Hey Urists!

It's Alexandra back again for another update from the Dwarf Fortress team! Tarn and Zach will be at GDC and PAX East while the art team have been busy the past month working on baby sprites for dwarves, animals, plants and monsters.



This might be the cutest update we ever have for Dwarf Fortress. Every living thing will be getting a baby form (and in some cases, child forms). This will make it much easier to identify units and what stage of life they are currently in. We know this is especially important for child dwarves who are currently depicted as adult dwarves with red shirts.

Here's a sneak peek at some of the sprites:





There’s still a few more sprites to do so we don’t have an exact ETA on the baby update but we will know more in the coming weeks! We really appreciate your patience between these updates as Tarn and Zach finish with their post-launch work.


We are going to Pax East with Tarn and Zach and if you’re going to be there Friday and Saturday, you won’t want to miss our Dwarf Fortress events!

There are tickets still available for our after party on Friday March 24th. There will be food, drinks and games and you’ll be able to meet all of us!

RSVP on Eventbrite now to avoid disappointment.

Tarn and Zach are hosting a panel about some of their favourite games on Saturday March 25th Learn about the design inspirations that led to the creation of Dwarf Fortress and get the chance to ask the brothers your questions!




For those who are unable to attend Pax East, the panel will also be streamed on https://www.twitch.tv/pax2. We will also make sure to upload the VOD to Youtube when it’s available.

We will see some of you next week so until then!

-Alexandra

Hey Urists!

It's Alexandra here with a few community updates! With GDC and Pax East coming up, the team is quite busy with travelling this month. This means that we will be a little slow on game updates for a few weeks. But not to fear because we have some exciting community events planned!




You are invited to the first gathering of the Fey Mood Society, a gathering of Dwarf Fortress fans to celebrate the launch of Dwarf Fortress on Steam and all things fortress-related! Meet Tarn and Zach Adams, enjoy some delicious food and drink and meet other Urists at Lucky Strike Fenway. We will be in the Polo Room with pool tables, dart boards and a shuffleboard.

Friday March 24th 6-9pm ET

Tickets: $5

RSVP on Eventbrite


Don't miss our Pax East panel where Tarn and Zach will be discussing their experiences with procedural generation in some of their favourite games. It takes place Saturday March 25th from 2-3pm ET in the Albatross Theatre.



For those who are unable to attend Pax East, the panel will also be streamed on https://www.twitch.tv/pax2


This past weekend Dwarf Fortress was awarded Best Strategy/Sim Game at the DICE awards! It's an incredible honor especially amoungst all the amazing nominees this year. You can watch Tarn and Zach's acceptance speech in full on Youtube



That's from me today! If you're going to PAX East I shall see you there and in the meantime, happy diggin'

-Alexandra

Our last major update caused the embark button to become unclickable. This patch fixes that! Sorry about that and thank you so much for your patience, urists!

-Alexandra

Arena mode is here which means you can new test out creatures, trees, materials and certain item mods before publishing them! Also notably we've added new sprites to show the growth progression of crops so now you'll be able to see where and what you plant!


New stuff

• Arena mode is back, with an updated interface.

Major bug fixes

• Stopped new timelines from always saving into region1.
  
• Fixed crash when copying trade information like ownership on certain items.
  
• Fixed crash from giant/diagonal activity zones.

Graphics additions/changes

• Underground crops now have sprouting textures.
  
• Added planted soil texture and updated farmplot texture.
  
• Fixed list icons for several creatures.
  
• Updated designation textures.
  
• Updated statue textures.

Audio additions/changes

• Made ambiences continue from where they left off rather than starting at the beginning each time.
  
• Now only plays a few random cards for a song on subsequent playthroughs rather than playing them in order each time.
  
• Added neutral cavern ambience.
  
• Replaced wild ambience with the biome-specific ambiences (and the existing wild sounds).
  
• Updated thunderstorm ambience.

Other bug fixes/tweaks

• Stopped dragons and other megabeasts from appearing as relatives of random dwarves in the fort.
  
• Allowed emotionless creatures to satisfy needs if they still have them.
  
• Added a few additional embark warnings.
  
• Added culling of certain dead units to help with performance.
  
• Made invader summons parts of the invasion.

-Alexandra from Kitfox

Hello!

We should have the arena mode patch together early next week. The arena is a great place to test out creature, tree, material, and certain item mods before publishing them, and it's also a place where you can have some sandbox-style fun with the vanilla stuff as well.

The main thing you can do is place creatures with skills, equipment, and teams, as well as special conditions like "necromancer", and set them upon each other.





You can also place liquids, snow, and mud, change the temperature and weather, and grow trees.

We have a few basic arena maps available on top of the Classic one, and are hoping to add an editor and save/load/sharing capabilities for these maps in the future as well. You can already save and load arena games while you are playing them.

-Tarn

Thanks for all your patience over the holidays! We're back and after only a few days, Putnam has already been on fire, fixing:

Major

• Fixed saved corruption caused by certain armies bringing uninitialized protocreatures instead of monsters

Other fixes/tweaks

• Sped up line-of-sight code
  
• Bees no longer included in food count

We're pretty sure the army corruption was causing the majority of crashes people were experiencing, so this should hopefully help a lot of you. It was in turn causing quite a bit of stress and chaos on our end. Now, with this big slice of chaos behind us, Tarn & Putnam can turn their eyes to other improvements and fixes for the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, we'll be streaming on Twitch next week, on January 9th and 14th as the start of our new event schedule (Mondays 8-10pm Eastern, and Saturdays 5-9pm Eastern). Our streamer will be SalfordSal, sharing her expertise with yet more people through the Kitfox channel. Join us and chat with fellow artisans!

Best,
Tanya from Kitfox

Hey Urists,

We have another important update before we are off for the holidays! We are happy to announce that we now have ❗❗ Classic "graphics" ❗❗ (i.e. ASCII-esque font-based glyphs) available. You can now toggle between Classic Mode and the premium graphical version with the press of a button!



Why play Classic? Pretend you're a time-traveler, or seeing through the Matrix, or just explore a new way to play your favorite game. Those of you out there who prefer to only play Classic mode without the premium graphics and so on also know you can find it on the Bay 12 website, as per usual.




With the success of the Steam launch, we are now able to bring on some more help for future updates and events.

Firstly, Putnam is a very prominent, long-time member of the Dwarf Fortress community and will be helping Toady with programming. This is a historic moment, as never before have non-Adams eyes seen the Dwarf Fortress code. Welcome, Putnam! We wish you luck and courage.

You may also be familiar with SalfordSal, a content creator who joined us for an episode of Let's Learn Dwarf Fortress. She will be joining the community team to help with Discord and will be hosting streams on the Kitfox Twitch channel!

We are so excited to be able to grow the team and can't wait to show you what we have planned! As always, please be kind and considerate to all of the humans associated with Dwarf Fortress, whether you see them on stream, Discord, Twitter, or elsewhere. Well, ideally we'd all be kind to all humans everywhere, but here's a good place to get in some practice.


Along with the addition of Classic mode, we have updated more graphics, and few more fixes to ambient audio. Plus now you can collect those silly Steam trading cards! Each one features a different biome and glimpse of some creatures you might find there. Collect 'em all! Or don't!

Also, as far as we know all of these changes are compatible with your old generated worlds and save files, so no need to start fresh unless you're feeling the itch. OK so on to the real patch notes:

Graphics additions/changes

• Can now swap back and forth from Classic tile mode (in video settings.)
  
• Graphics for some picked outdoor plants.
  
• Updated engraved walls.
  
• Added some custom symbols.
  
• Enabled Steam trading cards.

Audio additions/changes

• Added a music frequency option in the audio settings (default 3-5 minutes, can be set from 10 minutes to 10 seconds.)
  
• Made outdoor ambiences alternate between being more active and a few neutral wind ambiences.
  
• Made the wild ambience use some randomly spaced howls and giant footsteps.
  
• Updated trade depot ambience.

Other bug fixes/tweaks

• Ability to add/remove all civilians/soldiers from a burrow
  
• Can advance the game one frame (default key = period)
  
• Made assigning multiple squad positions continue to position 10 instead of stopping at 9

Thank you so much for an incredible 2022! It was a year of much anticipation and we hope to continue growing the game and the community in 2023 and beyond! Have a safe and restful holiday, maybe teach grandma how to make her first fort and we shall see you in the new year!

-Kitfox Games + Bay 12 Games

One more quick release to handle additional stability issues. This version also includes 72 new werebeast tiles, some changes to ambience, and a start to quality of life additions with the ability to select more materials at once when building constructions.

Major bug fixes

• Fixed save corruption from manual saves with case mismatch.
  
• Fixed crash when sorting pets/livestock by domestication status.
  
• Fixed crash when removing burrows from a scrollable burrow list.
  
• Fixed crash related to storing objects in recently deleted location zones.
  
• Fixed crash on squad equipment screen when there are multiple traveling squads.
  
• Fixed crash related to removing objects from display cases/pedestals.
  
• Fixed crash from looking at Groups for certain consorts.

Graphics additions/changes

• New graphics for werebeasts.

Audio additions/changes

• Updated forest, grassland, rainforest, siege ambiences.
  
• Added new wild ambience, moved old wild ambience to terrifying areas.
  
• Replaced siege horns with something less intense.

Other bug fixes/tweaks

• Added ability to add/remove every item of a given material when building structures that require multiple items.
  
• Holding a navigation key no longer recenters the screen during string entry.
  
• Now displays remove construction designation when designated instead of requiring unpause.

-Tarn

P.S.
Small note from Kitfox: if your save was previously corrupting and crashed, it probably cannot be revived, sorry. Many of these crashing errors caused garbage to be inserted into the save, which now is irreparable. If you can reload to an autosave, that's more likely to work. Otherwise, you'll have to start a new fort. Sorry! Thanks!

Tarn here!

This is a quick release mainly to handle a widescreen crash and some menu issues there. With that stabilized, we'll be able to start properly addressing the reports and feedback we've collected for a bulkier patch next. Thanks for a wonderful launch!

Major bug fixes

• Fixed crash from compressed menu lists (e.g. workshop assignment) on widescreen default settings
  
• Changed init option for interface pixel width to be a percentage (to fix many widescreen menu issues)
  
• Stopped fishing from hugely amplifying creature agitation in the wilds (zeroed general agitation level in old saves)

Graphics additions/changes
• Improved images for planned walls, floors, and fortifications
  
• Updated doors, hatches, chests, and other containers so that palettes will affect handles and other add-ons if the mods desire it, but made the default behavior consistently not palettize these add-ons
  
• Missing occupied animal trap images included

-Tarn

P.S.
Editor's note from Kitfox: this will help MANY of the crashes ya'll are experiencing. Basically anytime it crashed in a menu, I suspect this version will fix it. There's still a few less common bugs of course, so we know we have lots of work left, but I suspect this will make it MUCH more stable for those of you who were having trouble and weren't using 1920x1080 resolutions. Thank you for your patience thus far.

Hey folks!

We had a big day yesterday huh? Apparently Dwarf Fortress is still the #1 top seller on Steam? Thanks for all the support and love and, uh, purchases!


First, if you’re crashing, please know that the main cause appears to be widescreen monitors or other non-standard resolutions. We’re working on a solution but for now, the safest/best course of action is to use a 1920x1080 monitor or change your settings in the game to force that resolution in Windowed mode. For more info, see the FAQ below.


And for those of you who have been waiting for ages for the Classic mode, we’re also working towards that, hopefully coming to you in the coming weeks. Fingers crossed.

Alexandra will be continuing her tutorial newbie fort tomorrow at 1pm EST on the Kitfox Twitch channel, so tune in to learn and chat with other fans. Be nice.

We’ve also prepared an FAQ at the bottom. Read it for extra info and details!


But as of this post, we’ve also decided to change our regional pricing guidelines. $30 USD is absolutely a fair price, and for most regions we’ll be sticking to the Steam recommendations, but it’s been brought to our attention that as of October, some countries who were hit hard by inflation got caught in a bit of the international crossfire and had their indie game prices shoot up 500%, which probably feels harsh for folks just trying to live their lives.

Tarn and Zach and Tanya chatted and we decided the best path was to change all countries prices who had at least doubled in October, and instead going for the middle between the old and new prices.

So! The following regions are in the midst of the prices being re-re-adjusted:

Russia: 810 ₽ instead of 1100 ₽

Turkey: ₺165,00 instead of ₺280,00

Argentina: ARS$1215 instead of ARS$2100

And if you find piratey ways to take advantage of this little gesture, then we can’t stop you, but shame on you.

Thanks!
Tanya, Alexandra, Tarn, and Zach

P.S.

All our other Kitfox games are ALSO on sale this week! Boyfriend Dungeon, Pupperazzi, Six Ages, Shrouded Isle, and more, all on discount for folks who might be indie-curious. You can even pick up ALL the other Kitfox games for only ~$50 if you buy ‘em in our bundle! They might not be as famous, but those little gems were how we were able to fund Dwarf Fortress for Steam in the first place. :)


Q: Is there widescreen support? How do I adjust my resolution?

A: Dwarf Fortress supports widescreen resolutions but you may need to adjust your screen settings so everything lines up. Steam user matt explains:

“My resolution was set to 1440p prior (2560x1440) and Scale to Yes: Settings > Video > Set resolution to 1080p (1920x1080)

Set "Scale interface to fit grid height/width" to No

Restart the game. After making those changes, I am able to assign workers at workshops as expected. I suspect the crash is likely caused by out of bounds UI elements at higher resolutions when scale interface is enabled.”

Q: When is the game going on sale?

Not soon! And not for very much discount! Bay 12 and Kitfox are going to keep working on this for ~30 years, so it doesn’t make sense to follow normal Steam discounting. For example, we might discount 10% in a couple of months, but we also might not! We certainly won’t be discounting for more than 15% for at least two years!

Q: Will there be more streams?

Yes! We will be streaming tomorrow at 1pm EST on the Kitfox Twitch channel where Alexandra will be continuing her beginner fort. In the future we hope to do more special event streams and collaborations with other Dwarf Fortress streamers. We are especially interested in supporting charity events.

Q: When will there be Mac/ Linux support?

Sometime in 2023! We’ve already contacted a trusted programmer who will be looking into it, while Tarn works towards our other roadmap items. Wish us luck!

Q: Will there be adventure mode? Classic mode? Arena?

Yep, yep, and yep, but in the order of: Classic (quite soon), Arena (soonish), and then (much further away because it has a lot more left to do) Adventure. When Classic’s done, it will also be available as a stand-alone, free download, on the Bay 12 website.

Q: Can I play with just the keyboard?

No, currently in the Steam premium version you need a mouse to do many of the actions. We’re investigating alternatives for folks who are mouse-hampered but maybe a modder will beat us to it.

Q: Will the game be coming to mobile? Switch? Gamepass, Cloud gaming, GOG?

You can also buy the game on itch if you like! And we’re investigating GeForce Now with nVidia. But we have no other platforms to discuss right now.

Q: Will the game be localized/translated to my language?

No, sorry, it is extremely unfeasible due to the way the code handles language throughout the game. Our best suggestion at this time is to use auto-translation tools for text on screen, which has been helping some users.

Q: What mods are allowed?

The game is currently set up best to support graphical changes — sprite swaps, basically. More options will probably become available as we go. But please know that we WILL ban or delist your mod if it contains hateful or dehumanizing content.