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[HastyLumbago]

So I've started work on a new idea: A Puzzle Fortress! Basically, the concept is to build into the fortress a bunch of puzzles. Here are the ideas I've come up with so far:

Picross: A large room with a smoothed floor, with outlying single-tile channels filled with varying amounts of water/magma. These are the numbers you would find on the outer edge of a picross board. Engrave the tiles properly to cause the picture to emerge. A dual color variant could be created with the use of water AND magma, but I kind of suck at moving magma around. I imagine this will be easier with the addition of other fluids, such as acids, blood, milk, and so on. three dimensional variants, wherein the numbers coincide with spaces to be mined away, to create a sculpture are probably harder if not impossible to implement. the biggest issue with this is that you would never be able to have a row or column with only 1 engraved space, since evaporation is an issue. (If you glass over a cell with 1 water in it, does it still evaporate?)

Sudoku: I'm not fond of this game, but since it's easy to implement, I can give it a go. Simply a 9x9 room, with floor tiles of differing colors arranged in 3x3 chunks. The initial "numbers" on the grid are represented with visually distinct custom stockpiles. Beds, Statues, Booze, Gems, Doors, Tables, Chairs, Ammo, and Leather are used to represent the numbers 1-9. Since Sudoku isn't actually a math puzzle, this should prove to be sufficient. The player plays by designating new custom stockpiles.

Lights-out: I'm not sure if levers can be attached to more than one thing, or if things can be attatched to more than one lever. I'm sure it can be managed through pumps and pressure plates. Once you've got that though, you can build a system where the goal is to lower a bunch of drawbridges to create a path for traders or whatever. This is the only puzzle I've come up with with a practical application.



aaaaand I'm out of ideas. Honestly, the picross idea made me squee when I though of it. The basic idea is that we can use our dorfs to play puzzle games for each other: Yet another idea that DF simply wasn't designed for. Anyways, does anyone have anything to contribute?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Perhaps a standard Legend of Zelda dungeon would be more feasible. I just have no idea how to link a building to a creature's death.

[HastyLumbago]

I'm already working on doing a Majora's Mask Map. Start on a human settlement, turn off cave-ins, build the moon with scaffolding, remove the scaffolding, get a legendary hunter/swordsdwarf (with the 2010 DF, I'd use an archer instead of a crossbow dwarf), back up the save, then allow him 72 real-life hours to build the statues that hold up the moon before turning cave-ins back on and reloading the save in case of failure. I'm sort of considering that he should be the only dorf allowed on the surface, as well.

[ISGC]

build a labyrinth that , when you enter, caves in the entrance and releases magma.  as it slowly fills the labyrinth, you have to find your way all the way through it to escape. water if magma isn't fast enough or pressured enough for you
or something like that

[Urist Imiknorris]

build a labyrinth that , when you enter, caves in the entrance and releases magma.  as it slowly fills the labyrinth, you have to find your way all the way through it to escape. water if magma isn't fast enough or pressured enough for you
or something like that

I had this setup guarding a vault full of adamantine weapons and armor.

[HastyLumbago]

build a labyrinth that , when you enter, caves in the entrance and releases magma.  as it slowly fills the labyrinth, you have to find your way all the way through it to escape. water if magma isn't fast enough or pressured enough for you
or something like that

That's kind of fun, but not really in the spirit of what I have in mind. I'm really thinking more of a sort of pen and paper puzzle page, but done with dorfs.

[Sphalerite]

I've been seriously considering an automated tic-tac-toe board, where a dwarf (or adventurer) has to pull levers to pick a square to go in, and an mass of water logic computer mechanisms then plays the opposite side, with an array of drawbridges showing the state of the board.  Winning releases the player from the lever chamber.  Loosing the game or picking an illegal move will flood the lever chamber with magma.  Once I've got the hang of DF2010 maybe I'll try to build it.

[verx45]

i remember playing god of war 3 and there was this one puzzle that was very fascinating. Basically there was this huge open room with suspended cubes. It used water pressure and magma to move the cubes in the proper places so the actual dungeon could be assembled for the hero to find what he was looking for. now i know this would be impossible as there are no moving constructions but you could do something where the adventurer would have to pull certain levers to drain or flood rooms in the right order, doing this would assemble the proper maze that the hero would have to go through, when the hero starts the maze after assembling it he would pull a lever to get from one room to the next if he goes into the wrong room or assemble the maze wrong the room he would be in would flood with water with no way to escape.

[Itnetlolor]

Perhaps a standard Legend of Zelda dungeon would be more feasible. I just have no idea how to link a building to a creature's death.

Pressure plates set to the creature's weight exclusively. Just make sure that it is always on until the creature dies or something.

Alternatively, have a pressure plate altar that can only be triggered by the weight of the creature itself. No trophy for you!

BTW, try making the water temple from Zelda: OoT. As if the puzzle wasn't annoying enough, try making it.

You can also make it a load-bearing boss by setting it on the pressure-switch altar (required to finish the "level" and escape), opening the only exit out of the ruins first (usually a short distance from the altar, and destroy the fort piece by piece (using a water or magma (slower flow) pressure switch series in timed sequence elsewhere; like a hidden river/magma source/pump and channel maze). Idea was kinda inspired by playing some Tomb Raider again. It may require tons of support beams however. Not like you need to see them all anyhow.

And it wouldn't hurt to make a similar kind of trap set off only by adventurers to cause a cave in that prevents, or at least makes escape from the front door, ridiculously difficult; however, you can always just jump back in from the front door still. You know, have a flashy 1-way made (like it's the adventurer's fault for trapping everyone), and keep it 1-way in case you want to revisit the tomb. Just hope you didn't plunge too deep to make it unsolvable or uncontinuable.

[Kanddak]

Since Sudoku isn't actually a math puzzle,

What? It is so.

[Shinziril]

Nah, it's more like how binary "zeroes and ones" can actually be anything that has two states.  All Sudoku requires is nine different items, which you then attempt to fit into the tiles without anything conflicting.  Have you seen those "Wordoku"s that use letters instead?

[Kanddak]

How's that make it not mathematical? Do you think math comprises only operations with numbers?

[Chronas]

sudoku uses logic, not arithmetic -therefore their use as numbers is irrelevant

[Kanddak]

sudoku uses logic, not arithmetic -therefore their use as numbers is irrelevant

Precisely my point. Sudoku is not an arithmetic puzzle, but it is a mathematical puzzle because there are branches of mathematics other than arithmetic, such as logic, combinatorics, group theory, and so on.

Anyway, I'd love to see a DF implementation of Mastermind. Use eight "colors", implemented as binary numbers selected with three levers for each position in the code. Running out of guesses, of course, floods the game with magma.

[Chronas]

it doesn't matter that he said maths, his point was quite obviously that the numbers in sudoku are only tokens, you didn't need to be so damn belligerent in correcting him. your off-topic argument of semantics was unnecessary.

anyway, another good puzzle solution could be a series of levers linked to multiple floodgates, requiring them to be switched in the right combination and order to open up the magma channel to your forges -flick the wrong switches and you risk opening up a water channel instead and fouling up the mechanism