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[Dramegno]

I was just reading the front page and it looks like in two or three updates dwarf fortress will finally be in 64 bit, I bet that will make things interesting here in masterwork when that happens.

[lethosor]

Mods (at least content mods) shouldn't be affected at all by 64-bit builds.

[Putnam]

It can. I had a mod that used up over a GB of RAM simply to load the raws. Something like 2500 very similar castes.

[Dramegno]

I would imagine that when df 64 bit is released a 64 bit version of the masterwork loader/launcher (I don't know what to better call it.) would need to be done to use with it since at least the current style of masterwork is threaded into df so deeply that it don't make any real sense to have it released as a drop in the folder style modset.

[Putnam]

i do not see any benefit to making the launcher 64-bit

you do not need a 64-bit program to launch a 64-bit program AFAIK

the launcher is actually quite standalone from the game; all it really does with the game itself is launch it, everything else you do is (mostly) editing text files and launching other programs

[Niveras]

The launcher is not "threaded" into DF in any way.

The only and biggest concern will be how much work will be involved in porting dfhack to work with a 64 bit version. This may subsequently require that scripts be re-written, which would delay their implementation into df/masterwork. Though I think that latter aspect is unlikely. Even getting dfhack to work with the 64 bit DF may not be more involved than locating the new memory offsets, as it is for any given release.

64bit DF isn't going to change a whole lot, even in terms of vanilla performance.

[Dramegno]

when I said threaded I was talking about all of the raw edits that make masterwork masterwork, and at the least that I see an option or even a separate download for 64 bit would be needed for masterwork so that the launcher launches 64 bit dfhack, and df instead of looking for the 32 bit names which I don't think I have ever seen a program that was available in both 32-bit and 64-bit that used the exact file name for their exe or equiv. of course since it sounds to me that Toady One is almost making 64 bit from scratch the raws may be different than the 32 bit version but only time will tell.

[Nevets_]

64bit DF isn't going to change a whole lot, even in terms of vanilla performance.

It may, however, be the first step towards multi-threading, which would be the biggest improvement in DF since Z-Levels.  Previously, Toady has been focusing on content additions to the exclusion of, (and often the detriment to) the engine.  If the 64 bit update is any indication, he may have finally realized he can't cram anything else into the game until he brings the underlying code out of the 20th century.

[Putnam]

64-bit is completely unrelated to multithreading.

Previously, Toady has been focusing on content additions to the exclusion of, (and often the detriment to) the engine.

What, the 19 bugfix and performance improvement updates in the 0.40 line don't exist?

[forsaken1111]

64-bit is completely unrelated to multithreading.

Nevets didn't say they were related. He said that perhaps the move to 64-bit indicates that Toady is looking to do some non-content engine upgrades which might include multithreading.

[Nevets_]

What, the 19 bugfix and performance improvement updates in the 0.40 line don't exist?

I didn't notice any significant improvement in performance at 0.40, after you get to 100+ dwarves and another 100+ animals fps drops like a rock.  I love the game and since he's not charging anything for it Toady doesn't owe us anything, but I'd bet he spent 100x the time on implementing and bugfixing dwarven poetry than trying to optimize pathfinding.

[Putnam]

primarily because it's more timeconsuming to do the former than the latter

[Dramegno]

I don't know Putnam I may not have a lot of coding experience but in my experience the things that should take a small amount of time ends up taking you on one hell of a rabbit chase thru Wonderland and the 9 moons of Taryak by the time you get it hammered into place.

[Fizzixnerd]

Hi there!

First, just wanting to say how much I enjoy DF and MDF.  Thanks to all the modders and to Toady and to everyone else.

Secondly, Linux player here.  I've been using the 5.x Linux series for a while now and am wondering if anyone is looking to update it.

Thirdly, I also have some ideas for making Masterwork more cross platform.  Specifically, factoring out the functionality that Settings.exe uses to modify the RAWs into a separate program/library.  The reason for this is two-fold: portability and extensibility.  Having a small utility with which one could modify the settings (even from the command-line, if a GUi Settings Manager is not available for the OS in question) would increase the portability of MDF, assuming that the utility was written in a portable way.  I would nominate a scripting language (Python, Ruby) for this task, since they usually facilitate modification by people (and thus encourage hacks from members of the community!), but usually run without modification on many platforms.

Writing it to also to be a library allows for more intrepid hackers to integrate more complex work with the utility, and allowing for possible future work of migration of the entirety of Settings.exe to a more portable language platform.  I think this is an exciting prospect -- an easy to understand modules system (and so on) can really let people's creativity shine without them breaking each other (or at least not as often!).

I have some free time on my hands, and I would be willing to put in the effort to learn the Settings.exe code and factor out the necessary functionality, but I would probably need some support from the dev team in terms of gotchas and so forth.  Is there a channel on freenode or something where we could talk more?

Thanks again for all the hard work.

[lethosor]

+1. There's a #Masterwork channel on freenode that had one person a minute ago, if that helps, or you could make a thread in this board (which could attract more contributors that don't follow this thread).