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[guessingo]

This has probably been asked countless times before. I did some searches, but there are so many posts, its hard to find what I am looking for. This is a game that the creator gives a way for free, so I am NOT complaining about release dates. I know he works hard and I read the New York Times article about him.

First Question:
The last release was in March and it appeared to be an incremental bug fix release. It appears that the next release will be much larger correct?
The last release appears to be .31.25. So I would guess the next release will either be .32 or .40.  So when you get a .x release I would guess it will have alot of new features. I have been reading his regular updates.

Is this correct?

Second Question:
Is this how the releases usually work? He works for a long time on a major release with new features. Then he does a series of small .xx.xx releases that mainly fix bugs and make smaller improvements to the new features in the current release. Then he takes a long period of time to work on a larger release with a lot of new features.

Third Question:
There appeared to be alot of programmers on these forums. I get that impression with all the mods. Has anyone offered to help Bay 12 develop the game? I know it is 'their thing'. However, it is primarily 1 person and then his brother helps out. I am assuming people offered and were turned down. Just curious about this. I would think if did this as a community effort where he parceled out work, alot more might get done. This is a tremendous amount of work for 1-2 people. I also understand that what he is coding is very complex. At a minimum, community members could help him find and possibly fix bugs. Or at least help him debug.

Just curious. As I said this is a free game. So I'm not complaining. From the New York Times article, I get the impression if Bay 12 wanted to, they could sell the game or license it to a major developer and make a lot of money. Instead he works for less than what entry level developers get right out of college and without benefits. So none of us have a right to complain.

[thvaz]

1) No one knows, but certainly won't be 0.31.XX anymore.

2)Lately, yes. But toady is always changing his mind.

3) They don't want to lose control over the project. They get enough money to continue to develop the game, so they are fine with it.

[guessingo]

I understand about losing control. Wouldn't it be possible to get people to help find bugs atleast? Finding and fixing bugs in a game this complex is very time consuming.

[Oliolli]

People do find bugs. They report them to Toady, and he (eventually) fixes them.

[612DwarfAvenue]

Yeah, we got the Bug Reports boards just for that.

As for others working with him, Baughn works on the TrueType support, work on the different graphics modes you can set in the "init" files like 2D, VBO, etc., but that's about it. This is still Toady's game, and he does the rest of the work himself unless he says otherwise.

[Funk]

the odd are we that it is going to be .40 as that will get mixed up with 40D too much.

[BigD145]

3) Would you let someone else do anything to your life's work?

[612DwarfAvenue]

the odd are we that it is going to be .40 as that will get mixed up with 40D too much.

I can understand the last part, i think this'll probably be 32.01 or something, but "The odd are we that it is going to be" isn't grammatically accurate .

[MrWiggles]

Third Question:
There appeared to be alot of programmers on these forums. I get that impression with all the mods. Has anyone offered to help Bay 12 develop the game? I know it is 'their thing'. However, it is primarily 1 person and then his brother helps out. I am assuming people offered and were turned down. Just curious about this. I would think if did this as a community effort where he parceled out work, alot more might get done. This is a tremendous amount of work for 1-2 people. I also understand that what he is coding is very complex. At a minimum, community members could help him find and possibly fix bugs. Or at least help him debug.

I dont understand why this question gets asked.

The answer has to be absolutely yes, right?

[Oliolli]

the odd are we that it is going to be .40 as that will get mixed up with 40D too much.

I can understand the last part, i think this'll probably be 32.01 or something, but "The odd are we that it is going to be" isn't grammatically accurate .

I noticed the same thing. The way I deciphered it is: "The odds are wee (as in little) that it is going to be..."

[Logical2u]

Yeah, we got the Bug Reports boards just for that.

As for others working with him, Baughn works on the TrueType support, work on the different graphics modes you can set in the "init" files like 2D, VBO, etc., but that's about it. This is still Toady's game, and he does the rest of the work himself unless he says otherwise.

Actually the bug reports board has been replaced by the mantis bug tracker, so make sure you're reporting new bugs there!

[monk12]

I figure we'll be referring to this next one as DF 2012, so it'll all be good.

Anywho,

2) Toady doesn't like doing long stretches of no releases since that tends to adversely effect the community and the game, and in theory the most recent stretch of releases are supposed to be an "every couple of months" or so type of schedule. He was actually doing pretty good in that regard in 2010, but this upcoming feature release has suffered from more than a little feature creep since the minimum "what needs to be done" wasn't very exciting. It's been what, a year since the last content addition? *checks devlog* Last Februrary, so yeah.

Hopefully we'll be able to get back on track with the next releases in the Caravan Arc, but we'll see. You are correct on the general format though- content, bugfix, bugfix, repeat.

[MrWiggles]

Toady is about even with bug fix release and content releases.

[Funk]

well you can just work it out see the wiki, Version numbers
and you will need the power goals Consolidated Development: