08/02/2024
(Toady One) A

report for August

and a modest

Future of the Fortress reply

. Here also is the summer update video.

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07/01/2024
(Toady One) Here's

the report

and the

Future of the Fortress reply

to start us off.

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06/25/2024
(Toady One) The adventure continues. The beta on Steam where we've been testing the adventure mode conversion out now has abilities, butchery, and crafting enabled. There are a few more menus to go, and we're also going to start in on the magical stuff now. This should be reasonably fun ha ha.

The 9th Dwarf Fortress Gladiator Tournament has arrived! Signups are open until July 4th, 15:00 GMT.

Zach and I found the other underground creature notebook today! These are the images the two of us made in a couple of notebooks in our parents living room one day more than a decade ago when we were trying to populate the new-at-the-time 3D underground. The gorlak and other favorites came out of this process. Both notebooks:

Notebook Image 1
Notebook Image 2
Notebook Image 3
Notebook Image 4
Notebook Image 5
Notebook Image 6
Notebook Image 7
Notebook Image 8
Notebook Image 9
Notebook Image 10
Notebook Image 11
Notebook Image 12
Notebook Image 13
Notebook Image 14

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06/01/2024
(Toady One)

A report

and a

Future of the Fortress reply

for the month. Menus.

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05/09/2024
(Toady One) Here's a

report

and a

Q&A reply.

Things have been going well. Beta seems to have been received okay as the rough critter it is, missing some menus but still able to provide amusement as we get things done. I've returned from a short rest and am back on menus. Once these menus are done I'll be less on menus all the time which will be nice ha ha.

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2024-04-23: DF 50.12 Released
DF Version 50.13 has been released.

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04/17/2024
(Toady One) We posted an Adventure mode beta over on Steam. There are lots of good bits to it but some missing bits as well, so we're slowing rolling it out this time, while still letting more people test it out and have some fun. A lot of the Adventure mode experience is there. You can currently, in the released beta, create a party in character generation, visit your old forts, retire, unretire, get NPC companions, take quests, fight monsters with the various melee/wrestling/ranged options, set fires, tell stories, and travel the world. Portraits are available for dwarves, humans, elves, goblins, kobolds (minus some clothing variations), animal people (no items), and necromancer experiments (no items). These portraits are in both modes.

So there's fun to be had, but there's quite a bit more to do before we'll do the full launch. Non-exhaustively:

Clean up the big crash issues etc.
Quest log / information screen
Butchering and crafting
Ability use, from necromancy to pet animal to spit
Composing
Motion/attack indicators
Building interactions (levers, doors, etc.)
Wrestle button
Stealth vision arcs
Better UI for stuff like going through hatches over ramps
Some other info like movement speed / encumbrance
Tracking / odor / weather / light / time etc. information
Some travel map stuff like visible armies and zooming and highlights
Minimap / map memory
Trading and bartering (and the town shops being generally a mess)
Assuming false identities
Full personality customization in chargen
Graphics and audio that didn't make it in for the initial beta release
Get Classic conversions for the new buttons etc.
The new stuff: chosen mode with deities, town improvements, dungeon improvements, healing options, and so forth

As we mentioned before, cabin building is a larger interface project, so that'll come with the update after the full launch.

A Future of the Fortress reply for February questions. A Future of the Fortress reply for March questions.

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2024-03-06: DF 50.12 Released
DF Version 50.12 has been released.

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02/23/2024
(Toady One) The forum appears to have crashed badly - I have a support ticket open, no ETA on return. I have several recent backups so it shouldn't be catastrophic.

Here's a recent demo video of adventure mode.

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02/03/2024
(Toady One) (Threetoe) Here's

the February report

and also

a Future of the Fortress reply.

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01/30/2024
(Toady One) Sorry for the news delay - I've been expecting a 50.12 patch and it's been moving slower than anticipated. We recently posted an adventure mode progress update over in the Steam news. And here's

the report

and

the monthly Q&A.

Hopefully the patch will be together soon!

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12/14/2023
(Toady One) Variously progressing along. Adventure mode is going well. Arena adventurers are back in and I did some work to make conversations and regular announcements work nicely together. I had to go back and clean up an old technical problem, and it briefly led to an error where my adventurer would autonomously argue with the hippo person from the trailer every time I took a step. I guess my test adventurer has an irritating personality ha ha.

Putnam has been improving the Fort mode interface. There's more sorting/filters now (job search and sorting, alphabetized professions, etc.) We're also working on some improved statues of Jacob's that should be in 50.12, and in Adventure land, Carolyn has drawn some cool armor and clothing portrait variations while Neoriceisgood prepares more animal people portraits. I have to get away from Adventure mode at some point to work on archery issues at the bare minimum before 50.12 is ready to go, but there's a lot to do everywhere. Just going to keep plugging away at Adventure menus and the archery stuff will happen when it feels like a good day for bug fixin'. Both of the tracks need to move forward.

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12/01/2023
(Toady One) (Threetoe)

A report!



A reply!

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11/30/2023
(Toady One) The video I mentioned back in October was posted, an adventure mode trailer that was originally shown on PC Gamer alongside some anticipated unreleased games for next year. We're aiming to get the revamped Adventure Mode released by April!

Here also from a few weeks back is the latest Blindirl interview!

I've been hitting interface menus one at a time. Jumping, picking things up, climbing, inventory, and conversations (aside from a few gnarly cases) are done. Combat menus, the log, status, and character generation feel like the big ones left to do, but stuff always comes up ha ha. There were so many options buried inside of conversations - I still need to do performances and the secret identity specifier, for example. All menus support keyboard only, mouse only, and hybrid approaches.

Work continues on portraits as well, from goblins and kobolds to clothing variations and animal people. New equipment images on the full body tiles for equipment like artifacts and divine weapons also coming, and I think new item images as well.

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11/01/2023
(Toady One) (Threetoe) Here's a report for

the month

. And Future of the Fortress:

here

.

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10/13/2023
(Toady One) Pretty much the same topics as last time, but I'll try not to just be quiet and instead give an update ha ha. We're trying to get a video together so I'm going to leave screenshots off for the moment, but hopefully you can see the towns soon.

Portraits are all working in both modes, including ghosts and undead critters and so forth (Carolyn's art, with Neoriceisgood on animal peoples.) Had some near literal bit rot in that some zombie changes over a year ago to the graphical update caused adventurers to be generated without clothing, which took a bit to figure out ha ha. Having adventure mode not be playable for years is going to cause little troubles like this but we'll clear them up as we go. I think the current plan is to continue improving the portraits for a while, getting palettes working and such, and to push through every single animal person (though they might not show equipment), so I don't expect them to be in the next fort mode patch, but I have a branch where they are up on the sheets and it looks okay so far!

Also been doing site travel map (Jacob's art), and that's going well. We've got varied larger structures in, and private towers with their courtyards, just a bit spruced up from where it was in ASCII which already had the accurate street maps.

Finally, we got some edges up for the vision shadows in adventure mode, so it isn't as blocky.

All of this stuff will experience iterations ha ha. But it's also time to get some menus in, and to find time for archery and other fixes as well!

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10/06/2023
(Toady One) Continuing along with adventure mode stuff. We posted a roadmap over on Steam - I can't replicate the picture layout in this log, so here's a link: Roadmap. We're still stubbornly not updating our dev pages here since we're looking forward to being done with the UI updates and getting back to core development ha ha.

But until then, the work progresses! I got some zoomed travel map site art in and have been setting up the raw format and generation of portraits. It seems like it'll work about like the current layer sets we're using to create regular dwarf/etc. graphics with some minor changes. We're also adding palette support there that can be linked to items or body appearance as it stacks the layers. We have new default body and equipment sets paired with new palettes for the regular creature graphics so those pictures will get a nice update as well at some point in this process.

We have a preliminary layout for the adventure mode interface as well, though this is likely to change. No matter how it evolves, we're hoping to keep the giant tortoise person for the perform action ha ha.

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10/03/2023
(Toady One) Here's a patch for a linux log crash and tutorial issues and some missing classic keys, as well as some more minor issues that came up in code analysis.

Major bug fixes

• Fixed crash on linux related to game log threading
• Fixed broken tutorial on click workshop step
• Stopped tutorial prompt in tiny worlds where tutorial is invalid
• Cleaned up a source of squad schedule corruption
• Made classic graphics setting work properly on restart (hopefully for real this time!)

Other bug fixes/tweaks

• Fixed potential problem with doctors vs. multiple hospitals
• Ballista arrows etc. that chop down trees now count for treecap diplomacy
• Image sets with non-uniform types now properly display as having a variety of types
• Generic improvements now properly display "made a masterful improvement" in histories
• Allowed single pair dances to generate properly
• Fixed potential minor oddity involving animal placement

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2023-10-03: DF 50.11 Released
DF Version 50.11 has been released.

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10/02/2023
(Toady One) (Threetoe) Here are the reports for

this month

and

last month

. And here are the Future of the Fortress replies:

Reply 1

,

Reply 2

. On to adventure mode and more fort patches!

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