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[clinodev]

Have you considered allowing players to designate an entire ore/gem vein from an exposed tile instead of using a selection rectangle with sub-settings?  I was recently reminded that the former is not a vanilla function (DFHack), and seems like a good quality of life addition for Steam.

If I'm understanding correctly, it actually is a vanilla feature, it came in some years ago with marker mode and taverns, if I recall correctly, but I talk to people who don't know about it all the time!

From the menu, click d then a, and look near the bottom of the menu. You'll see, as you press a repeatedly, that "a: Designating All" will cycle through several other options, including "a: Automining Ore/Gems" which works very much like DFhack's "digv", you can select a single tile of a vein or cluster and it will designate it to be mined out. The main difference is it doesn't "cheat" and reveal the whole vein at once, but discovers each tile as it becomes visible, then designates it. Much more elegant.

Here's the wiki page: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Designations_menu#Designations_modification

[Salmeuk]

Have you considered allowing players to designate an entire ore/gem vein from an exposed tile instead of using a selection rectangle with sub-settings?  I was recently reminded that the former is not a vanilla function (DFHack), and seems like a good quality of life addition for Steam.

If I'm understanding correctly, it actually is a vanilla feature, it came in some years ago with marker mode and taverns, if I recall correctly, but I talk to people who don't know about it all the time!

From the menu, click d then a, and look near the bottom of the menu. You'll see, as you press a repeatedly, that "a: Designating All" will cycle through several other options, including "a: Automining Ore/Gems" which works very much like DFhack's "digv", you can select a single tile of a vein or cluster and it will designate it to be mined out. The main difference is it doesn't "cheat" and reveal the whole vein at once, but discovers each tile as it becomes visible, then designates it. Much more elegant.

Here's the wiki page: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Designations_menu#Designations_modification

I believe Immortal is actually referring to the ability to instantly designate the entire vein. It is a form of soft cheating in that you can map out the eventual path your dwarves will carve, which is veeeery handy, and also saves time in certain situations.

However, to make the feature more fitting in vanilla, you could possibly create some kind of function to determine if the vein tiles are actually exposed, and then only designate those visible portions of the vein.

[Mr Crabman]

1. Why are embark tiles 48x48? It feels like a weird number, neither just an intuitive even number like 100, nor a power of 2 like 32 or 64.

2. Would custom/moddable biomes and dimensions be possible in the future at some point after the map rewrite and mythgen?

That is, for biomes this would ideally enable things like custom ranges of flora/fauna with different predominances.

And for dimensions, would allow stuff like their own set of biomes and geology/material composition and structural generation (probably borrowed from other parts of worldgen, like "this is a cavern-like dimension" or "this place is made of floating rocks in a void" or something; or maybe that would be per-biome or something) and their metaphysical/magical rules (to an extent anyway; leaving some flexibility for mythgen to play with the dimension to varying degrees would be good probably).

In both cases, I mean in advance of worldgen itself for worldgen to work with, not just editing a specific world map post-worldgen with the "map editor" that's been mentioned before.

[PatrikLundell]

1. 48 = 16 * 3, so you get a 3 * 3 grid of 16 * 16 sections, resulting in a central section (rather than 4 sections around a center point). That's only a guess, though.

[Mr Crabman]

Hm, that makes some sense I guess.

How would mod updates work with the fact that saves don't keep raws anymore? One thing I see that worries me is that neither DFFD nor the Steam Workshop store old uploaded versions of mods (uploading a new version replaces the old one), so if all saves share mods (since they aren't stored inside the save folder anymore), that means updating a mod could irreversibly make all existing saves using it unplayable, and therefore as long as those saves exist, updating mods won't be safe/doable, so it won't be possible to use an updated version in a new save even though it could make use of it (if not for the other existing saves relying on the old version).

[iwantjelly]

Ok, if I understand correctly, Adventure Mode isn't sure to ever be released in the steam version ? That would be too bad, it has crazy potential !

[Mr Crabman]

Ok, if I understand correctly, Adventure Mode isn't sure to ever be released in the steam version ? That would be too bad, it has crazy potential !

Where did you hear adventure mode might not ever come to Steam? It'll definitely be coming eventually, though I think I've heard (unsubstantiated) rumors/guesses that it might be skipped for the first Steam release to get it out sooner, but those rumors will be confirmed or deconfirmed one way or another this Thursday when we get the official steam release roadmap.

[voliol]

How often are you designing/planning/discussing other future stuff during, or when taking pauses from, working on the Premium release? Compared to during a more ”feature-heavy” arc like the villains one. Is it more often as revamping menus is more samey? Or more seldom because of being busy or having planned out what can be already? Or about the same?

[iwantjelly]

Where did you hear adventure mode might not ever come to Steam? It'll definitely be coming eventually, though I think I've heard (unsubstantiated) rumors/guesses that it might be skipped for the first Steam release to get it out sooner, but those rumors will be confirmed or deconfirmed one way or another this Thursday when we get the official steam release roadmap.

Thanks for reassuring me ! This got me worried :

We haven't started converting adventure mode yet, and I think it's premature to say exactly how much we'll be able to manage before it crosses the point of being good enough for a release.  It is a weird creature in a lot of ways, and a lot of things are broken about it

My overthinking self overthought these words as "it's so broken we're gonna try but maybe not succeed to cross the point of being good enough for a release", but that's just me then. I'll eagerly wait for the roadmap  the hype !

[Mr Crabman]

You're welcome @iwantjelly.

For the future by the way, if you're directing a question at Toady you should color it lime green like this.

[voliol]

Where did you hear adventure mode might not ever come to Steam? It'll definitely be coming eventually, though I think I've heard (unsubstantiated) rumors/guesses that it might be skipped for the first Steam release to get it out sooner, but those rumors will be confirmed or deconfirmed one way or another this Thursday when we get the official steam release roadmap.

Thanks for reassuring me ! This got me worried :

We haven't started converting adventure mode yet, and I think it's premature to say exactly how much we'll be able to manage before it crosses the point of being good enough for a release.  It is a weird creature in a lot of ways, and a lot of things are broken about it

My overthinking self overthought these words as "it's so broken we're gonna try but maybe not succeed to cross the point of being good enough for a release", but that's just me then. I'll eagerly wait for the roadmap  the hype !

Either way what comes for Premium (i.e. the Steam/itch.io) version will be all that Classic (i.e. the free versions once the game is out on Steam/itch.io) will have and then some, due to Steam contracts where they want all features of a game on their platform. So if Premium isn’t getting Adventurer mode then so is no version of Dwarf Fortress, and I just can’t see a third of the game getting put on the chopping block.

[Mr Crabman]

1. The number of sliders that can be put into the "main" generation screen is limited for obvious reasons of not being overwhelming; just some basic stuff, and all the masses of complex options get shoved into the advanced worldgen menu.

But for myth and magic (and maybe even future updates possibly, if you have plans that far ahead), what do you imagine these "top level, non-advanced" sliders for worlds would be? The most obvious ones (and which have been mentioned before) for myth&magic are a "mundane vs fantasy" slider, and a "randomness" slider separate to that maybe (though what a zero-fantasy world with high randomness would even mean?), but there also has been mention of things like world bleakness and such in the past, so I'm curious what you consider worthy of being a "basic" slider for the normal worldgen menu.

2. So you got a new batch of music from the composer apparently... What will it be for?

[voliol]

Thank you for the road map . Even though it was heavier than I think many of us expected, it is appreciated that you are keeping us updated and that you are open to being flexible, letting us give our thoughts on what should go in the first release. I am split on it myself, some part of me is happy I’ve been touting for a ”2022 or 2023 release” at times to tone down hype overload at the Steam forums, and part of me wants to see a release as soon as possible. But from the tone of the road map post and the recent monthly reports, I also think you have discovered some of these problems the last few weeks, so I doubt the frustrations are one-sided. Again, thank you for being honest and with us, it is really important.

Now, some questions:
1. What menus could not make it over to Classic semi-automatically? Due to what UI elements? The icon buttons?
2. It makes sense to me that Adventure and Legends mode get priority over Steam Workshop support. Is 4. on the roadmap just investigating Workshop, or for implementing it as well if it doesn’t take too long?
3. Have you figured a way to make future menus Classic/Premium-proof, having seen what broke this time? So that you won’t have to do double menus in the future?

[Mobbstar]

Thank you for the roadmap.  We greatly appreciate the status update!  Take the time to make DF shiny and great!

Does "haven't done anything with Adventure mode and Arena mode yet" mean these modes would be available with the old (0.47) interface?  Or unavailable at all?

[Mr Crabman]

]Does "haven't done anything with Adventure mode and Arena mode yet" mean these modes would be available with the old (0.47) interface?  Or unavailable at all?

I wouldn't be surprised if they worked with the old 0.47 interface; we saw at least once in one of the devlog updates on the Kitfox youtube channel where Tarn accidentally entered an old screen. It seems like even the new background color for menus (as opposed to "ASCII black") is something that has to be done manually, so those mode's menus I suspect are just the same as they are now.