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[rungus]

Hi all. I'm new playing the game, although I've known about it for a few years, and I was wondering if there is a brief guide anywhere to which features were added when, alongside what is known and speculated about future releases. For example, I just stumbled across a mention of how temples were added in one release, and it was assumed that they were a precursor to religion being developed more, and it just got me wondering if religion has been developed more since then, and if there was a brief guide to the history of the development with a discussion of where it might go from here. I'm sure there's all sorts of info spread across this forum and the wiki, but it would take lifetimes to go through it all.

In some ways it's good that I can't comprehend anything, as it reminds me of reading Tolkien when I was 13, and feeling wonder at the vast history that was only hinted at that made the world seem so real and complex. On the other hand, it would be good to get a vague grip of the story so far, as a new player.

Also, on the topic of information for new players, is there a FAQ section in this forum? Or a complete list of which skills are moodable and which non-moodable anywhere? And what does a moody tanner even do? Do they make a damn good piece of leather, or do they hop onto the leatherworking workshop and make a leather artifact?

[Starver]

Possibly you'd benefit from a wander around the game wiki, for everything you might ask about, like all kinds of info about moody tanners. That page looks (overly?) comprehensive (i.e. all things Moody), there may be other pages a little less useful (but people are always looking at improving those).

Forum-FAQ-wise, there's a board specifically for questions, and another dedicated to the Wiki.

I'd also be interested in a readable narrative summary of development history (and future). I know there's all kinds of technical/devloggy details on the Wiki, but it may be a bit dry (and reading through the Dev's actual published Devlog notes can be entertaining but time-reversed and distractingly chatty if trying to splurge the whole lot.

Maybe someone can already point to something of a summarised-chronicle/chronicled-summary for you (us) to read. Perhaps I could even try to distill what I know (and can additionally research, probably discover afresh) myself. But those links might help to start you down the rabbit-hole!

[Manveru Taurënér]

Don't think there's any good compiled resources like that sadly no, have thought of maybe attempting such a thing myself at times but alas don't have much spare energy these days. The best and most easily accessible chunk would probably be the DFtalks, but a lot of info on future development may only have been mentioned once or twice as an offhanded comment in an interview or FotF answer way back and is easily forgotten/overlooked, not to mention that development tends to meander quite a bit with random bits being added outside of stated plans or other things postponed indefinitely due to time constraints.

[voliol]

Hello rungus, and welcome to the Dwarf Fortress community! I’m a person who tries my best to keep up with future plans for the game, and also sometimes a wiki editor. I’ll try my best to answer your questions.

Realistically the wiki can’t keep tabs on all future plans, and what they were at all points of time. We simply have too few editors/time for that. But we can keep track of the general gist. That information is kind of scattered still, but most of it should be found in the articles for the game itself and development arcs. ”History of Dwarf Fortress” also exists, but it is surprisingly uninformative, mostly containing links to the release notes.

Other than that, there’s the development ”checklist” page for mostly future features, the devlog(at the bottom of the page there are links to earlier year’s), the DF Talks, and the FotF thread.

Religion should get updated/expanded with both Myth&Magic and Starting Scenarios releases, as they relate to the mythological substance of and sites/institutions of religion respectively. Both of them are several years in the future.

Moodable skills can be found in the strange mood article. A moody tanner acts like a moody leatherworker, and produces e.g. a piece of artifact leather clothing.

[Shonai_Dweller]

The best way is to read through the past 10 years of Toady's weekly devlog (well, monthly now, but graphical updates and such aren't so interesting to write about).
That might take a while of course...

Basically the game gets a massive rewrite of large parts of the code every so often. The last one being in 2014 (world activation), the next one being "Mythgen", often referred to as The Big Wait on the forums as it's expected it'll take a long time (2014 update took just over two years). The one after that being "Starting Scenarios". Each of these updates is hugely ambitious, way beyond what the simple one word description might imply. Not sure what the last major update before World Activation was, making the game 3D was a big one (adding the Z level).

Between the rewrites there are plenty of smaller updates which add stuff onto the framework built with the rewrites (since 2014 we've seen "Visitors", "Artifacts" and half of "Villains") which tend to be followed by a bug fixing phase. The schedule is all messed up at the moment though. Villains, which was initially intended to be some neat additions and cleanup to leave us with a nice, fun, stable game during the Big Wait escalated into a massive update (because, basically Villains didn't work because the incredibly complex world wasn't complex enough). And then as it was (maybe) nearing completion, Toady remembered that he'd signed up to make a Steam release and had to put Villains on pause.

A lot of the additions you see are on a superficial level just to make the main focus of the update work. Religions, for example, exist now mainly as a way for villains to blackmail each other and to have institutions to infiltrate and gain power in. Actual religion will continue to be worked on with Mythgen touching on all things magical and godlike and Starting Scenarios on the politics, culture and society side of things (with a lot of overlap probably).

Not the answer you hoped for, I know. Read the devlog, read Threetoes stories, join the ride.

[Nopenope]

Toady basically switches course all the time due to development constraints, tangents, figuring out what he actually wants as he works on the system, and sometimes real-life constraints. At first he'd keep a list of things (the arc system, the core goals, the ordered list, etc.) he would like to develop but it's proven too time consuming to maintain and too hard to commit to as whole systems would get scrapped and some bullet points would become irrelevant. Now he maintains a private list of the things he wants to work on in the immediate future, and reveals very general goals to us (such as Siege and Army Improvements, Myth and Magic, etc.).

[Shonai_Dweller]

Oh and the version number is a rough guide to how many things on "the master list of everything that should be DF 1.0" have been completed. So we're 47% complete right now.

Not sure if that list expands over time, but likely many things not on the list end up in the game.

[FrankVill]

I think this page can give you a clear and orderly idea of ​​the different phases of the project so far:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/History_of_Dwarf_Fortress

As you will see, from the first version 0.21.93.19a (2006-08-08) the world was designed in 2D, the mountains for example were nothing more than "walls".
And a year later, the world turned 3D. You can analyze the different turning points in detail.
Of course, I see that nothing is mentioned of what version 0.47.01 added, which was the addition of villains and their corruption plots (the ability to win allies through blackmail, threats or promises to achieve their purposes), investigation methods of justice such as interrogation, the expansion of religions around the world, the power to create a group of adventurers from the beginning (before you could only handle one) and assign each of them pets or mounts of all kind.

When I was new to DF it seemed to me that its development was a bit chaotic. Often Toady would stop working on something to leave it "half way" and continue working on something else.
But over time I realized that he tends first to design all the possible elements of the world (trees, dragons, minerals, rivers, books ...) at a very basic level, forming a "simple" whole. Once this is done, he goes back to redesigning the various elements adding a new layer of complexity (like moving mountains from 2D to 3D) and adds some new things when these can be accommodated on a solid enough existing foundation. For example, economics will not be introduced until the psychology of dwarves has evolved enough for them to handle it intelligently (you are not going to lend your money to a bunch of crazy monkeys, haha).

It also makes sure that in each version the experience feels as alive and complete as possible. And if for this he has to add random and / or "scripted" elements, he will do it. But what he really wants is to make everything that happens or exists be due to a reason, that everything is cause-consequence. This is the case with merchant caravans, from time to time they simply appear because of your dwarven fortress. But in the future the caravans are expected to come from a city and actually travel a path to get to you (which could lead to bandits waiting to raid them, etc.). Over the years he is making everything feel more organic. Sometimes I enjoy discovering things more in legends mode than playing, knowing for example that the forgoten beast that attacked me existed 100 years before I started playing and things like that.