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[Vaiolis]

While playing Fortress mode, I was making a magma fall over my fortress entrance, when I "accidentally" rerouted the magma to flood my fortress. Unfortunately (or not), the dwarves inside died, and the migrants i had hoped to keep somehow died, so I was forced to leave it behind.

A bit later, I had the bright idea of reclaiming it, and did so swiftly, but found the magma pump still going. Whether it be a bug or not, I could not make the reclaim dwarves do anything except fight, even after the enemies were dead, and they were de-activated, so I set about getting an adventurer to go there.

As the adventurer came, I constantly got messages of "The pertinent magma defaced an Urist McEngraver!" so the magma was still going, so with a bit of effort I had my adventurer go into the fortress Indiana Jones-style and try to turn off the pumps. Since I couldn't, I went around the perimeter a while, and discovered an old pump, unused, no longer walled, but still connected to the magma, and the nearby lever that had shut off the gear assembly by it. Hitting the lever, I managed to flood the entire level with magma, but more importantly, it burned down the windmills powering the other pumps, and thus I saved and eventually (once the magma dried) reclaimed it again!

The whole experience got me thinking of making a fortress filled with traps like that, or puzzles and such, specifically for an adventurer to go into and try to conquer (and it may not even need adventurer traps!). I was wondering if anyone thought this a fun idea to try out? People could run a fortress, building up traps and such using whatever cheating or non-cheating methods necessary, and then abandon it when it was ready to let an adventurer attempt.

I looked for a while, but didn't see this suggested before. Although, I bet it has been at one point or another

Also, I found that fighting with a pick gets mining skill up, any special bonuses to that?

[Mulch Diggums]

Mining with a pick gives you 34 xp or so in mining and gives you dabbling miner but you cant raise it above that. Believe my I have tried. This idea about maknig adventure fortresses would be alot better if items didnt get scattered around once you abandoned. I think there should be a "who can build the best indiana jones style fortress to adventure in" The fortress that is hardest to live through wins.

[Kagus]

Fighting with a pick will yield you the mining skill, and it will level up as normal weaponry skills.  There's no benefit to it other than being able to use a pick with deadly efficiency in combat.

And there have been quite a few such gatherings of adventure-fort makers...   Not one of them ever really got off the ground.

[Vaiolis]

Although I'm not entirely sure, I've found that certain items don't seem to get scattered around the entire map. I think that items may stay on their respective z-axis where they were left, and if so, all treasures could be placed on a single z-axis that has nothing else but wall, then it would work  

I started making an Indiana Jones style fortress a while ago, and just finished the first part. It has plenty of levers that require lots of moving back and forth, a couple puzzles, but mostly pretty basic. I'm new to sharing files and such, how would I put the world/map (edited to show where the place is) up for download?

[Kagus]

For uploading the world, zip the region file that the world is in (DF/data/save) and pack it off to an uploading site.  I would, of course, recommend the Dwarf Fortress File Depot.

As for editing the map, you can either export an image of the map through the game, or simply take a screenshot when you're looking at the map.  Then draw a red circle or something around the location.

[Mulch Diggums]

Incase you need ideas for traps... heres one. A long tunnle with a wooden support in the wall every few squares. Around the middle of the tunnle there will be a pressure plate (adventures can set these off right?). The pressure plate releases lava on the other side of the supports. The lava will (hopefully) slowly burn away the support untill it escapes. If your adventurer dosn't make it out through that tunnle in time.. He has to find the secret escape.

[Duke 2.0]

I actually did something like this. I wanted to make a mostly aboveground fort as a type of human farming town, but due to some unforeseen problems it never got off the ground. Thus I decided to make myself a little adventurer mode dungeon. Basically it would be a smallish maze filled with 3x3 rooms. At the end was a switch next to a door. Using that switch opened the door to the cut gems I hastily mined for some form of treasure, but also released several doors holding back water a screen away. Not to mention several cave-ins blocking off old passages and revealing new ones The final effect was releasing several doors holding back magma, caving in the main entrance to make a lava pit of doom. Them it was a race to beat time as the magma slowly started to block passages, with water quickly posing a drowning hazard.

It was great. Of course I deleted that world(Standard size? Crazy on my machine.), so nothing to show off. Not great jump mazes, just a little maze with a doom trap.

[Vaiolis]

Yeah, I tried out the fortress a bit ago, and it runs pretty slow, but that's mainly because it is on one of the larger sizes (standard, I think...), so I think I'll start again with a pocket world, and try to get the focus out of tons of levers and more onto puzzles. And yeah, a competition for the most difficult (but still possible) adventurer-fortress sounds like fun, anyone else up for it?

EDIT: also, two trap questions...
a) hitting a pressure plate once activates... whatever it is connected to. If you hit it again, does it de-activate?

b) is there any way to make a lever or something that, when attached to a bridge or floodgate or something, toggles it? For instance, lets say I have two levers hooked to one floodgate. If I hit one lever, the floodgate raises, but if I hit the second lever while it is still raised, it does NOT come back down. Anyway to make it reverse whatever is currently happening, rather than activate when pulled one way and de-activate the other way?

[ May 19, 2008: Message edited by: Vaiolis ]

[AlmostEverywhere]

I've been working on a fort like this for some time.  To answer your questions Vaiolis, levers/pressure plates send "on" and "off" signals.  You can find out what these signals do on the wiki.  You can set a pressure plate to reset, which means it sends an "on" signal when something's on it and "off" when they move off it.  Or you can set it to be one-use, which means it'll send one "on" signal and then deactivate.

You can't set levers to toggle, so you've got to be more creative.  For example, I used levers connected to both floodgates and raising bridges, since an "on" signal will open a floodgate but raise a bridge.  I was able to make puzzles that way.

However, I've got a really big problem.  I decided to back up my partially-complete fortress, abandon, and come back to test everything.  To my horror, even though I set [ADVENTURER_TRAPS:YES], none of the pressure plates or traps were activated by my adventurer!  

Has anyone else had this problem?  Or have people gotten traps/plates to work in adventure mode?  Is there something I'm doing wrong?

[Joseph Miles]

This is a pretty common idea,  I myself have only tried it once because I can never find my fortress in adventurer mode. The other day though, I got bored in math class and started working on a maze to make in DF. I figure I'll need to add in some traps, some levers, and all that, but as is it may very well be deadly. The person would probably die of thirst before making it halfway through.

[AlmostEverywhere]

But seriously, all this discussion could be pointless if there's a bug stopping traps and pressure plates from working in adventure mode.  Before you invest too much time, I STRONGLY recommend testing out your work (with a back-up made).  If anyone is able to get an adventurer to spring a trap, please let me know.

[Joseph Miles]

You need to go to the init file and set it so traps are enabled, thats it.

[Kagus]

quote:Originally posted by Joseph Miles:
<STRONG>You need to go to the init file and set it so traps are enabled, thats it.</STRONG>

You mean like this?

quote:Originally posted by AlmostEverywhere:
<STRONG>  To my horror, even though I set [ADVENTURER_TRAPS:YES], none of the pressure plates or traps were activated by my adventurer!  </STRONG>

[Ryo]

I'm doing something like this on my fortress right now, where you had to find a secret way in. There were a few levers outside of my fortres - One of them disables the pump constantly filling up my moat, three of them drain the moat (Only one of them really needed to be pulled, but pulling all three just speeds up the process) and one of them causes a cave-in on the square below the lever, trapping the adventurer. It's not really hard, just stay away from the lever surrounded by a channel...

Then, you need to go down into the drained moat, where there's another lever. This one opens up a floodgate in the moat, which lets you get into the pumping room, but you still can't get into the main fortress. In here, there's another lever (What a surprise) which opens a floodgate in the pumping room allowing you to enter the fortress. But, it also causes a cave-in below the adventurer, and you fall into a small room with a locked door, a wall grate and...a lever! Pull the lever, room starts filling up with water. Fun.

But, this will also open the door, so you need to go through the door and get through a needlessly long and twisty corridor (Which is quickly filling up with water). Eventually, you find your way out, but you're a mile away from the fortress. Go back in the moat, in the pumping room where the floodgate is now open, and then you can enter the fortress. Which contains absolutely nothing of any use whatsoever.

Or you could just walk over the drawbridge to get inside. But that's just boring.

[AlmostEverywhere]

Wow, that's awesome!  One warning though:  That "locked door"?  If it's really a door, then the adventurer can bash it down or pick the lock.  Even if it's lever-operated.  You might wanna replace it with a floodgate, which is impassible until the right lever is pulled.

Also, I've found that the scattering of items is controlled by weight, i.e., heavy items don't get scattered.  I was able to have all my treasure stay in the treasury by putting it in heavy metal bins.  The bin counts as the item, not the gold necklaces and stuff inside it, so it doesn't get moved.  I even have a metal bin full of the skull totems that I'm more proud of, and another with my artifacts.