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Topics - Dood

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DF General Discussion / How realistic worldgen really is
« on: July 13, 2010, 05:15:15 pm »
So, while toying around with the excellent PerfectWorldDF trying to create a reasonably believable map of Europe to embark to, I inevitably had an experiment to test out how realistic results the DF worldgen creates. So after importing a heightmap of europe and fiddling with the rainfall, drainage, volcanism and savagery maps in order to create worldgen settings that would output a playable, yet mostly realistic world, I let toadys programming do its magic.
To elaborate a little bit, while elevation, rainfall and drainage are set via PerfectWorldDF, temperature, erosion, running rivers, placing civs, etc. are all done by DF.
When I looked at the final map I was quite surprised about how many of the major real world rivers are present in the DF world. Compare the attached maps with the one shown at http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/euriv.htm.

Worldmap large version:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Worldmap small version:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The interesting thing is that all the major rivers draining big parts of the continent (Rhine, Danube, Po, Loire, Rhone, Tajo/Tagus) are there. They are even taking pretty much the same routes as their real counterparts. I think that shows how well the rainfall/drainage/rivers mechanism of DF works.

I think it's really fascinating how the DF worldgen generates results like that. It's things like that that keep the science nerd in me hooked to Dwarf Fortress. The inner child is then kept in by all the murdering kittens and whatnot. ;D

Thanks for the great work Toady.

2
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / The dwarfy way to build a waterclock (possibly slightly spoilery)
« on: July 02, 2010, 04:43:47 pm »
Hey guys,

I think I just managed to build a new kind of waterclock.
In my current fortress I was annoyed by the large amounts of forgotten beasts (5 or six distributed among all three cavern layers). The first layer is completely filled with water, as are big parts of the second one. The third one contains more dry soil and a conveniently placed magma pipe. What intrigued me was the fact that directly above the magma pipe the caverns were only separated by floor tiles, with no "solid" rock in between. So I hatched a plan: Drain layers 1 and 2 directly into the magma pipe. A quick cave-in later the dwarven waterclock was born. (See Illustration)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
What I thought what would happen (all the water from the first two cavern layers rushing down and completely filling the third cavern) didn't. Instead I have a slow but steady stream of 7/7 tiles of water dripping into the the center of the magma pipe. Each 7/7 hitting the magme creates a huge plume of steam and a single tile of obsidian, which immediately drops down to the bottom of the magma sea and somehow vanishes. Therefore the pipe is not being capped by the usual crust of obsidian, which means the clock will keep ticking until the upper caverns run out of water.
The Impact on my FPS isn't even as hard as i thought it would be. DF still runs at 30 fps, although every drop hitting the magma slows it down a bit for a fraction of a second.

Well there you have it: Precision timing using all of the four classical elements plus SCIENCE!

3
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Outpost liason making my fortress an "official land"
« on: May 01, 2010, 02:19:59 pm »
So it looks like the outpost liason wants my fortress to become an official colony of my civilization (See pics).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Has anyone else encountered that yet. I searched the forum but didn't find anything. My guess is that this is pretty much analogous to getting a baron. But it seems that this time I can choose one of my own dwarves as the new baron.
So to elaborate on the background: I had my fortress running for a few years, but didn't bother assigning a sheriff/captain of the guard. Then I figured I would actually like to have a dungeon master to tame alls those jabberers. They usually don't come to the fortress without a justice systen, so I appointed some useless dwarf as captain of the guard and a few minutes later this message pops up. (It actually happened twice since the game crashed after the first time and I had to use an old save. So it is reproducible.)

If anyone is interested I will report back with the results once something interesting happens.

I also love how he says "Merit deserves a reward", since the last dwarven caravan got slaughteres horribly by a bunch of goblin invaders. :D


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