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[clinodev]

On a side note, I saw something about a “vermin catcher’s workshop”.  What’s that about?

I'm pretty sure he's just renamed the now misleadingly named kennel. Large animals which one would think should require a kennel are trained in pastures and animal training zones, while kennels are only required for training vermin.

[Immortal-D]

Are there any plans to revamp or add onto the bug tracker for Steam release?  Or will Steam users also be directed to the catch-all Mantis archive?

[DeKaFu]

Bit of an odd question, but I was hoping to add the crayon drawing I received to the wiki as an illustration on a creature page. Could you confirm whether this picture depicts a draltha or a drunian? (I requested a draltha but the colours and body shape threw me off, so now I'm second-guessing and don't want to put it on the wrong page.)

Thank you, by the way. I absolutely adore this piece of art.

[Corthalas]

I would like to know more about necromancer experiments: the huge amalgations mentioned in legends Mode, which seem to rampage like (semi)megabeasts. Is it possible to meet them in fortress mode or adventure mode? Would two of the same species be able to breed? I would like to know if they could even break away from their necromancer and join societies.
Thanks for creating this amazing game, Toady!

[Pillbo]

Creatures use the same color descriptions as wood and stone. Will creatures like dogs and cats also vary in color based on those colors, like furniture and dwarves will?  🤞

[voliol]

I would like to know more about necromancer experiments: the huge amalgations mentioned in legends Mode, which seem to rampage like (semi)megabeasts. Is it possible to meet them in fortress mode or adventure mode? Would two of the same species be able to breed? I would like to know if they could even break away from their necromancer and join societies.
Thanks for creating this amazing game, Toady!

The extracted raws example on the wiki ("hulk of Kortulon") has a male and female caste, so they should be able to breed if no other token stops it (like NIGHT_CREATURE). The example has no sapience tokens, so it wouldn't be able to join societies normally like the intelligent experiments do. Though that could mean it's treated like livestock so maybe you could steal some in a livestock raid?

The above all applies to the example, but it's possible there is some variance. Clown species can be generated with two gendered castes, or a single one, either gendered or ungendered. They can only breed in the first case. It's possible the same is true for experiments/amalgamations, and the one raws example on the wiki doesn't tell the whole story.

[BlueManedHawk]

On the old consolidated development page, one of the categories of things to do was called "bloats".  Considering that this is a word that generally has derogatory connotations, why was it selected to describe this category?

[Doorkeeper]

On the old consolidated development page, one of the categories of things to do was called "bloats".  Considering that this is a word that generally has derogatory connotations, why was it selected to describe this category?

Bloat, when not describing a decomposing body, normally means extra or too much, that causes things to "swell up" and become worse over time. Common examples like code bloat or bloatware, where devs add too much pointless features into a program to the point it's slow to load, takes too much disk space, and becomes too complicated to use. The caption directly above the bloat section on that dev page defines it perfectly: "Somewhat superfluous ideas..." Here, it's relating to feature bloat, or "feature creep" as it's more commonly known. Despite feature creep usually having a bad connotation (in programming sense), it is what made DF the game it is now and what formed this community, so I hope the remaining bloat features get included someday. Some of the ones marked incomplete has already been added in recent years I've noticed.

According to Wiktionary, bloat has a derogatory, dated meaning of "a worthless, dissipated fellow". Is this what you're referring to, or is there a new bad slang? The only times I've heard bloat used to describe a person in a negative light is when describing a juiced up bodybuilder, or somebody who drank too much soda quickly. Or those photos of malnourished babies. There's the frequent "bloated" zombie variant subtrope, but I've never seen anyone get offended by it, after all it IS a bloated, decomposing corpse. Regardless I find it weird that someone would compare a negative connotation of the word to how the word is used in the dev page. You could have easily websearched the word and figured it out on your own.

[Ziusudra]

I would like to know more about necromancer experiments: the huge amalgations mentioned in legends Mode, which seem to rampage like (semi)megabeasts. Is it possible to meet them in fortress mode or adventure mode? Would two of the same species be able to breed? I would like to know if they could even break away from their necromancer and join societies.
Thanks for creating this amazing game, Toady!

It's some times possible to play as them in adventurer mode, because the sapient ones can join civilizations. As explained on the wiki:

Experiments sometimes escape into the wild, and intelligent ones can rejoin civilization - in the latter case, they may become playable race options in adventurer mode.

[BlueManedHawk]

According to Wiktionary, bloat has a derogatory, dated meaning of "a worthless, dissipated fellow". Is this what you're referring to, or is there a new bad slang?

No.  I was referring to the usage of "bloat" as a shorthand for code bloat or software bloat in a computer context.

Despite feature creep usually having a bad connotation (in programming sense), it is what made DF the game it is now[…]

Is that really a good thing?  I can't think of any way that bloat could possibly make a program better, and the examples i can think of that DF has (the first things that come to mind are the many redundant types of wood, stone, gems, etc. which don't have any significant differences between them) don't seem like exceptions.

[LuuBluum]

Similarly to the recent changes to the jeweler's workshop, are there plans to also adjust some of the other generic "do things with thing" tasks so that they can be made more functional? For instance, jobs at a farmer's workshop don't let you specify what to process, milling jobs don't let you specify what to mill, and cooking jobs don't let you specify what ingredients to use (you can broadly say what you want to allow to cook or not cook, but you can't, say, set up a cooking task specifically to cook away all that flour or sugar you keep producing).

Also, similar to the bin changes, have you also considered making a similar change to bags/barrels? Farms in particular are notorious for seed barrels (and to a lesser extent, seed bags) having the same effect as bins.

[PatrikLundell]

Similarly to the recent changes to the jeweler's workshop, are there plans to also adjust some of the other generic "do things with thing" tasks so that they can be made more functional? For instance, jobs at a farmer's workshop don't let you specify what to process, milling jobs don't let you specify what to mill, and cooking jobs don't let you specify what ingredients to use (you can broadly say what you want to allow to cook or not cook, but you can't, say, set up a cooking task specifically to cook away all that flour or sugar you keep producing).

Also, similar to the bin changes, have you also considered making a similar change to bags/barrels? Farms in particular are notorious for seed barrels (and to a lesser extent, seed bags) having the same effect as bins.

It can be noted that the functionality for specifying the components for tasks is present in DF, but the UI to use it isn't. Thus, you can specify what ingredients to use for a cooking task using a DFHack script, so that level of specification is purely a UI job (which still isn't done instantly).
The other level of "use up all of the X using workshop Y" would be a Manager level meta task that could either be implemented with a Manager UI (and functionality) or a workshop UI (and functionality), or both. That would likely be a bit of work to implement, though.
Manager ability to devote certain tasks to specific workshops would be useful, though (e.g. web collection and processing only in the workshop actually located close to the caverns, for instance, and dedication of Craftdwarf workshops to specific professions, so their production won't be blocked by jobs the dorf allocated to the workshop doesn't do).

[FlorpyDorp]

When I first played DF, it was the bin bug that got me close to losing my mind. Especially with farm seeds. Didn’t end up encountering too many other bugs. The bin one took way too much googling back then to figure out. So grateful it’s been purged.

How does it feel to be resolving issues like that which you’ve had in the code for so long? Also, how are you prioritizing which bugs to fix/QoL stuff to add?

Does Kitfox have a stream of people new to the game getting fresh eyes on it to point out things that frustrate? Or is it mostly experienced dorfs giving suggestions, or do you feel you’ve got a good sense of what has needed fixing for awhile and just haven’t had time to do it until now?

Seems like a big priority for this release is making sure the thousands (millions?) of people who are first exposed don’t lose their minds with bugs/complexity right off the bat. Are you nervous about that period/response?

[LuuBluum]

In regards to a question I asked a few months back regarding aboveground crop seasons, I went and did them myself. You can find them here. Don't know if you would want to use them, but they're here if you're ever interested. Of the original aboveground crops (valley herb and whatnot), the only one I touched was the strawberry.

[dikbutdagrate]

Why is (kobold ore) cobaltite represented as a blue ore in game? And why can't we use it for anything?
Just curious about this. Were there plans at one point to make blue glass or blue porcelain a thing?
I always forget when I mine this stuff, that I can't turn it into anything other than blue furniture.

Why do beetles live at the circus?
Lol sorry, no punch-line for this one! I just found a couple of these lil' buddies pokin' around in the slade while taking a stroll in adventure mode. I backpacked a couple of them back to the fortress to make for a neat little bug exhibit for the dwarves, and I couldn't help but wonder what they were doing down there.

Have you ever seen those sheep that live on the Isle of Man?
Image from Wikipedia:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They're called Manx Loaghtan sheep.