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[guessingo]

I think I saw a blog post that said there is still some more features for 40.x, but its been a long time since a release. Are there more features coming or are we  into the 2 year wait period for the next release?

Also, any word on which major features will be in the next major release? Its hard to follow the blog posts.

[therahedwig]

It should be close. Toady's specifically splitting up this dev-cycle so we wouldn't have to wait 2 years.

Let's see

-Taverns
--procedural dancing
--procedural music+instruments
--procedural poetry
--Forming bands
-Temples
--Simple religious activity(contemplation)
--Curses from temples.
-Libraries
--Academics to fill your libraries
-Master/student relationships for artists and academics.
-Multi-race forts
--Improved seperation between guests and citizens, with petition system for guests to become citizens.

Add more if I am missing some.

[WordsandChaos]

We've also got the inclusion of the 'tech forest'.

[therahedwig]

Tech savanna.

I also forgot worldgen festivals and drunkeness(and general advanced multi-stage syndromes)

Seems like another month or so, a buggy release and then a bugfix cycle with about 10-ish releases where everyone is inexplicitely surprised that Toady is fixing bugs despite this being standard workflow for years now, and then the second tavern dev-cycle.

[Robsoie]

It should be close. Toady's specifically splitting up this dev-cycle so we wouldn't have to wait 2 years.

0.21.x that ended with 0.23.x...23a -> 2006 release
0.27.x that ended with 0.28.x...40d -> 2007 release
0.31.x that ended with 0.31.25 -> 2010 release (DF2010)
0.34.01 that ended with 0.34.11 -> 2012 release (DF2012)
0.40.01 that ended with 0.40.24 -> 2014 release (DF2014)

2016 is coming very soon, only a few months left, i wonder if Toady will manage a 2015 release to break the 2 years cycle, as he's been putting a lot more new stuff this time than i thought for a 1 year dev cycle.

[Shonai_Dweller]

He seems to be at the 'fixing up the remaining issues so everything works' stage now so I say release by November 1st (unless this stage ends in Toady realising it was all a huge mistake and he needs to start over, in which case, yeah, 2 year wait...).

Either way, answer to OPs question, no. 40.24 was the last of the 40.xx releases.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Oh my Armok!  I am so glad I don't have to wait two years for this kind of awesomeness!

[lethosor]

Either way, answer to OPs question, no. 40.24 was the last of the 40.xx releases.

In a way, yes - Toady said at some point that 0.40.20 (the job priorities release) was about halfway to 0.41 feature-wise, so the next release will almost certainly be 0.41 or higher. However, he's also talked about wanting to maintain save-compatibility, so it's not necessarily the end of 0.40.24 fortresses (although a nasty save corruption bug in 0.4x.01 could still break them).

[vjmdhzgr]

Either way, answer to OPs question, no. 40.24 was the last of the 40.xx releases.

In a way, yes - Toady said at some point that 0.40.20 (the job priorities release) was about halfway to 0.41 feature-wise, so the next release will almost certainly be 0.41 or higher. However, he's also talked about wanting to maintain save-compatibility, so it's not necessarily the end of 0.40.24 fortresses (although a nasty save corruption bug in 0.4x.01 could still break them).

He didn't really say that he wanted to maintain save-compatibility, just that early on it just so happened that it was save compatible. Since then I'm pretty sure he's added new things that would be way more likely to break compatibility, which was pretty shaky even back when it was possible.

[lethosor]

Yeah, it was a while ago that he mentioned that, but it did sound like he wanted to maintain it (bolded below) - I don't know what the current situation is, though.

How are things looking regarding save compatibility? I'm guessing it's at least tricky to inject the new stuff into existing saves.

Right now, it's still compatible.  It was too difficult to get the old saves to generate new instruments without crashing everything, so they'll be somewhat impoverished.  The dwarves might be able to make completely freeform stuff or nothing at all.  I'll know more when dwarves are using the new forms.  I'm trying to maintain the basic compatibility so I have an easier time with old bug report saves and so on, and there might be some use of the new art stuff in old forts (instrument defs are the hard part, so they might get singing forms, poetry and dance, but I can't promise it).  Other things like taverns/temples/needs etc. should work immediately in old forts, though you won't have as many varied visitors because entire classes of visitors (bards etc.) won't exist in the old worlds.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I really hope save compatibility isn't high on Toady's list of priorities. That seems like it would be so limiting. It's not like the old version is going anywhere. There's no automatic no-return Steam updates for Dwarf Fortress.
And why would you even want to carry your save over when it seems that the vast majority of the new interesting features are born in worldgen?

[lethosor]

He said that it would make it easier to fix bugs once the new release is out since he can test with existing saves (a lot of older bugs are difficult to reproduce because the only saves uploaded are from 0.34/0.31). If there are features that are difficult to bring into new saves, like the instruments/art forms that he mentioned, he can avoid porting them without limiting development - pre-0.40.18 saves can't utilize gelding, for example, and it's not necessary to make all features of the new version work in older saves to test bugs from older versions (when those features didn't exist).

[reality.auditor]

Answering topic: no, there will be no more 0.40.x releases. New release will be major, so 0.x.1. where x is bigger than 40.

I consider maintaining save compatibility between major releases as pure waste of time that could be spend on coding new features of (gasp!) debugging.

He said that it would make it easier to fix bugs once the new release is out since he can test with existing saves (a lot of older bugs are difficult to reproduce because the only saves uploaded are from 0.34/0.31).

...or you can fix bugs first, work on new features later.

[gchristopher]

Fingers crossed! The issues with invader pathing (and no invaders) were enough for me to give up playing 40.24. I'm really hoping the Fun resumes with a new version.