This month we have several goals. We're going to start by getting the experimental branch moved over to the main line. The update of the engine from SDL to SDL2 is stable, and there will also be a multithreading option. It's off by default until we get some more testing done on the experimental branch, but the speed gains are significant, so it will be available in the settings as well. The update to SDL2 was the most important change for ports, so Linux and Mac versions are much closer now.


Adventure mode work is underway! I have an adventurer running around in the graphical play area. As with fortress mode, the game already exists, but now we need to work through the interface for every possible action and event, as well as creating the sound landscape with our new audio engineers. This will be a long process, but it'll be fun to watch it come together, and we'll be able to update regularly on our progress there now that adventure work has finally begun.


Over in fortress mode, Putnam's almost ready with a menu to review old reports and announcements and is working on making filterable-sortable lists more consistent. Between the adventure work I should have a chance to look at ammunition issues this month as well. And we've got additional tree and plant graphics coming down the line, as well as graphical improvements to engravings, bookshelves, and more.

-Tarn

Hey Urists,

Alexandra here with a big community update but first, a dev update from Tarn:

(Last) week has been going well! The experimental SDL2 branch is stabilizing after a few patches, and this should pave the way for some speed increases as well as the Linux and Mac versions. Putnam got me through setting up the Windows Subsystem for Linux and it's mostly playing nice with everything, so there's some hope that I'll just be able to compile from within MSVC itself to make the Linux builds.

We're having our first meeting for the adventure mode sound effects tomorrow, and I'll need to get an adventurer running around soon for that and for upcoming artwork, so that's a simultaneous thing going on. And 50.09 is also in progress - the return of the game log and we're working toward report/announcement persistence and some archery fixes/changes as well.


We are so excited to share that the Dwarf Fortress FanGamer collection is now live! There is a very metal shirt, a pint glass with a fort design and a high-quality pin to represent your love of all things dorf. This is the first wave of the collection so expect to hear more merch news in the future!



Tarn and Zach say, “If you think losing is fun, buy this shirt. You’ll look like a total loser… and win!”

Store link: https://www.fangamer.com/collections/dwarf-fortress




For those who missed our 10th anniversary stream, we have uploaded the VOD to Youtube. Watch Tarn and Zach review a community -made fort live and hear them answer some of chat’s questions along the way.


Attention European Urists! We are coming to Cologne, Germany for Gamescom from August 23-27th and are looking for volunteers with convention experience who want to help out at our booth. If this is something you’d be interested in please email me at alexandra@kitfoxgames.com (Bonus points if you speak German)


The composer of the Dwarf Fortress soundtrack, Dabu is working on some exciting but secret new things for Adventure Mode and more. In the meantime, we wanted to share the tabs and sheet music for Strike the Earth! Looking forward to hearing your covers!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1o9FVaX97mVxPNNOK4IMC-c6EcgUG-9uW?usp=share_link


-Alexandra

Hey Urists,

Today's patch features the much-anticipated baby update including sprites for children and babies for many of the creatures and outdoor plants. This also includes dragon hatchings! How cute! Other important fixes for buckets and refuse stockpiles.

New stuff

• XML export is back in legends mode.

Major bug fixes

• Cleaned out lingering data from autosaves and manual saves that could cause corruption if multiple worlds were active.

Graphics additions/changes

• Added graphics for many child/baby creatures.
  
• Added hatchling state for dragons.
  
• Added crop/sprout pictures for outdoor plants.
  
• Added outdoor sapling graphics.
  
• Added palettized boulders.
  
• Ice wall graphics updated.
  
• Smooth ice wall graphics added.
  
• Added more fortification images to indicate direction and material.

Other bug fixes/tweaks

• Stopped dwarves without working grasps from trying to get goblets to drink, failing, and dying of thirst.
  
• Allowed most water-based jobs that use buckets to use partially-filled water buckets in addition to empty buckets.
  
• Made stocks screen open faster.
  
• Made all stockpiles not include the refuse option.
  
• Stopped refuse piles that also have armor/finished good settings from degrading contents.

-Alexandra

Tarn's about to be traveling for a little bit but in the meantime, there's a fancy new public beta branch on Steam for folks to try the following fixes for 50.08:

Major bug fixes

• Cleaned out lingering data from autosaves and manual saves that could cause corruption if multiple worlds were active.

Graphics additions/changes

• Added graphics for many child/baby creatures.
  
• Added hatchling state for dragons.
  
• Added crop/sprout pictures for outdoor plants.
  
• Added outdoor sapling graphics.
  
• Added palettized boulders.
  
• Ice wall graphics updated.
  
• Smooth ice wall graphics added.
  
• Added more fortification images to indicate direction and material.

Other bug fixes/tweaks

• Stopped dwarves without working grasps from trying to get goblets to drink, failing, and dying of thirst.
  
• Allowed most water-based jobs that use buckets to use partially-filled water buckets in addition to empty buckets.
  
• Made stocks screen open faster.
  
• Made all stockpiles not include the refuse option.
  
• Stopped refuse piles that also have armor/finished good settings from degrading contents.

If that sounds interesting to you, right-click on the game in your Steam library and choose Properties -> Betas -> click the None dropdown to pick public beta. And let us know in all the usual places whether you see a disaster in the making. If all goes well, this patch will be out in a couple of weeks!

In the meantime, if I understand correctly, DFHack ("the Dwarf Fortress Modding Engine") is launching literally tomorrow on Steam! That team of volunteers is entirely independent from Kitfox and Bay 12, but have our blessing to keep working their magic as best as we can without stepping on each others' toes. It has a lot of interesting extensions and tools for different user experiences, and is planned to be totally free. So keep an eye on it if you're curious.



Thanks to all who came to the PAX East panel and/or party. I heard Tarn and Zach had an excellent time, so I hope ya'll did too, minus one known decency violation from the bouncer (we're still agitating angrily about this to the management btw). Relatedly, if you heard or saw anything problematic about the Lucky Strike staff's conduct, please do let us know so we have the full picture of what happened at the venue.

Have a great day!
Tanya

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