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Topics - Kidinnu

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1
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Finding sites with waterfalls?
« on: November 21, 2007, 09:28:00 am »
Any advice to finding sites with waterfalls?

I'd like a site that, taking a cross-section through the river, looks like this:

code:

     ~~~~~          
     XXXXX
     XXXXX
~~~~~XXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX

This is the sort of thing you see at, say, Yosemite, or most of the other "notable" falls I've been to.

Instead I get sites that look like this:

code:

  XXX~~~~~
  XXX~XXXX
~~~~~XXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX

The waterfall has 'eroded' far back into the cliff face, without any side-to-side erosions happening, and so the waterfall itself is happening in the middle of a very-narrow-canyon. What's even worse is that this happens where two streams join not on a level, top view:

code:

.....~....
..XXX~XXXX
..XXX~XXXX
..XXX~~~~~
..XXX~XXXX
~~~~~~XXXX
..XXXXXXXX

I suspect this comes from a constraint somewhere in the worldgen code that keeps watercourses level, rather than letting them have gentle falls frequently, so they start in deep canyons in the mountains, and end 'falling' steeply into whatever river they join, but the river join blocks are ugly/unrealistic.

(What this is *really* in search of is a site where I can have water running through and out of my city; it seems like one way to do that would be to build underneath the waterfall, then channel it down through the earth.)

So, is there a terrain type I'm not investigating, or something odd about my preferred seeds?

[edit: fixed second picture]

[ November 21, 2007: Message edited by: Kidinnu ]


2
DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Cave rivers - disappointing?
« on: November 14, 2007, 10:15:00 am »
Back in the last version I really enjoyed the idea of building along cave rivers, but the floods ruined that idea. Looking forward to flooding rivers in this version, I found a seed off the wiki that reported a cave river (2967067655), spent two seasons digging a series of exploratory tunnels looking for it, and finally resorted to reveal.exe.

What was there was a short segment of water, with no cave around it, signs of erosion, apparent relation to the surrounding rock layers, or tributaries, that apparently came from nowhere: both ends disappeared into open space with mist.

This was crushingly disappointing. Is it typical of 0.27.169.33a underground rivers?

[Edit: 3614285250 is slightly better, but still not what I'd hope for: several segments of river at increasing levels of depth, ending in a sinkhole that falls off the map.

I suppose if I want a dwarf settlement based around underground waterways I ought to just undermine a waterfall and do all the digging myself; even after Friday's hoped-for release without uberswimming riverdwellers, I'll have to gear up a serious military before I can set up a riverside civilization. Meh.]

[ November 14, 2007: Message edited by: Kidinnu ]


3
DF Gameplay Questions / How to find interesting (water) features?
« on: November 02, 2007, 02:48:00 pm »
I had all sorts of unworkable ideas in v22 where I thought "OK, Toady says he's changing that for the next release in a way that'll make it work." There's been plenty of discussion of choosing starting locations for magma, but unless I have some reliable way of finding an underground river or chasm I'll never be able to try my unworkable ideas out again. Any suggestions?

Even if there IS an underground river in one of my fortress sites, I seem to have to honeycomb underground to find it - long test passages every couple of levels that don't contribute anything to the fortress. Ideas for quickly evaluating sites are also welcome, although it takes long enough to put together a build that I like that I really don't relish starting several games just to find one site that fits my ideas.


4
DF Bug Reports / (Oops, duplicate bug) Anvils the wrong material?
« on: November 14, 2007, 05:01:00 pm »
- Duplicate of 488

I have a metalsmith's forge that has only ever been used to work iron (got several sets of iron armor out of it successfully). I order my metalcrafter to make iron anvils. I confirm that his status line reads "Forging Iron Anvil". But at the end of the process, I have a copper anvil. Repeated four times. There's some evidence that peasants are hauling things to and from the forge as the smith works. However, nothing else is queued on the forge, and no metal orders have been given to my manager.

[ November 14, 2007: Message edited by: Kidinnu ]


5
DF Suggestions / Treeline - truth in biome labeling
« on: November 22, 2007, 02:40:00 am »
I've had at least three forts now that I abandoned as soon as I arrived because I selected 50% of the terrain as "woodlands" or "heavily forested" but the site was above the treeline and so had no trees or shrubs. This is really misleading in the site selection screen. I like to look at dwarf personalities & likes when planning a fort and the initial skillset, and make extensive records of my intent, but throwing away so many starts makes it hard for me to put in the effort.

The nice feature would be to preview the site before selecting the dwarves, although I know there may be game design arguments against this; the simpler feature would be more accurate biome labels.


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