Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Rogue Yun]

I love the way the arches look over the doors and the receding pillars. This looks brilliant

[Max™]

OMG, I found a save from before I dropped all of the magma pistons, one of my kogabkup folders was saved in an odd place that I randomly found just now!

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=10278

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

*q*

*shift+p*

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

BWAHAHAHAHA... wait, did I remember to put magma proof hatches over the staircase that overtopped?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Fuck... thought I did...

[AbanShakehandles]

Don't die creative design thread!

So this isn't finished, but I'm posting anyway to keep the gallery alive.



Settle caverns? How about carve your own!
When completed, this will not just be a vertical "tube", but will widen out in places, narrow in others, maybe some shelf like structures.

I plan to flood the bottom floor and have species from all 3 cavern layers growing around the base of my underground castle.

[Buckley]

Yes yes great thread.  Some amazing builds in here.

Unfortunately I don't have any images to post yet, but I did want to share that I've been getting increasingly more proactive and organized in my builds as I've gotten deeper and deeper into this game.  Some of the planning techniques I use (crude, low tech, but effective methinks) and emerging 'rules of thumb:

If I'm cheating (using reveal, which is most of the time) on embark I'll use excel to create a per - z level chart that lists predominate soils/ stones/ veins/ ores and such as well as predominate features (caverns, magma pipes/ sea).  I even include functions for mining layers (e.g. " z level - 40:  Native Gold and Marble mine)  I've found myself beginning to get a bit more architectural and !feng! dwarfy even in my mines.

From there I chart various fort functions to various levels.... most industries get at least 2 z levels (for stacking stockpiles above or below workshops) and after the first 6 z levels or so I begin inserting intermediate water/ magma "sewer" layers between layers.

Usually my first 6 or so z levels are all about getting basic fort functions up and running (lumber, stone masonry, engineering, farming, animal husbandry, gems, textiles) before I then dig for the depths to set up my magma furnace levels.  Once I have metals getting started (by that time I can usually keep 100-120 dwarfs busy by utilizing a lot of stone hauling, lumber hauling, and stone detailing jobs) I start focusing on building my more or less 'final' structures where I can take a bit more time to focus on building as much for aesthetics and wealth moreso than reacting to 25+ migrants showing up.

Will post pics as I get deeper into the current build. 

[enisea]

Dining rooms



The smoke is an !!Animal Caretaker!! that tried to take care of a wild fire imp...

[Centigrade]

Came expecting fiery furniture pictures. Nothing about the OP involved fire in any way. Left disappointed.

[Rose]

There's a burning dwarf literally in the post above yours.

[Magnumcannon]

PTW

[Broseph Stalin]

A while ago I created a test fort with NO_SLEEP NO_EAT NO_DRINK dwarves with infinite access to slade blocks, furniture, and iron bars so I could play with different designs in game rather than plotting them out in my head then fiddling with them while simultaneously running the fort. My latest project has been to experiment with above ground structures since the awkwardness of additive design seems to be the most intimidating part for a lot of players. Basically I wanted to show people you could have a nice looking above ground fort pretty easilly. These specific designs assume a two story building with a basement but any of the layouts could be used in any way.






This is a basic estate, it's a defensible position for a noble to live. This example has the manor shifted two tiles north to accomodate a mine, masons workshop, and smelter plus a very small amount of grazing space.



This is the manor itself. Nice bedroom and dining area plus some good storage space and a basement that's being used to house a furnace and spacious stockpiles.

 

Simple bedroom with room for an office, dining room, and a general sitting area. The basement probably won't accommodate a resource demanding industry like carpentry but a still can probably be supplied fairly steadilly.



Nice large bedroom at the expense of a spacious study. Fairly lavish accommodations downstairs and the basement can accommodate an industry like clothesmaking or weaving that requires little stockpile space.


Simple quarters for a simple dwarf with a small workspace. The upstairs has multiple beds which can be assigned to the cloud of children that tends to surround certain dwarves but can also function as a flophouse.


Bare bones, there's no upstairs for this design but if you're giving a dwarf the 4x4 they probably don't need much space.

[Galena]

I can't find many examples of it in my forts(because I've never really put effort into making it look beautiful), but I have found that adding asymmetry can make a fort much more organic and beautiful. Instead of using squares, make edges rough and organic- for instance
X- room  A-Wall
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
XXXXAAAXXXXXXXXAA
XXXXXAXXXXXXXXXXA
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXAA
XXXXXXXXXAXXXXAA
XXXXXXXAAAXXXAA
AAAXXXAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAA

This creates a sort of flow, and also makes it more organic. The intent in create an assymetrical, organic fort needs to be avoiding squares and rectangles, and creating a flow feel. For the best look in an asymmetrical fortress, it is important for rooms to be more open ended (like an open floor plan in a house) and use the shape of the room to transition between areas.

[Zeronet]

This is placing as humans in Masterwork DF. There's no real difficulty to it, i'm playing purely for the joy of building something cool, there's no invasions to actually threaten anything.




Main entrance to the city. The two bunkers in front of the walls contain fire turrets i bought off the dwarfs.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The Palace i'm constructing. Adding fortifications to every other wall really makes for some cool looking battlements in stonesense.

I,ve put the last one in spoilers as it's a little big.

[xub313]

I really like building extensive outer walls for my fortresses. And multiple layers of outer walls. It's probably a sand castle by some other things I've seen here, but I really like how this fort's entrance looks. I was even planning another layer but I decided to create a new world instead.

[gunpowdertea]

Very nice, has a nice medieval castle feel to the layout - though then you should also try and place it up on the hillside. Unfortunately this has no real implications in DF, the range of ranged weapons decreases and you cannot (still? changed?) fire siege weapons across z levels (well, they don't aim, but since targeting is dodgy anyways...).

[Naryar]

Tetris Fortress

Also in my current fort, apart from that I am trying to go away from the "build your fort out of 10x10 rectangular rooms" I am trying to give a more organic and random feel to the fort. It worked, more or less... (not convinced)

what i need is a fake vein generator so I can dig vein-like tunnels and then fill the remaining space with rooms, i think it will look good

And no even 100 mineral scarcity doesn't give me enough veins for this kind of design.

[fricy]

what i need is a fake vein generator so I can dig vein-like tunnels and then fill the remaining space with rooms, i think it will look good

3Dveins?