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Author Topic: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.  (Read 2104 times)

Tokkius

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #15 on: January 21, 2011, 11:05:24 am »

I save-scummed back a year and a half simply because my dwarves refused to move one of the infamous "Invincible Rocks" from the middle of an unimportant auxiliary hallway. The save-scum got me back to the point where the rock hadn't yet planted itself, and I managed to avoid it.
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LilGunmanX

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #16 on: January 21, 2011, 11:51:07 am »

I get so... so damn annoyed with wall engraving. I want to engrave my walls, damn it. Who the fuck wants to engrave a floor, when dwarves will just walk all over it and realistically should erode it away within ten or twenty years!? I want a Sistine Chapel to dedicate to our goddess of the sky, Budam Intenseflights! How am I supposed to do that when my dwarves just vandalize it with pictures of waves and this one ridiculous image of an otherwise unremarkable human being killed by a forest titan five-hundred years ago that seems to show up in every fortress I've ever made? I am literally to the point where I am ready to dump lava and water on everything and re-carve the walls until everything is perfect, but that would just take such a ludicrously huge amount of time and effort that it isn't even worth it.

I like my fortresses built defensively, but I like those fortresses to be aesthetically pleasing as well! I always make sure to build all the tables and chairs in the dining room out of the same material, usually a rock for convenience sake. I'm not obsessive enough to designate stockpiles so that they'll explicitly only build items of those materials, but I am enough so that I simply won't use anything that isn't of the material I want it. Since I carved the dining room into a grayish loam this time (yeah, I know) I went with chalk. Is it weird? Yes, but my fucking masons picked it to begin with, and it goes with the color scheme. Maybe I'll rip out all the walls eventually...

Mostly I like building cool and effective inventions... like my FB-powered gas chamber that runs on puppy dogs, or that ultimate boozefire cannon. I also recently... accidentally at that... realized that, utilizing a river above an underground well as a water source, that I can blast water out of my wells to create a massive fountain complex which can be drank out of, swam in, used as a mood elevator, or used to push away/drown enemies. But... of course... the obsession kicks in when I start wanting to make these designs a central part of my fortress... and then all hell breaks loose. Mechanisms MUST be of the same quality and material when linking things together. If I were linking a bunch of mica bridges to levers, the levers and mechanisms must be made of mica, and not a single mechanism can be of a different quality. Sometimes I let the quality thing go, but even then I at least want mechanisms used on the same item to be of the same quality... so if I had two bridges, and four mechanisms, with two of those mechanisms being + and the other two being regular, the + mechanisms should be used on the one bridge and the regular mechanisms should be used on the other bridge.

Uggh... the worse part is that I'm not even obsessive compulsive by nature, either! It's just this ONE GAME that begs autism. I could give two fucks about any of this stuff in an easy game like Minecraft... but in DF, where it's nearly impossible to get everything just fucking perfect, you really want to go that extra mile.
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newto

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #17 on: January 21, 2011, 12:12:24 pm »

I used to be good about the OCD stuff, only thing I cared about was roads made of blocks since they look nicer.

Now though...No stones or items in my perfectly smoothed channels and pumpstacks (water or magma), I recently had to savescum because I forgot gabbro was magma safe and and the sacrificialheroic migrants were still holding their iron picks at the bottom of my magma source when they carved the fortifications into the walls holding back the magma (I've had waaaay too many pumpstacks neutered by having to wait for the magma to slowly flow under the pump, 8 entry points into a large reservoir should be enough).

Also started with the insane requirements for buildings. My outdoor barracks/dangeroom is an 9X9 building, with 7x7-1 training spears on a wooden floor and weaponstand, a second floor for sleeping (eventually), with roof and stairs with a hatch on the roof. The entire thing is made of featherwood except for the dolomite mechanisms. Did I mention I'm on a 2X2 embark, so this has taken years to harvest?

Seeing the success of this plan, I constructed my waterwheels and axles out of towercaps, as well as the walls and roof above it (about 1/3 done since I have almost no towercaps).

Also no one is allowed to touch funmetal other than the strand extraction stage and transport unless they are 15+5 skilled. Furnace Dwarves, Weapon/Armour Smiths, Miners, Military. They have to earn the responsibility of it.
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slothen

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #18 on: January 21, 2011, 12:27:22 pm »

Walls, floors etc. are made exlusively from blocks. I get many legendary masons in the process.
All armor and weapons must be made from steel, even shields, but not hammers.
Only two types of stone may be used for the outside fortress. One for walls and one for floors. Simply using stone that look alike, but have different names, won't do.

these are all me, but only if its a construction where dwarves will be present.  Walling over a hole in the caverns or little things like that can be done with rough stone.
Mechanisms MUST be of the same quality and material when linking things together.
I stopped caring about this once I began using notes to keep track of mechanism linkings.  I don't use masterwork however, and I save some types of mechanisms for their color.
Plus, I just REALLY REALLY REALLY want Toady to implement you being able to specify what you want goods to be made out of. That would help me so much you have no idea.
I wouldn't hold your breath, there are plenty of ways to do this already, and they aren't that complicated.  The only thing that comes to mind where this could be an issue is with particular types of leather, or particular types of bone/cloth.

I hear some people have problems with mining out a tile and then not being able to 're-hide' the revealed portion when it clashes with their design, and going to ridiculous lengths to keep things even.
This is probably the most ridiculous in my opinion.
(oh, forgot to mention, all statues are made in special mason shops with their own stone piles, usually obsidian or marble if I have it)

you make statues out of stone?  :o
I've been known to scum-save because a cat was injured.

THERE ARE NO WORDS FOR THIS.


For this fort I've been obsessive about burial arrangements.  The first dwarves that died got shoved in coffins near the top floor of the adamantine vein because it was convenient and quick.  Since then I've dug out a wide room overlooking a deep cavern, and have made it a regular graveyard.  Bodies are in coffins (fine pewter for civilians, steel for experienced military, bronze for inexperienced military, electrum for civilians I liked, and lay pewter for children or dwarves i disliked.  the coffins are in a channeled grave below the room, which is smoothed and floored over, then I place a statue (glass or metal) above the grave.  I choose statues based on their subject material.  Civilians get statues of masterful roasts or the founding of the fortress, military get statues of dwarves killing things, and victims of dwarven justice get statues of dwarves striking down dwarves (i also have these kinds of statues in my jail).    Bonus points if the statue actually depicts the dwarf in question or a diety the dwarf worshiped, which happens but somewhat infrequently.  I also plan to do slabs, but I haven't bothered to figure those out yet.

In general I've been very picky about statue subject material in this fort, I need to start dumping statues I don't like because the list is getting rather long.
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While adding magma to anything will make it dwarfy, adding the word "magma" to your post does not necessarily make it funny.
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Yiab

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2011, 01:39:49 pm »

I once made a room for my incoming king by digging an 11x11 square entirely inside a magnetite vein. I wanted to engrave the entire thing with masterwork engravings, so I figured I'd send in my legendary engravers to engrave the whole thing, then floor over and re-engrave every tile that wasn't masterwork. Unfortunately, flooring over returns the tile to the biome's material, not the vein's, so I lost the magnetite flooring on those squares.

As for OCD stuff, when I'm on a map with sand/soil, I won't let anybody start digging in stone until they are a legendary miner. I refuse to destroy stones, even cheapo non-magma-safe ones, even after I have a functioning obsidian farm.

I will set up a breeding program for any tameable animal I come across (except cats), even though this means I have far too much meat to ever be eaten. Also, I never butcher a trainable animal.

I have a special set of workshops for special moods. Whenever someone gets a special mood, I forbid access to the hallways with normal workshops and force them into the special mood zone. Once they are in there, I lock them in and manually reclaim the items I have stashed in there for artifacts - the most valuable items I have of each category. Inevitably, this place has my raw adamantine, raw adamantine blocks, and adamantine wafers among its stores, along with all my forgotten beast bones and shells.
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shlorf

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #20 on: January 21, 2011, 02:02:21 pm »

Protip: Forgotten beast bones have value 1. Try dragon bones instead.

This thread is hilarious btw, maybe because none of these OCDs apply to me. I've even stopped tinkering with mood materials after getting too many blue metal maces and hammers. The moody dwarfs are still fucking with me tho, the last possessed weaponsmith made me dig for bismuth so he could make a bismuth hammer.
Thinking about it again actually i have one: Every dwarf must have his own 3x3 room which has to be engraved, veins and gems are left in no matter how valuable. The room should in the end have at least a cabinet, but mainly so i don't have to look at the soldiers and kids clothing.
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sir_laser

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #21 on: January 21, 2011, 03:34:41 pm »

What about, uh, casting obsidian?
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Yiab

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #22 on: January 22, 2011, 07:36:27 pm »

Protip: Forgotten beast bones have value 1. Try dragon bones instead.

Maybe something's gone wrong with my game, but all the bones I've ever seen are worth 0. Also, I don't have any dragons or dragon parts yet.
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Sutremaine

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #23 on: January 22, 2011, 07:53:16 pm »

Item value = item type x item material x item quality

Item types classed as refuse have a value of 0. Bones are classed as refuse and 0 x anything = 0, so... yeah.
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I am trying to make chickens lay bees as eggs. So far it only produces a single "Tame Small Creature" when a hen lays bees.
Honestly at the time, I didn't see what could go wrong with crowding 80 military Dwarves into a small room with a necromancer for the purpose of making bacon.

Flaede

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #24 on: January 23, 2011, 01:38:58 am »

his own 3x3 room which has to be engraved, veins and gems are left in no matter how valuable. The room should in the end have at least a cabinet, but mainly so i don't have to look at the soldiers and kids clothing.

Yeah, that one totally counts. A lot of my little foibles are derived from in-game experiences, however odd a path I've taken my response down.
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anqxyr

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #25 on: January 23, 2011, 01:40:11 pm »

This is how I generate worlds. I have carefully pre-made with Perfect World template, with every parameter carefully adjusted, and most of geographic features painted by hand. You don't want to know how much time I spent on fine-tuning it. So, the only thing left for RNG's mercy is biomes and temperature poles. Now, I want the hot pole to be on the north, because this is where most of mountains is, so I could trade elephant leather with dwarven caravans.
So, if the poles are other way around, I abort worldgen. This is easy, because you can see the dislocation of the poles immediately after beginning of world gen. So it takes only maybe half a minute.

Then it gets worse.

I have two oceans. Big and very big. I want the very big one to be evil biome. Not because I want to build my fortress on its shores, no. But because I like the picture of female dwarves, putting their children to bed, and telling them stories about The Great Ocean Of Inevitable Doom, from which the terrifying zombie whales comes to walk this land.
And no, the smaller ocean wouldn't suffice. Because then it will looks like it only tiny evil part of blue and beautiful Ocean Of Hope. And we don't want that, do we?

Anyway, back to the topic. During worldgen, evil and good biomes placed after the caves. That is, after roughly to minutes of worldgen. Naturally, I can't just sit and wait and do nothing all this time. So I switch to something else. Often to this forums. And by the time I remember to check, 500 years of worldgen passed already. And if bigger ocean is not evil, I abort worldgen. So, this all takes roughly 10 minutes. Multiply by the number of repeats needed to get just that one ocean to be evil.
So, 2 hours later, finally, we get perfect world.

Well, it wouldn't count as OCD if it would be so easy, would it?

We finally get to see the names of dwarven civilizations. Wait, what is it? There is no names dwarven enough? No Axes of Rage and Diamonds of Perfection? All you see is Lovely Boat? There is only one possible solution. Delete the world and regen it from scratch.
This can continue for days. Record is 10 days so far.

After the world finally generated, the rest is easy. Just pick good spot (and if you can't find good enough after more the 2 hours of search, regen the world) and proceed to dig\build fortress. And may the gods forgive you if you dug entrance to the room 7 tiles from the right side instead of 8.

TL;DR: I generate worlds. Often, long and painfully.
« Last Edit: January 23, 2011, 01:42:38 pm by anqxyr »
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Psychobones

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #26 on: January 23, 2011, 02:40:03 pm »

Everything must be smoothed and engraved. ALL engravings must be masterworks. By everything, I really do mean everything. When I discover a vein of something useful and I mine it out, if there's nothing else of value behind these veins, then I smooth and engrave it. On the plus side, this means I get a lot of legendary engravers.

Also, I've picked up recently making all my furniture the same material. Since I'm too lazy to screw with burrows, this means forbidding everything except that stone. This has caused issues before with steel production.

Every dwarf has a 4 square(2x2 or 1x4) room with a bed, a cabinet, and a coffer. And yes, it's engraved. The single extra space is for a statue if I like them(usually this means my military).

My forts don't expand with new immigrants, I usually just have them HTFU until such a time that I decide to make the bedrooms. I build all my bedrooms at once. Not quite OCD, more of for ease.
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Brightgalrs

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Re: Picture Perfect - going to odd lengths for silly reasons.
« Reply #27 on: January 23, 2011, 02:48:41 pm »

Ill admit I like to center the entrance to my fortress and have things relatively symmetric, but some of these things with items needing to be a specific stone and engravings needing to be about historical events are just silly.  :P
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