Dwarf Fortress getting closer to next release...

Prime Junta

RPGCodex' Little BRO
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I've been following the Dwarf Fortress dev log; it's currently in one of its "major upgrade" cycles, which introduce a lot of new content. It's getting closer, though -- by the sound of it, the next release should be out some time this month.

[ http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_now.html ]

There's some incredibly cool stuff in it: roads and tunnels connecting sites, religion, including major ones around gods of various ethoi, as well as megabeast and demon cults, with the difference that the megabeasts and demons are actually around; wars with populations being enslaved, subjugated, or massacred, and so on.

This game has more lifelike dynamically generated detail than most games that have actual, y'know, writers.

Tarn Adams said:
07/02/2008: 115. I was testing some adventure mode conversation responses in a human town. The high priest of the god of revenge came down the stairs, and he was an elf with a human name. I talked to him and learned that both of his parents had goblin names, and his grandparents had elven names. So I guessed that his grandparents had been abducted and that the humans had then liberated the tower, placing the goblin-named parents under human control before they had their child. This was more or less correct, but a bit more happened.

So, way back when, the demon was causing all sorts of trouble, fighting both the humans and the elves and destroying their cities. This went on for 40 years -- an elf managed to tear off the demon's nose about halfway through this rampage, but he couldn't finish the job because he had lost a limb in the fight before the nose-removal and lost the rest of his limbs afterward, prior to being burned to death. Eventually the demon was shot in the year 45 and the humans took over the goblin tower. Many of the goblins fled into the mountains, and others were enslaved, including some of their abductees.

Ngoso and Bax were a couple of elven children born to abducted parents that were left alone to live in the goblin tower under their new human rulers. When they grew up, they both started shops -- The Enjoyable Paddle and the Lessened Healer -- in the year 45, and in the year 54 they both moved to the human town of Beersreined. The next year they were married and they both decided to wander the wilds looking for monsters to kill (they never found any, as the giants were off on the other side of the world and the dragon was dead). Ngoso had ten children in Beersreined, the third of which became the high priest of the god of revenge after both he and his father were converted by the new temple in 146. Ngoso never converted as she had become a dragon worshipper during one of the attacks prior to its death.

As a sidenote, the elves and the humans didn't get along very well, and in the year 60 the elves actually drove the humans out of the goblin tower they had conquered. The elves had no desire to live in a goblin tower so they left it abandoned. At this point, the goblin refugees that had been wandering through the mountains for fifteen years reclaimed the tower. They held it for a total of two years before being defeated by the humans again, who were then able to maintain control of the site until play began. I didn't check if any of the goblins managed to escape again.
 
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Where do I sign up for the Adams Cult?
 
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If he's a megabeast, I think you'd have to get him to rampage through your hamlet first. OTOH if he's a demon, you'd just have to be abducted by goblins to qualify (assuming you're not one already; your avatar kinda looks like you might). And if he's a god, you'd have to meet a priest who would convert you.

Or so I've gathered.
 
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Any word on graphical matters? If it ever advances beyond little different colored x's I'll be the first in line.
 
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Any word on graphical matters? If it ever advances beyond little different colored x's I'll be the first in line.

Nothing new on that front; the Adams brothers have other priorities for now. There is a "presentation arc" listed among the "next couple of years" goals, but it's been there for a while. ("Arcs" are a bit like themes; ToadyOne develops the game in them.)

Specifically, goals listed for the "Presentation Arc" include:

# Core21, SOUND, (Future): Make all music/sounds optional, in groups. More songs (possibly seasonal), incidental music (like spotting the first kobold in a cave, etc.), various combat type sounds and ambient sounds, pleasing interface clicks.
# Core50, TILESET SUPPORT, (Future): Allow graphical tiles to be used for all game objects.
# Core51, SIZEABLE GAME WINDOW, (Future): Allow the resizing of the game windows, and possibly the support of variable width fonts to allow more text to be displayed.
# Core52, INTERFACE OVERHAUL, (Future): A coherent interface, additional options and mouse support.

There's no word on when he'll start on that Arc, so don't hold your breath. They're in "no particular order" on this page, but the presentation arc is the last of them; this may or may not have any meaning.

[ http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_v1.html ]
 
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Well, I imagine they will approach their arcs as I would if I were a dev unbeholden to the demands of a mass market publisher--do whatever was the funnest and what I loved most in the game. For these guys, it looks like that's the actual meat and substance, and not the window dressing, which is all to the good. There is a huge amount of programming in that list, so I'd say Dwarf Fortress will not be in my immediate future...unless I get some lasik surgery. ;)
 
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The weird thing about DF is that your perception of it changes totally once you're over the initial hump. It starts out as being forbidding and downright scary, but once you've got the hang of it, you stop caring about how it looks. The only reason I'd like to see nicer graphics is that it'd spread the Good News to more people.

For myself, I'd much prefer to see, say, the County Arc (being able to raise armies, send them to fight your neighbors, and thereby control a larger amount of terrain) before the Presentation Arc.

Although there is one thing I would very much like to see from the Presentation Arc: the scalable window. The game would be way easier to handle if I could use my entire screen real estate for it; it's rather tedious and often confusing to have to peer at the world through a keyhole, as it were.
 
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Yeah, I've been checking the DF development page fifteen times a day for two months now :D

Can't wait.
When the new DF version is out... my wife is gonna get sooooo pissed off.

Oh, and btw. I like having 1by1 ( http://mpesch3.de1.cc/1by1.html ) open below the DF window at all times.. So the (un)scalable window thing does not bother me.
 
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