The DF Tower Fortress Competition
Premise
Your team will build the tallest, craziest, most impressive tower that you can. This is a megaproject competition that aims to take advantage of a feature newly opened up with the release of v0.31 - the sky. You tower will be
at least 100 z-levels tall, a height previously possible only by embarking on extremely high (and rare) mountains. This is
not a master’s competition – it’s really just for fun with a competitive spin. All are welcome to join, including new players, and latecomers are welcome as well. If you don't have experience building up,
this link should get you started.
For those of you bored with the repetition of the usual DF fortress, this competition should breathe some new life into the game. In addition, the team aspect will guarantee that this fortress isn't like any of your others due to multiple sources of input. If you're short on inspiration, try typing random words you like into this handy
inspiration generator until you get something interesting, or brainstorm with your partner(s) to get something totally unique!
I’m not going to set a deadline yet, because… frankly, DF players almost never make competition deadlines. Team creation/interaction and the act of constructing upwards are going to slow down the process anyhow, so I'm going to say for now that it'll be about two months. I'll re-evaluate everyone's progress continuously as we go and see what a reasonable date is.
Rules, Guidelines, Game Parameters
1. Competitors may choose their own world and embark location. All embark sizes must be 2x2 region tiles big – the smallest embarkable area possible, utilities notwithstanding. This is so that competitors must not only build up but have a confined space with which to do so in (a 96x96 area; accounting for the five tile semi-unbuildable perimeter, 86x86).
2. Competitors have exactly 8 in-game years to construct their tower and prepare it for judging. This is from the 1st of the month of Granite whatever your starting year is to the 1st of Granite year eight years later. As each tower will be in a unique world, I will be examing each save’s legends mode to compare the starting and current date to ensure no competitor breaches the time restrictions. The final save must be uploaded to the
Dwarf Fortress File Depot.
3. The final map must be posted on Markavian’s
Dwarf Fortress Map Archive as well as being posted here. Players are encouraged to upload multiple maps of their tower’s progress as well, though it is not required.
4. Savescumming, or turning off the game externally without saving to revert progress, is not allowed unless absolutely necessary. In case of disaster (ie. your dwarves die, the entire tower collapses, your game becomes glitched), you may rollback to the previous Spring save (ie. the start of the player's turn), but you may not savescum to fix a small mistake.
5. Aside from graphics-related mods, you must be running the standard, unmodified version of Dwarf Fortress v0.31.04, as found on the
Bay12 Games Dwarf Fortress page. Worldgen and init settings must be as described further below.
6. Teams of one single member are not allowed (elaborated on further below). The challenge is as much about building a tower as it is about working with others. Furthermore, the saves are to be passed from member to member annually, rotating back to the first player when the line-up is done round-robin-style.
7. Your tower must fit the competition’s definition of a tower, as mentioned below. Furthermore, all elements of your fortress must be within the tower itself by the final save (including magma forges should you be using them).
8. Hostile creatures (ie. sieges, mean local wildlife, megabeasts, titans, forgotten beasts) do
not need to be able to path into your fort at all times as many competitions often require – this is purely a megaconstruction contest, not a survival/military one. Of course, if you want to make your tower an impenetreble stronghold inhabited only by military warlords, there's nothing stopping you.
Rules adapted from Solifuge's DFM1 rules.
These init settings must be set as below:
[TEMPERATURE:YES]
[INVADERS:YES] (though they don't have to be able to path into the fortress, they must still show up)
[CAVEINS:YES]
[ARTIFACTS:YES]
These init settings are not mandatory but are encouraged:
[INITIAL_SAVE:YES]
[AUTOSAVE:YEARLY]
[AUTOBACKUP:YES]
[AUTOSAVE_PAUSE:YES]
All other init.txt settings may be set as the competitors see fit.
All worldgen settings must be set as below:
[EMBARK_POINTS:1274] – You may choose whatever embark profile you like, but may not exceed the default point allocation.
[LEVELS_ABOVE_GROUND:100] – This is a ‘rule’ but depending on circumstance may be up to you – if you are embarking on a mountainside or planning to dig your tower out you may choose to lower this number to save FPS. However, be careful! Your tower will still need to be 100z+ in order to meet tower criteria. Make sure (immediately, upon embark) that you have enough space to build your tower, as if you find out you don’t in year 6 you’ll have to start all over (or may have to compromise your plans heavily).
All other worldgen.txt settings may be set as the competitors see fit.
When Is My Tower A Tower?
This is the definition of a tower we will be using: A 100z (
minimum) free-standing structure of any width with at least 5-tiles of open space between it and the ground at all sides if sunken, ignoring player constructions, bridges and access ways, etc. Some examples:
- If your tower stands 100z (or more) above the landscape on all sides, it is a tower. Any shorter and it is not.
- If your tower stands 100z tall but some of this (ie. 25z) is underground, only the aboveground counts – and in this case it would be too short to qualify.
- If your tower stands 100z tall and is sunken into the ground but is given a 5+ tile berth on
all sides, it is a tower.
- If your tower stands 100z tall but is partially submerged in a moat, it is a tower so long as the moat is 5+ tiles wide on all sides. Water will be treated as open-air much like the previous criteria.
- If your tower is built onto a slope such as the side of a mountain, the official ‘base’ begins from the highest level of where the tower connects to the slope. Even if the 'long' side of the tower is 100z+, it is not a tower unless the 'short' side is 100z+.
With a handy visual guide!
General Tips
- A falling dwarf will pass through down and up/down stairs as if they weren't there, making tall staircases a bit dangerous should accidents happen. Think about having multiple stairways, or stairways that move around a bit.
- While a cave-in in an underground fort can be tough, and a cave-in in a regular above-ground building can do some damage, a cave-in in a tower can seriously mess you and your dwarves up. Be very careful about supporting everything at all times.
- Scaffolding, scaffolding, scaffolding. Unless you plan on having a tower with no corners and no hollow areas, you are going to find it very hard to build up fast without scaffolding. Start it early, and start tearing it down as soon as you can because it takes forever to remove.
Teams
Yes, the dreaded
teamwork – truly more terrifying than any forgotten beast. Players
must compete in a team with at least one other player, to a maximum of eight. Saves will be passed down the player list annually on the 1st of Granite each spring round-robin style. There is no limit to the number of teams competing; feel free to just make one if you aren’t interested in any other teams. It’s up to the team creator whether a team is open or join-by-request or some other criteria.
For the curious and trivia-hungry, I am basing the team aspect off of the now-rather-old
Canyon Engineering Contest (aka bridge-building competition) that spawned the great fortress
Mountainbanners, which was created by the two-player team of Fedor and Symmetry/Lacero.
Teams:
1 –
Team Cloudpillar: Retro, Silfurdreki [closed]2 -
Team Chaotic Evil: Urist Imiknorris, Robocorn, Graebeard, Pheonix_RE [closed]3 -
Team Skycrashes: Jim Groovester, Neyvn, Flaede, Toady Two, rosedrake, Voligne, Lonewolf I, Barbarossa the Seal God [closed - home thread]4 -
Team Beleagured: The Architect, tbino [closed]5 -
Eam Magma: Japa, kdthehun [closed]6 -
Team French-Bake: James.Denholm, Jordrake [closed]7 -
Team CarpInfestedWaters: Hoary_Marmot, SkeletalCarp [closed]
Author
Topic: Tower Fortress Competition: Underway! (Read 20345 times)