Dwarf Fortress News

Hello!

Levers in Dwarf Fortress can be hooked up to all sorts of buildings and machines, such as doors, floodgates, gear assemblies, cages, spikes, and bridges. In the old game, this was a reasonably painful process, where mechanisms had to be manually selected, lists scrolled through, and afterward it was very difficult to figure out which lever was linked to which building without just pulling it and seeing what horrible things happened.

This has been changed now! In the video, you can see what we currently have:

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When you click "link lever", two appropriate mechanisms are chosen by default. You decide what to link the lever to by clicking on it, and once you've hooked it up, both the lever and the linked building have a list of links with a recenter option. So hopefully there will be fewer unnecessary tragedies.

Patrick has also drawn up some new barrels, with their contents, so that you can get some information about your food stocks at a glance.



Here we have some dwarven wine and rum, as well as meat, fish, plump helmets and seed bags.


- Tarn

Greetings all!

Alexandra here with the Spring video dev update showing off all the latest features in Dwarf Fortress with Tarn. This time, we have some new, exciting developments in the Fort including bedrooms, tombs and a visit from an elven caravan! We have have big updates on the building interface and zoning placement.

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That's it from me today, see you next update!

-Alexandra

Hey everybody!

This time we have a look at the expansive cavern system that you can find underneath your fortress.



There are all sorts of mushrooms down there, which Patrick has prepared for you. Big ones, little ones, really big ones... in the image above we have tower caps and fungiwood growing in the subterranean water pools, and the floor is entirely covered with smaller fungus. The largest multitile growths can be used for lumber if you manage to reach them and recover the fallen material, and the smaller ones can be used for food, dye, and clothing. These can also be cultivated. Your dwarves can use the water for all sorts of purposes, especially if the surface level lacks a river or brook. (We still have to handle the blue water behind the tree images, and the ramps cut off prematurely sometimes.)



Since the largest mushrooms occupy multiple vertical levels, you see slices of them as you move up and down through the levels of your fortress. In the gif, we start at the mossy floor with a spattering of webs and small vegetation (and a cave ogre) and move up three levels, viewing the caps as they round out at their tops.



You can see three different gem clusters in this image of a lichen floor. The open cavern makes it easier to prospect for ore and other useful minerals, but also leaves you exposed to visits from various creatures if you don't take precautions!

- Tarn

Hi again!

This time I've brought some elves, the third of the major critters you can find in the game, after dwarves and humans.



Brought to you by Mike, they are slighter than humans, as we can see here, and their hair comes in autumn colors, though some have mossy green or silvery white. I have everybody in the same clothing here to focus on the physical features. (Note that some of the beards of the dwarves have been shaved since my creature placer doesn't respect their normal customs.)



These elves grow wooden weapons and armor and don't like to trade any items made from butchered animals or wood they suspect came from felled trees. In the image above, you can see their heavy armor, and a more lightly armored warrior, with some humans in metal equipment for comparison.



And this is the variety of their typical clothing, using profession colors. A few of these professions are atypical for elves, but you can find them in human settlements where they'll often find themselves working in jobs that don't exist in their forest retreats, even those wood-working professions which the elves living among the trees might find offensive. Similarly, fully-acclimated city elves don't appreciate that forest elves eat the people they kill in the ongoing timber skirmishes, so it kind of evens out.

- Tarn

Hello!

Statues are one of the pieces of furniture in Dwarf Fortress. You generally use them to increase the value of a room, or as the center of a room when you designate an area to be a sculpture garden. This is a place for dwarves to hang out and admire the architecture, which generally makes them happy. The statues can depict particular people, historical events, abstract shapes, artifacts, and more. Of course, up to this point, we used the same text symbol for every statue, made the material give it one of a few colors, and left the rest to a sometimes lengthy paragraph description, including whatever engravings or other decorations might be found on the object.



After Patrick drew lots of new images and adapted many additional images to the statue format, we're finally able to begin showing some portion of the details! This is my coati hall, with eight coatis and a coati person. There's also a sunfish enjoying some time in the waves under the moon. The colors of the statue give some indication of their material, various stones I located in the mines. It's a strange room, and I shouldn't be in charge of decorating anything, but my dwarves enjoy the space, because they don't know any better. There's also a visiting human monster hunter there, possibly confused.



The pedestal indicates the quality of the statue, and also reflects all of the decorations (spikes, hanging rings, engravings, etc.) Damage and spatter are also indicated. This statue has been encrusted with oval cabochons and given little menacing spikes.

- Tarn