Print

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

[SnappyTWC]

Here's a megaproject I made in 40d16 late last year, thought some people might be interested.

Essentially, it's a huge floating oblate spheroid, with a side-to-side diameter of 64 and top to bottom diameter of 32. I made it by building the lower half shell out of basalt, then filling it in with obsidian via a lava/water pumping tower thingy; once the lower half was filled in, I built each outer shell layer then filled it in before doing the next. Lava was supplied by a volcano, and water from an underground river. If anyone wants to build their own fortress in the inside of it, I have a save from when the sphere was done but before I started carving into it (if someone could let me know a decent place to upload it, that'd be great).

As it turns out, I built it a bit too close to the lower edge of the map and one side got a bit squished, but that makes it look more like a death star, so I can't complain.

And, without further ado, pics:

Construction of the shell
The first five levels of the lower shell: http://imgur.com/2khmI.jpg
The completed lower shell: http://imgur.com/L0x2G.jpg

Casting the lower half
The obsidian casting tower: http://imgur.com/0B9hV.jpg
The first layer of obsidian casting: http://imgur.com/lbva7.gif
View from inside during casting: http://imgur.com/WusNI.jpg
It became apparent that the initial casting tower wasn't up to the job, here's the MkII casting tower: http://imgur.com/afw20.jpg
Another angle: http://imgur.com/sAlCU.jpg
And yet another: http://imgur.com/OfZwP.jpg
Side view: http://imgur.com/E85um.jpg
The first layer poured with the new tower: http://imgur.com/4UX6u.gif
Another view from inside: http://imgur.com/usK8e.jpg
Time-lapse filling of the lower half: http://imgur.com/4TGx4.gif

The last layer of the bottom half
http://imgur.com/UtFUy.jpg 18 HalfDone.jpg
http://imgur.com/2Gb7Y.jpg 19 HalfDone.jpg

A bunch of pictures from the half-way point
http://imgur.com/eEC1d.jpg 13 HalfDone.jpg
http://imgur.com/vdVFk.jpg 14 HalfDone.jpg
http://imgur.com/6hU9w.jpg 15 HalfDone.jpg
http://imgur.com/jzWjP.jpg 16 HalfDone.jpg
http://imgur.com/ys9v8.jpg 17 HalfDone.jpg

The volcano was full before I started: http://imgur.com/yQSgD.jpg

There were a few little holes that got missed when building the lower half, here's the contraption I used to help fill them, along with its deconstruction: http://imgur.com/C7P2n.gif

The top layers
An animation of the first top layer being cast: http://imgur.com/2TjHr.gif
Time lapse of a few more top layers: http://imgur.com/pDYir.gif

A bunch of pictures from when it was almost done:
http://imgur.com/NF6Mr.jpg
http://imgur.com/hgUh3.jpg
http://imgur.com/IfpOS.jpg
http://imgur.com/MPVn6.jpg
http://imgur.com/1zjIH.jpg

The last layer and starting the deconstruction of the casting tower: http://imgur.com/rLpyE.gif

A crude fly-by of the sphere after the casting tower was removed. A couple of holes remain: http://imgur.com/Y5cAJ.gif

[breadbocks]

Move this to Dwarf Mode Discussion. Megaprojects go there not here. Here is where stories and succession games go.

[Andreus]

Oh.

My.

Armok.

 

Someone give this man a <<*Medal*>>

[Patchouli]

The animations are incredibly cool.

[Heavenfall]

Pretty damn awesome. But! Awesome-levels would reach even higher, if it had been D2010 and you played it against those yet-to-be-added siegers that can mine. Egg falls on ground. Egg breaks! Out of curiosity, what does happen when the support is removed?

[nbonaparte]

Pretty damn awesome. But! Awesome-levels would reach even higher, if it had been D2010 and you played it against those yet-to-be-added siegers that can mine. Egg falls on ground. Egg breaks! Out of curiosity, what does happen when the support is removed?

Considering that this is cast, it might break the shell apart and leave the casting intact.

[breadbocks]

I'm doing this myself. The fort name is Dangercold the Fortress of Fire, because it is a volcano in a tundra. The symbol is the yeti, and the group name is The Nude Act. Wish me luck. And oddly enough, I found a NATURAL spot 118 levels above the surface. So it IS possible.

EDIT: And of course, the fort died the first month.

[SnappyTWC]

Ok, I collapsed it. It was spectacular.

Here's an animation: http://imgur.com/Ul6uT.gif

Looks like it displaced enough lava to overflow the volcano :D
Also, calculating the collapse took a minute fifty. 26 dwarves were killed instantly, with another plumetting to his death. There was a healthy tantrum spiral going within a minute or two after.

[TaintedMustard]

A suggestion for your next megaproject: Urist McDyson sphere.

[Agamemnon]

Very impressive. How many dwarven years did the whole project take? Were there How many work-accidents?

I'm still working on my hollow cube. I have the additional challenge that I can't spill too much water/lava, because all my masonry workshops are already located inside the cube. I'll start a documentation thread in a while.

[Retro]

This is quite awesome. Additional applause for the documentation (and animated stuff! I hadn't seen anything in 3D animated before). So it's a full obsidian sphere - I presume you're carving a whole fort out of it? Are you / have you uploaded this to the DFMA?

[Miggy]

I'm planning on making a sphere perhaps a bit similar to this, underground.

I will mine out several rooms on top of each other so they gain a sphere shape, then make holes in the center or rims, changing with each level. I will then send water from the top level cascading down through the levels, eventually draining out from the bottom. And then I will use it as my underground tree-farm.

Of course, I will make a hollow space around it so the sphere is floating on only the connecting ramp.

I'm not as of yet sure how big I'm going to make it. I was going to make it gargantuan, but my embark site only has some 30 odd usable z levels unless I go above ground, so I'm going to have to scale it down a tad...

[noodle0117]

aww, I was expecting the drop to look more awesome like creating massive shockwaves or something.
Either way, great job there!

[slink]

That's a neat construction.

I think the overflowing magma comes from the upper right-hand side of the sphere, when it drops.  If you watch it several times you can see water flowing from a point on the left-hand side and a much greater amount of lava flowing from the other side.

[Orangebottle]

Dude.


Your dwarves lacked a mountain, so you cast one out of obsidian and just plopped it in the middle of the map.