Dwarf Fortress News

As we've written about before, Dwarf Fortress is getting a Steam release with an official tileset, a new UI, and mouse controls. The latest video from Kitfox Games, who are handling the polished release, features original DF co-creator Zach Adams talking through new menus and artwork... while taking his fort's bins out.

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Hello!


Alexandra here from Kitfox Games! Zach returns this week with a...video update?! Watch as he gives us a tour of his new fort, while showing off the new artwork and menus in action!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Zach one half of a giant that needs to be thrown in the garbage. Following the minecart to the garbage into the underground layers, you will see the giant mushrooms, trees, monsters and flowers.



You can watch the full video on Youtube. We are happy to return to more video updates now that the art is nearing completion. Stay tuned for more soon!

-Alexandra and Bay 12 Games

The mysterious animal people have come to your fortress to seek you out, some for amusement, others... for revenge! They come from the world's wild places in all shapes and sizes. Should you choose to open your taverns to outsiders they will seek you out. They could be coming for entertainment or work. Some might be adventurers seeking danger, others may be poets or scribes.



All of these images show new animal people sprites by Neoriceisgood. There are almost 200 of these new sprites now.





You must remember where they come from. You must always watch yourself around wildlife. Even those recently domesticated are but one step from feral savagery. Respect for nature is the best defense against the animals' wild ways. The environment exists in a state of fragile balance, should the elves be believed. Destroying the animal peoples' habitat makes you their greatest natural enemy. Beware in the savage wilds lest you experience their wrath!

- Zach

Hello!

Carolyn has completed the update of the interface art and icons and has moved on to the next set of updates: vegetation! Here is where we are at so far with aboveground trees:



Flowers! These are apple, peach, and sand pear trees.



And their fruit! Along with some smaller bayberry clusters over on the right that didn't have visible flowers.



In autumn, the leaves begin to turn...



Achieving a rich autumnal glow...



And then ready to fall! We have yet to do the falling leaves animation (it has a very crappy placeholder drawn by me right now ha ha), but we'll be there soon. If you look closely, you'll see a few leaves pointing the wrong way, or branches connecting to nothing - those were my fault and we're fixing them up! Some of it also comes from limitations of the system. But for a tile-based system, where the exact tiles matter (dwarves can only scurry up into the thicker branches when treed by wild beasts), I think this looks great!

Of course, your dwarves don't have to embark in the temperate zone with the four seasons (despite the text at the top!):



In this screenshot alone, we have round limes, guavas, coffee berries, carambolas, kapok fruit, avocados, bitter oranges, cashew apples, pomegranates, papayas, citrons, rambutans, lychees, custard-apples, and durians. There are three images for fruit right now, based on size and recolored. This is a candidate for improvement of course.



And here they are in flower.

-Tarn

Hello!

We've been continuing along with our usability work. That isn't just tutorials, but a few final menus to give some helpful overviews and otherwise provide information. Let's take a look at the new Places tab for an example.



Here's an ordered list of the zones. The most important part is the recenter button - it's easy to lose your garbage dump or dungeon, placed somewhere on the hundred elevation levels and then forgotten until you need it again. The meeting areas all display the tavern/library/temple/etc. they are associated with, and barracks show their squad.



The larger locations, which can be made of several zones placed over multiple elevations if you like, also get their own list. Hospitals display the number of patients if you have any.



Here's the stockpile list. It places stockpiles with custom names at the top of their category (Zach named a few of them here.) Determining how full a stockpile is can be complicated by containers like bins and barrels, but the occupancy number here gives some idea of how close each stockpile is to needing expansion.



Like certain zones, workshops can be easy to misplace, and this alphabetical list lets you pop over to a given workshop without trouble. The assigned master of the workshop is shown below the name, and the list also shows the current task. It prints "+ X tasks" if there are additional tasks set for the shop.



Farm plots aren't as easy to misplace, since there are usually only a few layers where they can logically be set down, but it's nice to have an overview of what's currently growing and ready to harvest.

These are all still subject to change - they're a bit sparse and there's always more information we could display - but things are continuing to come together.

- Tarn