Dwarf Fortress News

Hey Urists,

It’s been a little over a month since our big Adventure Mode Roadmap. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, go ahead and do that here. Since then, we’ve been working on a ton of new procedural portraits for goblins, kobolds and animal people which will be added to both Adventure Mode and Fortress mode. Soon you will be able to stare into the face of every single being you encounter in your fort or, bring them along with you in Adventure Mode. Watching humanoids slowly go insane from sobriety or die of dehydration was never so personal.

Here is one of the first screenshots from the new Adventure Mode, featuring an ambitious hippoman at a tavern. Maybe you can convince him to join you on your party? We also see the Adventure Mode UI coming along with your character’s portrait in the bottom left as well as all the new buttons for the various actions you can do.



Below, we also have a first look at the Adventure Mode world map. As you can see, towns are represented in much more detail including roads, farm plots and homes. The little shield acts as the marker for your party as you move through the map to reach new points of interest.



We will have more to show with Adventure Mode as well as a more accurate release timeframe in a couple of weeks. If you're curious to pore over the little pixel icons and implications, Blind did a little livestream grilling Tarn and Zach over the Adventure Mode details, so check that video out here.

[h2]New Bugtracker[/h2]

We are happy to announce that we have a new bugtracker ready to go! The bug tracker has now migrated to a new domain with the old account system for reporting and commenting. The previous address and email reporting will no longer be used, so please update your bookmarks and follow the new instructions here: https://bit.ly/3R2d9t5

Thank you to everyone for your patience and willingness to help to squash all those pesky bugs!

[h2]New FanGamer Merch + European Store[/h2]



New Dwarf Fortress merch has arrived to FanGamer as well as select items on the FanGamer Europe store. We have the vinyl soundtrack, a journal designed to document your favourite forts, a giant desk mat and a hood with customizable menacing spikes! And European Urists can finally rejoice because you can now pick up the vinyl, journal, desk mat and pin on the European storefront, at least until they sell out:

Wave 2: https://fanga.me/r/dwarf-fortress-wave-2

FanGamer Europe: https://www.fangamer.eu/collections/dwarf-fortress

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That’s everything we have for this update. Thanks for reading! In a couple weeks will have some very exciting Adventure Mode stuff to show off and a more accurate timeframe for the release!

-Alexandra

P.S.

Our friends at Freeehold Games just released one of the biggest Caves of Qud patches ever yesterday! It’s been a year in the making and features a ton of new content including new boss fights and factions as well as the next leg of the main quest and HUNDREDS of new visual and audio effects, plus improved Steam Deck controls. Now is the best time to pick up Caves of Qud or return to it. You can buy Caves of Qud in Early Access and read more about the update on Steam or watch the trailer.

Kitfox and Bay12 have struck the earth, manufactured a thousand stone blocks, and laid out a roadmap for the Dwarf Fortress Steam edition's Adventure Mode, together with some forthcoming updates for the existing fortress management mode. Adventure Mode, in case you've been living under a rock (which I guess you probably have, if you've been playing Dwarf Fortress), is the open world roguelike RPG element of the game, which lets you roam the enormous realm you've generated and even tour/loot/disturb the unquiet spirits of your own, abandoned fortress. Alas, there's no word on a release date for the Steam edition's Adventure Mode beyond "not this year".

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Hello!

We are here with a brand-new development roadmap outlining our plans for Adventure Mode and updates to Fortress Mode. Please keep in mind these are estimates. We do have a date in mind but we’re not quite confident enough to announce it yet. All we can say right now is “not this year”, but hopefully we’ll have more specifics soon. We know you’ve been waiting patiently, and we are working hard.

We will be building on the Adventure Mode framework that already exists. This is exciting because everything is working as intended and we “just” need to add the interface and graphics, which will take us some months.

Here’s the plan for how we get to Adventure Mode release, hopefully not-too-late next year:

[h2]To Start[/h2]

First, the basics, which will let us actually see what’s going on at all in the new art style.

• Travel map - we have the world map, but sites need hundreds of sprites to match up with the ASCII that shows individual streets etc. We’ll be iterating on this until launch.
  
• Main interface layout - similar to Fortress Mode, there are tile-based actions, information menus, and other actions like travel. There’s also a day-night cycle and we’ll have a minimap this time around.
  
• Procedural portraits - we need to implement Carolyn’s great portraits for the humans/elves/dwarves/goblins/kobolds, and also get animal people displayed. Every animal person!
  

Once we have this framework, we’ll just start doing the actions and menus one at a time. Full keyboard and full mouse support for all play styles. Actions are challenging because they can be initiated by clicking the play area, through buttons and hot keys, or by accessing a full list. There must be several ways to perform the same action based on context, play style, and input method. Can you guess what the buttons below do?



[h2]Major Features[/h2]

These are the biggest-risk items, each of which hopefully isn’t more than a few weeks, but it’s hard to say since they each have multiple sub-systems and open design questions to be solved between code and art.

• Inventory - equipping items and containers are the trickiest parts here. You can wear multiple shirts and nest containers as deep as you like, and the new interface will have to handle this with both keyboard and mouse support.
  
• Combat (striking and wrestling) - wrestling will be a bit of a doozy, as there’s a lot of physical/anatomical complexity that we’re not sure how best to communicate
  
• Conversations - this includes supporting the current Adventure Mode system of interleaving speech and actions, and having three or more participants in conversations
  
• Character generator - you can make a whole party in Adventure Mode and the character creation options are complex. We have to update this system.
  

[h2]More![/h2]

These are individually much less complicated and risky than the above, but still have lots of little fiddly bits to keep us busy.

• Status screens - wounds, skills, needs etc. There is a lot of information about every character, similar to the dwarf sheets in Fortress Mode.
  
• Journal screen (quests and knowledge) - we may integrate this with Legends Mode because they are very similar.
  
• Crafting and other powers - Adventure Mode is highly moddable and we need to support vast menus of magical powers and other abilities. Pet any animal!
  
• Various small menus/actions (“widgets”) - stealth, movement, tracking, odors, party controls, combat options, etc.
  
• Audio integration - the audio designers are working in parallel with us and we’ll be adding a whole new soundscape for Adventure Mode
  

Cabin building wasn’t properly feature-rich in the classic Adventure Mode. We’d love to expand on it, but it’s definitely more optional to the Adventure Mode experience than the above features and systems. We have the new Fortress Mode interface which will help a lot, but we may do it after launch if it becomes too complicated.


[h2]Ongoing Fortress Work[/h2]

Work on Fortress Mode will continue in parallel with Adventure Mode. We’re reading the bug tracker and also have some content ideas which will complement Adventure Mode well. More on this later!


[h2]FAQ[/h2]

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

It is difficult due to the procedural sentence constructions used 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. We are investigating translation options behind the scenes but it’s very early stages.

Q: How can I report a bug?

You can track and report bugs on our MantisHub: https://kitfoxgames.notion.site/How-to-Report-Bugs-in-Dwarf-Fortress-b5e2ca19dabe408897d1c2669599b7a2

We know that this system isn’t working very well for our helpful bug wranglers though, so we’re looking into rolling back into the old system soon, in the hopes that we can rejuvenate the bug-hunting community like days of yore. We have double the code resources that we used to, but also ten times the bug reporters, so we’re still finding our feet to figure out how best to maximize this power. Please be patient.

Q: What about the Mac version?

Because of all the work that needs to be done for Adventure Mode, we won’t be able to start development on the Mac version until after its release, at the earliest.

Q: When are Steam Achievements coming?

We will consider implementing this after Adventure Mode. Several of the achievements will likely link the two modes together so it’s best to have these systems in place. The main problem with Achievements is that they also need to be a new ‘living’ system alongside all of the other features, and we’re not sure it’s a good idea for people to feel they have “100%ed” the game based on what’s essentially an arbitrary list of tasks. We’re considering it, but haven’t decided yet, and will come back to the topic after Adventure Mode.

-Kitfox Games + Bay 12 Games

Hey Urists,

We have a quick patch update today with fixes for Linux Mode, the tutorial and more. We will be posting a big update this week with a new roadmap for Adventure Mode and updated FAQ so stay tuned for that!

Release notes for 50.11 (October 3, 2023):

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
  

-Alexandra

The Steam version of legendary simulation game Dwarf Fortress has a vital new patch out updating the graphical edition to work on ye olde Linux, a most dorky operation system for that most dorky of games. It was a delayed release, mostly because primary developer Tarn Adams just got over a bout with covid...
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