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[Arx]

On the plus side, hauling all this tetrahedrite has all (11 of) my dwarves busy, and the child was apparently very nearly twelve already. On the down side, very little is happening that's not tetrahedrite hauling.

And I'm about to try my hand at pumps, so I can set up a farm inside my fort. This promises to be entertaining.

Edit: and as I type, migrants arrive. I am legitimately pleased by this for possibly the first time ever, since I need to get that valuable ore out of the water reservoir before I flood it. Five more haulers!

Edit again: Nooo the brook froze over before the reservoir could fill properly. I hope I'm not too badly screwed. Plenty of plants to make drinks from.

[Larix]

My personal dwarf breeding project has finally reached the desired result: on the 4th of Galena 1083, ònul ósoddom gave birth to Ingish Vabôbokun, her first daughter. ònul is the daughter of an engraver (who never set foot underground) and a clothier, her paternal grandmother is Rith Asteshdumat, matriarch of the aboveground fort. ònul's husband, Urist Ecemtulon, is the grandson of Rith on his mother's side - the two have the exact same four grandparents. Little Ingish does seem quite healthy in spite of the low ancestor count.

I just let the fort run in the background with minimal supervision for the last few days, because there was nothing left to do but wait; i'd already walled the settlement off, built an automatic watercannon that kept nuking wandering wildlife, trained all adults in a bit of crossbow use and just kept everything ticking. FPS was seriously deteriorating - under 30 at 120+ dwarfs (Ingish is Nr. 145, but FPS had been poor for years).

Total value generated is just under 13 Mio. in 30 fort years, with absolutely no metal industry. The belowground fort ran mostly on autopilot, just creating food, drink and clothes for themselves. Somewhere in year 26 or so, the last mined stone ran out, and in year 29, their brewery stopped distilling for lack of containers. Everything was set up with large party halls and enough beds and tables for everybody, so everyone's still ecstatic down there. Not to mention the ~30.000 drink and ~25.000 prepared food and about 1100 of each clothing item they hoard. That must have been a major cause of FPS troubles - whenever i set up, deleted or changed a stockpile, FPS dropped into the single digits for about half a minute before recovering.

The aboveground fort got one axe, three stones, one block and a dead wild boar as starting gifts and based on them a fully self-sufficient surface fort with thriving animal husbandry (wolves, wombats, wild boars), beekeeping industry, legendary engraver and jeweller in spite of never digging a single tile and having no trade, and a few multi-story buildings and a complete fortification ring all made from raw clay taking up about 1300 lumps. The fort is 35 dwarfs strong now, ten of them adult. (110 dwarfs live in the below-ground settlement.)

I was waiting for the birth to have conclusive proof that cousins can marry and reproduce, but making it to the third generation of fort-born dwarfs is also a nice final achievement to shelve the place with.

PS: in other news, the concept rig for the dwarfputing mass storage device passed its function test. Using carts in eight different weights to hold information and reading those weights out (with four plates per cart) would allow storing the equivalent of three bits per cart, and this storage device can handle blocks of seven carts with a single pressure plate and bridge. The supposed organisation in sixteen-cart blocks (equivalent to six bytes or one "frame" of video data for a 6x8 pixel monchrome display) would take one plate and three bridges with links per block, so seven mechanisms per six bytes stored data. The read-out would obviously take four linked-up pressure plates for each of the sixteen positions, about two hundred total, but that's a one-shot cost; you could store an arbitrary amount of data in sort of a sixteen-track data tape, and five hundred blocks would hold 3KB of data, at a cost of a paltry 3700 mechanisms (reading track already included). But it'd also require making, selecting and placing 8000 minecarts. And it would just be storage, you couldn't (usefully) write to it, rewind it or search for a place on the "tape".

[Lich180]

So now you have to fight a zombie yak and a zombie minotaur right?

Yes. I'm currently getting a military up and running, since its only my first winter. I only had 3 axedwarves training until the spring migrant wave showed up, now I have almost 2 full squads of assorted weapon users.

Might not have much to worry about though, the waterfall seems to be a great spot for ambushes, zombies, and anything else to try and cross from one part of the map to the other. They then get dropped 30z and explode in the river below.

[MeMyselfAndI]

in other news, the concept rig for the dwarfputing mass storage device passed its function test. Using carts in eight different weights to hold information and reading those weights out (with four plates per cart) would allow storing the equivalent of three bits per cart, and this storage device can handle blocks of seven carts with a single pressure plate and bridge. The supposed organisation in sixteen-cart blocks (equivalent to six bytes or one "frame" of video data for a 6x8 pixel monchrome display) would take one plate and three bridges with links per block, so seven mechanisms per six bytes stored data. The read-out would obviously take four linked-up pressure plates for each of the sixteen positions, about two hundred total, but that's a one-shot cost; you could store an arbitrary amount of data in sort of a sixteen-track data tape, and five hundred blocks would hold 3KB of data, at a cost of a paltry 3700 mechanisms (reading track already included). But it'd also require making, selecting and placing 8000 minecarts. And it would just be storage, you couldn't (usefully) write to it, rewind it or search for a place on the "tape".

You can use a trick to write to it. What you do is you encode the data in the relative position of carts in the tape and then swap carts around to write data.

So for example: light then heavy is a 0, heavy then light is a 1. This only encodes half a bit per cart, though.

(In actuality, you may with to use multiple parallel lines as opposed to one line - although beware about line desync issues.)

You can extend this to multiple carts, but the encoding/decoding gets... Complicated. For example, with 4 carts of unique weight you can encode 4 bits (actually, ~4.6 bits -> log2(n!)). But good luck setting up the encoding/decoding system.

Alternatively, just use full (of water) and empty carts.

[Lich180]

So my second artifact in this fort is a pine figurine, with spikes of cedar and pictures of elves being torn apart by some human.

I can taste the irony.

[Larix]

[Something about a "data tape" using carts of discrete weights to store information]And it would just be storage, you couldn't (usefully) write to it, rewind it or search for a place on the "tape".

You can use a trick to write to it. What you do is you encode the data in the relative position of carts in the tape and then swap carts around to write data.

Swapping carts around or generally extracting carts from/inserting them into a queue is a non-trivial undertaking. It would be completely impractical in the contraption i'm thinking of (it's so relatively uncomplicated exactly because i was looking for something that only stores data and was willing to do without actual memory functions).

So for example: light then heavy is a 0, heavy then light is a 1. This only encodes half a bit per cart, though.

(In actuality, you may with to use multiple parallel lines as opposed to one line - although beware about line desync issues.)

You can extend this to multiple carts, but the encoding/decoding gets... Complicated. For example, with 4 carts of unique weight you can encode 4 bits (actually, ~4.6 bits -> log2(n!)). But good luck setting up the encoding/decoding system.

I'm afraid that'd be really complicated to work with in DF. With the long recovery time of pressure plates and the rather crude types of memory that have been realised so far, i don't have a good idea how to read and process a specific relative order of carts. Using a limited number of cart weights and mapping each cart in the "tape" to a specific "area" of the active memory that does actual logic operations on the data would allow a pretty straight bit-wise memory: if carts can have four different weights, the exact weight of a cart can be read out by two pressure plates, converting it into two "yes/no" signals, which can then be stored by two memory cells, each holding one bit. Four carts, each with one of four possible weights (with possible duplications - in fact, all four could be the same weight) would come up to 4^4 possibilities - significantly more than [4!].

The basic idea i was contemplating is to store information for later use without the immense consumption of materials and labour common to "active" memory seen in most DF logic - instead of five to ten mechanisms and several installed buildings, possibly even two minecarts to store every single bit, such a data "archive" could hold up to six bits per mechanism and pair of minecarts. Mechanism costs would rise drastically if you wanted random or specific access, i can't say if it'd still be practical to, say, store text snippets in a conversation machine.

Alternatively, just use full (of water) and empty carts.

Funny you mention that - my venture into miniaturised watercannons originated from research into using water in carts as extra information. Picking up and dumping water can be completely automatised - just path a cart into a loading pond or over a dumping track stop (next to a water-accepting free space, ideally over a river or aquifer). Track stops can even be switched on/off and water supply to a loader activated/deactivated, as a second layer of switching.

[ribby]

So my first siege occurred in the middle of my construction of a death labyrinth specifically built and stuffed full of traps to kill and capture invaders. Only half the traps were down so I was a little worried... but nonetheless I closed the drawbridge to the main entrance and prepared an army behind the few siege weapons to create a final line of defence. So the first 10 guys died and another 6 or so trolls were captured but really only 30% of the enemy were dead or incapacitated, it wasn't enough. The labyrinth came out in a pen containing 3 war dogs, a giant python and a giant war lion. Sadly the goblins waited until they'd built up their forces a bit before storming that room and only one died before all the beasts were cruelly slain. At this point the death count was these animals and a couple of cats who'd foolishly walked out through the labyrinth into the arms of the goblins but happily, no dwarves.

Then I watched in horror as the invaders cleverly waited until they had filled this room before trying to storm the rest of the fort. Feeling rather hopeful I opened both drawbridges (the system is a bit like an airlock which the labyrinth and beast room comes out in the middle of I hoped that I'd be able to shut the airlock again before things got too out of hand for my soldiers to deal with) and saw that most of the goblins tried to retreat whilst a brave few attempted to advance further. At this point I fired the siege equipment. This was the most tragic death of the siege. A puppy happened to crawl in front of the bolt and was horribly mangled and torn apart the couple of goblins that had come this far were quickly repelled by my archers (who for some reason had decided to start using bolts again rather than just bashing their enemies with crossbows, I wasn't complaining.)

Of those that fled a further 6 fell prey to the traps that littered the main entrance. 2 died instantly and a further 4 were slowed enough to be hunted down and shot to pieces by archers before my macemen finished them off.

The rejoicing was interrupted when tragedy struck. A troll was sitting at the entrance to the caverns blocking the way in. I sent the military down to deal with it but sadly my only Elite Crossbowman was the first on the scene. Worse, he'd decided to stop using bolts again. After a brief scuffle he was thrown from the narrow platform they were battling on into the water below where he was eaten by a giant olm. Currently we're trying to retrieve his corpse so this hero can have a proper burial.

[MeMyselfAndI]

Why do you need any mechanisms per bit?

Use minecart physics, specifically the newton's cradle effect. It means that you can only read at one point in the loop, but oh well.

[nomoetoe]

My entire fortress population is fighting one Sasquatch HE WONT DIE THEY WONT LEAVE HIM ALONE NO MATTER WHAT I DO.

I may be a bit mad. c:

edit: NOPE very mad, most of the population is very unhappy.miserable and 2 went berserk FUCK IT. losing is fun but not like that. I'm quite mad. c:

[callisto8413]

Two things today.  A five year old kid made a artifact, a war bone hammer, which sounds cool.   

And I closed down my old jail cells (three of them which were just 2 by 1 dirt cells with some food and a chain) and replaced them with a large common jail cell dug out next to the main staircase.  It has four beds (one in each corner), four chains, two statues and two chairs (placed so that one chair is between two different chains), with a central food stockpile. 

Something like this...
B=Bed  R=Rope  C=Chair  S=Statue F=food

BRFFRB
SCFFCS
BRFFRB

The second it was finished a Dwarf was tossed into it.  A prisoner who, while not delighted to be confined and complained about the lack of a table, liked his fine bed and is enjoying the food.  True, people come in to eat and drink the food, but also a lot of people are bringing in food and drink because it is right next to the main staircase.

Also, I hope the high traffic of Dwarfs will keep him happy.  In other words, I hope he will chat with them.  He seems to like kids and there always seems to be one visiting the food stockpile at any one time.  He also seems to have a huge list of friends, so pretty much anybody entering the room is a relative, a friends, or a somebody he knows.  And his family is mostly in the Fortress.  His grandparents live in the Fortress, along with lots of uncles and aunts and so on.

He seems to be a survivor - from what I can tell he has lost two of his four kids when they were just babies (likely to Forgotten Beasts) so I assume he will make it the 60 days sentence without too much of a problem.  In other words, he will not starve or go bonkers.  From his stats he seems to be a pretty stable and even nice individual.  I feel kind of sad that he has been tossed in jail because he got blamed for something that upset the Mayor.   

Oh well.   

[Canalan]

Well, I solved a mystery today.  My first caravan came on a new embark, one I very very much needed.  As soon as it arrived, though, it left, leaving me perplexed and more than a little upset!  I chalked it up to it coming so late in the year anymore, and went on with my construction, designating some emergency farms to fill the gap.

Oh, did I mention I embarked on a waterfall?  I have a thing for them lately.  So, right at the beginning, I bridged the little stream that fell into the big river.  Apparently, the little ramps in the stream are very rarely pathable, right near the falls.  Instead of using my nice, safe bridge, a merchant decided he really needed to path through the river.  I found his skeleton on the big river's bottom, right below the bloodstained walls of the falls.  His pack animal is still trying to swim up stream, managing to stay alive, for now.

Also, due to personal policies, I refuse to memorialize dead dwarves, only burying them (as long as they have remains, otherwise memorial slab it is).  So I have a sad little ghost hanging around my fort, and I used Therapist to name him "Casper".

[Porpoisepower]

I'm going to make a mega project fortress, as much above ground as possible...

Made entirely of soap

Made from Skunk Tallow

I'm going to need many, many, many of skunks.

I'm thinking of naming it "Stench of Creativity"

[ribby]

Currently we're trying to retrieve his corpse so this hero can have a proper burial.

Though he was literally my favourite dwarf I may have to give up on placing him in his tomb as a giant pig forgotten beast is now paddling around in the water where he died...

[PDF urist master]

what ability does it have? if it's poison gas or vapors, you can easily snipe it with marksdwarves while it's trapped in the water.

[Spehss _]

Speaking of forgotten beasts, the missing forgotten beast from the third caverns made itself known today. A worker form the kitchens was hauling or something when the beast spat a glob of forgotten beast substance. The military was immediately given orders to slay the beast while it was still down in the unpopulated cavern access tunnels of the fortress.

One of the two hammerlords, Stakud Glovedoor, manaed to catch the one-eyed tick beast on the grand stairwell and proceeded to bash it into a pulp with her named copper hammer "The Pungency of Venerating." It was hardly much of a battle and more of a curbstomp. The beast eventually bled to death from the accumulated beatings. Its corpse was later butchered and is currently getting processed into lavish meals. A memorial slab is being put up in the dining hall to simultaneously honor the thing and add some more bling to the dining room.

The two macedwarfs are back to training together. Mistem Daggerbolt has been through the hospital and has mostly recovered from her earlier ordeal with the giant scorpion that tried to beat her to death with her own eveningstar and drown her. She has three different infections though, and her ability to grasp at the moment is still impaired. Considering the two dwarfs have been assigned a custom weapon that's basically a two handed oversized morningstar, this may badly impact her fighting ability. She's forced to wield her oversized morningstar with just one hand.

Lastly, the fort's only glassmaker had a fey mood. Unfortunately, he likes bismuth bronze and a specific type of wood, neither of which we can get in this location. Even worse, he's holding up the construction of the magma pumpstack's parts. Guess we'll just wait for him to snap and then train a new glassmaker from scratch as a replacement.