Dwarf Fortress News

Dwarf Fortress is the kind of deeply simulated videogame where a cat can wander into a tavern, step in booze, get drunk by licking its paws and then vomit booze-puke all over the floor. Caves of Qud is the kind of deeply simulated videogame where you can use a can of "spray-a-brain" to turn an inanimate object like a wall sentient, at which point it can move, talk, fight, and become your companion if you're able to beguile it...
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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

When Dwarf Fortress creators Tarn & Zach Adams talk about the games that inspired them growing up, they're almost all RPGs—so how did they end up making the PC's most famous management simulation and not an RPG? Part of the answer is that they did make an RPG. They just decided to build it inside their management sim. Adventure mode in its current form lets you create a party and go on a roguelike journey through a world you generated in Fortress mode, to directly explore what you were once lording over from above...
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Dwarf Fortress is a huge success story on Steam. It sold nearly 500,000 copies less than a month after it debuted on the storefront—which, for the record, happened more than 16 years after its initial standalone release—earning its two-man development team more than $7.2 million in revenue. And it's still shifting units: Dwarf Fortress co-creator Tarn Adams told us during a GDC chat that the total figure has now climbed to roughly 630,000 copies sold on Steam...
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When I last talked to Tarn and Zach Adams, the brothers and co-creators of Dwarf Fortress were just wrapping their heads around a new reality: becoming millionaires. It's only been three months since then, but when I sat down with the brothers this week at the 2023 Game Developers Conference, I had to know: Were they treating themselves to a little well-earned luxury yet?..
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