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[Shonai_Dweller]

Hello, I've been following the latest Kruggsmash series scorchfountain, and I 've noticed that in his game there are Necromancers literally everywhere. Migrants, villains, bandits, everywhere.
Is that specific to his world or is that a trend? It feels very odd.
I haven't played DF in a long time, that's why I'm asking

New bug introduced in 47.01. Necromancer visitors and migrants.

Also various necromancer enhancements (new beasts, zombie apocalypse style invasions, etc) ensured that most old worlds are full of them now. The Scorchfountain world is pretty typical (I seem to recall he ran it for a few thousand years).

So it is considered abnormal in the way that it's going to be fixed/improved, right?

Yeah, there are two bugs. One is the guaranteed takeover of the world by necros after 800 years or so. Tarn said in a recent interview that, while it's nice to be able to show off the new necro stuff, it requires tweaking to not happen all the time.

Second is the necro visitors and migrants. They shouldn't happen and the game doesn't work well enough with them to let them continue. So it's likely to be just removed until more work on how everyone reacts to weird magical stuff is added (coming up in Mythgen development arc possibly).

[Evans]

The focus has been on adding features and fix serious bugs, with an occasional fix of not-so-serious ones for a long time. The bug fix releases have fixed some of the bugs introduced by the (then) latest major release, but the net result has been the addition of more bugs for every major release. QoL things have had a low priority because most everything is going to be overhauled completely in the future.

Everything? Like *EVERYTHING?*

The Premium release has thrown a spanner into the old operational principles, though, and things might change a little:
- The commercial Premium release will have an official tile set, which can definitely be considered a QoL issue. The functionality in DF itself supporting the tile set will be available to all tile set creators, and that functionality will go beyond what's been available so far. As far as I understand, most of the functionality of TwbT is intended to be included (minus TwbT's bugs, but with DF ones instead).
- The graphics overhaul will provide differently sized grids, which means world tiles will be 16*16 pixels, in-game tiles 32*32, and text elements (such as the UI), will be 8*12 (I think). I would expect DF to support different tile sizes as well, but those are the ones it will be shipped with.

Sure, but its not like shiny new graphics is that vital when compared to, well, pretty much everything.
Unless DF goes Unity with massive increase in graphics quality, extra light effects and such... I'll probably use one of them old tiles anyway, the one I like the most.

<The parts above is what's being worked on currently, with the grid sizes being implemented. The parts below are still to be started. The order below is not any attempt to guess the order in which it will be implemented>
- The UI is to be overhauled, with more logical, or at least consistent, key bindings, plus consistent mouse click support.
- The stress system will be tweaked and re-balanced. I have some hope this will actually be release as updates to the current DF version to get feedback and allow for several passes. The development process is going to be changed to support development of a new version in parallel with support for the current version, and this is a clear candidate for using that process.
- Apart from purely UI related key reshuffling/mouse support, there's also been talk of actual functionality changes, with the military management menu system and stockpiles being among the leading candidates of an enormous list of possible candidates. Time constraints will probably determine how much gets done.

You know what made A.D.O.M. great, when it was new? It wasn't limited level. It wasn't not-so random areas. It wasn't not-so useful artifacts.
What made it great was consistency and most perfect roguelike UI I have ever seen.
UI is important. Consistency is important. These here should have happen years ago, long before we had breakable armors and other new features.
The thing is, good UI is something you basically do *once* and *early* and then only expand on that. It may stay the same practically forever, with only new extra screens added to house new features.
When you have tons of features it gets much more difficult to clean the mess later.

Once the Premium release has been released, there will be the usual set of bug fix releases, starting with game breaking ones and continuing on to less critical ones. Whether Toady will perform more bug fixing than usual remains to be seen, however.

He better, or steam users will eat him raw. 2020 is a year now, paying customers expect certain level of quality. We, the old timers who could use imagination to replace ASCII symbols are a dying breed.

After that it's time to finish the Villains release, and after that there's Improved Sieges. Then, assuming things doesn't change, it's time for the Big Wait where a lot of backwards compatibility breaking changes are made followed by the first Myth & Magic release.
Hopefully, the parallel development support will be employed to make reasonably regular bug fix/minor improvement releases for the (then) current release while the "real" development continues behind the scenes.

Improved sieges sound like something that will make drawbridges breakable, or similar nonsense. Not sure if this is something I look forward to.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Everything. Pretty much, yes.

Way, way too late with "graphics aren't needed comment" ha ha ha.

Oh, UI should be done early? Should have maybe made that comment 10 years ago...

Game is free always has been, always will be. I mean, doesn't stop Steam folk paying for it without knowing what it is. But, you know, why cater for those who buy things without knowing what they are.

Everyone knows necro visitors are bugs now. You're replying to a 6 month old thread

Looking forward to tunneling invaders and trolls knocking down drawbridges. Will finally make Sieges relevant (besides as a surprise for new players. Once). Siegers diverting the river so it flows into your fortress is the funniest comment Tarn made in a while. Would be awesome if that actually became a thing.

[Evans]

Way, way too late with "graphics aren't needed comment" ha ha ha.

Oh, UI should be done early? Should have maybe made that comment 10 years ago...

I think I made a comment along these lines somewhere that long ago.

Game is free always has been, always will be. I mean, doesn't stop Steam folk paying for it without knowing what it is. But, you know, why cater for those who buy things without knowing what they are.

Because, for example, I'll be also buying steam version when it comes out? Who thought?

Everyone knows necro visitors are bugs now. You're replying to a 6 month old thread

Excuse me, was there a new version released after 0.47.04? No? So I am responding to a topic of newest available release, right? Right fella?

Looking forward to tunneling invaders and trolls knocking down drawbridges. Will finally make Sieges relevant (besides as a surprise for new players. Once). Siegers diverting the river so it flows into your fortress is the funniest comment Tarn made in a while. Would be awesome if that actually became a thing.

I could never understood this rush people had for forcing a harder mechanics on everybody. You can play mods with serious siegers if you want to.

How about... start working on adventurer mode instead?

[Shonai_Dweller]

"Serious Siegers" still rush your trap corridor and mill about outside your impenetrable drawbridge for a year before giving up. AI can't be modded.

Anyhow, it's not "people" it's the person who's game you're playing and his plans for it. Tunneling invaders are "optional" in the plans, so presumably can be switched off. Invaders can be turned off altogether if you don't like them.

[Evans]

"Serious Siegers" still rush your trap corridor and mill about outside your impenetrable drawbridge for a year before giving up. AI can't be modded.

Anyhow, it's not "people" it's the person who's game you're playing and his plans for it. Tunneling invaders are "optional" in the plans, so presumably can be switched off. Invaders can be turned off altogether if you don't like them.

Try Jotun siegie agains creatures spreading fires
I had once a wooden fortress in the plains, a lot of !FUN!.

[Shonai_Dweller]

"Serious Siegers" still rush your trap corridor and mill about outside your impenetrable drawbridge for a year before giving up. AI can't be modded.

Anyhow, it's not "people" it's the person who's game you're playing and his plans for it. Tunneling invaders are "optional" in the plans, so presumably can be switched off. Invaders can be turned off altogether if you don't like them.

Try Jotun siegie agains creatures spreading fires
I had once a wooden fortress in the plains, a lot of !FUN!.

Exactly. Right now the only challenge in a siege, after you've played a few times, is challenge you deliberately make yourself. "Build a wooden fortress to fight a fire-breathing enemy". Well, yeah, that's challenging, sure. But right now Toady's looking for actual challenge in the vanilla game. Not "close the drawbridge" which is enough to even nullify your fire-breathing Jotun completely.

(Although to be fair, he hasn't actually mentioned breaking drawbridges in any of the recent interviews. Just messing with the surface if they can't get in. But digging invaders will presumably shake things up a bit).

[Evans]

"Serious Siegers" still rush your trap corridor and mill about outside your impenetrable drawbridge for a year before giving up. AI can't be modded.

Anyhow, it's not "people" it's the person who's game you're playing and his plans for it. Tunneling invaders are "optional" in the plans, so presumably can be switched off. Invaders can be turned off altogether if you don't like them.

Try Jotun siegie agains creatures spreading fires
I had once a wooden fortress in the plains, a lot of !FUN!.

Exactly. Right now the only challenge in a siege, after you've played a few times, is challenge you deliberately make yourself. "Build a wooden fortress to fight a fire-breathing enemy". Well, yeah, that's challenging, sure. But right now Toady's looking for actual challenge in the vanilla game. Not "close the drawbridge" which is enough to even nullify your fire-breathing Jotun completely.

Just because old players already know the game, doesn't mean that new ones have to experience that 'actual challenge' right off the bat.

There are other ways to make game interesting, rather than adding siegers deconstructing walls. Actually, there are other things that can make game interesting rather then sieges.
How about infiltration? This artist troupe turned out to be cultists or poisoners and before you know it, your dwarf are dropping dead left and right or going crazy.

You see... why take the easy way out (nullify defences) and not the more interesting one (conspiration, infiltration, sabotage) when you already have trees dropping leaves and nuts in late seasons.

And besides, the whole game is a challenge you deliberately make yourself.

[Shonai_Dweller]

"Serious Siegers" still rush your trap corridor and mill about outside your impenetrable drawbridge for a year before giving up. AI can't be modded.

Anyhow, it's not "people" it's the person who's game you're playing and his plans for it. Tunneling invaders are "optional" in the plans, so presumably can be switched off. Invaders can be turned off altogether if you don't like them.

Try Jotun siegie agains creatures spreading fires
I had once a wooden fortress in the plains, a lot of !FUN!.

Exactly. Right now the only challenge in a siege, after you've played a few times, is challenge you deliberately make yourself. "Build a wooden fortress to fight a fire-breathing enemy". Well, yeah, that's challenging, sure. But right now Toady's looking for actual challenge in the vanilla game. Not "close the drawbridge" which is enough to even nullify your fire-breathing Jotun completely.

Just because old players already know the game, doesn't mean that new ones have to experience that 'actual challenge' right off the bat.

There are other ways to make game interesting, rather than adding siegers deconstructing walls. Actually, there are other things that can make game interesting rather then sieges.
How about infiltration? This artist troupe turned out to be cultists or poisoners and before you know it, your dwarf are dropping dead left and right or going crazy.

You see... why take the easy way out (nullify defences) and not the more interesting one (conspiration, infiltration, sabotage) when you already have trees dropping leaves and nuts in late seasons.

And besides, the whole game is a challenge you deliberately make yourself.

Infiltration, conspiracy and sabotage are exactly what the Villains arc is all about. That's due to be finished off after Steam is out of the way, before Improved Sieges starts. So exactly what you want.

But seriously. There's so much of the game left to do, decades of work in fact, why do you insist any certain part be worked on before any other part?

Toady wants his indie project, the one he makes by himself, to have tunneling Siegers, has had for the past 10 years, maybe more. Who cares what players have or haven't experienced while tagging along in his alpha versions?

[voliol]

Could you move this discussion either to Future of the Fortress or to PMs? Seeing there's a new post in the Announcements forum is all too exciting for it to turn out to be just comments on an months old release.

[Evans]

But seriously. There's so much of the game left to do, decades of work in fact, why do you insist any certain part be worked on before any other part?

Toady wants his indie project, the one he makes by himself, to have tunneling Siegers, has had for the past 10 years, maybe more. Who cares what players have or haven't experienced while tagging along in his alpha versions?

Player cares.

And the certain part you insist I insist on working is one of the more vital. UI is vital.
Adventurer mode is a whole new separate gameplay that could make fantastic use from all the lore and secrets and new locations and stuff to the great end.

I don't know how to explain it. Either you see the point or you don't.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Leopard geckos were updated as it mentions in the file_changes, but giant leopard geckos are still liked for their amazing sticky feet.

Ha ha, I guess I know what the first job is for the parallel releases, assuming this release isn't fatally flawed.

Looking forward to the new release which hopefully fixes this truly game-breaking bug. And, yeah, crashes and stuff. 

[Huw2k8]

Love how much this gets updated