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Dwarf Fortress 0.31.19 Released"
Nice! Lots of cool new stuff, I see.
Animals can be placed in pen/pasture zones, and grazing animals will need to graze on grass (they can also eat underground fungus found in many open cave layers). Pastures should be made large enough to provide ample grass...
The evil grasses are probably a little extreme and seizure-inducing. I might throttle that back.
While it does add complexity, the fact that grazing animals need to graze now adds realism and I
approve. However, if evil grasses are as evil as you seem to imply, I can see the potential for
serious problems in trying to raise grazing animals on evil biomes! (Does this mean that the pack animals (i.e., Muskoxen) in caravans might automatically become sick or die from visiting an evil biome to trade?) Considering that this need to graze is new, I suggest following through with your intuition on throttling back the evilness of grass.
You can make many of the more clayish soil types into earthenware ceramics now...
I didn't get very far into glazing, but you can ash glaze and tin glaze (with cassiterite).
Many of us have been waiting for
porcelain crafting and high temperature kilns. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying we are
very pleased with this addition, which makes the
169. (3) High Temperature Furnace, Porcelain, Stoneware, Earthware on the Eternal Suggestion Voting list rather obsolete now. (It also makes the
79. (13) Ceramics and Cement votes half obsolete, with the other half still relevant.)
Glazing is cool! That said, I hope you consider
expanding a bit on the types of glazes. Reading about
ceramic glaze on Wikipedia, one finds that a variety of materials have been used as a glaze. Often this includes "suspensions of various powdered minerals, and metal oxides." But what I find as a
rather obvious omission is the lack of
salt glazes. Why not allow
Rock Salt?:
Sodium from the salt reacts with silica in the clay body to form a glassy coating of sodium silicate.
Also, I hope to see one or more
porcelain enamel glazes added some day. (I.e., using a powdered form of
glass.)
I'm starting the first one to two week bug fix cycle now, so there weren't a lot of bug fixes for this release, but creatures, items and vegetation don't pick up as many contaminants now.
Nice!
This contamination business was a
serious issue!
Also, I'm glad to see a new bug fix cycle. But will these fixes be limited to bugs that have arisen from the changes in 0.31.19? Or is there a possibility that a few of the more annoying/serious outstanding bugs might be looked at? (This is supposed to be the start of the
"Caravan Arc", after all. I'm hoping to see
wagons in caravans again...)