Print

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

Fortify the mountain!

Build a bigger-volume magma cannon!

Build a massive jail for stopping the inevitable tantrum spiral.

Construct the city in the cavern!

Start a new megaproject.

Hail Discordia!(fnord)

[nahkh]

My friends, I come before you with grave news and a solemn beard.
'tis soon time to lay our beloved fortress SparkGear 3 to rest, as her time is nigh.
But do not despair! For whence the old perish the new is born.
An endless cycle of death, booze and rebirth,
from which all great things come
and to which they all must go.
But lo! All is not lost.
There is a new hope on the horizon,
a new hope for dwarvenkind,
the hope for a Mountainhome.

And that hope, my friends,
is us.

So, new month, new SparkGear.
   To the uninitiated, SparkGear is a type of succession fortress where turns are measured in real time, not game time. Specifically, one turn is one twenty-four hour period. One day, as the elves say. Originally, there were no rules to speak of, but experience has shown us that some moderation is good. Here's an abridged list:

1. Don't get everyone killed.
  If you intentionally screw the whole thing up, we will revert to the previous save and subsequently ignore you. Accidents happen, but no griefing. If you accidentally render the map unplayable (and our definition of unplayable is... kinda different) we'll still revert but there'll be no ill will towards you.

2. Labels.
  For the love of Armok label your levers.

3. Don't leave stone behind.
  This is a little disputed, but you should always strive to use all the stone you dig. This is simply to keep the FPS manageable to the end of the month. Think of the children.

4. Your turn, you're the boss.
  I hate micromanagement. Preferably all I do in this fort is set up the save and keep the player list up to date. The person whose turn it is in charge. You decide if the previous save is unplayable, you decide if you want to wait for a late save, you decide if the dining room needs magma for atmosphere. Don't PM me about this crap.
  That said, I'm in the habit of checking this thread like an OCD on amphetamine, so chances are I'll know what's going on anyway. I'll happily comment and give suggestions.

Everything else is optional. In-character logs of your turn are preferred, but not required. We have a bit of a history for copious off-game chatter. Pictures are required, since they're often fucking hilarious (check out SG3 if you don't believe me). Video is even better.

I do have a request, though.

Think big.

We're trying to build a mountainhome here. Make it impressive.
And be considerate when you build. Take care when placing stuff. Will your sweet new housing wing block off future construction in a bad way? For example, last fort someone build a sweet "mausoliam" one level below our entrance, making it near impossible to build a drain for the excess magma spills from our magma cannon. Check the nearby areas, are there things that might need expanding later? Leave space for them then. And don't forget to check the Z-levels either.


Technicalities


We'll be running a df 40d[11,12,13] with Dig Deeper installed. I'll be providing a clean copy for you to use, just so we can avoid any problems. The prepackaged folder contains 40d13 with DD installed. Plus some settings were tweaked. The initial save can be four here
A note on Dig Deeper:
It's a df mod that expands on the standard gameplay in many ways, the most notable being it makes shit harder. More monsters, countless numbers of orcs (who will fuck you up, by the way), and as a new addition it makes farming harder. You'll need a lot more farms to feed your dwarves now. Just a warning.

The turns switch at midnight my local time. Makes my job easier. My local time happens to be +2 GMT, which means that turns switch at 22:00 GMT. Learn it, and learn it well. There are plenty of GMT converters on the intartubes, so you don't have an excuse. If you're late with the save, it's hammertime baby. You can use the dwarf fortress file depot or any other hosting site (rapidshare, mediafire, megaupload, whatever). You can even pass the save directly from player to player if needed (though not recommended).

This here will be the official player list. The game will run through August, thus making your turn number double as the date. Only the first two weeks are up for reservation, the third week will be opened on the 8th and the fourth week on the 15th.

Date	Player	Notable achievements
Pre	Nahkh	Genned the world, selected site.
1.	Barbarossa the Seal God	Everyone died. The end. Reclaimed, nearly everyone died.
2.	Demonic Spoon	Pop growth, rebuilt the fort, was later revealed to have caused war with humans.
3.	ToonyMan	Skipped due to lightning
4.	Kamrusepas	Skipped due to stability issues
4.5	abculatter_2	(poorly) Designed and built the MDS
5.	Skaltum	Tested the MDS, got economy.
6.	nil	Is currently sieged by humans. Greatly improved the fort, built slums.
7.	abculatter_2	Many strange and wonderful things, then failed to upload the save. Skipped
8.	Tarquinius	Catacomb and labyrinth, started the tower
9.	Danneh	Dunno
10.	Neyvn	Added archery ranges and a new food stockpile
11.	wilsonns	Made a shopping district
12.	Samus1111111	Skipped
13.	Skid	Skipped
14.	crash2455	Dunno
15.	Demonic Spoon	Prepared stuff for the king, built the Tower of Armok
16.	Solarn	Dunno
17.	Barbarossa the Seal God	Built some towers and a bunker. Maybe started a tantrum spiral
18.	Nahkh	Too busy in Prague to care.
19.	nil	-
20.	Blast	-
21.	Errol	-
22.	Neyvn	-
23.	The13thRonin	-
24.	ArkDelgato	-
25.	ToonyMan	-
26.	Vieto	-
27.	Aldaris	-
28.	Samus1111111	-
29.	ajar	-
30.	Open	-
31.	DS	-

Here's the current hall of shame for SG regulars:
Skaltum - Heretic

People who aren't shit:
ArkDelgato - Saved SG3 from Certain Destruction.
nil - All around good player.
The13thRonin - Made Dig Deeper. Kudos for that.
and on trial status: Demonic Spoon - Viceroy while I'm gone (which has been a lot lately)

(These are not comprehensive lists yet, I've only just now started collecting them. If you want to nominate a fellow player, do so here)

Finally, here's a quick rundown of the previous fortresses.

SparkGear 1, the original. Grandiose art, bumbling idiots, kitchens made of uranium, defacement of said art, et cetera. The fort ended for lack of challenge and FPS problems. We had dealt with HFS of course.

SparkGear 2. Now this was a piece of work. Tantrum spirals, insane megaprojects, mass executions, the works. At the time it seemed like nothing could top this trainwreck, but oh boy were we wrong.
It did end rather spectacularly, in fire and blood. Never again will dwarves attempt space flight.

SparkGear 3, The greatest, most epic fortress of them all. If you're going to read about only one of the SGs, read this one. For it is wonderful.
This was the first fortress that used the DD mod, and boy did we feel it. The fort was pretty much under constant siege by orcs, goblins and zombie wyverns for TWENTY YEARS STRAIGHT. Oh gods how many dwarves did we bury. I don't even know. The numbers were nearly two hundred dead and eighty living near the end. We had a magma cannon. We had massive, luxurious dining halls. We had power stations. We had half-finished, forgotten projects everywhere, levers littering the corridors. It can't be described. READ THE THREAD. It'll do you good.

Now, how about some
fucking SparkGear?

[Demonic Spoon]

Where's the rundown? Added I see, hehe, I'm gonna be remembered forever for the Sparkgear Space Program.

[nahkh]

Ehhem. Hit post instead of preview.

[ToonyMan]

If there's magma I'm doing another magma lake.

WAIT, OF COURSE THERE"S MAGAM.

[nahkh]

Yeah, magma is more fun than hidden fun stuff.

[ToonyMan]

Bring alot of miners and mechanics.

[skaltum]

If there's magma I'm doing another magma lake.

WAIT, OF COURSE THERE"S MAGAM.

i suppose you meant MAGMA

[ToonyMan]

Don't point your flaws out.

[Demonic Spoon]

I'm suspecting he spells it like that on purpose, since he also did it on hte map he uploaded and if I remember correctly in Speargroove.

[Kamrusepas]

Could I get 4th? so hopefully this time I wont fail...

[Demonic Spoon]

As long as you just fail enough to make it interesting and funny it's all good, heck Sparkgear 3 was named the fortress of failures.

[Kamrusepas]

As long as you just fail enough to make it interesting and funny it's all good, heck Sparkgear 3 was named the fortress of failures.

Im talking about starting my turn with 4 ambushes and 2 seiges not even giving me time to close the gates before half the dwarfs are dead.

or flooding the world (much like toonyman did) on accident.

[nahkh]

Yeah, accident.

[Heron TSG]

Ze first day of this month shall be more grandiose than ze last, although less hilarious!

[ToonyMan]

Yeah, accident.

It was only a little intentional.