I'd be happy to help convert the imgur posts into a series hosted either on github or maybe s3. There'd be no good reason it couldn't be and it'd be nice for roomcarnage to have its own place on the web. Sadly imgur appears to be somewhat difficult to scrape. Do you have the original source material?
A generous offer! Please let me know if it still stands, after two and a half months - I really ought to check this thread more often.
I don't know how readable this is, nor how long till DS sees it - 'tis bit of a necro, and I apologize for disrupting it, but the time taken would fit a reply that hopefully encourages them.
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I'll attempt to address and clarify some of your more salient points.
Yes, 'tis the curse of Roomcarnage at this point. The moderately-sized population doesn't do me much good, if there are no outward goals left for the dwarves to pursue.
Regarding using ramps instead of stairs, it's an interesting point - to some degree I do value such aesthetics. In Weatherwires, I constructed eight different guildhalls, using a different color of wood to produce chairs, tables, and beds for each. It was a ponderous effort, much like everything else I attempted in Weatherwires - in many ways, that fortress is a relic of my more manic, obsessive youth.
All that is besides the point, of course - the black tile backgrounds don't really bother me. The pursuit of perfection, in design and process, no longer interests me.
Turning off announcements for uninvited guests is a great recommendation. However, looking back, there are a couple visitors who I am glad to have noticed - although, you are right, they don't really have any way of affecting the fortress at this point. Or so you would think.
When it comes to the possibility of werecreatures tracking foul fog to other places - or, indeed, any events that take place outside of the fortress - I am mostly being poetic. In this version of DF, very little occurs outside of the fortress that is actively running.
Without spoiling too much of the next chapter, I can say that the lack of dogs is not a great worry. The fortress now has a large, capable, well-equipped military, and rising undead have been put down without much trouble, except for a few instances where I doubt dogs would have helped.
I suspect you are right, that some ridiculous bug has prevented the merchants from arriving. As I mentioned before, lands and sites outside the fortress go largely untracked and unresolved, meaning the problem with the merchants must have arisen from within. Perhaps the number of merchant deaths reached a threshold, preventing any further arrivals. Perhaps they are trapped in limbo at the edge of the map.
It doesn't make much difference, to be honest. In Weatherwires, I used third party utilities, including dfhack, to manipulate merchants into joining the fortress. It was a decision I later regretted, and I swore that, in all future stories, I would endeavor to write stories about the vanilla DF experience. So, this is the fate of the Momentous Dye.
And... yes. Rith Craftportent. I expected to see
her* again at some point, to be honest. You'll find out what happens to her in the next chapter.
So! Obviously it has been some time since the last chapter was published, back in late March. You might think that the intervening four months or so have been spent avoiding the game - or that I recorded the chapter, and it has been languishing on imgur while I put off writing captions.
Both of these possibilities, while certainly having a precedent in earlier chapters, are false.
I have been recording the chapter, averaging several hours a week, for the last four months. Some weeks I wasn't able to play at all. Other weeks, I had Roomcarnage running for 8 hours every day. I just finished recording the chapter a few days ago, and am now in the process of writing captions.
Take from that what you will.
- DS
