Four words: Dear GOD, that’s awesome!

It’s not exactly news that Dwarf Fortress has a pretty poor graphical interface. ASCII graphics are tough enough to interpret, but in DF, not only is that “d” actually a dog, but it’s also on a hill that is higher than the ground to the left but lower than the ground to his right. It becomes pretty impossible to mentally visualize our fort in 3D when we’re looking at the game world as 2D slabs, one stacked on another, unable to see more than one z level at a time.

This technique, however, allows you to view multiple levels are once. Lower levels are gradually darkened out to denote depth. There is even a little animation that plays whenever you raise or lower the level. It feels natural and I would be willing to be it’s infinitely easier than redoing the graphical engine.

A small change like this would go a long way to the readability of DF…and for most new players, that’s one of the largest hurdles to jump over.

Toady…make it happen!

The latest talk, number 3, is available at his website, and you can download it here. Below I have compiled a list of the highlights/new info we were able to glean from the talk. Everything is separated by categories and grouped together as such. It might not be 100% perfect or accurate, so definitely give the podcast a listen yourself!

Do be WARNED this post will contain spoilers for the next version. That is to be expected given that these talks are MEANT to be about the next version, but a warning is probably a good idea. No “Hidden Fun Stuff” will be spoiled, but some other features might be. You’ve been warned!

The Underground

• Pain and suffering when you go down below. In all, the underground will be quite tough
• Aquifers are still around, though they’ll behave with the new underground features and won’t flood them. It won’t be possible to (easily) flood the entirety of the underground due to how the caverns work. Still, expect to see water underground such as lakes, etc.
• Even more HFS, not much to spoil, but actual HFS (game ending stuff) has changed, and there are random elements down there as well
• “Fog of war” thing is one of the more exciting features (according to Toady). You won’t be able to know everything that’s in a cavern without exploring first. It will become necessary to do some exploring/scouting for both building your fort and dealing with any nasty creatures
• There are roughly 2-5 “safe” layers before you start hitting caverns and such. You’ll need to be a bit more mindful when carving out a fort, and you’ll have to adapt your strategy based on what you’re around. You’ll get a good feeling of where you should be building, though. All of this can be toned down or turned off.
• Layers are split into 3 major “groups”. At the top are your normal layers. In the middle are the caverns, etc. Towards the very bottom you’ll usually find magma and other such features
• As such, you won’t have to search around for a proper site with magma. Most every site should be able to reach magma now, though if you’re near a volcano it’s obviously closer to the surface. Otherwise you have to deal with the critters down below
• In all, there will be a risk/reward aspect to the underground. He doesn’t want people to freak out and wall up a breached cavern every time. You’ll find all sorts of goodies like mushroom forests, underground lakes, magma, etc., though you’ll also have to deal with animal people, critters, and other more dangerous things
• Eventually the underground should be filled with “traditional” RPG elements. Forgotten temples, treasure, etc.

Underground critters and animal people

• Underground critters (mainly animal people) will be much more advanced than they are now, harkening back to the 2D days when the underground was more challenging/dangerous
• The underground animal people will be more “evil” than their above-ground counterparts, but will also be more “civilized”, meaning they’ll have crude weapons and mounts. Batmen riding a giant bad while shooting poison darts with a blowgun made out of a Giant Cave Spider leg…phew! Their goal in life is to cause as much trouble and violence as they can
• Underground critters have multiple access points for spawning. They mainly use the edges of the maps to enter your location
• Gremlins are returning – they can pull levers, jump on pressure plates, release animals from cages/chains, and are hidden from sight. Expect to hate them and lose many fortresses due to their antics
• Underground creatures mostly hate each other. Animal people will war with one another AND you. Above ground animal creatures might be friendly towards each other, Elves, etc.

Forgotten Creatures

• Forgotten creatures come in two flavors: Titans, which are above ground megabeasts, and Forgotten Creatures, who live below. They are both created at the beginning of world gen. They are single individuals (not races).
• Titans above ground, randomly generated, oriented to a particular region (A neutral region will produce a normal monster, no sick things, etc. Evil will be more twisted, skin falling off, dark features, etc. Good regions avoid certain animals (you won’t find a carrion or venomous Good titan) and gives them a contemplative/good nature
• These forgotten creatures can be made out of anything. Glass, mud, metals, etc. No super metals (adamantine), though. You can even have them made out of “gross” materials such as vomit, grime, and slime.
• Underground megabeasts are the “ultimate challenge” of the game
• A fun example of one such “friendly” titan: A giant shrimp with maroon hair and a long swinging trunk. He emanated an aura of giving and kindness
• Forgotten beasts have no “history” to them. Further, there are only a certain amount of them and that’s it. Just like megabeasts they will not breed nor will more of them spawn after the initial world generation. There will be a larger amount of forgotten beasts than the others due to their nature (as in, you’ll be stumbling across quite a few as you play forts). In a small world you can expect to see a couple dozen forgotten beasts (Toady gave the number “27″ in a 33×33 world)
• In some of the larger/typical worlds you can expect to find hundreds of forgotten beasts and dozens of titans

Difficulty

• Toady gets his greatest kicks from us losing/failure/etc. Losing is fun! Getting people to “have fun losing” is a continued theme
• Expect the underground to be quite difficult
• “From within and from without, your fortress is going to be squeezed”
• Turn it off in the init, but if you want to play something that feels like an active universe/fantasy world, they’ll be plenty of stuff to entertain you

Dwarves

• There’s a new skill (Situational Awareness) for spotting sneaking creature. Now you can spot creatures farther away as the skill increases
• Grime accumulates on the body and can increase the likelihood of an infection. You can wash the grime away with soap. Elves do not believe in soap (due to the materials used) and will use water, but they won’t fully be able to clean themselves because of this
• He’s interested in the idea of age being more than a number. Already we have appearance modifiers, but soon you might see attribute/skill decreases, illness, etc.

Adventure Mode

• Adventure mode is definitely not being forgotten this go around. Everything mentioned above will be able to be experienced as an adventurer. You can dive into caves, find animal people, fight forgotten beasts, etc. It’ll be very hard, though
• Quest caves will make more sense than they do now due to the changes being made to caverns and caves
• He wants to stay away from “making things up” in adventure mode to keep things interesting. Things like interesting quests, sites, adventures, etc. should be naturally made up by the game and not artificially added

Toady

• Toady has a pretty average system. Integrated graphics, quadcore processor. As such he has the same FPS issues as us, which is good, as he’s able to make real time fixes and see the changes
• He truly loves what he does
• Scamps is pretty awesome

Other

• They like the idea of immortal races (elves, goblins), but they haven’t been fully realized yet.
• Elves sticking to forests is basically all that is saving the world from being taken over (scary!)

He also talks about an unofficial Dwarf Fortress meetup, so if you live in or around the Seattle area you should consider checking it out!

Dev update!

There’s going to be an unofficial meetup on October 22nd most likely at the Pike Place Brewery (same place as May) at 7PM, organized by a documentarian who is swinging through Seattle on an epic journey. Please drop by the thread if you think you might be able to make it. Optional documenting will occur, as well as webcasting courtesy of Sir Finkus, and Zach and I will be there.

We now have volcanic shafty pipey things shooting up through the layers again, and I didn’t spot any dangerous flooding. There are various other layer connections as well. The next big project involves similar stuff down deeper, on a much more grand scale than the previous incarnations (those being game-ending timers and little glowing pits with a few this-and-thats).