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[therahedwig]

Yes, as far as I understand it, the only relationship kitfox has is 'wrangling steam and itch and small legal stuff so Tarn doesn't have to learn it'.

I was actually pleasantly surprised that the modding capabilities stays fully the same between the two 'versions', but I guess keeping two versions of the codebase is a massive pain. So now we'll get a version with just curses and a version with full assets and steam workshop.

[Death Dragon]

Yes, as far as I understand it, the only relationship kitfox has is 'wrangling steam and itch and small legal stuff so Tarn doesn't have to learn it'.

Might be good to point out though that Kitfox will get a portion of the revenue from the steam and itch sales:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xwhi1KKp5QD9R4-euZ0JqRB0vHdNPqdBJXjIgp-yYHA/preview?ts=5c786ef7/pubhtml
This also says that apparently 80% of the steam money goes to Bay12

[Immortal-D]

If you don't mind me asking; the circumstances of the Steam launch are troubling.  Do you ever go jogging, bike riding, etc.?

[Shonai_Dweller]

If you don't mind me asking; the circumstances of the Steam launch are troubling.  Do you ever go jogging, bike riding, etc.?

Healthcare is helpful when someone hits you with a truck while out jogging/cycling too. So, regardless of the answer he'd probably choose to go Steam anyhow.

[Untrustedlife]

If you don't mind me asking; the circumstances of the Steam launch are troubling.  Do you ever go jogging, bike riding, etc.?

It was because of a cancer scare, jogging wont save you from cancer.
One can get cancer no matter how healthy they are.
If he lived in Canada/the UK/Australia/Denmark/whatever first world country that isn't the US he wouldn't have to worry about going bankrupt over cancer. But here he does, so he needs to be able to afford healthcare.

Insensitive question. I guess maybe you didnt know it was about cancer.

(People die in the US due to lack of access to basic healthcare. Annually there are 45,000 deaths where the main reason is lack of access to basic healthcare in the US (According To A Harvard and Cambridge study). This is not a problem in countries with healthcare for all, we also have the most medical bankruptcies in the world)

Sorry for the rant. I shouldn't bring politics here. But you revealed my politics.

Lets all just buy it on steam and itch so our favorite programmer Tarn Adams and our favorite "professional" game designer and "professional" writer Zach Adams don't become statistics. I'm definitely buying it immediately when its available. (The professional bit was a reference to the df talks)

[Meph]

I go bike riding.
(See my sig.)

[Untrustedlife]

I go bike riding.
(See my sig.)

Yes, bike riding is fun.
*calms down*

[Shonai_Dweller]

I go bike riding.
(See my sig.)

Yes, bike riding is fun.
*calms down*

Me too!
At least I did until I was actually hit by a truck.
(Healthcare is fairly decent here in Japan, and trucks are small).

[Inarius]

Well, i do too, and a car almost rolled over my head because it hit me at very low speed and i couldn't jump because of the bike over me, and its conductor didn't see me.
So well, biking is certainly not the first thing i think about for  "health" in general. Very fun, very convenient yes. But well.
(At least healthcare is almost free in France, by "free" i mean pre-paid via taxes by everybody

[Antares]

Do you anticipate that non-Classic will have equivalents to the options found in init.txt and d_init.txt?
If so, would this extend to custom tilesets/graphics?

[clinodev]

I strongly encourage people to look at Toady's copious "Steam Dwarf Fortress" answers in at least the two reddit AMAs before asking "fresh" FotF questions that have likely been covered many times over. Kitfox Games's community director Victoria, Toady's co-editor and Kitfox founder Tanya X. Short, Meph, Mayday, and ThreeToe (via Toady) are all in there too, answering questions. There's even a bonus Scamps pic!

Here are the links:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/b147yh/im_tarn_aka_toady_one_dwarf_fortress_is_coming_to/?depth=10

https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/b15o8z/hi_im_tarn_adams_cocreator_of_dwarf_fortress_and/?depth=10

[PatrikLundell]

How will The Announcement affect DF development?
- In the near term: The writing of a new graphics engine will obviously take time, so
1a: Do you have a ballpark guess of how long it will take, i.e. days/weeks/months/seasons...?
1b: When do you plan to write the engine? My guess would be that you'd finish the villain release and a few essential bug fix releases and then do the engine, followed by bug fix releases of things found while the engine was produced. The dev page hasn't been updated to cover this yet (as of this writing).
1c: Are you adamant in doing it yourself rather than contracting competent community members for the task (especially if the 1a estimate is beyond "a few weeks", as I would expect it to be)?
- In the long term:
2. Do you intend to change the way you work as a result of this? I'm primarily aiming the question at how you deal with bugs during the rather long (semi) major development cycles, as a Long Wait with a growing pile of reported bugs and no bug fixes is likely to result in DF being labeled as abandonware by many. I expect a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning bugs whatever you do due to the nature of DF and its development, but some outcomes are worse than others.

Edit: 1b and 2 have been answered below by quotes from other fora, and so have been de-Toadified color wise.

[Shonai_Dweller]

1b:
From Toady on the Discord:

> re: schedule.  Villains -> fixes -> code for steam -> steam release -> whatever panicky stuff needs to be fixed -> pre-magic other stuff (armies, adv med, wtvr) -> magic big wait

Why would anything change, besides moving forward the graphics engine in the schedule? He's been talking about limitations to the current tileset for ages now so was going to have to do it at some point. He's not going to suddenly open source his game to random people. No doubt he's taking advice from his new colleagues though.

And random people on Steam will label Dwarf Fortress "abandonware" whatever happens. Just one of the risks which will happen no matter what he does. Luckily there's a big enough community that's been following the game for years who know otherwise. Just a question of marketing.

I've followed Crusader Kings since 2012. A commercial game that I've spent far too much money on. That still has bugs. Some years old. It took years before fatal slowdown in the endgame was anything near playable. It also made a huge amount of money (and continues to do so).

[Knight Otu]

2. Do you intend to change the way you work as a result of this? I'm primarily aiming the question at how you deal with bugs during the rather long (semi) major development cycles, as a Long Wait with a growing pile of reported bugs and no bug fixes is likely to result in DF being labeled as abandonware by many. I expect a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning bugs whatever you do due to the nature of DF and its development, but some outcomes are worse than others.

From the Reddit AMA:

It's early and we haven't gotten to the initial release, so I haven't thought too much about plans for the intermittent waits. Certainly we are now planning to be able to fix bugs a little more easily during waits -- for instance, we had that weapon trap crash bug that lasted all through one of them, and that was not good. So we'll plan for patches concurrent with feature work now. At the same time, the development works the way it works because so many systems are interconnected; sometimes a long wait is just the best way to go, at least the way I conceive of things. If that causes some issues, or some dips, then, well, I hope we'll be fine! If we have to adjust again, like we're adjusting now, we will.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks for the quote, Shonai_Dweller. I don't follow other discussion fora, so I don't see what's posted in those.

If the tile set limitations are going to be addressed as well, the rewrite is larger than I thought, as well as having a larger impact, as I assume that means increasing the number of bits used for assets (in which case there might not be any need for a world map tile set, as that could just be a subset of a larger one, which is one of the points mifki listed as a wished for feature in the TwbT thread). The support for a larger tile set would definitely be welcome as such, but I think the timing could be better (i.e. not as a derail of a detour of a departure from the Myth & Magic development, and getting it done within a somewhat reasonable time frame from The Announcement to an actual Steam/Itch release might be challenging as well). There's never a really good time, though.

"Open source" is vastly different from making the code available to hand picked people (with suitable conditions both on the readability/level of commenting/coding style of the outsourced code [so Toady can maintain it should he wish to/need to], and requirements that the DF source code is handled in a suitable manner). I agree it's a wise move to use a trusted intermediary to handle the administration for the tile set work, though, and hope both Kitfox and the artists can provide some useful feedback as well.

I agree some people will label DF as abandonware no matter what (if I understand it correctly there's some banned bugger who's already on a crusade of revenge on Steam), but the crucial thing is neither a small number of malcontents, nor a confident community (who's currently over here), but what happens with those in between. If the general perception is negative DF will likely suffer from fewer who's willing to try it out despite poor ratings (which is what a generally negative perception would result in). I also disagree it's a matter of spin doctoring: there's an important element of meeting expectations, as well as setting the expectations appropriately (the latter can be helped a bit with proper marketing, but not the former). I'd expect the average Steam customer to be far less tolerant when it comes to both slow development and late and feeble bug fixing (i.e. a constantly growing mountain of outstanding bugs) than the current community, with little to no understanding or care for the current development method. We're joining Toady's ride, but Steam customers are temporary licencees (due to Steam's horrible EULA), and likely expect to be treated as customers.

Thanks to Knight Otu as well, posting another off site quote while I wrote this post (and it's good to hear Toady is going to try to adjust the process to better meet expectations). I don't think long development waits is as much of an issue as a lack of bug fixing, although I think there's a need to fix some intermediate bugs in parallel during the development waits as well as the fatal ones to provide a sense of progress and developer presence to those who don't follow the game development as such, just play the game.