trees or plants outside at all, and the place is completely flat.  I'm okay with that since I plan to do all my living and fighting underground.

3 more hours gone, half way through now.  Since there isn't anything to gather I built a well on the surface in the first summer in case booze runs low/out.  This contradicts my plan, but it's temporary while I build floodgates and get the water works running.

--

Day 3:
I built a bridge over the little stream, it probably isn't dangerous since my dwarves keep jumping across it.  A caravan might not be able to cross as easily?  Also finished the water works for an indoor well and ability to expand for future wells or other water fun.


More migrants have come, but I think food and drink are starting to become a problem.  We could end up on hunger strike soon.  As soon as the last guy walks through the gate, this evil creature shows up.  It could get ugly because all I have are some doors.


The were-creature ran off just as we drank the last of the booze.  So instead of running out with axes and picks to do battle they are hanging around the well on the surface.

Now one of my guys gets the urge to make a mysterious construction, and it turns out to be a fancy amulet.  Let's get something useful next time people!

It's exciting to see the caravan from mountain homes show up, but 2 frames later I find out the wagons are going to pass me up.  Calamity!  As I throw a tantrum it seems the cause is the bridge to depot is currently in the Raised position...  At least I can lower it and get some trade goods.


And just like that 2 more hours have past, and 3 are left in the challenge.  I spent quite a bit of time trading my jewel-encrusted mechanisms for wood, booze, and armor.  I'll barely make it to the second year at this rate!!

----
Day 4
Just a side note here, the game's been running smoothly at 100fps the whole time.

I was building some statues and laughed at this one.  It goes right outside the dining hall.  Speaking of which, I ordered the hall to be smoothed out.

Turned all of the wood into beds and a few bins, and got the sleeping level in pretty good shape.  The elves showed up and we got some wood to replenish the stocks for further expansion.

Spent some time on fortifying the entrance too.  I'm using a series of floor hatches to ensure no building destroyers can get in. 


And with that I will have to stop here at 9 hours into the challenge, and 6 hours on this fort.


Not too bad, only 16 months into the fort.  17 Ecstatic, 5 happy, 3 content.

I found a little metal, but without coal or trees for easy processing it just sat around.  I usually setup a separate entrance before digging deep, and was starting to make progress in that direction

This location is working out much better than the aquifer spot.  I figure it was the 'Very Deep Soil' that set me up for failure, in combination with no multi-layer aquifer experience.

Fort: http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7474

I guess my main regret would be not doing a cool project, got too busy trying this new fort layout.

Good luck to anyone and everyone working to finish things up!
I'll update OP with the final submissions and get the poll going tomorrow morning.

[Mishrak]

Mine's done also.  Uploading it now and I'll edit this post with the writeup and screenshots shortly.


[edit] Save uploaded.

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=7475

Writeup:

So my original plan was to do a bit of roleplaying and tie it into the Ars article, but I kinda ran out of time, and things just weren't cooperating, so I had to improvise.  I built a shiny room dedicated to them out of gold and magma, and built a pit up top to dump large quantities of enemies (and not enemies) into the Ars room, as a means of making it very Dwarf Fortress like.  It worked really well.  I had to redesign it a couple of times, but the final build worked great.  If I were to do it again, I'd certainly make it better and more efficient.  (And harder to escape).  The problem was finding things to dump in it.  I embarked near a necro tower, and the last time that happened, I was sieged by zombies by the second year.  Well into the summer of the 3rd year, and that just never occured here.  I never even got ambushed by goblins, although I did trap a few.  I tried to open HFS but I was having issues digging under the magma sea, so I left that alone for the sake of time.  Finally, it was some sneaky human necromancers that provided at least enough entertainment and "decoration" for the Ars room, so it wasn't a complete waste.

Pictures:
Embark:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Before any ground was broken.  This place was always filled with boars, white cranes or vultures.  Or necromancers.  Just saying.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It took 121 z-levels of digging through two other caverns to finally find water.  I was a bit nervous till I did.  Notice the L shape in the center.  That would later become my site for my well.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Early wall construction, along with a Trade Depot and a moat.  The refuse pile is encased in walls to protect against necromancers.  Also notice the volcano dumping area in the upper right corner.  This proved to be very handy.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"Dwarves were harmed in the making of this fortress."  I lost several engravers to volcano breaches, one miner to a cave-in, and many others wounded or dead.  Such is Dwarf Fortress.  This picture is one haunting my Forging Area.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Another haunting, this time he's stalking the manager /expedition leader in the main food area.  There's several livestock areas for birds, several farms.  Kitchen and Brewery to the left, drink stockpile to the south, on the far east was a pigtail / cloth farm.  I accidentally cooked most of the plump helmets early on, so I was playing catchup most of the way trying to keep booze supplies high.  Sacking the elves helped a lot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The main project, the Ars room.  This was the earliest screenshot I took of it, before it got all messy.  Hilariously, and rather fitting, is the dwarf miner corpse who fell into it during a cave-in while trying to expand the pit up above.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ars Room from above.  Sadly, I didn't get a shot before there was blood all over the place, so it distorted the image a little bit.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

20 Z-level drop.  The two headed ettin I dropped in there didn't survive, but the necromancer did.  And he made things fun.  Notice the 3 re-animated corpses in there.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This Caravan is about to have a really bad day.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The results of what happened next, after pulling the lever that retracted the bridges below that caravan.  I hated to do it to the dwarves, but I was out of time.  I had planned to tie necromancers up at the chains in that picture, but when this one survived the fall, I didn't have to anymore.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When it was all said and done, I'm pretty happy with the device I made.  It worked exactly like I envisioned it, and it didn't cause tantrum spirals because you weren't physically killing the enemies AND the corpses were in a room that was sealed off.  I have a feeling I'm not too far from a siege, and were I to continue with the fort, it would have been even more glorious a room - filled with zombie goblins and other things.

Anyway, this was done in roughly 10 hours.  I might have gone over by a few minutes, I'm not really sure.  It was close, either way.  Also my FPS ran at around 80 or so the entire time, except for a few situations where it dipped into the 50's and 60's for a few minutes.

[Ruhn]

! ! !
OK, the voting is ready to go for the grand prize.
! ! !

I would also like to discuss how we should submit to Ars.  Some ideas are:
1) copy everything into an email and send to Casey Johnston
2) Just email her a link to the winning post (since she talked about going on the forums before)
3) Don't contact Casey directly, put a link to the winner in the article's comments
4) Recreate the writeup on a website and send links to that
5) Someone has a journalist friend that would post the writeup on our behalf
6) other really good ideas?

I meant to email her over the weekend to introduce our activity, will get to that in the next day or 2.

[vjek]

I think just email her a link to the thread with some introductory context would be sufficient.

[Mishrak]

I agree, share some context and see what she does with it.  If she replies at all, I'll be happy.  I don't expect her to put an article up, but who knows. 

[Gigaz]

My computer doesn't work at the moment so I might not vote . I only looked at 2 or 3 forts.

[RockBiterSon]

I think we should just direct her to the thread. That way she can see mine too! But I'll vote as well.

[Ruhn]

Agreed.  I sent her a link, will let you guys know if I get an email response.

In the mean time let's keep voting for the "grand prize" going for a few more days.
I've gotten as far as downloading the forts, but not reviewing them all.

[Gigaz]

I looked at all the other 7 forts and I will vote for Thatdude. I never thought that a above-ground fort could be so dwarfy.

[Ruhn]

A reply!  LET THE VOTES CONTINUE!!

Thanks for getting in touch, this is really cool! I'm glad you all decided to make something constructive out of my article. I'm interested in writing about some of the best finished 10-hour forts, and also who the winner was, and see how much further everyone got than me... can you let me know when a winner is chosen and also link me to some of the best ones, by any chance? I might need help interpreting them too, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Let me know!

[Mishrak]

Hah!  How great is that.  Love it.  Props to you Ruhn for organizing this.  I didn't think my idea of more than just a whim really, but it seems Casey likes this and that's worth the work we did.  Keep voting dudes!

[Ruhn]

Hah!  How great is that.  Love it.  Props to you Ruhn for organizing this.  I didn't think my idea of more than just a whim really, but it seems Casey likes this and that's worth the work we did.  Keep voting dudes!

Kudos to you as well, Mishrak.  Your whim was brilliance.