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As of 30 minutes ago, the new version of dwarf fortress has been released!

Unfortunately, as I don't have my computer for another week I wont get to test it till at least then. At least the initial round of bugfixing should be handled by then...
Spoiler

It's April first. Either it's a joke or they picked the worst time in the world to release it.

NOT A JOKE.

Well, it is. I figure Toady's making the 'it's an april first joke!' into the joke itself.

loomer wrote:NOT A JOKE.

Well, it is. I figure Toady's making the 'it's an april first joke!' into the joke itself.

Bingo!

Alternatively the joke is he restricted the bandwidth today, which would explain why I was only able to load about half of one page of the forum in 5 minutes and couldn't even get near the website this morning.

Aaah metahumour...

The new version seems rather interesting- lacking any time to really play with it, I went and found some priests and joined their religion, then stabbed the high priest and opened one of her arteries in her leg and slicing into someone's spinal column for the other. I stabbed the two defenseless priests some more, then a bronze armoured priest with a morning star started bashing me as I couldn't get past his armour, although I cut off his left ear (I might have gotten his eye, but that was possibly an old wound). He broke my spine and I had to "fight" (flail at, my attacks were "push") him prone, and they were pounding me into jelly just as the priest finally died of her wounds. Notably, I also took a morningstar blow to the chest during it before I got my ass kicked with the spine hit and started having trouble breathing. I threw some sea nettles at the farmer who came to help but they did nothing*, especially since I was paralysed from the waist down, so I started to remove my pants to use as a new weapon (I'd lost my sword in a grapple) when I got a CTD.

The new combat system, at first glance, seems really neat, which is what I was testing. I also noticed that with a shield even with only moderate skill I blocked a lot more crossbow bolts, and a lot of them bounced off my armour harmlessly.

*It stated I bruised the fat in his arm, which I believe means "You didn't do shit" when translated out of still slightly wonky descriptions. I also noticed that peoples' character descriptions updated as I fought them- the elf was mentioned as missing an ear in his L(ook) and D(escription) screen. UI is getting even worse somehow on many screens though, the inventory screen and the wounds now overlap since they're both in an enemy/other person's L(ook) screen.

And so Dwarf Fortress takes another step towards quantum-level simulation of the universe. Can't wait to try out some adventure mode with the new combat.

open_sketchbook wrote:And so Dwarf Fortress takes another step towards quantum-level simulation of the universe. Can't wait to try out some adventure mode with the new combat.

And another step towards quantum indeterminacy in the user interface, where what a particular button does at any given time is entirely unknowable until you press it and collapse the waveform.

Yeah, pretty much- adventure mode is nigh-unplayable without checking the wiki for keybindings, and god knows what the new version did to those. Dwarf mode was, as of the previous version, still mostly playable if you had the patience to actually learn all the idiosyncratic button uses, but honestly I've never had fun playing adventure mode because of the key problems. (I mostly started it up since stabbing a dude is a real easy way of testing nasty and interesting injuries right off the bat- I was quite impressed at how a solid blow to the chest left me unable to breathe properly, although less so about how it claimed my lung being injured was a "mortal wound" unless I was doomed to slow suffocation or something (which didn't seem evident since I survived for quite some time to get myself turned into paste) I wonder if I'd eventually have healed that lung damage).

The underground features are a lot of fun. I had a giant toad emerge from map-spanning underwater caverns to eat my herbalist as he exploited the Deep Swamps, as I have come to call them.

Also, there's now like 120 levels, as promised, with minimal slowdown (at least in the early stages). Toady may have actually optimized some. I haven't encountered a Forgotten Beast yet, but that should be fun and soon, given my habit of digging as deep down right from the start as I can.

EDIT:
Also doors don't work.

I am on the main site but dont see a MAc version yet, is that coming?

This release is just a control for him to compare to the next one, which will include the graphics optimizations. That release should come soon, and I assume it'll be for all operating systems.

Just had my first Forgotten Beast - a swimming, four horned, blind (fair enough, it does live in the underwater ocean) iguana. That could breathe fire. So basically a blind godzilla. Fortunately it couldn't actually get into my fort through the carefully walled stairwells and then swam off when it got bored.

I got a random creature that was essentially a man-sized ball of blood and other liquids encased in an bone shell, which basically rolled around slamming my miners and engravers to death for ten minutes until a hammerdorf crushed it's shell near to the underground pond I had built and it bled out everywhere. Having exhausted himself killing the thing, he took a drink from the pond, and promptly vomited everywhere and died. So I'm pretty sure it's blood was poisonous or something, and I think I need to drain the pond, if not due to the poison then because of the piles of vomit and the dead hammerdorf that is decorating it.

I think that creature is going to show up on tuesday's D&D 3.5 dungeon delve.

I have heard of things so far like Vast underground river networks or "lost" buried temples full of treasure, or forgotten cities. Anyone have screenshots of someone of the new goodies or features?

No screens, but my current site has underground chasms (at least six screens across in narrow ravines, all interconnected) that eventually lead to a sea, then another sea beneath it, and then beneath that is an ancient temple swarming with undead with the big treasure being an adamantine longsword. So the features you've heard are pretty much bang on so far.

Crossroads Inc. wrote:I have heard of things so far like Vast underground river networks or "lost" buried temples full of treasure, or forgotten cities. Anyone have screenshots of someone of the new goodies or features?

Heres a screenshot:
Spoiler I'm not really too sure about asking for screenshots of DF, graphics aren't exactly the selling point at the moment...

Personally, I'm happier with the descriptions of stuff that has happened to people, as it is the game digested and transferred into human readable format, rather than a wadge of ascii and more data spread over 5 different screens.

(Yes, yes: I know once you play for 20 minutes everything becomes perfectly clear and you know exactly what is going on, and soon it might have proper graphics)

Oooooooooh, I'm a-tingle with glee!

Still, I'll wait until the build has stabalized and the Mayday graphics-enhanced version is out. Never could stand Dorfan without seeing a wall as a wall, chair as a chair, door as a door, etcetera.

Also, might be a good idea to wait until I have a new computer. Mine is achingly old and I'm lucky to get above 10FPS at times.


He didn't touch ballastae, did he? My dorfing inevitably includes ballastae as a critical feature. It's the only way to defend a fort - channel all and sundry who want to enter through an insane dwarven death-trap. My preferred death trap flavor is the Dwarven Proton Torpedo Bay (aka the Lorik Spitball - Dorf Fortress style) with a special system rigged up to recover any and all launched ordinance.

There's no better way to deal with invading hordes of pointy-eared cannibals bearing loads of schlock on the backs of poor donkies, war-bands of humans on wagons loaded with things they intend to give to us in horrifically rigged bad deals, and the King's tax collectors; not to mention invading waves of the idle nobility or mobile iron ore.


Well... I may be overstating it. I'm sure there are better ways to deal with all of the above, but magma doesn't really leave anything intact, water takes more time to use than I like, and I don't believe in commiting wanton acts of cruelty to dwarves by locking a guy in a room with a barrel of raw crab, a barrel of alcohol, a bed and a lever to [P]ull all the time to operate the spikes.

Plus, I love using Dwarfy administrative tools to assign children to ballasta duty so they can grow big, strong, fast dwarven muscles and get a taste for blood early on, in a safe environment.

I love the new channeling.
They start out by making ramps, with it only being empty space straight down as in previous version with squares that don't have a wall adjacent to them. While making it impassible does require the extra step of removing the ramps, this new set up eliminates much of the need to micromanage digging of channels more than two tiles wide.

Just had a milker, armed with only bare hands, battle another Iguana Beast. Eight legs, six eyes, acid spit! He made it for five minutes with no skills and average stats through sheer luck. He got taken down eventually when he passed out from exhaustion, but goddamn if that wasn't a badass dwarf.

So I downloaded this game...what the hell is going on?

The graphics is a major turn off for me at the moment. If it could be updated to at least 8 bit then I can see myself really playing it. For all intents and purposes it looks to be a very good game but the graphics prevent me from enjoying it.

Enigma wrote:The graphics is a major turn off for me at the moment. If it could be updated to at least 8 bit then I can see myself really playing it. For all intents and purposes it looks to be a very good game but the graphics prevent me from enjoying it.

It is a bit of an oddity this game. On the one hand there is a near quantum level simulation of some aspects, and yet other crucial bits are left incredibly coarse, like a dwarf can carry either one 800kg block of stone or one shoe (not a pile, not two...) when hauling crap about.

There are serious issues like interface and balancing, which are currently lacking, but apparently will be addressed soon.

It was still fun when I last played though, and I look forward to giving this version a go once I can.

There is nothing quite so horrible as watching dwarves haul individual seeds.

Xenophobe3691 wrote:So I downloaded this game...what the hell is going on?

Download the PREVIOUS version and then download a graphics patch for it and practice on that first. It is a lot of fun once you get a feel for things. Here is what the game looks like under the "Stonesense" graphics program:



SO I would suggest master the old game before starting the new one.

Sadly I don't think Stonesense can be played realtime, no? Don't tease the guy with visualisers when you still need to see the Matrix to actually play. Of course, if Stonesense can actually be played, I might switch from ASCII to that (I dunno, I learned the ASCII so while I love Mayday's pack with a few exceptions, I really can't switch cause I can't tell what shit is anymore)