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[Jimmius]

I keep hearing people talk about it, see it referenced in FOTF posts etc. but can't seem to find what it actually is. Is there some planned development hiatus in the near future?

[Bumber]

It's going to be a long period (2 years?) of no updates while Toady works on the Myths and Magic development arc. It will probably begin within the next few weeks.

[PatrikLundell]

As Bumber said, it's an extra long wait in between the last release of this development arc and the first one in the (first) Myth & Magic arc. Toady has aimed at keeping these release free period down to about a year, but at the same time he's managed to keep game saves backwards compatible (with new feature loss) for quite some time.
This time he's going to do significant structural changes that are going to break save game compatibility, and he'll probably cram several of those in at the same time. Then he's going to implement basic myth and magic, as well as mostly restore the current functionality using the new structures.
As can be guessed, this takes extra time. How long isn't known (obviously), but it's probably not going to be less than two years and hopefully not more than four.

I believe the start of the Big Wait will happen a lot later than in a few weeks. The development page contains a lot of candidates for development in this arc, and while he's stated clearly that not all of them will be implemented now, there's several month's worth of development material there, and once the actual development is done, there's usually one or two bug fixing releases at the end to leave the game in a playable state during the Big Wait. I've seen someone guess at October, and that seems like the right ballpark to me, give or take a couple of months.

[Shonai_Dweller]

It's going to be a long period (2 years?) of no updates while Toady works on the Myths and Magic development arc. It will probably begin within the next few weeks.

Toady gave himself an extension of 6 months to this 'small updates' phase back in April. There's still quite a lot to add from the pre-mythgen list. And while not everything on that list will make it, we've been promised a villains update, armies and adventurer pets at least. Probably this'll keep going until around October.

[KittyTac]

One the Big Wait starts, I'm going to almost completely disappear from this board and just spend time in FG&RP.

[Shonai_Dweller]

One the Big Wait starts, I'm going to almost completely disappear from this board and just spend time in FG&RP.

If everything goes to plan, will have a feature packed, "stable" (as far as alpha df is ever stable) DF to play with. A new golden age of modding will ensure and all the board will sing in harmony. Toady even says he's considering looking back to fix fatal errors in the final pre-Big Wait release as there always seems to be one (trees hit buildings crash, weapon traps crash, etc) discovered 3 weeks after new development begins. It's all looking good.

[Salmeuk]

If a new player returns to DF after their first "big wait," they are officially converts and will continue to play the game well into the future.

[Rose]

This right there is the timeline of DF releases.

Zoomable link


As can be seen, there's a pattern of about 6 or 7 long waits, followed by quick bugfix releases.

I survived 5 of them.

[PatrikLundell]

Comment on Japa's comment:
DF is developed in "arcs", where each arc starts with an initial release, followed by a number of bug fix/implementation releases where bugs are fixed (typically the first releases after the initial one are focused on fixing fatal bugs). Implementation releases implements things the initial one set up the stage for, as well as performs some tweaking/balancing. There may also be further development releases that add content not directly related to the initial release. An arc typically ends with a few bug fixing/tweaking releases. After that there's a longer period (the gaps in the graph) when the groundwork for the next arc is performed. The Big Wait is such a release free gap that's expected to be longer than "normal" (as can be seen from the graph, "normal" isn't exactly a precise definition here).

[KittyTac]

If a new player returns to DF after their first "big wait," they are officially converts and will continue to play the game well into the future.

I joined when 43.05 was still a thing. I survived one.

[Liber celi]

I started with good old 40d. I can still smell it (it smelled like carp).

[Rose]

I started with good old 40d. I can still smell it (it smelled like carp).

Back when HFS was just a single chamber somewhere on the map

[Liber celi]

-one HFS chamber per overworld tile
-we had 4 kinds of clowns and we liked it
-creepy pits with insane humanoids, engravings and skulls, oh my
-fish too hardcore
-horrible sparring mutilations every day, Legendary Champions just merking newbies and wading in dwarven gore
-give crossbows to dwarves with brain damage
-Obsidian >= Steel
-Somebody better stop the Dungeon Master from covering every available surface in XXcloaksXX
-the Economy turned on? Ah shit. Another fortress basically ruined. Better pull that lever, son.

[thvaz]

When I started all we had were a game over message when we dug too much, nothing of this fancy HFS stuff your newbies keep talking about. /getoffmylawn

[Man of Paper]

I'm pretty sure the great Toad can be considered a legal guardian for myself and the last few posters.