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[GRead]

OK, so I had an idea the other day.

If you had all the resources you could possibly desire, what amazing structures would you build? A shimmering crystal city? The dreaded Iron Tower? Deep catacombs that spread beneath the very earth? a city of gold?

Of course, by modifying the raw files, you can have limitless resources of whatever type you desire. The caveat being, of course, that it removes allot of the challenge from the game, and really, it's not so spiffy cheating yourself a gold city you can't show off.

So, in light of all this, the Idea I had was this: What if there was a community world, where everyone cheated like crazy. The idea isn't just a community fortress with claimed dwarves, or even a succession game where you pass around the keys to the fortress: The Idea is a succession world. Everyone joins in with the knowledge that we'll be modifying the reactions to give ourselves boatloads of free materials, and then we take turns building crazy ruins, vast cities, enormous necropolis', anything else that strikes the mind really. Then, when it's all done, the world will be open for adventuring in and looking at the things everyone else has wrought.

It's not really about challenging yourself, it's certainly not about story: no more than a little blurb about the place you've built is really necessary. It's about building, building that amazing structure you've always wanted to build but weren't prepared to wait for 50 years of caravan deliveries to get the materials just to build the first floor.

Does this Idea interest anyone?

---edit---
Apparently so! Adding a roster to the front page here and getting this thing rolling.

code:

 1:Ricemastah - Done?
2:Mech#4
3:Boksi
4:THLawrence
5:Torak
6:Niaba
7:GRead
8 :Devath
9:Elitay
10: 

As THLawrence noted on page 2, there are some important things to consider:
1: In order to maximize compatibility, the world will be genned in Vanilla DF; worlds don't care so much if you have raw entries they don't, but they care very
much if you're short on them.

2: Cheat. Cheat like crazy. The idea is to build an awe-inspiring structure, but it's also to do it in a reasonable amount of time. to facilitate this, mod the reactions raws to create free materials without fuel. It may be helpful to have a seperate install of DF for this, so you don't mess with the raws you'll be playing with otherwise: all modifications will have to be to the basic reactions, as the world won't recognize any new additions.
Example: You can go into the adamantine reaction and change it to produce 100 rock crystal and 100 pearlash without any input reagents. you cannot go into the reactions and create a new entry that makes 100 rock crystal and 100 pearlash.
Other things include utilities like Companion or setting your dwarves speed to 1.

3: Keep your init in mind when creating the fortress; just because you or I turn off temperature and caveins doesn't mean other people will. so try to avoid messing with the settings to make an ice fortress in the sahara or a tropical paradise where Nist Akath once stood. Floating cities may fall from the sky for some people, and magma might suddenly melt your golden floodgates.

4: Traps are currently buggy. Try to avoid using the default mechanism-traps, *especially* cage traps.

5: Lengthy progress reports are unnecessary, but if things are taking awhile you should probably let everyone know you're still alive and working.

Thanks to everyone for contributing so far! here's hoping we can work some of the kinks out of the succession world concept.

[ May 23, 2008: Message edited by: GRead ]

[ May 23, 2008: Message edited by: GRead ]

[Fedor]

A thirty level tall gold and marble statue of a foaming beer mug.

[Kagus]

Massive tree.  Inside is a mini-fortress running in the hollow branches and trunk.  Wood part is made out of, well, wood.  Leaves made from green glass (this idea was posted by someone else, and I got to thinking about it).

The undercastle.  I tried making one a while ago, but it didn't turn out all that well.  

Sewer system.   I know it doesn't sound that impressive, but you don't know what I'm thinking of when I say this...   Heh heh.

The underworld.  See "underworld challenge" in the fort-mode discussion.

The doomtower.  Massive obsidian pillar rising up to the sky, with various spikey outcroppsings where I happen to need a little extra room, and a magma moat around the outside.  

Human castle.  Simple enough, just a big fortified keep with surrounding common lands which are protected by a big stone wall, with functioning moat, drawbridge, and portcullis.

Shipwreck.  Bits and pieces of a massive galleon on an ocean shore.

[bigmcstrongmuscle]

I have one really good one. Sunken Atlantean ruin.

Channel out all but the border of an aquifer layer to make a giant lake, seal the outside of the aquifer using pumps and construction, then drain the lake. Remove the drainage system, then build a giant clear glass city in the deeps with dozens of domed subdivisions sectioned off, able to be individually drained and filled by lever-controlled self-powered pumps (They'd have to be started manually, but after that, they'd run till the lever's switched off. The blueprint makes sense in my head).

Bonus points for building the city around one or more central glass spires which go from the very bottom of the map to the very top. If its at all possible to find an aquifer and magma on the same map, bonus points for filling a core of the spire with lava for channeling to the forges and furnaces. If not, channel out a wide river leading off the map (and dammed to a height high enough to keep the lake full and low enough not to overflow its bed), then make the above-water portion of the spire a giant self-powered waterfall.

Build residential, commercial and industrial domes with easy access to each other, Sim-City style. Use z-level accessways between domes as well as horizontal. All individual homes, warehouses, offices and workshops should be built in separate stone buildings or apartment complexes. Any outdoor flooring may be made either of stone or colored glass. Each dome at least should be covered in a clear glass roof. Give the buildings as many gem windows as possible. Build a special room or plaza to showcase each artifact, and another to honor each legendary dwarf. Make as many rooms royal quality as possible, either through artifacts or lots of masterpiece stuff. If there was sufficient forward planning to use natural stone for the buildings, engrave them.

Fill the whole place with outdoor plazas, statuaries, menageries, fountains, amphitheaters, irrigated gardens and farms. Menageries would have bars and free-roaming animals, not just cages, and fountains would all work on a self-contained, self-powered water system.

If the map has underground water, add tree farms. If it has a chasm, add a lever in a hard-to-reach central control room  that diverts the rest of the lake into a chasm, allowing the player to destroy his framerate and access the lakebed. If not, make one that opens a dam at the bottom of the lake bed and drains it off the map. If the map has Hidden Fun Stuff, build a special dome over it, seal it up, and build a glass temple to Armok above it with a lever-controlled trap near the altar so that sacrificial victims can be dropped within. Make another dome a City of the Dead and fill it with tombs for nobles and legendaries, plus a Great Hall of the Fallen featuring an alcove, statue, and casket for all remaining dwarves.

The only entrance to the final city should be through a series of natural stone tunnels beneath a small log cabin on shore. (Exception: there will have to be *some* construction where it punctures the aquifer) If possible, place lever-controlled adamantine double doors or floodgates to seal the entrance in an engraved subterranean gallery.

Remove the blockages to the remaining aquifer squares and let the whole thing flood over. For bonus points, build the cliffs around the lake even higher and pump water from the aquifer square to raise the water level of the lake. Flood all the domes one by one, killing all the dwarves except a legendary engraver as it progresses. Once he is the last dwarf alive, engrave the stone tunnels, producing masterpiece mementos to the glory of the city and its destruction by flood.

Then abandon the fort for adventurers to find and drool over. Extra points for modding in a race of amphibious sentients who could take the place over and challenge adventurers or reclaimers. Bullywugs, anyone?

[Boksi]

Massive obsidian fortress, both above and underground, built around a central magma vent. It is encircled with bands of magma. It menaces with spikes of steel towers. Then an inner sanctum around the vent, made out of obsidian, gold and some red material, preferably rubies.

Another project I'd like to do would be to completely remove all the ground I can, down to the lowest level, then build a massive city of interconnected towers,preferably somewhat submerged if possible. The materials would be glass, marble, gold and bronze mainly.

[Akroma]

the whole outside world covered in cristal glass flooers and occasional upright cristal glass spikes, making it look like a crystal forest. Below it, a forest walled with gold.

[Ed-]

A clear glass castle.

it's... possible, but, it's a huge pain to do it.

[Kagus]

Oh yeah, I forgot one.  Mainly because It's not that impossible (wouldn't crystal glass be more fun than just clear?), and I actually intend to do it sometime.

The Infernal Temple.

Bottom level of the world, centered around a demon pit.  A massive circular chamber carved out for two z-levels off the bottom floor.  Around the pit is a bauxite pentagram, and at the intersection of each point with the ring around the star, there stands a candle (tallow pillar).  Directly adjacent to the pit there is an elevated altar, from which creatures may be thrown into the pit to appease the dark gods.

I might pave the area around the pit with gold or somesuch...

[GRead]

Hmmmm, it appears that I didn't exactly communicate what I had in my mind!
Loving the replies so far, but what I was actually suggesting is that a group of people build these very things you have suggested, using an install of Dwarf Fortress that repurposes the traditional reactions to create free materials.

I.E., the only reason I haven't built a crystal glass spire in the middle of a lake is the sheer impossibility of getting that much rock crystal. It would take thousands of caravans to get enough. But if you modify one of the reactions in the raws to, say, spew out 100 rock crystals and 100 pearlash without any input materials, it becomes allot more possible. Hence the 'blatant cheating'

But it kind of ruins the fun to just do that by yourself. You know, 'woohoo, I was able to create an amazing monument by cheating. I could have just sketched this out on paper and be just as fulfilled.' so the idea was to have a succession world; instead of a succession game, where you pass the fortress off every year, you pass the world off every time you finish a monument\fortress. Then when it's done the world is there for adventuring.

The cheating lets the amazing feats of engineering get completed in a much more timely manner. Since the point is about what your imagination can come up with and not the process of getting there, I think it would be fun to build something to show off to everyone else. It's one thing to make it for yourself, another to make it for everyone as part of a big project.

Hence why I suspect I may just be crazy, and am wondering if anyone else finds the idea intriguing.

[subject name here]

A giant steel lava cannon made in the shape of a penis. I would then piss off the elves just so I can use it on them.

[Boksi]

Yeah, I'm interested.

I recommend placing about twenty placeholder reactions. From what I've gathered, it's possible to modify these reactions to produce what you want, but not to add more.

[Karlito]

Well, you see, the problem with this is that the succession world thing doesn't really work out.  Our first attempt at this was Adventure Park and the fact is that it simply takes to long to build something truly magnificent and when you've finally got it done, everyone's gone and lost interest.

[Dwarmin]

I have a vision of carving a giant elephant head built into the side of a cliff. Until we get mass rewall, I can dream about...

-space for at least 200 Dwarves to live.
-2 Crystal glass eyes, for the nobles quarters
-2 giant tusks-made from real ivory!
-10 ballistas that shoot out of the mouth
-A massive trunk to dump refuse out of

[Boksi]

Oh, don't make the eyes out of crystal glass.

Use rubies.

[Jreengus]

That would be a great place to put the fortress I was gunna do. Built in a chasm out of clear glass with the bottom of the chasm floored over and then the chasm filled with magma (Refilling vents FTW!)