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[clinodev]

To be honest, PatrikLundell, I'm not sure yours is actually a minority opinion at all. It certainly seems common in the 95k subscriber subreddit I mod, where, unfortunately, this forum is widely seen as hostile to new participants, despite my efforts to encourage everyone to be active here as well.

Some Bay12 forum folks seem to feel obligated to post a counter-reply to every suggestion that there might be problems, so by pure number of comments on Bay 12 posts, we may well be out-numbered, but it's mostly the same names who were loudly asserting stress was just fine in the Summer of 2018, and that we definitely didn't need any bug fixes before moving on to new features, no matter what some players were reporting. The comments are still there, of course, no need to trust my imagination memory.

I'm often struck by how many people have stopped playing because of the bugs, yet still actively follow development. They comment in the reddit posts where I link the official forum threads of note, like FotF, Dev Logs, Bay 12 Reports, etc. (I likewise link the Steam Community Updates here on Bay 12 so forum folks who aren't active on Steam don't miss, for instance, the January release date!) That seems like a sign of the strength and greatness of the game to me, and the greater and wider the participation in the community we can foster, the better and stronger the community will be, in my opinion. I look forward to being able to honestly encourage them that the game is in a good playable state, and they should play again!

[Manveru Taurënér]

ONLY if Toady starts supporting the current release in parallel with the next one: It would be a very bad move to fix the game breaking bugs identified within three or so weeks of the Villains release to catch the last Villains bug fix release and then have all the others (including game breaking ones: it took several months for the community to identify the raid equipment crash bug) wait until the Premium release is done (which is the result of immediately jumping onto "graphics" changes and then back to bugs in that code base only, as the "graphics" changes can't be released in a Villains bug fix, since it presumably will break a number of existing "graphics" sets).

Wasn't there some talk about doing parallel work like that for bugs in some AMA or another? But yeah, hopefully crash bugs and other game-breakers will be included in the "fires being put out", my main point was that getting to the steam stuff sooner makes sense on a lot of levels. Then again I'm in the camp clinodev just mentioned, I haven't played for quite a few years and only know some bits of what big new bugs are floating about so my opinion only goes so far. Wasn't really the bugs that made me stop playing (tho some of them surely contributed), more that I'm in it for the "final" version so I don't mind waiting a few years/decades to play a more feature complete version of the best game ever and just enjoy the dev updates in the meantime.

[therahedwig]

I suspect the problem is more of an anxiety handling one than a feature vs bugs crowd. A lot of people who have been around for a while know exactly why certain bugs are happening and when they're projected to go away. What I see often is that newer folk come in and full of anxiety complain about bugs and then conclude with something along the lines of 'if this doesn't change now, this game will never be succesful/really this game should be developed by someone who knows what they're doing'. And then older folk reply back with the same kind of anxiety, which makes them seem very aggressive.

The thing is that the newer folk in this case are coming in with clichés that, well, you can't expect them to realize that they're clichés. At the same time, I am not sure if we should expect of older folk to become therapists to these people. Even this issue is itself a cliché, I see it happen in the communities of open source projects and other still-in-development games all the time, and I don't know a good solution. All I can say is that seeing it as a feature vs bugs people thing might be a misdiagnosis

The premium release seems to really make people anxious in any case. I guess everyone is super scared to see it have a super terrible review score? I am not too worried, but that's mostly because DF has some advantages that most indie-fails don't have, the most important one being that it has a huge community around it. This may seem insignificant, but that's really super important, equally if not more important to being accessible or having few bugs

[Toady One]

I am currently making my own tileset for the game. With the upcoming graphical release, are we going to be able to finally have gendered tiles? If so, will we be able to have male and female tiles for each profession? Secondly, if this is happening, will you be adding trans gendered to dwarfs to the game that use tiles from the opposing gender (or even allow a third androgynous gender)?

Also, are we going to be allowed to now have ghost and zombie tiles for specific professions? I.e. a tile for a male miner zombie and a different tile for a female farmer ghost?

Lastly, will we be able to have custom tiles for forgotten beast\titan\secret-fun-thing subtypes (such as separate tiles for Sauropod and Spider beasts), and will we be able to assign tiles (or at least colors) for material types like a beast made from mucus or gabbro?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8061916#msg8061916
Death Dragon: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8062302#msg8062302

Yeah, the thread Shonai_Dweller linked is as good a source of information as we have currently, and I don't want to announce any final decisions until I have more code in place and see how it performs etc.  But we're hoping to have a lot of additional options that should cover most or all of your cases.  But for stuff like procedural beasts, we really need to see it in action and also see how much art we'll need, and I'm sure there'll be a lot of hole-plugging there as we see odd things happening, ha ha.

After reading Toady's and Shonai's replies I went back and reread some dev logs to rejig my memory, this in-turn inspired more questions.

There has been a lot of talk about player villain plots but I was wondering about player mercenaries, can the player join a mercenary company and go to battle earning some of the "Honors" that the company may have?

For next time, some of the speaking skills are used now,

After rereading the dev logs I can see that intimidation seems confirmed but can you tell us what other speaking skills are already slated for next release?

there's the new intrigue skill which can come up in interrogation.

While rereading the dev logs I saw that you added an "intrigue" tab, is this what the intrigue skill governs? and if yes in what way?

Also given that we will presumably be able to use judge intent to tell how characters are feeling I must ask, is it finally possible to see the fear in your enemies eyes while they beg for their lives right before they die? Or to put it another way if is start talking to someone I'm fighting will it tell me how afraid/confident they are feeling without utterances?

At the same time, I allowed the taking of any civ skill, for the new character sheet background purposes.  They are not used yet.

I saw that in the dev log where you mentioned enabling civ skill picks during character creation you mentioned wider skill use in adventure mode but said "not yet".

My question is what do you mean by "not yet"? more specifically by "not yet" do you mean not before Steam release (my hope) or not before the Big Wait/Myth Arc (my fear).

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8062380#msg8062380
JesterHell696 (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8062593#msg8062593
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8062598#msg8062598
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8062606#msg8062606
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8062609#msg8062609
Untrustedlife: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8062659#msg8062659
and more

Adv mercs: That was a hope, but I think it'll have to wait a bit now.
Speaking skills+Seeing fear: Persuade, intimidate and flatter come up the most currently, where judge intent and intrigue offer modifiers.  Though we switched to dwarf mode before this jelled - it's still on the list of things to clean up in January, even if quite a bit is being delayed surrounding it.
Intrigue tab: The intrigue tab (in Q) is for seeing the org charts and also all of the actors and plots you've discovered, rather than anything to do with the skill directly.
When are adv civ skills: Yeah, I think therahedwig's observation that between Steam and the Big Wait we have adv mode medical, and that adv mode medical may include some civ skill improvements generally, is about as much as we've decided.  But Shonai_Dweller's correct about tools being a main blocker.  It could be proper to just forego the tools and get *something* in.  We waffle on that, and whether or not the more abstract workshops should be involved (as Untrustedlife notes for carpentry.)

Right now books are kind of artifacts, and they have a tendancy to be stolen by visitors (or they just, um, forgot to put them down or something...). Are these going to be generating reports?

If I accidentally kill a visitor and put his artifact on a pedestal, or even just in a stockpile, does the game know it's now mine and start generating suspicious activity reports for it?

Are the justice system updates going to make it slightly less impossible to track down and capture a visitor vampire?
(Not actually experienced this myself, so someone else might chime in with what the specific issue is there and how updating the justice system might account for it).

The suspicious activity reports are only triggered in the context of heists currently for performance/mem reasons (not that it's a lot, but it would be a contributing factor to trouble) -- even kobolds don't trigger the same level of detail, though I hope to get to that point in the future.  So the books shouldn't cause problems unless a villain wants one.

Visitor vampies: Yeah, it'll help some, because the new system can track off-site and non-fort people now, so you can at least have an ongoing record of witness reports, and the ability to arrest them.

But is there any kind of secure 'duress' of dwarves/other when they're brought to the sheriff's or will say interrogating a P.O.W cage caught goblin for rumors about prisoners, tributed artifacts and further information suddenly lead to them breaking free and starting a slaughter depending that the sheriff ability to hold them still?

Keeping in mind this is a bridge we've already come to pass with the dangerous animal hauling job being relegated to using cage transferral now: If prisoners are not safe or trustworthy enough to bring into the office, can they be escorted to a cage inside the law enforcement office?

Sorry if my questions are relatively similar and related, it just there's a discrepency that a dangerous vampire might end up being apprehended peacefully, brought to office, accused and unmasked then go immediately hostile like they do in adventure mode and there wouldnt be any sort of way to secure them from a outburst (like having their hands tied) unless i already exploited disorientation to put dwarves inside a cage trap (regarding question #2)

I didn't change that at all.  I agree it is sometimes troubling, though at least you can interrogate an existing prisoner at a chain or cage if you don't want to bring them to an office, as I recall.

Is it something like a pause-and-zoom announcement when citizens notice a missing artifact or is it a passive report that waits to be noticed?

There is a big box announcement with a location, yeah -- it shouldn't be so common as to be annoying.  It only it once for each escalation through witness report types, if the witness reports escalate in order (e.g. 'artifact missing!' -> 'artifact seen stolen!' -> 'artifact seen handed off!').

Will we finally be seeing a bit of justice in adventure mode in this release or is that still a ways off? Like could the lord of a village the adventurer angered send an actual assassin after you? Or is that all limited to villains, what if the lord is secretly a villain? Right now sometimes hearthpeople will attack you and follow you around in the village if you anger them in the current version/they run into you on patrol,  but that isnt much and it may be only limited to cases where you actually attack the meadhall (though im not sure).

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8063498#msg8063498

We're not quite there yet - as therahedwig notes, we have many of the tools now, and that was part of the point of doing all this, but it'll have to wait a bit now.

I've been mucking about with books. I have noticed with certain book forms, like the biographical dictionary and the genealogy, that my adventurer just wrote an essay. Is that because these forms are not properly implemented yet, or is it because my adventurer just knows too little about the world? Because star charts are also not really implemented, but they do give a chart text instead of an essay.

- What determines whether a scholar will actually discover a topic at the end of their research? A coinflip?
- Why can bookbindings and codices not be decorated while scroll rollers can? Is it because the notion of a covering for the codex is missing?
- For many of the non-manual books, guides, chronicles, encyclopedias. I expected them to actually teach adventurers about the content(s), but reading them doesn't seem to do anything. Is this related to the rumour/knowledge split? Do these books do anything on the purest of mechanical levels, or is it mostly unimplemented?

Yeah, I just haven't gotten to the proper level of detail myself.  As I recollect, I left some notes behind but didn't flesh it out before release, as often happens.  The lack of info wasn't about the adventurer knowledge, but the basic implementation.  This is also why they don't teach anything.

Hmm, I have no idea about the binding/codex decorations vs. scroll rollers, and it's not something I can check quickly.  I'll have to make a note.

Let's see, fort scholars...  they do activity cycles, the length of which is 1-2 days (whether they are pondering or discussing etc.)  Once they get through 50 cycles, it rolls 0-50 vs. the number of completed cycles minus 50 to see if they get "breakthrough credit."  So at 51, they have a 2% chance, and at 100, they have a 100% chance.  Then, it resets the cycle number to zero and gives them breakthrough credit, based on a skill roll plus 100 (for discuss, the other researchers contribute half of their summed skill rolls.)  Based on the difficulty (1-4) of the topic, total lifetime breakthrough credit is then assigned a number of 50-sided dice.  An easy topic is dice=credit/2500, then /5000, then /10000, then /20000 for level 4 topics.  The number of dice cannot exceed 10.  Then roll these dice -- if you get a 50 on any of them, discovery!  This is a bit archaic, and I'm not suggesting it works particularly well.  But that is how it works.  Also: if they fail to get the breakthrough after the 50-sided rolls, they have a 2% chance of switching topics, or if their credit exceeds 100000, they always switch topics (though they keep the credit, so returning to the topic later gives them a decent chance at breakthrough.)

1) To what extent will your dwarves interact with prisoners as of this coming release? Will it be possible for the dwarf carrying water to prisoners to become friends with them, try to release them, petition for their release, or be blackmailed by them?

2) What kind of value changes result from thoughts related to imprisonment? Can someone released early or who sees their blackmailer jailed start to value the law and stop being villainous?

3) You mentioned that in world generation you've seen family members completely lose trust in their villainous kin. Are there any interactions family and friends can have with villainous people that sways them from committing further villainy once their current intrigues are thwarted?

4) Can you pull up a gremlin on charges for their lever crimes and send out a squad of dwarves to non-lethally nab the little buggers in the caverns locally? Can you integrate said little buggers from jail instead of cages if you're simultaneously training them?

5) How strong is the influence of law values on decision making when it comes to schemes? How strong is the influence of the trust value on letting somebody convince you that actually laws are arbitrary and worth breaking with schemes?

1. They probably chat with them, yeah, but they don't advocate for them or do anything meaningful.

2. They do a lot of relevant value changes, but it's still very random which one they pick.  It doesn't try to find further meaning beyond the event type.

3. Corrupt relations are not currently salvageable, sadly.

4. Ha ha, nope.  We haven't merged in any of the ancient code.

5. Gah, it's something like...  ten points, at the highest.  In an equation with many many factors, where points have arbitrary meaning.  Part of the idea behind the adv mode work was to get some verbal feedback for balancing that stuff out in a way that can be expressed, but we didn't get to that, so it's still a very rough equation.  We have the historical feedback, but that just gives the most important factor.  But hmm, high trust vs. high law probably cancel out evenly, so it'd go back to skill/personality.

Are there any plans for civilisation/era-specific architecture?

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8066153#msg8066153
BlevRuz (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8066157#msg8066157

Yeah, I don't have specific plans, but I have some more reading material, and eventually we'll put something together.

Will AI agents try to re-mount if they fall from their mount ? I mean, is a bandit aware of the fact that he is on something, and that, if he falls from his mount, he can ride it again ?

Second question : do you plan to add the mounting part in Arena too ?

I'd really like to test many things with mounting.

The only people that re-mount are your companions that have mounts -- they always try to mimic your state, which is a bit silly at times, if you don't have a mount, but it is better than nothing.  We'll have to do more later.

Arena: you can already set basic mount relationships in the current version, and in the new version, you can also set a creature to be tame/mountable so you can mount/remount it if you are controlling a character, but the AI doesn't understand remounting.

It seems to me that the "worldgen -> post-worldgen -> adventure mode -> fort mode" development process causes most of the new features to just be applied to the game's history generation, because by the time the actual gameplay parts of the development cycle are reached, there isn't much development time left.
Do you still prefer this development structure or would it be better for the game to go through it backwards and start development of new features in adv/fort mode?

therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068325#msg8068325

Yeah, I agree that it's a bit frustrating, though I do think it works out for the best a lot of times, to test things out and then get them in place.  This particular time though, we're uniquely hitting a deadline in a way that is not only a first but hopefully also won't be as much of an issue in the future.  So the process has specifically worked out very poorly this time, partially because we were already underway before a Steam deal was even being contemplated, and partially because I didn't think through the date ramifications carefully afterward (I might have delayed more earlier, to get to more fort/adv stuff.)  But whatever pain there is this time should help me organize better for next time, and hopefully we'll have more fort/adv stuff and fewer multiple-feature delays for future releases.

- Do horses need to graze in adv mode? I looked around, but couldn't see anything regarding it. Horses ignoring you to graze is a pretty universal horseback-riding experience.
- How are you planning on tackling the steam release? Just one big monthslong dev cycle, or are you going to break it up a little so you can fold it into the bugfix cycles and have binaries for M&M to experiment with?
- Will the new romance stuff also be delayed for fort mode to the post-steam releases?
- Do you think the army stuff will take as long as the villains release has? I mean, sure the villains release got delayed by all the linking stuff that cropped up, but as far as I know it is also a pretty ambitious system for a video game. Will the army stuff require a lot of worldgen work, or is it mostly interaction and UI side?

PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068350#msg8068350
therahedwig (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068435#msg8068435
PatrikLundell: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068457#msg8068457
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068482#msg8068482
therahedwig (op): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068510#msg8068510
PlumpHelmetMan: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068514#msg8068514
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068530#msg8068530
PlumpHelmetMan: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068539#msg8068539
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8068720#msg8068720

Grazing: Hmm, they don't appear to -- at least the grazing behavior is over in the fort mode idle side currently.

Steam cycle: On the graphical side, it has to be one big cycle - the Steam release is an event of sorts.  M&M are developing with us now, so I'm sure they'll have test stuff to play with to make their art iteration easier.  We're also hoping to start the stabilizing branching, experimentally, before the Steam release -- so if there's some nasty bug in the villains release that takes time to show, I can release a patch for it while keeping the Steam release on track.

Romance: Dwarf mode got multiple lovers, breakups, divorces, and additional friendship/grudge categories.  Didn't do jealous obsessions there yet.  Didn't dive into trust/loyalty distinctions since there wasn't much to work with yet, until we get a little further into how traitors work etc., or some other approach that uses them.

Army timing: The villains stuff was pretty intricate.  I think the army changes will probably be more straightforward.  Though we have ways of complicating things.  Also, it's possible the army stuff can be broken into a series of shorter releases.  The way the villain stuff worked, we didn't do that (though we should have, probably).  The Steam release will also be out at this time, so I probably shouldn't make any assertions about how the releases will be structured specifically, until we get a feel for how that works.  But the only time we're really planning to disappear for a bit is the Big Wait, and that'll still have stabilization releases on the 'stable' branch, however we set that up.

Delays/deadlines: Regarding comments about the deadline/delays, this is not pressure coming from Kitfox or the artists.  We just have to start -- I've been sitting on the contract more than a year!  That's my fault.  We should have a better system in place once we're releasing on Steam + Classic in a more understood fashion.  I just estimated poorly or flat-out didn't think some of the date matters through.  But we'll get back to the delayed features along with the army stuff before the Big Wait, when we have some more control over the timing, and a parallel pipeline for stabilizing bugs etc. in place.

Since elves operate in their own religious system compared to polytheism with the Druid holding higher office than the Queen, they are obviously different than all the other races for the next version who mostly adhere to polytheism (and goblin demonic monotheism, but until that's fixed: atheism). Besides establishments for shrines will there be any kind of barebones recognition of druidism from a playable fortress's perspective should a player switch the religious system in the raws and desire to pray to the natural spirit of the mountains?

Its something i might probe into when the version with priests eventually rolls out, but i imagine they're probably far away from acolytes doing very important nature stuff (purportedly via the mass recreational consumption of hemp plants grown locally) in that one day, a fortress priest/druid might inherit a prominent nationally important noble role via mass support or private selection of successors.

From the player fortress, I don't think it'll be meaningful, no.  They don't create wandering priests with variations of their religion, so just through absence I guess.  The elf system continues to be undernourished.

1. In a previous update you mentioned that animal people were some of the last holdouts to a necromancer's reign of terror. Are animal men going to receive any significant behavioral changes in the next update?
2. If randomly generated necromancers can create special undead, could we create our own necromancer types which could create unique types of undead? Would it be possible to start an adventure mode playthrough as an undead servant of a necromancer?
3. Could reanimating biome regions create special undead?
4. How exactly does a faction gauge the strength of someone they want to attack? You've mentioned before that civs will do this but what factors are at play here? Population, what metals they use, and what pets they have come to mind.

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8069436#msg8069436
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8069466#msg8069466
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8069468#msg8069468
voliol: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8069472#msg8069472
FantasticDorf: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8069596#msg8069596

1. Yeah, nothing changed for them.  That was just a group of heroic critters at an elf site, I think.

2. The tags for 'experimenter' etc. are available for modders, though it doesn't offer additional control over what sorts of critters are made.  The resurrection ability lets you customize the syndrome though, so that should be moddable in more specific fashion.  You can adventure as an experimental humanoid if they escaped and made it to a town - we still don't allow 'evil' civ adventurer starts, though there aren't too many obstacles to that.

3. They don't currently, in vanilla, and they can't do experiments...  I have no idea if the resurrection effect works.  Probably not?

4. Yeah, there's a whole numeric strength calculation that takes equipment, pops, pets, etc. into consideration, the same calcs that are used in the actual abstract squad battles, though it won't be very accurate to how things work out when they meet in local play on the tile grid.

6. To what extent does your shield protect your mount?

It'd be cool to ride at a fire breathing dragon, deflecting its fearsome breath, preparing to plunge a spear into its beastly heart. It'd be slightly less cool to then have all the fat boil off your horse.

DG: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8070420#msg8070420
Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8070438#msg8070438

It doesn't do anything, as I recollect, for attacks.  It's the same as it has always been for siege riders, and I don't think their shields did anything.  Though for flows...  does the shield prevent the flow from entering the square?  Then it would work.

If an artifact gets stolen in an area a player adventurer is in, is it possible the player adventurer will be interrogated if they are suspected of stealing it? If so how will responding to an interrogation as a player adventurer work?

Shonai_Dweller: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8071312#msg8071312

Yeah, as Shonai_Dweller says, we haven't done anything with this yet.

What is this ”limb regrowth effect” from the latest devlog? Some new magic effect, or something old like healing due to transformation? Am I right in assuming the latter parts meant this effect (whether new or old) will be moddable in the upcoming version?

Toady, did you remove the body reset from transformations, then?

Can this effect be turned around to remove tissues from limbs, like in the old Armok game?

Eric Blank (op2): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8071459#msg8071459
therahedwig: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8071467#msg8071467
Eric Blank (op2): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg8071468#msg8071468

Ah, it's the shrine thing, yeah, sorry.  There are about...  ten, twelve new healing effects available as part of syndromes, for all of the bad stuff.  Not just open wounds, missing limbs, and bleeding, but for nerves, infection, swelling, dizziness, etc. -- though there isn't one for actually "curing" poison itself, just symptoms, and the shrine healing syndrome lasts only a short while, so it wouldn't help for long.  We still need an effect that removes existing syndromes by class/token/etc.

I have a note for fixing the body transformations (by storing wound states, since transferring them is too hard for now), and thought I was going to get there, but now it is in the delay pile.

Tissue removal:  Ha ha, I didn't add a new effect, but syndromes like rot can already target tissue layers, so you can make a skin rotting spell now if you want.  But I don't remember if that can get you all the way to the 'missing' state, or just a very disgusting one.

So the release will be in january according to the steam update, does this mean you didnt get everything you wanted for this release done, how much did you get done, can you give us a rundown on how close you came to that? How happy are you with it? (I like the good old Tarn Adams rambling)

Will making adventure mode a "fun game" still be a priority after the steam release given that the new players will likely focus on fort mode? Ive been worried about this. As I absolutely love adventure mode and i can see a ton of potential and love it even now given the ludicrous variety of roles the player can fill and the reactive world sim.

Do you really mean to finalize "Classic" in January, given the previously stated desire to sort out raid crashes and stress/memory issues on top of all the unknown new issues likely to arise from 18 months of pretty amazing and jam-packed development since the last release? Yes, you wrote "After any fires are put out," and I know there's some. . . tension. . . here on the forum between the "Hey, maybe some bug fixes?" and "No, no fix, only feature!" camps, but if there's ever been a time to square some things away before starting a major development cycle, perhaps it's now? Even the biggest "Feature" pushers eventually admitted some stress changes might have been nice by October 2018.

Feature delays/Steam/bug scheduling: I'm writing this FotF before the Jan 1 dev log, but the anticipation is that the answers to your questions will be there, to the extent they weren't already addressed above in some of the other Steam cycle questions (e.g. existence of stabilization branch etc.)

Potential fort mode focus:  Along with all the fort stuff post Steam, adv mode medical, adv army stuff, delayed villainous stuff and all that are still the plan.  I'm not sure what sorts of change-ups will be in store after the Steam release, but we've always been making the game we wanted to make, more or less, and we're going to keep doing that.  RPGs don't do *badly* on Steam as far as I know.

Can characters that got cursed by being bitten by a werecritter be cured by praying to a/the (right) god?

No syndrome cures of any kind so far, sadly.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Thanks Toady. Glad we're able to celebrate another decade of DF!

[clinodev]

Happy New Year and thanks for the replies as always!

When I posted them on the Discord distribution thingy, Victoria immediately replied: "Omg Tarn haha take a break"   

Additionally, thanks for a really great and complete Dev Log this month! Many, many more people read that and I think it's going to ease a lot of people's questions and anxieties.

[FantasticDorf]

I didn't change that at all.  I agree it is sometimes troubling, though at least you can interrogate an existing prisoner at a chain or cage if you don't want to bring them to an office, as I recall.

1. They probably chat with them, yeah, but they don't advocate for them or do anything meaningful.

Very interesting, having a goblin inside someone's room as a decoration or in the 'zoo' (or any other kind of person) should in theory let them flex their social skills for practice on a live participant who can't run away.

Might still expect a issue report though like "Room covered in spit, dont know why" from angry goblins who don't like the social interaction. I think i might take the pacifist route out, let dwarves work their social skills on a goblin then gently pit them in a isolated shut off area soon as their heads are full of dwarf philosophy, friendships and bunkum and see how far they get as they run for their lives off the map.

*EDIT - Other possible issue reports like 'Dwarf does not sleep due to unknown noise disturbance' of a goblin shouting all the while from the chain at the opposite side of the room.

[Eric Blank]

Thanks so much for the answers Toady

[therahedwig]

Thank you for the answer, and again much good luck with polishing this release

[JesterHell696]

Thanks for the answers Toady.

[Witty]

You mentioned on Dwarf Fortress Roundtable podcast that you and Zach had a multi-day Transport Tycoon session. Could you elaborate a bit on that? I'm curious as to how you got that started and what the ultimate end result was.

[Knight Otu]

Thanks for the answers!

[darkhog]

With the graphics mode for the steam version, will you make changing tilesets easier so you won't have to basically update all the save games as well so they use correct tiles?

Also, more importantly, what are some optimizations you can do in game's coding so FPS death, if not becoming a thing of the past, can be way less common? Note that I mean performance issues during game play, not anything related to world/history generation (for that I'm a patient person and can let it generate over night).

[PatrikLundell]

As far as I understand, the "graphics" rework will move the tile dependencies from the saves to a common place. This is more or less necessary since a Commercial save would otherwise either be incompatible with a Classic save, or would sort of violate the Commercial conditions by moving the Commercial tile set into a Classic player's game.

There is no silver bullet for FPS death, or it would have been fired off a long time ago. It's a matter of tweaking things in a lot of places, basically, which is an ongoing job I think Toady performs behind the scenes. The battle basically manages to keep the rate at which the FPS death happens to remain about the same as DF becomes larger and more complex, but is unlikely to cure it.

[Luckyowl]

not sure if anyone asked this, but is there a way you can make the rate, and reload time on range weapons a token so we can edit and customize different type of weapons?