Print

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

[AncientEnemy]

you can make a tower of pumps with no floors/walls whatsoever to contain the water and it'll still work, only dropping the occasional tile of water which is usually sucked right back into the pump

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1143-wall-lesspumptower

[Fossaman]

Could you turn on flow amounts and show us again? This is very interesting, and I want to see exactly how much water is being lost.

[AncientEnemy]

bleh, i've already disassembled the thing. but most of the time there would be literally no water at any of the pump exits except the top, with the occasional 1/7 or 2/7 flickering for a moment somewhere along the line, and then being re-absorbed into the system. surround the floor with grates and it's virtually lossless

[AncientEnemy]

in working out that tower I came to the following idea, a mini-waterfall. since all they care about is the mist, this is a quick build and makes a nice dining room accessory:

here's my prototype:
http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1144-mistgenerator
(you can see in that movie at least a little bit of what i was talking about with the wall-less pump tower, the exit tile from the lower pump is almost always bone-dry as the intake from the pump above sucks it up)

I think it can be shrunk even more to become the following:

heh, i'm a genius, i forgot to indicate the pumps. the important part is that the 'exit' tile of the upper pump be over open space, so power is transmitted from the lower pump

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

I built one of these kind of. it was slightly different and went from the very bottom zlevel to the very top and lagged my computer so much I had to force quit.

[numerobis]

you can make a tower of pumps with no floors/walls whatsoever to contain the water and it'll still work, only dropping the occasional tile of water which is usually sucked right back into the pump

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1143-wall-lesspumptower

Works with magma, too.  I haven't built walls around my mid-level pumps in a long time.

Your mist setup: does it work?  I've always needed more drop than what you indicate, in order to get mist.

[kefkakrazy]

This is awesome. How is it on FPS? If the water getting slung around causes FPS hitches, I might stick with my walled towers, but if not, you can guarantee that I'm going to take advantage of this-I LOVE building massive water tanks, and getting water into them is the hard part, since you have to pump it all the way to the top to make it keep rising.

[AncientEnemy]

Your mist setup: does it work?  I've always needed more drop than what you indicate, in order to get mist.

look at the movie above the diagram. the water actually free-falls for 1 z-level, and generates a good amount of mist.

as for the FPS, i tested it just now, currently my fort is overburdened with children born after I capped my pop/pregnancies so it's a little slow in either case but:

mist generator off: 49-59 fps
mist generator on: 46-56 fps

[edit] oh, my bad, you were asking about FPS with the pump tower. again, i've dissassmbled it, and didnt think to take fps readings while it was going. it was early morning and i was a bit hasty to tear it down :/[/edit]

btw, can anyone help brainstorm a more efficient "dwarf use" floor? at first I thought I had it all figured out, i was just going to make the whole reservoir  room grates on top of supports, neither of which block water so none of those pesky 1/7 tiles that waste water would popo up, but curses and damnation, it doesn't allow you to build a grate on top of a support... no idea why. do you think there'd be a signifigant chance of dwarf drowning if i made the pesky areas out of downward staircases? or more ideas on how to limit spashing?

[AncientEnemy]

here's a new, more compact version of my tower, although it still has a couple minor flaws (im a perfectionist XD), with flow amounts turned on.

again, it doesn't seem to signifigantly impact fps, only maybe 3-5 or so lost versus normal (comp is running quite slow right now but 24 versus 29, the main FPS drag is from having too many damn dorfs)

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1146-freestandingpumptower

[punkideas]

Which way are those pumps oriented in the movie?

[Chromie]

I'm a bit stupid when it comes to mechanics... why is there a gear assembly on the 'reservoir floor' of the diagram?

[AncientEnemy]

it holds up the gear assembly above it, which holds up the windmill above that.
the gear assembly attached to the pump is the one that lets you switch the whole thing on and off, but when you switch off a gear assembly it stops supporting other mechanisms. without that 'base' assembly, the windmill and assembly below it would collapse when you shut off the pumps.

also i forgot to note that this requires 'high' wind, (for 40 energy) from the windmill, or a second windmill, as the whole setup takes 35 energy.

[AncientEnemy]

Which way are those pumps oriented in the movie?

err, which movie? in the very first one, the bottom pump outputs on the east, then each one faces the opposite direction of the level below it.

the mist generator, the pumps face the same way as in the diagram.

the second pump tower, the bottom pump outputs on the west, again with each one above it being opposite the last.

[Cheshire Cat]

in the past this would not have worked. i think it was around 3 versions ago pumps suddenly got a whole lot more powerful suction, i remember clearly because transferring my save to the newer version broke my fortwide water system.

reasons were the pumps were drawing a lot more water a lot faster, so there was no longer enough water flowing into the system to make it work, and because the water level was consistently lower all my underground resovoirs suddenly filled up with tower caps.

this is pretty funny to see this going as a tower without any kind of containment. looks like i no longer need to be careful when i make my pumping towers now, seems like they will go without being sealed up.

[GetAssista]

100 storey wall-less water tower in action

yup, I have similar magma one too, though its operation is much less forgiving wrt mistakes )