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[TheCoolSideofthePIllow]

I am just curious if there is a dev build version of DF publicly available with all the current, working features Toady is working on. Judging by his pretty constant blog posts, it seems like the new version will be *massive* and its puzzling me why he hasn't released a new version with even just *some* of the things he's been working on. It made me wonder if, like many other games, he had dev version that would allow players to experience the bleeding edge of the game, even if it might be less stable.

[neblime]

no it is not available and toady has stated he does not like the idea of doing such a thing, so i think you'll just have to wait.

[Uristsonsonson]

I'd guess it's either because the new features are still so unfinished and buggy that they wouldn't be all that fun to play around with yet or because daily releases would quickly get confusing for us and him and possibly mess up his version numbering scheme. Or it's neither of those and Toady just personally prefers to wait until he's happy with it, which I would agree with honestly. I wanna mess with the new stuff too, but just releasing it how it is now would almost be like taking brownies out of the oven before they're done, you know? Sure they'll still be good. But you'll ultimately be missing out on how much better they could be.

[Sutremaine]

I'd say it'd be closer to a souffle. It'll look good for that first initial glimpse, then it'll inevitably and quickly collapse.

[Wirevix]

The problem really isn't that it would be "less stable;" it would be more completely unplayable.  Even in his quite abbreviated dev notes, Toady mentions crashes that take him hours to hunt down quite regularly.  You wouldn't be playing around with unstable new features; you'd be failing to generate worlds, failing to get past "Play," failing to assign points, etc., as the game would probably crash regularly during any of those things. 

Dwarf Fortress isn't a game where just one thing or another can change, generally... everything domino-effects into everything else.  Before the pre-release final big bughunt, whole sections of the game are probably just completely broken because they don't matter to what Toady is doing right at this moment.

[TheCoolSideofthePIllow]

I'd guess it's either because the new features are still so unfinished and buggy that they wouldn't be all that fun to play around

Are you kidding? I have fun just reading his updates about testing things. XD

[Knight Otu]

I'd guess it's either because the new features are still so unfinished and buggy that they wouldn't be all that fun to play around

Are you kidding? I have fun just reading his updates about testing things. XD

See Wirevix's post. For long stretches of time, the game would not be playable. It might not even start while Toady uses diagnostics to see how his code works out. Besides, having fun reading about testing stuff, and actually playing the stuff being tested are two very different things. People always say "Oh, I'm sure I'll still have fun with a more buggy DF." They're kidding themselves.

[misko27]

If you want an unstable bleeding edge version of the game, that's just the official release anyway. It will be both buggy and fun and fixed relatively quickly, I can assure you.

[avdpos]

You are playing the dev-version.
Most game that give out developmentversion are having big teams that program there games.
Dwarf fortress do have Toady.
If the company with 10 employers give out a new developmentversion every month that is about a version every 100 days for Toady. ok, that we have more time than that since our last BETA-version (or am it still alpha?) of Dwarf fortress.
But it is still the developmentverison we are playing rigth now.

[Dirst]

You are playing the dev-version.
Most game that give out developmentversion are having big teams that program there games.
Dwarf fortress do have Toady.
If the company with 10 employers give out a new developmentversion every month that is about a version every 100 days for Toady. ok, that we have more time than that since our last BETA-version (or am it still alpha?) of Dwarf fortress.
But it is still the developmentverison we are playing rigth now.

This is correct.  The game is marked as an alpha release.  The current version number is 0.34 which roughly translates into "one-third of the features envisioned for the final game."  And one-third of Dwarf Fortress is still awesome enough to attract a fanatical following...

[Propman]

The Toady version of the game is kept practically on life support, with the frog man likely having several text documents up at once at a minute's notice to correct a feature as soon as it crashes the game. Basically, while he's playing the game, he's also playing with the code in order to get it to line up correctly, sorta like playing DF and tetris at once. If that tetris was correcting code.

[Capntastic]

Toady did an advance bug-test copy a few years ago for an elite team of supersoldiers but I think he decided that it wasn't that beneficial in the long run.

[ollobrains]

time to mount a kickstarter campaign to fund the hiring of some sshort term programming assistance, obvisouly he has his reasons a bit like steve with aurora 4x, there its 2-3 realises a year with small updates. 

Ideally open source the whole thing but toadys projects his opinions, i dunno maybe he should set a personal goal of a update thats stable every 12 months or so.  Each to their own though

[NobodyPro]

time to mount a kickstarter campaign to fund the hiring of some sshort term programming assistance, obvisouly he has his reasons a bit like steve with aurora 4x, there its 2-3 realises a year with small updates. 

Ideally open source the whole thing but toadys projects his opinions, i dunno maybe he should set a personal goal of a update thats stable every 12 months or so.  Each to their own though

ಠ_ಠ

[Playergamer]

time to mount a kickstarter campaign to fund the hiring of some sshort term programming assistance, obvisouly he has his reasons a bit like steve with aurora 4x, there its 2-3 realises a year with small updates. 

Ideally open source the whole thing but toadys projects his opinions, i dunno maybe he should set a personal goal of a update thats stable every 12 months or so.  Each to their own though

ಠ_ಠ

What would the point be?