Hello, we’ve just pushed a new version to Steam and itch, 18.09.03. This version is **not compatible** with previous saves.
We’re just two months away now from leaving Early Access, so you may not hear from us for a while as we batten down the hatches and work hard on tying up loose ends and fixing various bugs before release.
We’ve added two major feature sets: magic redesign and steamworks mod support.
Magic Redesign
We overhauled the magic system. Wizards are now magical crafters, healers and potion makers. The concept of the research tree has been removed, as have spells. We think this fits the core design of the game a bit better.
Magical Objects
Wizards can now build Summoning Circles. Dwarfs can use the summoning circle to teleport and get out of tough situations.
They can also build magical towers that grow plants faster or heal nearby dwarfs.
Wizards can now also summon the magical helper directly. The magical helper lasts for a day and then disappears.
Potions
Wizards can brew potions at the Apocethary. Dwarves then take potions and put them in their backpack until they are needed. There are healing potions, disease cure potions, and potions which increase the strength or speed of dwarves.
Innate Abilities
Wizards gain new innate abilities when they level up. Starting at level 2, wizards can heal their fellow dwarfs. Their healing power increases as they continue to level up. Starting at level 4, wizards can cast a fireball spell, which also increases in power as they level up.
Steamworks Support
You can now upload and download mods from Steamworks. Note that this will only work if you are running the game through Steam, and it hasn’t been tested on Linux or Mac. There is a single example mod in the Workshop that we have made. If you would like to start modding the game, you can read our tutorial here.
New Art
We’ve made art for all the new stone types, and we’ve also valued them differently depending on their strength. This artwork is a WIP
There is also some random new artwork including better splash particles.
Context Commands
There are two new context commands. While selecting dwarfs, you can now set their allowed tasks. You can also right click on some tasks and assign them a new priority.
Changes
New Version 18.08.19
We just pushed a new version to Steam and itch.io. This version is compatible with the previous version’s saves. There is one new feature in this build: having chats with your employees! There are also a couple of bugfixes. Also, we are working on new features right now in the background which have not yet made it into the release, but we expect them to be done soon.
Stuff We’re Working On
Right now we’re working on two main threads of development: steamworks mod support, and a redesign of the magic system. The steamworks mod support is nearly done, and is waiting for about a week of testing before we’re ready to roll it out. Once this is finished, you will be able to upload and download mods from Steam. We will also be providing documentation for modders to get started.
As for magic redesign, we’ve overhauled the magic system completely. We’ve eliminated the concept of “spells” and a research tree. This feature ended up being too clunky and disconnected from the rest of the game. Instead, we’ve redesigned the role of wizards to be magical crafters and healers. We feel this fits in better with the style of gameplay that’s evolved for DwarfCorp, and gives Wizards a more active role.
Wizards will be able to craft magical objects such as teleportation devices and magical towers. They can also brew potions.
We’re still working on these new features and they will likely be rolled out with the new Steamworks changes.
Changes
New Version 18.08.05 -- Randomized Dwarfs!
Hi everyone, we just pushed a new version to Steam and itch, 18.08.05. We have a bunch of new features on the lineup for this build that we’re excited to share. The remaining months we have left are going to be focused on adding new features and polishing/removing some existing ones.
(More) Unique Dwarves
In previous builds, dwarves pretty much all looked the same. We decided that one of the major changes we wanted to make before leaving Early Access (in October of this year) was dwarves with more unique styles and personalities. We started by giving dwarves variations in hairstyles, beards, noses, eyes and skin tones. Dwarves now also have unique voice pitches.
By popular demand, you can now also assign dwarves custom job titles to keep track of them:
Some more Dwarf Interactions
Boredom
Dwarves now have a stat called “Boredom”. Boredom builds up while dwarves are doing boring tasks like digging or chopping wood. When boredom reaches its peak, dwarves will take a break and do other things. One of the hobbies we added in this build was gambling. When dwarves get bored, they may enlist other dwarves in a game of dice.
Healing
When dwarves fall unconscious due to injury or sickness, other dwarves may now care for them. Dwarves carry their fallen comrades to beds, and perform CPR on them until they resuscitate (or die).
Quitting
Dwarves will now quit their jobs if the situation is particularly dire, and leave the colony.
Blood Spatter
Blood now leaves semi-permanent marks on surfaces.
First Person Camera
Again by popular demand there is now a camera mode called “Walk” that allows you walk around your colony and look at your dwarves face-to-face in first-person mode.
Changeset
New version 18.07.08
Hi everybody. In the month of June we were working on clarifying and improving the design of DwarfCorp before we leave Early Access in October of this year.
We’ve been deciding which features to expand (for example, trading, dwarf interaction and crafting), which to redo or balance (magic, combat and mining), and which to cut altogether (TBD). Some of the design changes we have already implemented for this next version, 18.07.08. Others we will be rolling in during the coming months.
Almost Everything Is Tradeable
One of the design changes we’ve implemented for this new version is that all items that dwarves create can now be traded or stockpiled. Goblins, Elves, Molemen and the Undead also craft items that they will try to trade with you. You can now deconstruct objects and put them into stockpiles for trading.
Mining Nerfed
We noticed that players could basically strip mine the entire world in a few hours. Not that strip mining isn’t an important part of DwarfCorp (it is!) but we wanted to make this a little more challenging for the player. We have added 6 new stone types (Sandstone, Shale, Slate, Granite, Marble and Obsidian) that spawn in layers depending on the biome. These stone layers get more and more difficult to mine for low-level dwarfs, so as you go deeper, it takes longer to mine stuff. We’ve also increased the rate at which dwarves return to stockpiles to deposit stone to further slow down mining.
We’ll be making more changes to mining over the coming months. We’re hoping to have a natural progression from easier to harder as you go deeper into the earth. That will mean more challenging enemies and bigger rewards for players who delve deeper. This will also mean making our world deeper than it is now.
Context Menus
When using the select tool, you can now right click on objects to open up a context menu. Selecting groups of items also brings up context-sensitive commands on the bottom of the screen. This makes doing certain tasks a lot easier. Expect more context sensitive tools in the future.
Trolls
Trolls are now in the game. They appear alongside goblins, and have a devastating ground pound attack!
Other Stuff
There are some other changes we’re working on now which haven’t made it into the game yet.
Dwarf Uniqueness
Since one of our design goals is to increase interaction with dwarves, we wanted to make the dwarves a little bit more unique. To do this, we’ve decided to implement a dwarf customization system so that dwarves have distinguishing hairstyles, noses and skin/hair colors. The technical part of this system is nearly done, and we are now in the process of making all the required art.
Better Conversations
We’ve begun integrating the YarnSpinner framework for interactive story telling into DwarfCorp. Hopefully this will allow us to generate more interesting events and conversations with dwarves and other NPCs in the world.
Change List
New Version 18.06.03
Hello, we’ve just pushed a new version of DwarfCorp, 18.06.03 to Steam and itch. In the last announcement we have some details about what this build contains. Unfortunately, because we made changes to the way terrain is stored to reduce memory consumption, older saves are not compatible with 18.06.03. One of the things we tried to focus on in this release in terms of performance was long-term game performance and memory leaks. We ran the game through automated tests over about 24 hours of uptime and found/fixed several problems.
Changes:
What's Happening?
We are currently working on a big new build that will be coming out next weekend. We just want to make sure that it’s well-tested before release. The new build features our new event system, gremlin and kobold attacks, performance improvements, and improvements to dwarf AI and path planning.
One of the more important bits of AI improvement we’re adding is dwarves auto-cancelling tasks that have been deemed impossible to achieve, either because the dwarf was stuck in a cave or the task was in a place the dwarf couldn’t reach. This sounds like common sense, but it’s something we’ve been meaning to add for a while.
We’ve also been working on some raw performance improvements, reducing memory consumption and other important nuts and bolts to keep the game running smoothly on less powerful hardware. This includes changes that optimize the game when there are lots of creatures planning paths at once.
We’re also in the process of designing out a couple of new creatures. For example, here’s a Troll, an ally of the Goblin hordes.
New Version 18.05.16
Hello, we’ve just uploaded a new version of the game, 18.05.16 to itch and Steam. Unfortunately, this version is not compatible with older saves.
Changes:
New Version 18.04.28
Hello, we’ve just posted a new version to Steam and itch.io. This version again focuses on bugs and performance improvements. Saves with this version are compatible with saves from the previous version.
Changes:
What are we working on now?
In addition to fixing bugs and improving performance, we've been working on Steam Workshop integration and modding (almost done!), a new scripted event system (still in the works), and a complete redesign of the magic system. More info on this as it becomes available.
New Version 18.04.16
Hi, we pushed a new version of DwarfCorp, 18.04.16 to Steam and itch.io. This version is mostly bugfixes and is compatible with older saves from 18.04.08.
Changes:
<*>Fix flashing dwarf animations caused by uninitialized texture memory.<*>Fix animals/dwarves not properly path planning in water. (Was caused by earlier change which prevented dwarves from mining sea floor)<*>Various tweaks to creature animations. New mud golem animations. Fix animation of mudgolem projectiles.<*>Fix bug that was causing the game to not launch on Linux and Mac. (Was caused by change that was supposed to make it easier for modders to import textures).<*>Ensure that when dwarves are mining/chopping wood that resources are gathered by all dwarves, not just the dwarf that did the chopping/mining.<*>Fix crash caused by attempting to save the audio mixer.<*>Fix camera getting stuck at the border of the world when zooming to a trade envoy or war party.<*>Increase priority of wrangling animals.<*>Fix wrangle button popup and wrangle tutorial.<*>Fix typing into task search bar.<*>Fix input to playstate while game performance is too low to poll keyboard.<*>Clicking off of text fields now defocuses them correctly.<*>Add ability to click-hold on trade items to rapidly trigger them. Small aesthetic changes to trade menu.<*>Fix zombie birds on loading game.<*>Fix undead skeletons attacking player when trade envoy comes.
new version 18.04.08
Hello, we just pushed a new version of the game 18.04.08 to steam. In this version we’ve been fixing design issues and bugs found by our QA team and improving performance. We’ve also added a couple of new features.
Unfortunately, your old saves will not work with this version. Changes to farming have invalidated old saves.
Explosives
You can now build explosive barrels. When placed, the barrels tick for a few seconds as dwarfs run away in terror, and then explode. Gremlins (not in the game yet) will also place explosive barrels to sabotage your colony.
New Animations
We’ve been filling in some missing animations. For example, snakes and spiders now have attack animations.
