Bay 12 Games Forum

So I started a new fortress in my modded copy of DF and looked around. Then I found this, about three z-levels above the river in a slight river valley.

Before you say "Oh, it's a mod, maybe a hidden feature": It's my mod and I know exactly what I put in it (the only inorganic material I added was a metal that explodes at room temperature). Anyway, this stuff hasn't melted (I'm in a Warm area and it's midsummer) or vaporized, but where my stairwell intersects with it I constructed walls around it just in case it does something horrible. All dwarves creepers that have touched it (both miners, my mason) remain perfectly healthy and I know they weren't wearing gloves, so it seems I have an... interesting... blue rock here that's probably made out of the souls of dead elves but remains inert. Another layer-ish thing of it was also found underground. Now here's my question:

Can it be weaponized?!

My other question is "has this happened before" but that's less fun.

So you guys all know that "Could someone please explain" thread, right? The one where you answer someone else's question? But sometimes it's just not enough. Why do you have to waste your time on someone else's dumb question, anyway? We all know that our questions are so much more thought-provoking and insightful, so let's answer them ourselves! Bwahahaha. Discussion is somewhat encouraged since otherwise this is a completely self-serving thread.

I'll start: How can you fish in aquifer water and actually catch things?

The corrupted rain from evil biomes is absorbed by aquifers and travels under the land, its evil reanimation properties reviving fossilized minnows and other boring sea life, but it's too diluted to really get going and resurrect body parts/corpses/skin. So those turtles you find are actually prehistoric fossils reanimated by Armok himself.

What's Suika Fortress?
It's a mod that basically turns Dwarf Fortress into one big Touhou fangame. Touhou is a Japanese bullet hell series where all the tanks and gunturrets are replaced by girls, typically based off of Japanese mythology. For some reason, it's spawned thousands of fanworks and remains highly popular. The mod features yukkuri, which are hard to explain but are basically a meme involving species of disfigured character heads that hop around and are filled with various foodstuffs (or NUCLEAR WASTE as the case may be). Confused yet? Well, the mod itself plays mostly like Dwarf Fortress so you can refer to the thread to see what's replaced by what.

Succession Rules
This is a succession game. This forum is full of them, but here's how they work:

• One person plays on a save file for a pre-set period of time, usually an in-game year.
• Once the year is done, they zip it up and upload it for the next player to play. Images and narration are highly encouraged - this is about making a story, not just playing the game. To upload pictures, use a site like tinypic, and save them in .png format - otherwise tinypic will convert them to artifacted jpegs and we don't want that!
• Repeat ad infinitum.

Get it? All right, here's our rules:

• Put your name in the thread to be put on the succession list.
• Wait until your turn rolls around.
• You have 48 hours to claim your turn before we move onto the next person on the list.
• If you tell us in advance that you won't be able to claim your turn at the time, we'll move it two turns ahead. If you still can't claim it, it's off the list.
• The turn lasts exactly one in-game year as usual. As soon as you see that spring is here, upload that save file and give it to the next person. Remember to take pictures and tell us what happened during that year!
• You have one week of real life to complete your turn. If you go longer than that, your turn never existed and we move onto the next person.
• Repeat until every suika has died horribly.

Narration protip: Take it easy. You're playing a game where bouncing heads are the biggest menace to your fortress. Role-playing and dialogue in a setting like this makes a fun game boring. Sure, you can introduce yourself as a character and dabble a bit in narration but don't get into serious business.

The first turn will be mine to embark and set up. After that it's anyone's game!

Turn List (IMPORTANT)
1. GoombaGeek
2. You, if you sign up in the thread!

The Establishment of Slowtaken
It is the year 144. The suikan mountainhomes have thrived for over a century. But now, they are beginning to grow too large and gain too much. Eerie vapours come from the deepest mines, and rumours of impending disaster circulate among the suikan population, finally reaching the elite of the Lance of Crows, gleaming pinnacle of suikan civilization.

"I've been listenin' ta these rocks fer my whole life, and lately I've been hearin' right uncanny sounds... RIBBITING sounds... in tha cavern we've been workin' on fer a century now..."
"We caught another yukkugasa in our cage trap, but this morning both the cage and the yukkugasa were GONE! Vanished into thin air, I tell you! Even now it could be brutalizing the trappers!"
"Urist's skeleton finally turned up, WITH A BUCKET STRAIGHT THROUGH HIS SKULL!"

The nobles can't help but listen to these constant doomsayers just a little bit, and eventually a committee is organized.

"All right. There's been an uproar lately. Some commoner was apparently killed by a rabid bucket, another one is strapped to a bed in the mental care ward and keeps saying 'kero' incessantly, and everyone thinks that we're all going to die. What do we do?"

"Ooh, ooh, I know! We hammer them until their heads are all over the wall! Then we hammer them more! I like hammering! Let's hammer them!"

"That could have worked when only a couple people were talking about this, but this has gotten out of hand. The entire mountainhome's talking about this now. Do you really want to hammer them all?"

"Yeah! Yeah! Let's hammer them all! Every last one! Hammer them! Hammer every one of them!"

"Someone go put him outside. Anyway, I propose we send a caravan to some new hellhole in the middle of nowhere. The idiots will move over to the new fortress, they'll all get brutally killed by kedamas within a decade and everyone here will finally shut up. Even better, they'll fetch us new materials for a while and all we have to do is send them seeds or some crap every autumn."

"Excellent idea! I second the notion!"

A brave group of seven suikas is organized and sent to the distant Dune of Crafting, through which the Droopy Trough bisects like a watery arrow. Trees are scarce, but the area boasts rich metal reserves. Two miners, two farmers, a woodworker, a stoneworker and one of the braver nobles are loaded onto the caravan and given a hero's farewell. They are hastily given breeding pairs of yusakuyas and chenkkuris and one large yukkureimu as well, to protect the fortress and eventually to breed as a source of delicious bean paste. Will they live to see the year 145?

Well, I was trying to start modding and project one was to make a creeper bodytype. EDIT: Just in case you didn't know, a creeper is that green Minecraft guy with four legs and a frowny face that explodes. I counted the eyeballs as "apertures" because I always thought they were empty holes, but that doesn't really explain why it doesn't load >:I

[BODY:CREEPER]
[BP:HEAD:head:heads][HEAD]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:700]
[BP:BRAIN:brain:brains][THOUGHT][CONTYPE:HEAD][CON:EYE1][CON:EYE2][EMBEDDED][INTERNAL][SMALL]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:400]
[BP:HIGHMIDDLE:neck:necks][THROAT][CONTYPE:HEAD][CONTYPE:UPPERBODY][BREATHE]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:800]
[BP:MIDDLE:upper body:upper bodies][UPPERBODY][CON_CAT:HEART]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:800]
[BP:LOWMIDDLE:lower body:lower bodies][LOWERBODY][CONTYPE:UPPERBODY][CON:LEG1][CON:LEG2][CON:LEG3][CON:LEG4]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:900]
[BP:LEG1:front left leg:front left legs][GRASP][LIMB][LEFT][JOINT][STANCE]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:250]
[BP:LEG2:front right leg:front right legs][GRASP][LIMB][RIGHT][JOINT][STANCE]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:250]
[BP:LEG3:back left leg:back left legs][LIMB][LEFT][JOINT][STANCE]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:250]
[BP:LEG4:back right leg:back right legs][LIMB][RIGHT][JOINT][STANCE]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:250]
[BP:MOUTH:mouth:mouths][MOUTH][GRASP][APERTURE][CONTYPE:HEAD][BREATHE][EMBEDDED]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:80]
[BP:EYE1:left eyeball:left eyeballs][LEFT][NERVOUS][SIGHT][APERTURE][EMBEDDED]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:30]
[BP:EYE2:right eyeball:right eyeballs][RIGHT][NERVOUS][SIGHT][APERTURE][EMBEDDED]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:30]
[BP:GUTS:guts:guts][GUTS][CONTYPE:LOWERBODY][INTERNAL][SMALL]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:500]
[BP:HEART1:left heart:left hearts][CIRCULATION][EMBEDDED][INTERNAL][SMALL][CATEGORY:HEART]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:60]
[BP:HEART2:right heart:right hearts][CIRCULATION][EMBEDDED][INTERNAL][SMALL][CATEGORY:HEART]
[DEFAULT_RELSIZE:60]
It can survive without suffocating or falling over, BUT it's currently immobile and every attack on it "passes right through" instead of, well, hitting. So it's basically an intangible cloud bound to a single tile that can't do anything. So where's the obvious mistake? (At least, I assume it's obvious.)

Shieldsensed, story of a newb

Well, last year I was mindlessly browsing TVtropes, looking for a game to occupy my spare time. Then I found Dwarf Fortress! I read and read, enchanted by tales of murderous carp and overpowered throwing. Then I downloaded the game, sure it would live up to my expectations.

I stared at the worldgen for all of fifteen minutes before giving up and moving on.

A year later I thought of it again, possibly at the behest of my friend (who had stared at the worldgen for fifteen minutes before giving up and moving on).

And I made a few fortresses, learned how to do things, and slowly figured out how to make a community of dwarves destined to not die in a pool of magma within three months. And I started a fortress that is sure to be a winner, Shieldsensed. Absolutely sure. Yup. Definitely.

Granite, Year 5 day distinctions are for uncool dudes
It's a lovely day. Presumably, horrifying tentacle monsters are oozing their way through history, but we are going to ignore that for now because we're going to start a fortress! After freaking out at the worldmap, me a team of seven dwarves eventually find a nice location without an aquifer. And so we embark to some temperate mountainside forest, eagerly awaiting the fun to be had by all.

The Undocumented Times:

The fortress begins as a long hallway and a general stuff stockpile. Immediately, our seven brave workers start unpacking, and soon enough everything is piled up in a ridiculous unsorted heap. Next they get to work on an underground farm and some workshops, with the farm right next to a pond. One especially brave dwarf is given the task of breaching the dirt wall separating our brave outpost from a watery demise, and the irrigation, somehow, works almost properly. For his efforts, he is given the nickname "Floody" Erithåblel, Delugeer. The field is not fully watered, but it is muddy enough to begin growing some crops of plump helmets and nothing else. Our farmer, not content with taking the (admittedly long) hallway to our stockpile every time she wishes to gather seeds, plunges into the pond, swims up and walks above-ground to the entrance for her trips. At least she won't have to worry about cave adaptation...

Meanwhile, alcohol consumption reaches an all-time high, and dark rumours spread about the once-inexhaustible supplies of mead will run out before autumn. A still is shoddily crafted by soon-to-be-sober hands, but will it be enough to bring Shieldsensed out of the dark dimensions of sobriety?

The answer, fortunately, is "yes", as nearly all of our plump helmet output is jammed into the still and ruthlessly fermented into wine. This happens just in time for a charming apartment block to be built, but an already-overclocked mason cannot produce enough cabinets for every dwarf, so they must go with just a bed and a door. Already, bloodshot gazes haunt the hallways, silently accusing one another for this critical lack of furniture.

Suddenly, torrential rains begin! Our dwarven population meanders inside the fortress, but...

The hole from the pond to the farm was never filled!!

Water gushes over our carefully tilled land, washing away scores of beautiful plump helmets. Fortunately, "Floody" manages to wade through the rushing floodwaters with a just-crafted floodgate in tow, ready to do what he must for the fortress. He manages to plug the hole with no problem. Hopefully he's equally crafty when told to do irresponsible things with magma.

TIME SKIP! Timber, Year 6
After spending nearly two years establishing the fortress, our dwarven numbers have swelled to 11. The top level is full of workbenches and our farm, while the bottom level has a lovely pattern of bedrooms within, complete with dining room and empty kitchen spots. The organization of Shieldsensed started haphazardly but improved over time, just in time for a trade caravan to avoid us because their caravan sucked too much to make it around the bend to our depot. Since the next one showed up without a hitch, I can only assume that this was the elves' fault. Damned elves.

I bet you'd all love to see the cabinet-free bedrooms, so here's a (artifacted-up...) picture of them:


Note how it devolves into clay and sand after a certain point. Oh well...

And here's a labeled picture of the fortress, a year and a half old!