Hello!

One of the main things we've been working on recently is updating the world map. As with almost everything in Classic DF, the world map is displayed using ASCII symbols. It looks like this:



This particular world is a medium sized 129x129 one (currently you can make a large world at 257x257, down to a pocket world at 17x17). If you haven't played before, even from the ASCII image, you can probably tell what is water versus land, and that the top is the icy part. And maybe find some trees and deserts. However, some of the other symbols are likely more difficult to distinguish, or maybe it just looks entirely unreadable.

Here is our work-in-progress graphical map of the same world:



The image is larger and square since we've moved from 8x12 ASCII glyphs to 16x16 tiles. There's still quite a bit to do with river mouths and wetlands and oceans and mountains and trees and so on, of course. But we've arrived at a point where it accomplishes the goal of making the world map more easily understood and thought it would be fun to share.

- Tarn

Hi!

Dwarf Fortress has a few hundred real world animals and some dozens of fantasy creatures, but the most distinct part of the bestiary is the critters that are generated by the program. These include forgotten beasts, various demons, night trolls, werecreatures, experiments, and others. It's a pixel art challenge to accurately reflect what is stated in the text, and our first step is the night trolls! The body positions are a bit restricted due to inventory and piece-matching requirements.



In other critter news, we also have visual distinctions between domestic animals like the peacock and peahen.



Here are some updated stockpile pictures, where signs distinguish the sort of stockpile (clockwise from top left: food, furniture, finished goods, lumber). Since it is an initial DF embark, the finished goods pile is mostly crutches and splints, for the inevitable. You also have a look here at the base level of DF's multi-tile trees. We're using the foliage shadow to clarify that this is the base of a tree and not just a trunk.



Finally, here is a windmill turning some axles and gear assemblies.



You can use such machines to pump water, mill grains, and turn rollers to propel minecarts. Power can be provided by windmills and water wheels, and vertical axles and gears allow you to transmit it downward into the mountain as well.

- Tarn

Hello again!

I hope everybody finds themselves well. We've been continuing to plug away on the graphics for Dwarf Fortress and have some more goodies!

Beyond the ASCII ramp pictures we showed earlier, one of the main problems with visualizing the map in Dwarf Fortress is that the Classic game only shows one z-level at a time. This might be a very thin strip of sloping hill, or just the bottom or top of a river canyon. Lacking visual context, players sometimes resort to sliding the view of the landscape up and down to form an image in their mind. Now, we can more easily show many elevation levels at once, through the power of having more than 16 colors!



This is much easier to read as a desert hillside. This is still a work-in-progress, and there's more we can do with the shading and tile boundaries, but the main obstacles are overcome.

Here's a small animation moving down three levels of the hill to see it in action:



We've been working on a variety of other improvements as well recently. In Classic DF, we used background color to denote planned furniture. In Premium DF, we can use transparency:



There is a finished room on the left, and a similar room in the planning stages on the right.

Creature graphics have also seen some additions:



Although Dwarf Fortress creatures always occupy just one tile (unless they are a wagon... or somebody is dragging their entrails...), we have an opportunity now to make the largest creatures at least slightly larger. On the left is a blind cave ogre, very large as you might expect. On the right, a gorlak, a small friendly head with tusks, arms and legs that occasionally takes up a profession like a poet or a scholar.

Expect them in your taverns from time to time!

- Tarn

Hello!

Okay, now I can show you what I meant about the graphical improvements last time instead of trying to explain in words, ha ha.

For reference, here is a hillside in Classic DF:

This is a cutaway view at one altitude. This view has been pretty confusing for new players. All you need to know is that it's a grid of uniform size, and the upward triangles are ramps. Dwarves can walk up those to the next highest level.

Here is a similar view in Dwarf Fortress Premium. First off, you can see the new graphical tiles displaying alongside the old to-be-updated interface instructions.

Our work from last time got us away from the Classic's DF uniform text grid. The artists have done a great job with preparing shadows and shading to indicate that those ramps go up, and not down. For any of its faults, the upward triangles did give us that, and now we have it here. We'll do some additional work later on in the process that further bolsters the three dimensionality of the game.



The ramp situations can get pretty complicated! There are still some shadows and situations to patch up, but it's going well. In the second image there, you can see some brown jasper gems in the lower wall, and some hematite ore striping the upper wall at one spot.

But that's not all we've been working on:

This is a small fort with a carpenter's workshop, log pile, and constructed block wall outside. Inside, we have a mason's workshop with a stone stockpile, some doors placed, a metalsmith's forge under construction, and a larger meeting hall. The dwarves have smoothed the walls in the meeting hall - they generally like smoothed stone better when it comes to the value they place on their bedrooms and so forth. By the end, the smoothed stone color will match the surrounding stone.

Here are some domesticated animals by a pool of water.


The artists are still way ahead of me, but I'll keep working to support all of their creations. The process continues!

- Tarn


Hey everyone! Hope you've all been staying safe and inside. <3

Remember you can get all of these updates in your email inbox if you sign up for the newsletter... with exclusive bonus pics of Tarn's cat, Scamps!

Cheers,
Victoria

Hi again!

We released the last standalone Classic DF patch at the end of February, and therefore: the code work on DF Premium (AKA the Steam version) is underway! The artists have sent me their work to this point, and now my first job is to get them a test version they can use to improve existing tiles and add new ones.

Since Dwarf Fortress's display to this point has just been a uniform grid, the initial step was to rework the innards so that we can display multiple tile grids of different sizes or whatever else we need. This is done now. Next I'm implementing the first pass list of the hundreds of identifiers the artists will be using to plug their work into the game.

There won't be anything new to show for a while still, but it was exciting to see the larger graphical grid displaying some grass and stone underneath the existing menus, rather than by itself as in the trailer. Like, welcome to 1987 or something, I know, ha ha, but this is going to be pretty cool. There's always some iffiness in dealing with technical hurdles, rather than the more straightforward work of updating existing content, so this is good from the standpoint of removing uncertainties as well.

- Tarn


Hi!

So I've been posting lil' peeks at the new sprites in DF Premium via Twitter, but might as well share them here too, right? Place your votes on the most deadly DF hump, heh.


From the Wiki.

Cheers,
Victoria

Hello!

Soon we'll be done patching the last major standalone Classic DF release. Fixed some oldies, like an ancient bug causing dwarves to teleport through walls when they are charged by an opponent and tumble backward in a certain way, and some new ones. For instance, the new necromancer experiments can sometimes escape from the tower and try to eek out a life in a village, and this sometimes means they can migrate to your fortress, as visitors or potential citizens. That's all fine, but they still casually ripped out doors and broke furniture. This is now fixed, ha ha.

March is here, and with that, the code work on Premium DF kicks into full swing. It'll be an interesting change of pace, to say the least, and it'll be cool to see all the artwork Mayday and Meph have been working on come to life.

- Tarn

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This update was originally going to be posted a week ago, but we were at PAX East! Sorry about the lateness. :)

It was nice to see some of you in person! The floor was packed with people, and it's always refreshing to be able to talk to fans of the game in real life. We only had the trailer of DF showing but even then... y'all are excited!

- Victoria

Hi again!

We've been keeping up the bug fixes as the last standalone Classic DF release stabilizes. Now-corrected highlights include the game getting confused about who owned the tomb after a mummy came back from the dead, leading to the mummy's zombies sieging themselves, and two dwarven spies diligently maintaining their enemy cover identities even when they came to live in the player's fort, confusing the local soldiers and starting civil wars. And lots of more mundane fixes.

It has been an adventure steering this fairly massive ongoing project from the villain work toward the Premium DF work since the Steam announcement last year. We should be ready to fully switch gears and work on Premium DF around the change of the month. Fewer news items about odd quirks and strange features, and more about graphics and user experience, but I imagine we'll still see some strange things happen, ha ha. They'll just be shinier now.

Scamps, my cat, turned 11 this week! (Picture included.) I have to revert most of his code additions, but he's always kept up his confidence and continues to try his best on the keyboard nearly every day.

- Tarn