As you may have seen on the PC Gaming Show today, we're announcing that we have a release month for Adventure Mode which will be coming April 2024! Watch the brand new trailer with the first ever footage of Adventure Mode in action:
For those who don’t know, Adventure Mode is the RPG mode of Dwarf Fortress, where you can create a character and freely roam the rich simulated world you have made a home in during your Fortress Mode save or start fresh in a newly generated world.
Characters in the world will now have a face. A dwarf’s appearance will reflect their description, from wounds to clothing to hairstyle. This is possible thanks to the game’s procedural portrait system based on the beautiful pixel art from Carolyn Jong we’ve been showing off in the art updates. This feature will also be coming to Fortress Mode.
We've already shown off the dwarves and the elves but here is a look at goblins and kobolds:
Thanks to a new interface, Adventure Mode brings rich conversations with characters! This will help you bond with your unique party of adventurers and add weight to the stories they create in your world.
Combat in the game will also see a visual and mechanical revamp with updated wrestling mechanics. This will encourage those who may have in the past avoided grappling, to maybe look forward to a tussle. It will also spice up your adventures out in the wild and another exciting layer of engagement with their world. Fight as an individual or control your whole party in tactical mode.
The world map while in Adventure Mode will also see a change, with important landmarks such as roads, towns, and homes being much more easily visible.
Adventure Mode holds limitless possibilities for player stories: Write a poem and recite it in front of unsuspecting tavern-goers, join the group of hearth warriors of a local village to solve local problems, rob a tomb and become cursed by a mummy. This and so much more!
We also remain busy working on Fortress Mode in parallel to development on Adventure Mode and look forward to sharing an exact date for Adventure Mode when ready. In the meantime we will continue to update you on our progress. As we get closer to launch we will be releasing tutorials and other videos for more gameplay action!
As usual you can discuss the update and follow the news in the Kitfox Discord. We have an Adventure Mode channel, in-depth bug discussions, and it's the fastest way to find out about our Dwarf Fortress livestreams!
-Kitfox + Bay 12 Games
Nominate Dwarf Fortress for the Steam Awards!
Attention Urists!
Do you think Dwarf Fortress is one of the stand out games this year? Annoyed at how mainstream awards shows look over cool, indie games? Well, now is your chance to make your voice heard because you will be able to nominate Dwarf Fortress for the 2023 Steam Awards!
Nominations are open and we want to amass a large squad of Urists to be ready for when it does. We think Dwarf Fortress would be a great candidate for both Hardest Game You’ve Played and Labour of Love. We support you in whatever category you think fits best (Game of the Year?!?!) but we think these are the ones we have the best chances with!
We we will update again if we pass the nomination stage.
Good luck and happy voting 💪⛏
-Alexandra
First Look at Adventure Mode + New Bugtracker and more!
Hey Urists,
It’s been a little over a month since our big Adventure Mode Roadmap. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, go ahead and do that here. Since then, we’ve been working on a ton of new procedural portraits for goblins, kobolds and animal people which will be added to both Adventure Mode and Fortress mode. Soon you will be able to stare into the face of every single being you encounter in your fort or, bring them along with you in Adventure Mode. Watching humanoids slowly go insane from sobriety or die of dehydration was never so personal.
Here is one of the first screenshots from the new Adventure Mode, featuring an ambitious hippoman at a tavern. Maybe you can convince him to join you on your party? We also see the Adventure Mode UI coming along with your character’s portrait in the bottom left as well as all the new buttons for the various actions you can do.
Below, we also have a first look at the Adventure Mode world map. As you can see, towns are represented in much more detail including roads, farm plots and homes. The little shield acts as the marker for your party as you move through the map to reach new points of interest.
We are happy to announce that we have a new bugtracker ready to go! The bug tracker has now migrated to a new domain with the old account system for reporting and commenting. The previous address and email reporting will no longer be used, so please update your bookmarks and follow the new instructions here: https://bit.ly/3R2d9t5
Thank you to everyone for your patience and willingness to help to squash all those pesky bugs!
New FanGamer Merch + European Store
New Dwarf Fortress merch has arrived to FanGamer as well as select items on the FanGamer Europe store. We have the vinyl soundtrack, a journal designed to document your favourite forts, a giant desk mat and a hood with customizable menacing spikes! And European Urists can finally rejoice because you can now pick up the vinyl, journal, desk mat and pin on the European storefront, at least until they sell out:
That’s everything we have for this update. Thanks for reading! In a couple weeks will have some very exciting Adventure Mode stuff to show off and a more accurate timeframe for the release!
-Alexandra
P.S.
Our friends at Freeehold Games just released one of the biggest Caves of Qud patches ever yesterday! It’s been a year in the making and features a ton of new content including new boss fights and factions as well as the next leg of the main quest and HUNDREDS of new visual and audio effects, plus improved Steam Deck controls. Now is the best time to pick up Caves of Qud or return to it. You can buy Caves of Qud in Early Access and read more about the update on Steam or watch the trailer.
Adventure Mode Roadmap 🗺 Dwarf Fortress Dev Update
Hello!
We are here with a brand-new development roadmap outlining our plans for Adventure Mode and updates to Fortress Mode. Please keep in mind these are estimates. We do have a date in mind but we’re not quite confident enough to announce it yet. All we can say right now is “not this year”, but hopefully we’ll have more specifics soon. We know you’ve been waiting patiently, and we are working hard.
We will be building on the Adventure Mode framework that already exists. This is exciting because everything is working as intended and we “just” need to add the interface and graphics, which will take us some months.
Here’s the plan for how we get to Adventure Mode release, hopefully not-too-late next year:
To Start
First, the basics, which will let us actually see what’s going on at all in the new art style.
Travel map - we have the world map, but sites need hundreds of sprites to match up with the ASCII that shows individual streets etc. We’ll be iterating on this until launch.
Main interface layout - similar to Fortress Mode, there are tile-based actions, information menus, and other actions like travel. There’s also a day-night cycle and we’ll have a minimap this time around.
Procedural portraits - we need to implement Carolyn’s great portraits for the humans/elves/dwarves/goblins/kobolds, and also get animal people displayed. Every animal person!
Once we have this framework, we’ll just start doing the actions and menus one at a time. Full keyboard and full mouse support for all play styles. Actions are challenging because they can be initiated by clicking the play area, through buttons and hot keys, or by accessing a full list. There must be several ways to perform the same action based on context, play style, and input method. Can you guess what the buttons below do?
Major Features
These are the biggest-risk items, each of which hopefully isn’t more than a few weeks, but it’s hard to say since they each have multiple sub-systems and open design questions to be solved between code and art.
Inventory - equipping items and containers are the trickiest parts here. You can wear multiple shirts and nest containers as deep as you like, and the new interface will have to handle this with both keyboard and mouse support.
Combat (striking and wrestling) - wrestling will be a bit of a doozy, as there’s a lot of physical/anatomical complexity that we’re not sure how best to communicate
Conversations - this includes supporting the current Adventure Mode system of interleaving speech and actions, and having three or more participants in conversations
Character generator - you can make a whole party in Adventure Mode and the character creation options are complex. We have to update this system.
More!
These are individually much less complicated and risky than the above, but still have lots of little fiddly bits to keep us busy.
Status screens - wounds, skills, needs etc. There is a lot of information about every character, similar to the dwarf sheets in Fortress Mode.
Journal screen (quests and knowledge) - we may integrate this with Legends Mode because they are very similar.
Crafting and other powers - Adventure Mode is highly moddable and we need to support vast menus of magical powers and other abilities. Pet any animal!
Various small menus/actions (“widgets”) - stealth, movement, tracking, odors, party controls, combat options, etc.
Audio integration - the audio designers are working in parallel with us and we’ll be adding a whole new soundscape for Adventure Mode
Cabin building wasn’t properly feature-rich in the classic Adventure Mode. We’d love to expand on it, but it’s definitely more optional to the Adventure Mode experience than the above features and systems. We have the new Fortress Mode interface which will help a lot, but we may do it after launch if it becomes too complicated.
Ongoing Fortress Work
Work on Fortress Mode will continue in parallel with Adventure Mode. We’re reading the bug tracker and also have some content ideas which will complement Adventure Mode well. More on this later!
FAQ
Q: Will the game be localized/translated to my language?
It is difficult due to the procedural sentence constructions used throughout the game. Our best suggestion at this time is to use auto-translation tools for text on screen, which has been helping some users. We are investigating translation options behind the scenes but it’s very early stages.
We know that this system isn’t working very well for our helpful bug wranglers though, so we’re looking into rolling back into the old system soon, in the hopes that we can rejuvenate the bug-hunting community like days of yore. We have double the code resources that we used to, but also ten times the bug reporters, so we’re still finding our feet to figure out how best to maximize this power. Please be patient.
Q: What about the Mac version?
Because of all the work that needs to be done for Adventure Mode, we won’t be able to start development on the Mac version until after its release, at the earliest.
Q: When are Steam Achievements coming?
We will consider implementing this after Adventure Mode. Several of the achievements will likely link the two modes together so it’s best to have these systems in place. The main problem with Achievements is that they also need to be a new ‘living’ system alongside all of the other features, and we’re not sure it’s a good idea for people to feel they have “100%ed” the game based on what’s essentially an arbitrary list of tasks. We’re considering it, but haven’t decided yet, and will come back to the topic after Adventure Mode.
-Kitfox Games + Bay 12 Games
Fixes for Linux and Tutorial- Patch Notes for 50.11 (October 3, 2023)
Hey Urists,
We have a quick patch update today with fixes for Linux Mode, the tutorial and more. We will be posting a big update this week with a new roadmap for Adventure Mode and updated FAQ so stay tuned for that!
Release notes for 50.11 (October 3, 2023):
Major bug fixes
Fixed crash on linux related to game log threading
Fixed broken tutorial on click workshop step
Stopped tutorial prompt in tiny worlds where tutorial is invalid
Cleaned up a source of squad schedule corruption
Made classic graphics setting work properly on restart (hopefully for real this time!)
Other bug fixes/tweaks
Fixed potential problem with doctors vs. multiple hospitals
Ballista arrows etc. that chop down trees now count for treecap diplomacy
Image sets with non-uniform types now properly display as having a variety of types
Generic improvements now properly display "made a masterful improvement" in histories
Allowed single pair dances to generate properly
Fixed potential minor oddity involving animal placement
-Alexandra
50.10 now live: Alerts, ammo, food, and Linux
Here's the long-awaited 50.10! The game is now available for Linux, and this patch has some needed updates, like the ability to look at old alerts, ammo that works when uniforms are changed, and soldiers that don't hoard rotten food in their rooms.
We're going to continue now on parallel tracks. The main work will be on adventure mode. There should be more to show there soon as we get the site travel images in place and get the character running around the world again. Putnam has been working on some interface changes that should allow us to more support the keyboard/mouse interface options as we go, which I know is concerning for some people. It has taken longer than we expected to get the ball rolling generally on adventure mode, but the time ahead is clear now and we're optimistic it'll go smoothly.
We've also got more work to do back in fort mode. Some form of the full ammunition control system needs to come back for instance - we'll continue with patches like this one as we go.
As some of you might have seen on beta, here are the full patch notes:
New stuff
Can view all alerts, including old ones that have been dismissed
Can view combat reports from creature sheets
Can pause combat reports whenever new events are added
Added crash logging
Can now play the game on Linux
Major bug fixes
Fixed crash from removing zone with assigned unit
Fixed multithreading crash related to announcements
Fixed a potential crash issue with monarch arrival and made them provide more wagons properly
Fixed potential crash related to certain traveling creatures
Ammo assignments are updated properly when changing uniforms
Removed ownership of food items whenever they are dropped (stops rotten food hoarding in rooms)
Graphics additions/changes
New stone ramp graphics
Other bug fixes/tweaks
Made creatures more able to get out of trees
Sped up mid-level map retrieval (helps slowdowns on large world embarks)
Optimized relationship lookup for socializing dwarves
Fixed out of bounds issue with wheelbarrows
Stopped music mods from throwing error when making a new world
Fixed crash when there's an invalid language (mods)
Made broker leave depot when last wagon leaves instead of first
Have fun! Tarn and Zach
P.S. from Kitfox: Although Tarn had covid and sadly had to miss it, the procedural generation panel we organized at PAX West features three game designers discussing various Dwarf Fortress systems and others. It's insightful and brilliant! Watch it here on YouTube, though I'll warn the visuals aren't very compelling, so maybe think of it more like a podcast. Enjoy!
Beta Branch Patch Notes v50.10 (Sept. 12 2023)
Hi Urists,
We have an update to the beta branch with some of your most requested fixes including the ability to view all alerts and a fix for archer ammo. You can look at your old alerts now, and you can also view combat history from a creature's sheet and advance through it one step at a time if a combat is active.
Ammo should work if you've made custom uniforms for archers now. Soldiers shouldn't hoard rotten food in their rooms. Lots of crash fixes and some more optimization. There's also a potential fix for dwarves being stuck in trees but it needs more testing to see how effective it is. All of the following updates are going on beta first so we can figure out what kind of problems will arise before we move over to the main branch.
Thank you to everyone for being so patient with us as we get back to full strength!
New stuff
Can view all alerts, including old ones that have been dismissed
Can view combat reports from creature sheets
Can pause combat reports whenever new events are added
Added crash logging
Major bug fixes
Fixed crash from removing zone with assigned unit
Fixed multithreading crash related to announcements
Fixed a potential crash issue with monarch arrival and made them provide more wagons properly
Fixed potential crash related to certain traveling creatures
Ammo assignments are updated properly when changing uniforms
Removed ownership of food items whenever they are dropped (stops rotten food hoarding in rooms)
Graphics additions/changes
New stone ramp graphics
Other bug fixes/tweaks
Made creatures more able to get out of trees
Sped up mid-level map retrieval (helps slowdowns on large world embarks)
Optimized relationship lookup for socializing dwarves
Fixed out of bounds issue with wheelbarrows
Stopped music mods from throwing error when making a new world
Fixed crash when there's an invalid language (mods)
Made broker leave depot when last wagon leaves instead of first
Tarn is back in action! Almost there!
Hey folks!
Tarn is back from Germany and covid positive! Even a week later! Ouch! Thanks to all of you who visited Tarn at Gamescom. Despite the illness, it was rejuvenating to meet a continent of fans and watch people build succession forts at the booth. Putnam continues tinkering and improving, but in terrible luck, Tarn & Zach are also dealing with a family emergency that unfortunately continues to worsen.
But the good news is that a patch is incoming, as promised, just a bit behind schedule. Tarn is back at work, mostly recovered, fixing bugs and implementing some new graphics you should be able to see by early next week at the latest.
Stay safe and vaccinated! Kitfox & Bay 12
Linux Mode, Reports and Gamescom news ⛏ Dwarf Fortress Dev Update
Hey Urists,
A short update this week as we prepare to head to Germany for Gamescom. While art and audio and other developments for Adventure Mode continues, we also have two much-anticipated updates coming soon(ish) for Fortress Mode.
The Linux version is almost ready, and in about two weeks we will be looking for beta testers, after Tarn gets back from Germany... in fact, it's already on the Public Beta Branch!
A patch in the works will also soon give you the ability to view all reports, pausing when a new announcement is added, and viewing a particular creature’s reports.
I also heard rumors of giant animals, but those must be further off on the horizon. I guess I can already see them coming because they’re so big.
Kitfox will be at Gamescom this year with Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud and the soon-to-be-released Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out. Tarn Adams will be at the Kitfox booth from 2-4pm every day of the show to meet you! You can find us at booth 91 in the Indie Arena Booth. We can’t wait to meet you in person!
We are also hosting an after-party on Thursday August 24th from 6-10pm. Join us for an evening on the Rhine with food, drink and tavern tales among Urists. Meet Tarn and pixel artist Carolyn (ask her about procedural faces!). Get tickets on Eventbrite
So that’s all for now, but you should be seeing another update real soon!
It's Alexandra here from Kitfox with a seasonal video update from Tarn. We have updates on the art and programming side of development as Adventure Mode work continues. Watch the full video on Youtube:
One of the most exciting new updates is that we have started creating procedural dwarf faces. This means that a dwarf's appearance will reflect the personality from their description. Here are some of the prototypes that our artist Carolyn has been making:
Watch the full video to hear about updates to Adventure Mode, the Linux version and to see a Giant Capybara!
We are also working on a new beginner-friendly tutorial series with Dwarf Fortress content creator BlindiRL. We have a complete starter guide and a tutorial on making wells with more to come. It's never been easier to learn how to play Dwarf Fortress!
To discuss all the latest with your fellow urists, please join our Discord.
