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[Footkerchief]

Toady, have you thought when/if you ever going to implement what in most people eye's might seem like two critical improvements to the code, that's it, 64 bits and multi-threading?

64-bit:

On that note, do you have plans of attempting a 64bit build?

Yeah, I did the first attempt on that and it totally failed, since my express MSVC doesn't even support it.  If I want to continue using MSVC, I'll have to buy it now I think, or go through some weird process which doesn't work for half of the people.  It caused everything to be delayed.

I was just going to link to Visual Studio Community 2013 myself; it claims to have all the functionality of Visual Studio 2013 Pro, but is free to download and use for individuals and teams of up to 5 developers (plus academic, research, and open-source use).  If this doesn't do the job, I'm sure a collection could be arranged to get you the workflow tools you need to move to 64-bit; IMO it's a matter of when, not if. 

Money's not the problem.  I just need something that works, I didn't have that last time I tried, and I didn't want to risk gumming up progress with new compiler mishaps.  I guess once I get this release cleaned up we'll be at the best lull I'm going to find for a while, although I still have no idea how it's going to work.

You didn't used to have to change your computer...  if that's true, we'll have to wait a bit longer.

Multithreading:

Rainseeker:   Here's a technical question; 'Recently in computer architecture the paradigm has shifted to multiple cores. I was wondering if Dwarf Fortress will support multiple threads eventually, and if so what timescale it will occur in.'
Toady:   It is my understanding that the SDL stuff is now multicored, with the graphics and the graphics display and so on. Now obviously people, when they're asking about it, that's one important point but people are curious like 'why can't I have seventeen dwarves pathing at once' or 'why can't you take that stupid ass weather simulation and make that go happen on some core, preferably not at all'. It's complicated, and from what I gather it would be a really difficult long project and it's probably not going to happen. That's what I gather. Now there are some things, like these micro multithreading of a smaller process just to get through one loop faster, it can break it up and then come back without it being a case of running path finding at the same time as you're running a fluid simulation, and that stuff, the more I know about that the better, probably, and maybe that's feasible. As for splitting up the path finding and stuff: some people have discussed about how that might work, but as for whether anything is actually going to come of that, I wouldn't bet on it anyway.

[Dirst]

As Footkerchief mentioned, going to 64-bit will require switching to a newer compiler, which has knock-on effects for all of the third-party tools that interface directly with DF.  If Toady ends up having to use a "pro" compiler to make 64-bit executables across platforms, the volunteers who work on Dwarf Therapist, DFHack, etc. may no longer be able to make binary-compatible tools unless they also pony up for "pro" compilers.  Fortunately the Visual Studio Community 2013 compiler sounds like it might get around that problem.

I hope the switch-over is as simple as changing a couple flags in the code and re-compiling in the new environment.

[Rose]

I hope the switch-over is as simple as changing a couple flags in the code and re-compiling in the new environment.

Sadly, in development, things are rarely this simple.

It's quite likely that everything will explode on upgrade.

[vjmdhzgr]

Two of the starting scenario examples were a prison and a religious center. Are the features necessary for these going to be added, or will new starting scenarios be added later?

[Scoops Novel]

As you mentioned you're considering cave adaptation, have you thought about updating the effects of sobriety?

[Footkerchief]

Two of the starting scenario examples were a prison and a religious center. Are the features necessary for these going to be added, or will new starting scenarios be added later?

The necessary features will be added eventually, but probably not all of them in the first release of start scenarios.  The targeted frameworks sound pretty big:

Fortress Starting Scenarios

    Framework
        Expand framework of law, custom, rights, property and status as needed to provide a variety of scenarios
        Foundation of laws, both natural and supernatural
        Explicit standing of different citizens vs. civilization authorities
        Possible expansion of religious and family concepts to provide sufficient scenarios
    Starting scenarios
        Various possiblities that guide or govern fortress activity: frontier settlement, religious site, prison colony, mining company, military citadel, roadside inn, secondary/future palace of the monarch
        Drastic changes to migrants based on starting scenario
        Caravans/diplomatic relationships based on starting scenario
        Reclaim mechanics should be folded into this
        Generalize starting scenario relationships to every site foundation
    Hill/deep dwarves
        Ability to bring extra dwarves appropriate to the starting scenario
        Entity populations surrounding your fortress in appropriate environments, both above and below ground
        Ability to move dwarves in and out of surroundings
        Relationship with surrounding dwarves
        Ability to trade/demand food in depot or similar place with surrounding dwarves

[Knight Otu]

Two of the starting scenario examples were a prison and a religious center. Are the features necessary for these going to be added, or will new starting scenarios be added later?

The necessary features will be added eventually, but probably not all of them in the first release of start scenarios.  The targeted frameworks sound pretty big:

It's so big, it's wearing adamantine and slade spires for jewelry.  At least that's what I said in another thread.

[riffraffselbow]

With the priority-designation system, could we get some kind of (maybe optional?) conveyor-belt automation? So when all the tasks labeled 1 (or maybe all the tasks labeled 1 in some subset of labors, like "mining" or "farmwork" (maybe grouping by labor group, individual skill, or not at all should be another option)) are finished, all the 2s become 1s, the 3s become 2s, etc.

It always bugs me when priority systems don't have this kind of automation, because I always end up having to go back in and manually advance things to fit something in at the bottom. By the way, it'd be nice, when assigning priorities, to see some kind of indication of how many tasks each priority level has in it currently, or at least a binary "lightbulb" telling me if a level has any tasks.

[Putnam]

With the priority-designation system, could we get some kind of (maybe optional?) conveyor-belt automation? So when all the tasks labeled 1 (or maybe all the tasks labeled 1 in some subset of labors, like "mining" or "farmwork" (maybe grouping by labor group, individual skill, or not at all should be another option)) are finished, all the 2s become 1s, the 3s become 2s, etc.

It always bugs me when priority systems don't have this kind of automation, because I always end up having to go back in and manually advance things to fit something in at the bottom. By the way, it'd be nice, when assigning priorities, to see some kind of indication of how many tasks each priority level has in it currently, or at least a binary "lightbulb" telling me if a level has any tasks.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=5.0

[monk12]

You people always come through when we depend on you- and we do depend on you for the Rock & Roll lifestyle we have become accustomed to.

This gave me a good laugh.

[Zarathustra30]

Looking over the bug tracker change log, I see bug 6397 and bug 1416 have been fixed.

A.K.A. The Shaft of Enlightenment and the Planepacked glitch.

It is terrifying.

[flabort]

Half an hour before 2015, even.
Wait, no, that's a 24hour clock. Just half a day before 2015.

[Darkweave]

I've really missed the DFTalk frequency we had a few years ago. Are there any plans to get back to a more regular schedule with those? If not is that more because of scheduling conflicts or a lack of topics to discuss?


and


I was listening to some of the older DFTalks and was particularly interested in the game vs simulation discussions. What parts of the game do you currently feel are the worst offenders in terms of being way too gamey or way too simulationey? Are there any parts of the game for which you think you got the balance almost spot on?

[vjmdhzgr]

Looking over the bug tracker change log, I see bug 6397 and bug 1416 have been fixed.

A.K.A. The Shaft of Enlightenment and the Planepacked glitch.

It is terrifying.

Noooooooooooooooooo. Those were the best bugs in the whole game. I never got to make my own planepacked and I'm sad i'll never get to now.

It is terrible.

[flabort]

Don't worry. The planepacked glitch existed before burrows, but the incarnation that Toady just fixed was for the Burrow version.
What I'm saying is a future release will introduce a similar bug, and you'll get your planepacked.

But no timeline on what feature could possibly rebreak the game.