Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Manveru Taurënér]

Not sure if there's any kind of netiquette regarding these things, but gathered up those parts of the reddit AMA (with a bit of pruning) that felt relevant to development for those that don't want to sift through the whole thing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hey everybody! As Dwarf Fortress players, you might have seen the announcement from yesterday that we're adding support for Steam and itch, with a graphical version to be released along with the continued updates to the free version. Due to uncertainty with crowdfunding and ongoing health concerns ( Patreon Post, Kitfox FAQ ), we've been impelled to make what is a pretty big change, but now that we've dived in, we're dedicated to making it work for everybody and to make the game better for it. The villain release is going to come first, and after we stabilize that, I'll work on doing the remaining coding necessary for graphical support (Mayday and Meph are already hard at work on a brand new 32x32 tile set!) Then we'll have the graphical release, with the free version getting related powers for modders as well.

The mods sent some common questions, so we can answer some of those right now:

Extended mouse support? There will definitely be some improvement here. We haven't promised to get down into the deepest menus yet as it might become overwhelming, but the top-level fort mode actions will be much improved. This includes clickable menus and also better abilities to select digging designations and other areas with the mouse etc.

Doing in-game labor management, a la therapist? This has always been tied up in future workshop and guilds etc. rewrites, so we'll likely not try to tackle this now. We will a chance to make some of the overall labor issues more solvable, and will look at stuff like finding out why your miners aren't working or fort happiness levels.

DFHack into main game? I'm not sure is encompassed by that -- DFHack is capable of many, many things.

UI Abstraction? Writing a full API is going to be beyond of the scope of what we can do here. That said, there's going to be some more control of how things work and are arranged, but I won't know how much until I'm well into the main screen rewrite.

Multitile creatures? The larger creatures will not be in multiple tiles this time in terms of game mechanics. They are just allowed to spread out a little beyond their tile visually since we have a chance to do that now. True multitile creatures is a much larger and harder problem.

Adventure mode more understandable? We'll have to be more specific in the questions. Just having graphics should really help, and even before the Steam release, there will be some changes here and there. Certainly just after the Steam release, when we are doing the pre-magic items left on dev, we have a lot to do there in terms of navigation etc., if that's what you mean.

Old music and movie? Dwarf Fortress Classic will have my music and the old movie and so forth. People with DF in their Steam library will also have access to these in Classic. For the main Steam/itch version, we really wanted to do a full conversion to something more accessible. I'm not actually sure what's going to happen to the opening movie! It might still be the same or not or somewhere in between.

Do you think that Steam will require prioritizing development of user-friendly updates & fixes like labor management and the stress system? I know stuff like that is normally on the backburner compared to content updates.

Edit: I know this was kind of mentioned in the op, I'm specifically wondering if a commercial release might change priorities from the current dev plan.

We are going to take a special look during the first pass, because there will definitely be a lot of new people at that time. After that, it's still possible that the division of tasks will change a bit, yeah, but it would be really hard for me to predict what that'll be like. Should get some good new stuff there anyway, on first steam.

And stress I was going to fix anyway, before the Big Wait. With steam inserted before Big Wait now, certainly a candidate.

How deep will the Workshop support run? Will it be more for sharing world parameters, tilesets, and save games or include support for more elaborate modding like some of the large overhauls on the forums?

We don't have details yet, but my assumption(?) is that we're definitely able to change the txt mods around (cuz changing tiles is basically the same kind of file operation), and that would open it all up, including total conversions.

I know you get asked about pathfinding a lot, but I'm a coder so hopefully this isn't one you've had before: Have you considered using (or do you already use) a subregion graph?

It feels like it would be much cheaper - you'd only have to recalculate paths for entities within the subregion, plus the subregion's own connections, when the map changes.

Long paths could be calculated very efficiently.

No time to follow links during an AMA, but various subregion approaches have been tried (either by me or by people trying to help out). They've all failed based on the time it takes to recalculate regions after digging, flooding, etc. With a 200x200x200 map or whatever, it gets prohibitive. But sure, any new approach there that calcs the regions/graph super super fast would be useful.

If the Steam release is wildly successful financially (which I predict it very well might be), would you ever consider bringing on additional developers?

It would certainly make that possible! Even with just a bit of Kitfox's help here, we now have two artists and a music person.

Someone couldn't make it to the AMA but they put this to me to ask: "I would be severely interested if post steam release a code-refactoring to allow for full translation is anywhere on the development agenda. I have two friends who would love to try the game, but whose English is just not sufficient to enjoy doing so."

Localization of procedural text is a very very very hard problem. We'd need something like a fluent coder on the team to handle that, or some other complicated solution that seems out of reach. At the same time, getting some of the main menu text etc. out would be more viable.

Any plans to expand more on the military system of the game? I'd like to be able to tell my soldiers to behave aggressively or defensively in combat, or command them to hold their ground, or have them train cooperatively with other squads so they learn specialist tactics like a shield wall in front of a crossbow squad.

Ha ha, I remember when we were going to do formations many many years ago and then didn't get there. We've wanted to improve squad behavior for a long time. And the military screen is very scary. This is one of our on-the-table accessibility looks; there are quite a few of these, so we have no guarantees yet, but it's something we're thinking about, since it's very frustrating especially to not be able to get a squad to, say, tactically withdraw when you want.

Will the Steam version support cloud saves?

The only thing I've been told which may run counter to being able to this is that there is a file/total space limit? And DF saves can be very large depending the world. Otherwise, if it's a switch as people say, then it doesn't seem to be an issue to do it.

Will Dwarf Therapist work with the Steam Release? What about the visualizers like Stonesense or Armok Vision? Hell any third-party plug-ins?

What will it cost on Steam so I know how much to squirrel away for the release?

The binaries are super-super similar (due to Cheevos etc. might not be identical), so I'm assuming however DFHack works etc. the plugging in process would be about the same? I don't know very much about how it works, so I can't really give a reliable reply.

Price is $19.99.

Not sure I've seen it mentioned, but is there a "back of the envelope" timeline estimate for the Steam release?

Ha ha, such things are always very very foolish coming from me. I must refrain from hazarding a guess for all of our sakes.

How do you feel about the current dwarven conversations and relationships and where they are in adventure mode and fortress mode, and what would you like to see changed about them if anything?

what are you most excited to see simulated in the future, if anything? New world gen/creation myths and stories? more complex webs of 'sentient' interaction? The economy? etc.

Are adventurers ever gonna be able to do more mundane things, like be an accountant, a smith(lemme forge demma artifacts!), a farmer, and architect, so on?

most of your buildings in human villages that I've seen are boxes. That isn't really a problem, many many buildings in the world are boxes, they're heat efficient and easy to build. But what do you think of procedurally generated cultural architecture? Is that a little 'too much'(too difficult) as it were? What about procedurally generated layouts for things like villages and fortresses that are culturally dependent? things like a giant greathall for a dwarven kingdom with the fort centralized around it versus a more egalitarian setup where a council rules in which the layout is more based on utilitarian efficiency(segregated craftshops near stockpiles, fishery closer to water)? Government types for humans determining wether they have a longhouse where the town meets and votes, or a lords mansion surrounded by a fancy wall?

Oh, we want to improve conversations and relationship a lot, but these are hard problems. Villains release will have more stuff -- trust, loyalty, etc.

Most excited about? Probably the myth and magic stuff. Been aiming at that since the beginning, and it's finally on the horizon!

Adventurer skills has been one of those dev things for a while. We just get bogged down mostly trying to think about if it should model some extra tools or whatever. But we'd like to explore that yeah.

We're on a grid, so architecture is always going to be a little disappointing. But we do want to put some more effort in there. It's just a matter of finding time as usual.

Will the Steam version be playable on Linux?

We haven't 100% committed on this one for Day 1 just because the current build set up is sooooo bad, for both Mac and Linux. I can't even play it through my virtual machine (the window is too small), and my Mac Mini is 10 years old, and I need to make sure I can get Mac working as the OS updates (we've had trouble on newer OSX). We'll keep people posted on this.

Are there any hidden Easter eggs in the game? Also second question! I am marine worker and love being on the ocean, any ideas when boats are going to be implemented?

There aren't many easter eggs. I think the players have found them all? They aren't that hidden; stuff like checking your temperature after you have died and so on.

Boats are a post magic, post embark scenario/law/property/etc. feature, but not too post! Might even be the thing after, have to think about economy a bit more.

DFHack enables other mods like TWBT (Text Will Be Text) which itself has three (IMO) main features. Those are:

Actual font rendering in game such that fonts don't have to overlap with game sprites.

Multi-level rendering where more than 1 Z-level is visible at a time with it fading to black/blue as it goes down.

Ledge-shading, combined with the multi-level rendering, where whenever a Z level drops there's a black shadow along the ledge.

Are these going to get add directly into the game code? These are my biggest (by far) wants out of a Graphical Dwarf Fortress.

Fonts will be separated, definitely.

Multi-level rendering is on the table -- just have to check a performance thing there, since it can actually get pretty expensive if you think about too many Z-levels, especially if a tile gets refreshed a lot. But we have been talking about it with the artists.

We had shading in the mockups originally, but decided to line them up more with the trailer in the end. Ledge shading also def on the table.

With the inclusion of an official texture pack, are texture packs going to be manageable in-game, or is it going to stick with moving files around? Also, taking from other games like Cogmind, is it possible that there might be a hotkey to switch between ascii and tileset modes on the fly?

We're definitely changing how the files work, because the art will be larger and thus bad to move around in the save files. Also, we were thinking of doing an in-game manager, partially because of Workshop and that would be available in classic too if we do it. On the fly change is also something we've talked about -- just depends on SDL issues if the surface deletion etc etc etc ends up having some irritating technical hitch we might have to skip it for now.

Any chances of bringing back DFtalk?

We've tried of number of times, and it has always been our fault that it hasn't happened (not Capn or Rainseeker who have been great). It is a lot of work for the editor and a bit of prep, and the time seems to slip away.

Speaking of biomes, do you have a favourite one? Is there a biome that is not in the game but you would like to implement? Will there be underground minibiomies in the caverns in the future, something like spider nests or a giant crystal caves (something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Crystals) ? Because caverns are awesome but some more variety underground would be great

Oh, yeah, we love that stuff... as a kid I was a Manual of the Planes addict, and now I want to explore the generation of a variety of magical or otherwise interesting environments. Various critters, growths, land-forms, ways of moving or how the body and mind relate to it... Favorites are hard to pick out... the map rewrite will allow us to do locally interesting features though, which is going to make the ones you listed possible.

How do you feel about the current reception of the news? And, are there any unexpected hurtles so far in getting the game itself ported?

Uploading a test version to Steam and then downloading it from my library and getting it to play was, like, reallllly surprisingly straightforward. It sits in the same type of folder as always and you just point Steam to the exe. I haven't done stuff like achievements or Workshop yet, but so far it is a breeze.

And we're really happy about how the news has generally been received!

In the distant past you've said you wanted no part of commercial releases, I know this has something to do with medical bills so the why is handled, but how do you feel about putting this out in this manner?

I mean, it's been 18+ years that we've the site without selling any games, so certainly we were doing it one way and now that's changed. Like you say, we don't feel all that terrible about it because of what's up. But yeah, it wouldn't be our first choice and we wish the overall environment for people that want to release free stuff were better. But it's not.

And Kitfox really has made managing the artists etc. really easy especially in terms of paperwork and all that, and managing that was one of the things we just really have no idea how to do.

Though the stories and psychology of persons and villains is the next major feature, have you given any passing thought to improving how beasts/animals interact with gameplay in a more immediate sense?

Specifically, I think CURIOUSBEAST_GUZZLER/ITEM is the most interesting behavior of animals - because it's proactive. Will we ever see expansions of that system, like a CURIOUSBEAST_EATER that actually devours/deletes edibles (like body parts) instead of simple rhesus macaque behavior, or even a HUNTS_PREY that encourages animal-on-animal violence?

Scamps jumped on the back of my chair howling as I was reading this question, so I'm certainly enough of a fan of animal antics to live with this kind of behavior... we're big animal fans generally and have thought a few times that we'd have gotten to hunting etc. It remains embarrassing that capybaras are still the only animal that has sound... it's just hard to get to a place where this is the central push with so much else to be done.

Anyway, my question is this: What's up with sewers? They were mentioned a loooong time ago. Are they ever coming?

Are the sewers broken? There are supposed to be little channels and grates and stuff in the adv mode towns. If you mean fort sewers, hmm, we have grates and channels but we haven't really been leaning toward production of waste, you know. Manure is so useful, though. Hard choices.

For the question, now that DF is coming to steam, any plans to work on the performance of the game?

Right now, I'm still thinking of just doing the incremental optimizations I've been doing -- people have seen some boosts as I recollect as I've done those. It's not great progress but it's the kind we can make if there are so many dwarves and 50K items etc. Multithreading etc. is way too hard to do now (still have a microthreading thing to look at.)

I'm a gamer suffering from the SMA disease, I'm stuck in bed 24/7. With my disease, I have serious difficulties with playing some of the games because my weak muscles prevent me from pressing any buttons on the keyboard, I do everything using a laptop touchpad and an on-screen keyboard, as well as other accessibility devices and programs(scripts, macros etc.), as you can probably guess, playing DF in my situation is quite difficult.

I understand there'll be some improvements to mouse support, but could you tell me some more about it? And will there be any chance to test these improvements so that I don't risk wasting money on the Steam version only to find out that I still can't play?

Hi! I think the other comments have said all I can; it's too early for me to know exactly what the improvements are or whether they'll be enough, but yeah, the free version will let you try them, and even if the Steam version somehow doesn't work, you should be able to refund it. But I am going to try to make this possible! The main question is some of the menus buried deeper down in the code; there are some hundred of them, some coded very badly, and getting to everything might be prohibitive for the first pass.

Mac support on the Steam version (either at release, or Coming Later) ??

Some fun achievements?

Answered OSX w/ Linux above.

Achievements def on the table! It seems like Steam should have those anyway. Might be a crime not to do a Losing is Fun achievement? Though it is almost too predictable.

Do you think the existence of the Steam release will impact the game development in the future? How?

For the impact on development, clearly there'll be a little delay here in core feature development at the beginning to get this set up. After that, we're hoping that neither the types of features or speed of implementation will be too adversely impacted. I can't think of something I was planning off the top of my head that only works in ASCII but couldn't have a tile... I mean, if it comes down to it, the tile could be the ASCII or whatever. Dev speed, I think, is the actual concern if there is one. I've mentioned it before as a reason DF was ASCII in the first place. However, with two experienced DF people doing the art, and dev cycles that aren't super short, I think my work and their work can mostly run in parallel. That is the idea. There will be hiccups for sure, but it doesn't seem from where I'm looking that it'll be something that causes ongoing month-long delays or anything like that, or that diverts the direction of the game. Magic is still coming.

I know that youve already mentioned that your old music is going to stay in classic mode, and thats great! Is there any chance that we would ever hear more of your music (inside or outside of dward fortress)? It just has this really relaxing and nostalgic quality to it. Thanks for everything Tarn!

I've been wanting to record new tracks for a very long time, but it has been hard to sit down and take the time to compose and play without the "this game doesn't have music" impulse that was behind me before.

Why is performance such a low priority?

I would love to design & manage a giant dwarf city on a huge embark with 1000s of dwarves for centuries, but this is flat-out impossible. Even with tiny embarks and minimal population, my FPS crashes after 20 years or so. It's insanely frustrating to see all these great features getting added on such a grand scale, when the core game itself is fundamentally limited in scope by the terrible performance issues.

What would it take to change your mind about performance improvements?

If we had a dedicated patreon just for performance, how much money would have to be in it for you to prioritize this? Alternately, why haven't you allowed some other programmers to take a stab on optimization work?

No matter how much I work on performance, I'm not going to be able to deliver a great 1000 dwarf fort. Some things are beyond me.

Opening up the source hasn't been on the table, so I haven't been able to bring other people on. (The SDL stuff we did didn't touch upon nearly so much of the code) We did do a pathfinding optimization attempt with an outside person, and it simply didn't yield a benefit (there was a subregion question I answered earlier.)

Any plans to expand the medical system? I think dwarven appendicitis in your beloved mayor can lead to a lot of mysterious Fun.

Yeah, we've thought a little about diseases and plagues and improved trauma a bit, and people have sent us some solid material to work with on the treatment side etc. Until then, we're stuck with our model of compartment syndrome from I Was Bitten.

What's the biggest on your hit-list right now for an emergent behavior that needs to be fixed?

Are there any plans to fix tantrum spiraling in the future? I know fortress mode isn't your top top priority, but curious if that's on your radar.

If someone who just heard about your need to procure more funds wanted to make a donation, would you rather it come directly through Bay12Games (because you get more of a cut of that) or have it held off until the Steam release (so that you get bigger release numbers?)

If you could start this entire process over from scratch, what programming decision would you make differently?

Hmm, there are things that just feel unfinished, like with adv how you can meet friendly groups that should hostile and aren't but you can't really do much with them either. Brain's getting too fuzzed to pull anything that's not just a bug though.

Well, the new stress system was supposed to fix that. And the spirals were gone because alcohol was for years. So it's more like we put stress back in recently and then tried to tune it a few times, and there are still problems with it that can cause a fort to go to waste. We've promised another round of stress fixing before the Big Wait. Now that we've announced steam, we need to refine our Big Wait promises to pre/post Steam, but haven't done so yet.

We do still need support for the months to come before Steam. However if somebody's tight for funds themselves, and wants the game on Steam, they should get the version they want.

Would have definitely done the maps differently. So many cool things will come out of this rewrite (done sometime during the magic process). Having multiple cameras open on different parts of the world, really interesting local features, etc. It'll be neat. The way you do maps, items, creatures, etc. in games like this tends to last a long time, so it's good to pause and think it through as best you can.

Are you going to be plucking off some low-hanging fruit before the Steam release and what do you think that will be? That is to say, of the little optimisations and improvements you'll make before the Steam and itch.io releases, what sort of issues do you think you're going to be prioritising?

This is a unique opportunity to help out first-time players, so we'll definitely be thinking of them. Of course, a lot of that benefits everybody. We haven't settled on the list yet though; we'll be logging about it like everything else when we get there, so you won't have to wait for the release to see what we decide to do.

I don't follow your every word, so this may have come up before and be a question you're sick of, but: do you ever miss 2D?

I like the story flow of it, and the way it guaranteed experiencing certain disasters and how the well and chasm could easily disgorge creatures at you, and how you could use the magma on the chasm to shut it off etc. Kind of feels like a different game style in a way. We're hoping some of the local features from the map rewrite recapture a bit of that feel by making the underground something that you can have more fun of all kinds with.

Any chance for cap-breaking tweaks? Stuff like multiple moves per tick (to get around the ~80 mph speed limit), running on water/up walls at high speeds, even greater healing rates (maybe even regeneration for hydras!)...

I don't have a strong objection here or anything, but it is a technical problem to jump up the ticks, just in terms of setting up little extra loops or whatever that might double up a given action, and how being able to double up in time like that might give a kind of quantum advantage in combat etc. that the game has trouble managing. It's doable, but it needs to be thought through carefully.

So, seeing how you're actually working with other people now, Kitfox, etc., and Dwarf Fortress being released as a proper product, what changes might be in store for us, the players, and you the developer, in terms of development; feature-wise, timewise, or otherwise?

Imagine the backlash on the Steam reviews after the next Long Wait.

Also, do you have any plans, as to how to keep interest high, to keep the revenue stream, from Steam, itch.io, an actual stream, and not just a minimal trickle?

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, now, we will.

Has there been any features that you have tried to implement, or wished to implement, that you couldn't because of technical or time limitations?

Yeah, time limits just about everything I guess. When it came to the technical side, I mean, we're bumping against that on performance anywhere that applies for sure. Then there's stuff like lying, which is very hard without a big data hit, and stuff like time travel, which is... well, there is that one time travel RTS. And a time trave? roguelike I think. It is hard.

I'm curious what services the publisher provide? Obviously publishing to steam only cost $100 so I was wondering what other things they are helping with.

They are handling all of the artist/music contracting stuff. That's been one of the main obstacles for us. Not just finding money, but all of the paperwork. All the press/steam stuff, and other related promotion matters. There's a lot that is needed beyond just the entry fee. All I could have done myself is maybe cobbled together an ASCII steam version and that just wouldn't have been adequate.

[DG]

Thanks, Manveru. I don't Reddit well so I appreciate it.

[Untrustedlife]

Not sure if there's any kind of netiquette regarding these things, but gathered up those parts of the reddit AMA (with a bit of pruning) that felt relevant to development for those that don't want to sift through the whole thing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hey everybody! As Dwarf Fortress players, you might have seen the announcement from yesterday that we're adding support for Steam and itch, with a graphical version to be released along with the continued updates to the free version. Due to uncertainty with crowdfunding and ongoing health concerns ( Patreon Post, Kitfox FAQ ), we've been impelled to make what is a pretty big change, but now that we've dived in, we're dedicated to making it work for everybody and to make the game better for it. The villain release is going to come first, and after we stabilize that, I'll work on doing the remaining coding necessary for graphical support (Mayday and Meph are already hard at work on a brand new 32x32 tile set!) Then we'll have the graphical release, with the free version getting related powers for modders as well.

The mods sent some common questions, so we can answer some of those right now:

Extended mouse support? There will definitely be some improvement here. We haven't promised to get down into the deepest menus yet as it might become overwhelming, but the top-level fort mode actions will be much improved. This includes clickable menus and also better abilities to select digging designations and other areas with the mouse etc.

Doing in-game labor management, a la therapist? This has always been tied up in future workshop and guilds etc. rewrites, so we'll likely not try to tackle this now. We will a chance to make some of the overall labor issues more solvable, and will look at stuff like finding out why your miners aren't working or fort happiness levels.

DFHack into main game? I'm not sure is encompassed by that -- DFHack is capable of many, many things.

UI Abstraction? Writing a full API is going to be beyond of the scope of what we can do here. That said, there's going to be some more control of how things work and are arranged, but I won't know how much until I'm well into the main screen rewrite.

Multitile creatures? The larger creatures will not be in multiple tiles this time in terms of game mechanics. They are just allowed to spread out a little beyond their tile visually since we have a chance to do that now. True multitile creatures is a much larger and harder problem.

Adventure mode more understandable? We'll have to be more specific in the questions. Just having graphics should really help, and even before the Steam release, there will be some changes here and there. Certainly just after the Steam release, when we are doing the pre-magic items left on dev, we have a lot to do there in terms of navigation etc., if that's what you mean.

Old music and movie? Dwarf Fortress Classic will have my music and the old movie and so forth. People with DF in their Steam library will also have access to these in Classic. For the main Steam/itch version, we really wanted to do a full conversion to something more accessible. I'm not actually sure what's going to happen to the opening movie! It might still be the same or not or somewhere in between.

Do you think that Steam will require prioritizing development of user-friendly updates & fixes like labor management and the stress system? I know stuff like that is normally on the backburner compared to content updates.

Edit: I know this was kind of mentioned in the op, I'm specifically wondering if a commercial release might change priorities from the current dev plan.

We are going to take a special look during the first pass, because there will definitely be a lot of new people at that time. After that, it's still possible that the division of tasks will change a bit, yeah, but it would be really hard for me to predict what that'll be like. Should get some good new stuff there anyway, on first steam.

And stress I was going to fix anyway, before the Big Wait. With steam inserted before Big Wait now, certainly a candidate.

How deep will the Workshop support run? Will it be more for sharing world parameters, tilesets, and save games or include support for more elaborate modding like some of the large overhauls on the forums?

We don't have details yet, but my assumption(?) is that we're definitely able to change the txt mods around (cuz changing tiles is basically the same kind of file operation), and that would open it all up, including total conversions.

I know you get asked about pathfinding a lot, but I'm a coder so hopefully this isn't one you've had before: Have you considered using (or do you already use) a subregion graph?

It feels like it would be much cheaper - you'd only have to recalculate paths for entities within the subregion, plus the subregion's own connections, when the map changes.

Long paths could be calculated very efficiently.

No time to follow links during an AMA, but various subregion approaches have been tried (either by me or by people trying to help out). They've all failed based on the time it takes to recalculate regions after digging, flooding, etc. With a 200x200x200 map or whatever, it gets prohibitive. But sure, any new approach there that calcs the regions/graph super super fast would be useful.

If the Steam release is wildly successful financially (which I predict it very well might be), would you ever consider bringing on additional developers?

It would certainly make that possible! Even with just a bit of Kitfox's help here, we now have two artists and a music person.

Someone couldn't make it to the AMA but they put this to me to ask: "I would be severely interested if post steam release a code-refactoring to allow for full translation is anywhere on the development agenda. I have two friends who would love to try the game, but whose English is just not sufficient to enjoy doing so."

Localization of procedural text is a very very very hard problem. We'd need something like a fluent coder on the team to handle that, or some other complicated solution that seems out of reach. At the same time, getting some of the main menu text etc. out would be more viable.

Any plans to expand more on the military system of the game? I'd like to be able to tell my soldiers to behave aggressively or defensively in combat, or command them to hold their ground, or have them train cooperatively with other squads so they learn specialist tactics like a shield wall in front of a crossbow squad.

Ha ha, I remember when we were going to do formations many many years ago and then didn't get there. We've wanted to improve squad behavior for a long time. And the military screen is very scary. This is one of our on-the-table accessibility looks; there are quite a few of these, so we have no guarantees yet, but it's something we're thinking about, since it's very frustrating especially to not be able to get a squad to, say, tactically withdraw when you want.

Will the Steam version support cloud saves?

The only thing I've been told which may run counter to being able to this is that there is a file/total space limit? And DF saves can be very large depending the world. Otherwise, if it's a switch as people say, then it doesn't seem to be an issue to do it.

Will Dwarf Therapist work with the Steam Release? What about the visualizers like Stonesense or Armok Vision? Hell any third-party plug-ins?

What will it cost on Steam so I know how much to squirrel away for the release?

The binaries are super-super similar (due to Cheevos etc. might not be identical), so I'm assuming however DFHack works etc. the plugging in process would be about the same? I don't know very much about how it works, so I can't really give a reliable reply.

Price is $19.99.

Not sure I've seen it mentioned, but is there a "back of the envelope" timeline estimate for the Steam release?

Ha ha, such things are always very very foolish coming from me. I must refrain from hazarding a guess for all of our sakes.

How do you feel about the current dwarven conversations and relationships and where they are in adventure mode and fortress mode, and what would you like to see changed about them if anything?

what are you most excited to see simulated in the future, if anything? New world gen/creation myths and stories? more complex webs of 'sentient' interaction? The economy? etc.

Are adventurers ever gonna be able to do more mundane things, like be an accountant, a smith(lemme forge demma artifacts!), a farmer, and architect, so on?

most of your buildings in human villages that I've seen are boxes. That isn't really a problem, many many buildings in the world are boxes, they're heat efficient and easy to build. But what do you think of procedurally generated cultural architecture? Is that a little 'too much'(too difficult) as it were? What about procedurally generated layouts for things like villages and fortresses that are culturally dependent? things like a giant greathall for a dwarven kingdom with the fort centralized around it versus a more egalitarian setup where a council rules in which the layout is more based on utilitarian efficiency(segregated craftshops near stockpiles, fishery closer to water)? Government types for humans determining wether they have a longhouse where the town meets and votes, or a lords mansion surrounded by a fancy wall?

Oh, we want to improve conversations and relationship a lot, but these are hard problems. Villains release will have more stuff -- trust, loyalty, etc.

Most excited about? Probably the myth and magic stuff. Been aiming at that since the beginning, and it's finally on the horizon!

Adventurer skills has been one of those dev things for a while. We just get bogged down mostly trying to think about if it should model some extra tools or whatever. But we'd like to explore that yeah.

We're on a grid, so architecture is always going to be a little disappointing. But we do want to put some more effort in there. It's just a matter of finding time as usual.

Will the Steam version be playable on Linux?

We haven't 100% committed on this one for Day 1 just because the current build set up is sooooo bad, for both Mac and Linux. I can't even play it through my virtual machine (the window is too small), and my Mac Mini is 10 years old, and I need to make sure I can get Mac working as the OS updates (we've had trouble on newer OSX). We'll keep people posted on this.

Are there any hidden Easter eggs in the game? Also second question! I am marine worker and love being on the ocean, any ideas when boats are going to be implemented?

There aren't many easter eggs. I think the players have found them all? They aren't that hidden; stuff like checking your temperature after you have died and so on.

Boats are a post magic, post embark scenario/law/property/etc. feature, but not too post! Might even be the thing after, have to think about economy a bit more.

DFHack enables other mods like TWBT (Text Will Be Text) which itself has three (IMO) main features. Those are:

Actual font rendering in game such that fonts don't have to overlap with game sprites.

Multi-level rendering where more than 1 Z-level is visible at a time with it fading to black/blue as it goes down.

Ledge-shading, combined with the multi-level rendering, where whenever a Z level drops there's a black shadow along the ledge.

Are these going to get add directly into the game code? These are my biggest (by far) wants out of a Graphical Dwarf Fortress.

Fonts will be separated, definitely.

Multi-level rendering is on the table -- just have to check a performance thing there, since it can actually get pretty expensive if you think about too many Z-levels, especially if a tile gets refreshed a lot. But we have been talking about it with the artists.

We had shading in the mockups originally, but decided to line them up more with the trailer in the end. Ledge shading also def on the table.

With the inclusion of an official texture pack, are texture packs going to be manageable in-game, or is it going to stick with moving files around? Also, taking from other games like Cogmind, is it possible that there might be a hotkey to switch between ascii and tileset modes on the fly?

We're definitely changing how the files work, because the art will be larger and thus bad to move around in the save files. Also, we were thinking of doing an in-game manager, partially because of Workshop and that would be available in classic too if we do it. On the fly change is also something we've talked about -- just depends on SDL issues if the surface deletion etc etc etc ends up having some irritating technical hitch we might have to skip it for now.

Any chances of bringing back DFtalk?

We've tried of number of times, and it has always been our fault that it hasn't happened (not Capn or Rainseeker who have been great). It is a lot of work for the editor and a bit of prep, and the time seems to slip away.

Speaking of biomes, do you have a favourite one? Is there a biome that is not in the game but you would like to implement? Will there be underground minibiomies in the caverns in the future, something like spider nests or a giant crystal caves (something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_of_the_Crystals) ? Because caverns are awesome but some more variety underground would be great

Oh, yeah, we love that stuff... as a kid I was a Manual of the Planes addict, and now I want to explore the generation of a variety of magical or otherwise interesting environments. Various critters, growths, land-forms, ways of moving or how the body and mind relate to it... Favorites are hard to pick out... the map rewrite will allow us to do locally interesting features though, which is going to make the ones you listed possible.

How do you feel about the current reception of the news? And, are there any unexpected hurtles so far in getting the game itself ported?

Uploading a test version to Steam and then downloading it from my library and getting it to play was, like, reallllly surprisingly straightforward. It sits in the same type of folder as always and you just point Steam to the exe. I haven't done stuff like achievements or Workshop yet, but so far it is a breeze.

And we're really happy about how the news has generally been received!

In the distant past you've said you wanted no part of commercial releases, I know this has something to do with medical bills so the why is handled, but how do you feel about putting this out in this manner?

I mean, it's been 18+ years that we've the site without selling any games, so certainly we were doing it one way and now that's changed. Like you say, we don't feel all that terrible about it because of what's up. But yeah, it wouldn't be our first choice and we wish the overall environment for people that want to release free stuff were better. But it's not.

And Kitfox really has made managing the artists etc. really easy especially in terms of paperwork and all that, and managing that was one of the things we just really have no idea how to do.

Though the stories and psychology of persons and villains is the next major feature, have you given any passing thought to improving how beasts/animals interact with gameplay in a more immediate sense?

Specifically, I think CURIOUSBEAST_GUZZLER/ITEM is the most interesting behavior of animals - because it's proactive. Will we ever see expansions of that system, like a CURIOUSBEAST_EATER that actually devours/deletes edibles (like body parts) instead of simple rhesus macaque behavior, or even a HUNTS_PREY that encourages animal-on-animal violence?

Scamps jumped on the back of my chair howling as I was reading this question, so I'm certainly enough of a fan of animal antics to live with this kind of behavior... we're big animal fans generally and have thought a few times that we'd have gotten to hunting etc. It remains embarrassing that capybaras are still the only animal that has sound... it's just hard to get to a place where this is the central push with so much else to be done.

Anyway, my question is this: What's up with sewers? They were mentioned a loooong time ago. Are they ever coming?

Are the sewers broken? There are supposed to be little channels and grates and stuff in the adv mode towns. If you mean fort sewers, hmm, we have grates and channels but we haven't really been leaning toward production of waste, you know. Manure is so useful, though. Hard choices.

For the question, now that DF is coming to steam, any plans to work on the performance of the game?

Right now, I'm still thinking of just doing the incremental optimizations I've been doing -- people have seen some boosts as I recollect as I've done those. It's not great progress but it's the kind we can make if there are so many dwarves and 50K items etc. Multithreading etc. is way too hard to do now (still have a microthreading thing to look at.)

I'm a gamer suffering from the SMA disease, I'm stuck in bed 24/7. With my disease, I have serious difficulties with playing some of the games because my weak muscles prevent me from pressing any buttons on the keyboard, I do everything using a laptop touchpad and an on-screen keyboard, as well as other accessibility devices and programs(scripts, macros etc.), as you can probably guess, playing DF in my situation is quite difficult.

I understand there'll be some improvements to mouse support, but could you tell me some more about it? And will there be any chance to test these improvements so that I don't risk wasting money on the Steam version only to find out that I still can't play?

Hi! I think the other comments have said all I can; it's too early for me to know exactly what the improvements are or whether they'll be enough, but yeah, the free version will let you try them, and even if the Steam version somehow doesn't work, you should be able to refund it. But I am going to try to make this possible! The main question is some of the menus buried deeper down in the code; there are some hundred of them, some coded very badly, and getting to everything might be prohibitive for the first pass.

Mac support on the Steam version (either at release, or Coming Later) ??

Some fun achievements?

Answered OSX w/ Linux above.

Achievements def on the table! It seems like Steam should have those anyway. Might be a crime not to do a Losing is Fun achievement? Though it is almost too predictable.

Do you think the existence of the Steam release will impact the game development in the future? How?

For the impact on development, clearly there'll be a little delay here in core feature development at the beginning to get this set up. After that, we're hoping that neither the types of features or speed of implementation will be too adversely impacted. I can't think of something I was planning off the top of my head that only works in ASCII but couldn't have a tile... I mean, if it comes down to it, the tile could be the ASCII or whatever. Dev speed, I think, is the actual concern if there is one. I've mentioned it before as a reason DF was ASCII in the first place. However, with two experienced DF people doing the art, and dev cycles that aren't super short, I think my work and their work can mostly run in parallel. That is the idea. There will be hiccups for sure, but it doesn't seem from where I'm looking that it'll be something that causes ongoing month-long delays or anything like that, or that diverts the direction of the game. Magic is still coming.

I know that youve already mentioned that your old music is going to stay in classic mode, and thats great! Is there any chance that we would ever hear more of your music (inside or outside of dward fortress)? It just has this really relaxing and nostalgic quality to it. Thanks for everything Tarn!

I've been wanting to record new tracks for a very long time, but it has been hard to sit down and take the time to compose and play without the "this game doesn't have music" impulse that was behind me before.

Why is performance such a low priority?

I would love to design & manage a giant dwarf city on a huge embark with 1000s of dwarves for centuries, but this is flat-out impossible. Even with tiny embarks and minimal population, my FPS crashes after 20 years or so. It's insanely frustrating to see all these great features getting added on such a grand scale, when the core game itself is fundamentally limited in scope by the terrible performance issues.

What would it take to change your mind about performance improvements?

If we had a dedicated patreon just for performance, how much money would have to be in it for you to prioritize this? Alternately, why haven't you allowed some other programmers to take a stab on optimization work?

No matter how much I work on performance, I'm not going to be able to deliver a great 1000 dwarf fort. Some things are beyond me.

Opening up the source hasn't been on the table, so I haven't been able to bring other people on. (The SDL stuff we did didn't touch upon nearly so much of the code) We did do a pathfinding optimization attempt with an outside person, and it simply didn't yield a benefit (there was a subregion question I answered earlier.)

Any plans to expand the medical system? I think dwarven appendicitis in your beloved mayor can lead to a lot of mysterious Fun.

Yeah, we've thought a little about diseases and plagues and improved trauma a bit, and people have sent us some solid material to work with on the treatment side etc. Until then, we're stuck with our model of compartment syndrome from I Was Bitten.

What's the biggest on your hit-list right now for an emergent behavior that needs to be fixed?

Are there any plans to fix tantrum spiraling in the future? I know fortress mode isn't your top top priority, but curious if that's on your radar.

If someone who just heard about your need to procure more funds wanted to make a donation, would you rather it come directly through Bay12Games (because you get more of a cut of that) or have it held off until the Steam release (so that you get bigger release numbers?)

If you could start this entire process over from scratch, what programming decision would you make differently?

Hmm, there are things that just feel unfinished, like with adv how you can meet friendly groups that should hostile and aren't but you can't really do much with them either. Brain's getting too fuzzed to pull anything that's not just a bug though.

Well, the new stress system was supposed to fix that. And the spirals were gone because alcohol was for years. So it's more like we put stress back in recently and then tried to tune it a few times, and there are still problems with it that can cause a fort to go to waste. We've promised another round of stress fixing before the Big Wait. Now that we've announced steam, we need to refine our Big Wait promises to pre/post Steam, but haven't done so yet.

We do still need support for the months to come before Steam. However if somebody's tight for funds themselves, and wants the game on Steam, they should get the version they want.

Would have definitely done the maps differently. So many cool things will come out of this rewrite (done sometime during the magic process). Having multiple cameras open on different parts of the world, really interesting local features, etc. It'll be neat. The way you do maps, items, creatures, etc. in games like this tends to last a long time, so it's good to pause and think it through as best you can.

Are you going to be plucking off some low-hanging fruit before the Steam release and what do you think that will be? That is to say, of the little optimisations and improvements you'll make before the Steam and itch.io releases, what sort of issues do you think you're going to be prioritising?

This is a unique opportunity to help out first-time players, so we'll definitely be thinking of them. Of course, a lot of that benefits everybody. We haven't settled on the list yet though; we'll be logging about it like everything else when we get there, so you won't have to wait for the release to see what we decide to do.

I don't follow your every word, so this may have come up before and be a question you're sick of, but: do you ever miss 2D?

I like the story flow of it, and the way it guaranteed experiencing certain disasters and how the well and chasm could easily disgorge creatures at you, and how you could use the magma on the chasm to shut it off etc. Kind of feels like a different game style in a way. We're hoping some of the local features from the map rewrite recapture a bit of that feel by making the underground something that you can have more fun of all kinds with.

Any chance for cap-breaking tweaks? Stuff like multiple moves per tick (to get around the ~80 mph speed limit), running on water/up walls at high speeds, even greater healing rates (maybe even regeneration for hydras!)...

I don't have a strong objection here or anything, but it is a technical problem to jump up the ticks, just in terms of setting up little extra loops or whatever that might double up a given action, and how being able to double up in time like that might give a kind of quantum advantage in combat etc. that the game has trouble managing. It's doable, but it needs to be thought through carefully.

So, seeing how you're actually working with other people now, Kitfox, etc., and Dwarf Fortress being released as a proper product, what changes might be in store for us, the players, and you the developer, in terms of development; feature-wise, timewise, or otherwise?

Imagine the backlash on the Steam reviews after the next Long Wait.

Also, do you have any plans, as to how to keep interest high, to keep the revenue stream, from Steam, itch.io, an actual stream, and not just a minimal trickle?

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, now, we will.

Has there been any features that you have tried to implement, or wished to implement, that you couldn't because of technical or time limitations?

Yeah, time limits just about everything I guess. When it came to the technical side, I mean, we're bumping against that on performance anywhere that applies for sure. Then there's stuff like lying, which is very hard without a big data hit, and stuff like time travel, which is... well, there is that one time travel RTS. And a time trave? roguelike I think. It is hard.

I'm curious what services the publisher provide? Obviously publishing to steam only cost $100 so I was wondering what other things they are helping with.

They are handling all of the artist/music contracting stuff. That's been one of the main obstacles for us. Not just finding money, but all of the paperwork. All the press/steam stuff, and other related promotion matters. There's a lot that is needed beyond just the entry fee. All I could have done myself is maybe cobbled together an ASCII steam version and that just wouldn't have been adequate.

You missed a few including my own question but all in all not bad.

[Manveru Taurënér]

You missed a few including my own question but all in all not bad.

Skipped over stuff that was more general or non-future dev questions or already answered etc to keep it less unwieldy, and stuck to just Tarns answers (but may well have missed relevant stuff too or made seemingly bad calls on what to skip, not used to reddit either and some stuff seemed to want to hide itself). For those interested there's plenty more interesting stuff there, as well as some answers from Mayday and Meph on the tileset work and modding ^^

Edit: Right, you asked stuff in the r/gamedev AMA, felt like there wasn't much there that weren't too niche/relevant enough to copy so just skipped that

[Shonai_Dweller]

Great news on the Steam thing. I hope this brings in lots of new players (and their money) for you!

As I read through Meph's threads explaining the tons of sprites that will make the graphical version of DF so interesting, it becomes obvious (as I think it did to you back with Armok I) that graphics can never show everything you want them too. That leaves them as highly detailed, colourful representations, which I guess people accept more so in 2D than 3D but to me is not much more useful than an ASCII character (but that's just me - whatever attracts new players is cool I guess).

So, and I suppose it might be too early to tell, but with all this new income, official graphical version, back up of tremendously cool people...do you feel any pressure to reconsider any features from the point of view of "will this work in the graphical version"?

Examples might be, say, the Half-Elf issue. If you attempt it, it's going to be a lot of work just for the coding. But for tilesets? Sprites for half, quarter, a little bit elves? Green half-goblins? Pale half-goblins with red eyes (two variations from three-toe's own stories). The scope of procgen critters post myth-gen? It's all going to be a headache for the graphics guys but it all seems so essential to making dwarf fortress what it is. (And I guess the reason I'll play the Steam version in ascii, statues of famous bards represented by statues of armoured dwarves just annoys me).

To clarify, I don't mean contractual pressure, but just on the level of consideration for Meph and Mayday's sanity.

[Egan_BW]

I say let 'em go insane trying to render maggot people.

[Death Dragon]

I say let 'em go insane trying to render maggot people.

I agree with this. I hope Toady won't let graphical considerations stop him from creating the most extreme fantasy world generator.

As far as I know, one thing you really appreciated about DF was that you didn't have any responsibility towards anyone and you could work on anything you want at any pace you want. Do you feel any sort of mental "consequences" due to putting the game up for sale? Do you feel differently now that you're going to have "customers"?

On Discord you said that most new graphics effects like the transparency feature etc have already been implemented into the game. For how long have you been working on these things exactly? Did you do them secretly at the side during the villain update?

Edit:
Last months answers were really cool:

It's planned that, when you expel someone, the person will remember that negatively and if they have villainous tendencies, they might want to take revenge on you in some way, right?
Would there be a chance that the same could happen when you decline a visitor's petition request or do they currently not care about it either way when you decline those?

Yeah, I should set that up -- I've made a note.  As PatrikLundell said, they have personality-based reactions to it already, and if it does upset them greatly, it should be able to be the basis of a vendetta if they have the proper tendencies.

That is awesome to hear. I hope there will be some cool stories stemming from that.

A while ago in this devlog (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html#2018-12-07), you talked about how the infrastructure of a site can affect and change the population. Do you have an ability like this planned for libraries in the short term, too? For example, them being able to change the moral values of the site population based on what kind of books are stored in it?

Libraries have an effect in world gen in the currently released version, based on the original and copied books that are there.  Every year, each library gets five turns to pick a book.  If the book has a poetic/music/dance form, it has a chance to make that form well-known in the entire parent civ, as a form of cultural diffusion.  If the book promotes a value at a certain level, it makes a roll against the author's skill roll when they made the book.  The local site civ can have their values shifted by 1-2 point (it takes 10 or more to change the visible text for the value), and the parent civ can also be shifted a point, and all sites under the parent civ have a chance to be shifted a point as well.  It's a very rough system (and it doesn't respond gracefully based on the number of books, etc. etc.), but there's something there.

This is amazingly interesting to me. I didn't know it was already possibly for books to change the values of a civilisation. This isn't something you can currently look up in legends mode, is it?
Just to confirm: With "in world gen" you just mean the initial world generation, right? Not the time passing after the world has been finalised?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Since it's only happening once a year is there any reason to turn it off during background worldgen? I know there are differences, but value change in individuals is still going on. But, meh, what do I know. Awaiting official answer.

[Hapchazzard]

First off, sorry if I offended with the "like a 1930s apartment block" remark, I was just trying to be witty

Second, wow, a graphical DF release, honestly didn't expect this in the near future and am (very pleasantly) surprised! The new graphics look really good!

Since audio is also in the works, thought I'd ask a question about it: are there any potential plans for the Steam release (or later) to have 'ambient sounds', e.g. water dripping/echos in caverns, generic forest sounds when in a woodland, crowd sounds when in a congregated area (such as a tavern), etc.?

Second, more related to the graphical features, I've noticed in the graphical previews that sentient critters in battle actually have differing equipment, armor and appearances - some dwarfs have swords, some maces, some crossbows, some spears, etc. This is another very exciting thing for me. If this will actually be a feature, how far will it go in differentiating sentient creatures by equipment/state? Will it
change their sprites based on:
1. Equipped equipment, and it's state?
2. Clothing, and it's state?
3. Physical appearance, such as bald dwarfs actually being bald, etc.?
4. Wounds, from generic bloodiness when wounded, to possibly even more specific wounds (e.g. decapitation being shown, though I am fully aware that this might be a bit too graphical/gory). Possibly bandages when wounds are healing, also.

[Shonai_Dweller]

There are ongoing discussions regarding the new graphics over in the mod/tilesets forum with Meph & Mayday (who are making them). Held weapons and such can be seen in the sprites, while clothing seems to be undergoing debate (dyed red tunic should be red, or colours should match profession as in Classic, etc). Facial hair and hairstyles are hoped for too.

[Hapchazzard]

There are ongoing discussions regarding the new graphics over in the mod/tilesets forum with Meph & Mayday (who are making them). Held weapons and such can be seen in the sprites, while clothing seems to be undergoing debate (dyed red tunic should be red, or colours should match profession as in Classic, etc). Facial hair and hairstyles are hoped for too.

Just checked, very interesting thread! Thanks for the heads-up!

[Shonai_Dweller]

Now that there are people other than you looking at graphics, another at music and presumably someone thinking about achievements and stuff, how do you want the Suggestions to work from now on? Continue to throw everything into the Bay12 Suggestions forum and you'll pass on anything you think you want in your game? Or some other way to pass on Suggestions directly?

[PatrikLundell]

Now that there are people other than you looking at graphics, another at music and presumably someone thinking about achievements and stuff, how do you want the Suggestions to work from now on? Continue to throw everything into the Bay12 Suggestions forum and you'll pass on anything you think you want in your game? Or some other way to pass on Suggestions directly?

The people involved shouldn't have any great problems with locating relevant Suggestion sub forum threads, so my opinion (not being Toady, of course) is that the sub forum should work well regardless of the type of suggestions, although suggestion writers may want to try to keep suggestions that would target different people separated into different threads. At the end of the day, it would be Toady who made the decision, of course, but there's no reason for the various people in the implementation team not to communicate (via the tread or privately) to build a basis for a decision.

[Criperum]

Will the steam version of the game have 3rd party utilities most people used to have like dfhack and dwarf therapist? I mean managing dwarfes and searching in most game windows provided by them is hard to overestimate. Or maybe the steam version will have the same functionality introduced?

[therahedwig]

Probably not: these utilities are made by outsiders, so it would be a lot of paperwork to get them bundled legally without any confusion on who owns what that someone with a lawyer could take advantage of.