Dwarf Fortress News

Hello!

Here's a quick update on some new artwork. There are lots of biomes you can embark on in Dwarf Fortress, and we have some new plants and terrain made by Carolyn to make the drier places come alive.



Here you can see the baby toe succulents and pebble plants in flower (and Neoriceisgood's leopard gecko people). These flowers only show up briefly once during the year.



We also have sandy deserts of various colors! This is a sure place to find material for glass making, though you'll have to work a little harder to put some fire in the glass furnace without trees for charcoal.



Now we'll take a look at some more environmental art, but we'll have to create it by giving these dwarven soldiers some friends to play with.



I've placed five trolls in the room!



Our trolls have cyan blood! There's also a touch of dwarven blood spatter here in red, but all the soldiers survived, along with some helpful citizens that jumped in with the dogs.



Here's a combat report, which you can get to by clicking on an alert over on the left side. We only have one troll corpse picture, even though the headlessness lines up in this case, ha ha.

- Tarn

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