Constructing Construction and Dwarf Thirst Traps
Author: kiwihotaru,
published 4 years ago,
Hello!
We've been working on the building construction interface, which covers everything from workshops to bridges to farmplots to walls, and are making good progress there. Placing and sizing rectangles with the keyboard sometimes require a lot of keypresses, as you can imagine, and we've got that all up and running with the mouse now, which is much more efficient. We should be able to show that in a bit. In the meantime, let's take a look at wells!
Now, dwarves drink in the game, hard stuff, lotta drinkin'. This is fine for them. They work slower without it. But sometimes water is needed, for bathing or for the hospital, say. If you want to control the water supply, or you want to stay away from giant cave crocodiles, it can be prudent to carve out a cistern and place a well several Z levels above the water itself.
For demonstration purposes, since we haven't finished the graphics for flowing liquids away from natural sources, I set up a well on a wooden platform above a river. Here's the stilts and a block stairway upward:
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//34693670/54b2c53993296b4b6ce51bf09c04a7ffdd406caf.png[/img]
Two levels up, we have the platform and the well itself:
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//34693670/28ed0b423e8d179895e01eeb767f96d9efcc2d2c.png[/img]
This well uses a rope. You can also use a chain. A well also requires a bucket, some blocks for the low wall, and a 'mechanism', which is used in Dwarf Fortress for any machinery, included levers and certain workshops.
Once I got the little demo area set up, I cruelly used a debug command to destroy all the booze in the fort and also make all the dwarves thirsty. Here you see them rush up the platform to quench their thirst, and you can see the empty bucket plop down into the river and come up full of water a few times.
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//34693670/69897d93003c9cc2bc68167c6f79715a745b6b38.gif[/img]
There are some other little work areas that, like the well, are smaller than the typical 3x3 workshops. In the following image we have a screwpress and a quern on the right:
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//34693670/d9dfe720927150f632bcb389fdcc858562441524.png[/img]
The screwpress's construction requires a few mechanisms, made at the mechanic's workshop on the left, and our stonemason used the mason's shop at the center to carve the quern. Flour is ground from grain at the quern - you can see the little handle at the top where the stones are spun against each other. You can also set up a powered system using a millstone and a windmill or watermill, along with some axles and a gear assembly - we should be able to show that when the building interfaces are a little further along.
(I mined out the work space and placed the shops immediately - I was debating whether to haul away or use the hide option to obscure the loose stone for the final image, or otherwise smooth the place over, when I noticed the small visitor on the left and knew it was time to take the screenshot. A wild chinchilla!)
- Tarn