Development in 2018 (RSS Feed)

• 12/24/2018 This story only uses what we have finished so far: network building, corrupting officials, and some light law enforcement. There's a bit more to do before we move on from world generation, in order to make things more properly villainous.
  
  In the year 100, the most extensive network was run by a secretive figure known only as Earthhells the Bewildering. They have members working in several towns and fortresses (purple is the leader, red is a member, yellow indicates a corrupt official. As usual, the fortresses are just a few pixels; there are three colored here.) To see how this came to pass, we'll start with Lomoth Hummedage, a bandit causing minor trouble around the human town of Bucklejacks.
  
  After amounting to nothing as a bandit for some time, in the year 43 at the age of 29, Lomoth, fond of scheming and idly wishing to become wealthy and powerful, struck up a conversation with the dwarven butcher Aban Paintedbites, on one of the human's visits to the fortress of Sensedtraded. Aban was similarly constituted, and an intimidating figure, though she hadn't committed a crime in her life, and Lomoth managed to talk her into scaring the poor noseless bookkeeper (cougar at age 5) into giving Aban some extra supplies for the pair of ne'er-do-wells to share. Lomoth encouraged Aban to look around for other opportunities while continuing to skim supplies from the bookkeeper. (The human didn't accomplish much else, but Aban was always grateful for the push into her new and exciting lifestyle, and kicked some money Lomoth's way over the years.)
  
  Aban was an extravagant sort, and given to flights of fancy, so she took on the name Earthhells the Bewildering, even if all she'd done was strong-arm some supplies and fail to convince Captain Momuz to look the other way. In fact, Ducim the bookkeeper got fired (no hammering yet!) after a few years, but was too scared to identify Earthhells, went off and became a fish cleaner instead. Earthhells, in the meantime, took the brazen move of looping her own father into criminal schemes, got him to talk Manager Uzol into skimming some money from his position. Her father was a priest of the goddess of jewels, but not a stranger to crime, as Earthhell's aunt had become a notorious goblin gangster after the abduction, and Earthhells was able to play on her father's bond of love as well as his greed. As before, Captain Momuz found out Manager Uzol before long, and he scampered off to become a tavern keeper in some distant fortress.
  
  Earthhells and her dad weren't done with Sensedtraded, though. The priest involved three more locals, and Earthhells convinced a ranger, Dastot, son of the bookkeeper, to get involved (before the firing.) This ended up being quite a catch, as Dastot became an agent for the dwarven civilization not long after. Before leaving on his first mission, Dastot failed to corrupt the broker, but got the chief medical dwarf, earning enough trust with Earthhells to get the go-ahead to try to run his own network. Unsurprisingly, the dwarven spy proved talented, getting Captain Momuz to accept a bribe while flipping Uzol's replacement, Manager Besmar. There would be no more firings of corrupt officials. Sensedtraded was lost to criminality, at least while Momuz was around, but there were still a lot of honest dwarves. At one point, Earthhells tried to get her mother the militia commander to join up, but she was having none of it and never trusted her wayward daughter again. Afterward, Earthhells moved to the nearby fortress of Netpleat. Captain Deduk was never known to turn down a bribe and would be even less trouble than Momuz had been.
  
  In 59, Dastot received his first assignment from Queen Erush, to infiltrate the human town of Bunnyvise on the goblin border. Dastot took on the identity of a monster slayer and went to work, doing Earthhells business on the side, acquiring a cut of embezzled funds from the Chief Chamberlain in 62. He acquired a few new members for the organization, the most notable being the goblin Ber Larvalmenace. Ber was unusual as the child of a goblin spy posing as a merchant and her local goblin lover; Ber stuck with his mother Azstrog while she was on assignment, so never acquired citizenship, and just sort of hung around town without a job when he became an adult. At the time, Dastot and Azstrog were using each other for information as part of their agent duties, and Dastot eventually recruited Ber for the gang in the year 69, when Ber was 21. He was terrible at the job, making three failed approaches on Bunnyvise officials; when he finally turned the Chief Cup-Bearer Shorast, in the year 95, it was short-lived, as a cyclops killed the official in 97.
  
  While all that was going on, Earthhells was growing the network in Netpleat. Her most notable new lieutenants were the historian Urdim Mountainwarded, who brought no fewer than eight new members into the organization, and Thikut Relievedattics, Earthhells's ex-husband, a convicted embezzler and leatherworker. Earthhells was still a butcher, and then a tanner, and eventually became the alderperson of the tanners guild. The reliable Captain Deduk died in 91. His replacement was an elf, Ima Coastalpleats, an ex-poet who got flipped by Earthhells's network within a few years on the job. In year 99, when we were winding up, Earthhells even decided to get her hands dirty, and started embezzling money directly from the guild. As an alderperson, she won't be migrating any time soon, but several of the organization's members are dwarves, not bogged down with duties, and free to travel to the first new fortress that becomes available. That should be fun.
  
  Queen Erush also became a villain, and was killed by a zombie roc, but that's another story.
• 12/13/2018 There is always more to do, but we're at a good stopping point for world gen religions. Prophets now arise in cities and villages associated to their particular gods through the new more granular belief tracking (rather than at random), and the named organized religions are associated to them and can start anywhere, whether that's a village or a capital. Prophets could already do this with monastic orders, and that has been improved by giving these orders the ability to find sponsors for the construction of a monastery, whether the sponsor is a religiously-aligned government or a merchant company or craft guild with aligned leadership.
  
  The prophets can also convert portions of the population to non-monastic religions as well now. These are similar to the current version's temple religions with some new properties. Priesthoods come into being before large temples are built, once the prophet's teachings have taken hold in a community, and these priests further convert populations in the village or city where they are working. This leads to small-scale infrastructure production, as in the last devlog. Once the feedback loop has created enough infrastructure in a market-sized town, a temple can be built, and a high priest is elevated. Additionally, priests can convert people along trade routes and local market connections, leading to additional priests and temples springing into being over time. Once two temples have been built, a holy city is designated and a third level of priest arises there, above the high priests. We should add many variation to this process and its structures later, but it's fine for now.
  
  Even as it stands, there's quite a bit going on. In my first test, a war-and-fortresses religion sprang up in a dwarven hillocks, and the prophet managed to get it adopted by quite a few people in the associated fortress. From there, the second quite-adventurous priest managed to get it passed along the trade/smuggling route to the dark tower, risking murder to establish a temple in what was later declared the holy city of what became the largest world religion. It's quite a fortress, the dark tower, and wholly appropriate for the war-fortress deity for that reason, but pilgrimages are notably awkward. Though I suspect that under the hood, the dark tower was a hit because there wasn't as much competition for the faithful. The demon rulers do not currently care about religions cropping up in their environs, and the goblins don't form them themselves, so the first outsiders that don't get murdered tend to do well. This might be changed in the demon's favor; similar problems with the elves are curtailed somewhat by the druid (who gets an extra state turn as a religious position holder). Prophets only attach to deities (since they are given a belief system concerning the deity's will/future actions), giving them an advantage, so more robust religions using other/similar methods for the non-deities (demon/forest spirit) seem necessary at some point to counteract this and leave those cultures intact for longer.
  
  For some broad examples, I ran out a medium-sized map 150 years. At the end of worldgen, there were 90 non-monastic religions as well as 39 monastic orders. 11 of the monastic orders had found sponsors for monasteries, which exist as separate sites (much like the castles, which are also back in the game.) Seven of the religions had risen to the point of having full three-level priesthoods with multiple temples and a holy city; the largest of these was either the Rainy Sect with 10 temples and 147 priests, or the Cult of Pages with 7 temples and 162 priests, depending on how you count, noting that the many priests are each in different sites and are historical figures drawn from the proper religious segment of the population or from believing historical figures, with all that entails in terms of individual interlocking storylines, though their personal conversion stories could certainly use some (any) details.
  
  Here's the trade map of the world, of the kind you can currently export from Legends mode. And here are the major religions (purple = holy city, red = temple, orange = priest, yellow = believers): the Rainy Sect (deity: sky, priest: Sacred Flier, high priest: High Cloud, holy city priest: Most Holy Sky), the Cult of Pages, the Fenced Faith, the Creed of Blossoms, the Foggy Communion, the Mauve Cult (deity: jewels, priest: Holy Cave, high priest: Exalted Rock, holy city priest: Absolute Lilac), and the Sect of Controlling. One other religion, the Granite Order is in a transitional state with a single temple and 35 priests, but they haven't broken through to a second market-size town yet.
  
  The other 82 religions aren't all insignificant though. Take these two religions, the Romantic Faith and the Adorable Creed, founded within five years of each other a century ago in the same dwarven fortress by two different prophets of the birth god Zefon. Each has only a single priest, the aged dwarf prophets preaching their own version of Zefon, but they've had impact throughout the area. They just haven't managed to break through significantly across trade barriers, or make enough of a local impact to get another priest set up in an attached village, hillocks or mountain hall. But there are many adherents to either faith. The largest templeless minor religion is the Armored Fellowship, a three priest dwarven fortress god religion with two fortress branches, a hillocks branch, as well as believers in four human market towns and an elven market town they picked up on the trade routes. There would be a small chance for these to spread out to the human and elf villages from those markets, but priests on-site would really have helped speed that along. The major faiths managed that transition.
• 12/07/2018 The first part of the w.g. religion rewrite is to update population demographics and site infrastructure in order to support more diversity, which will in turn lead to more interesting links and possibilities. The current setup that the big market cities have (usually) one large temple and nothing else, religiously, and that smaller sites have nothing has been changed. All sites now keep track of small religious structural/sculpture additions they've had over the years, in terms of every worshipped deity and every named religion.
  
  As an example, I ran a small island, where we have the towns of Bunnygears and Wiltconfuse. These towns both started human, and are both located in the north of the island, surrounded by dwarven hillocks and fortresses. So it came to pass that by the year 50, the population of each town was roughly 25% dwarven. This is reflected in the new infrastructure accounting, with each town having a substantial minority of its shrines and statues depicting dwarven deities. In Bunnygears, however, more than half of the religious art/shrines/etc. are dedicated to the human god of beauty. This happened because the ruler of Bunnygears for the last 47 years has been Baroness Erab, an ardent worshipper of Ashi Mirthumber, the aforementioned god. Bunnygears also features many small religious structures specifically related to the Fellowship of Sheens, an Ashi-focused religion that coalesced about halfway through the fifty year period we are considering.
  
  Technically, the game allows devout state actors, populations, and the infrastructure itself to each perform 'actions' over the years. The state historical figures and populations can build new infrastructure, and the infrastructure sways the demographics of the populations slightly. In the case of Bunnygears, this leads to any historical figures that come from the dwarven populations to have a decent chance of being at least casual Ashi worshippers, perhaps even Fellowship of Sheens members, on top of having their traditional beliefs in the dwarven pantheons. The dwarven shrines etc. also have an effect on the human populations, though it is less pronounced numerically. Overall, we're just getting started on these kind of cultural feedback mechanisms, but it seems very promising so far. For now, we'll be moving on to more individual-focused religious interactions in preparation for the villain work. Even as it stands, the fact that historical figures are much more religiously distinct makes the potential plots more interesting.
  
  Incidentally, Ashi's only involvement with Bunnygears was unleashing a werezebra on it, the current price of having a temple to profane. We'll improve this at a later date, he he he.
• 12/05/2018 I don't want to alarm anyone, but the cancer on my nose has returned and they're going to have to do surgery to cut it out. The procedure is covered by my wife's health insurance so I don't need any help in the form of money. But I do want to say that a whole lot of people are not in my position, where insurance will cover part of the cost.
  
  Once again, I don't need any more money than you would normally give to Bay 12 Games. I just want you to think about all the people left out in the cold during the holidays.
  
  Thanks for supporting us, and Congratulations to the generous!
• 12/01/2018 A Bay 12 Report to begin the end of the year, and also here is the Future of the Fortress for the month.
• 11/28/2018 Worldgen corruption is underway. It seems pretty clear it'll fulfill its function in preparing a fertile ground for villainous network building, as the various petty actions are tracked and ongoing. Dwarves and others are variously tempted by e.g. the opportunity to embezzle or accept bribes using the power of their positions. If their personality and values aren't up to the challenge, they may eventually fall to temptation and undertake corrupt activities in an ongoing fashion, which will make them a target for both law enforcement and blackmail. (It needs more work to be a good-enough model for crime, but it works for now.)
  
  For the record, the first corrupt person in Dwarf Fortress was Irne Locksnarl, a human from Postrushed. He was a miner, then a bard, but when the opportunity to become the chief chef of the entire kingdom opened up, he took it. After being tempted several times over the years, finally, after fifteen years in the job, Irne began scheming a bit extra out of the kitchen budget. One can imagine a few things a villain could do with that information. At least, that'll be our job next month, heh.
  
  We've also moved profaning temples under this framework (up to this point it has been completely random), and we've also added business rivalries leading to sabotage, gambling problems, and related w.g. activity. That's almost all we need! Another look at religion, and we're ready to revisit villains.
• 11/21/2018 What do you get when you cross True Crime with Dwarf Fortress? A new Threetoe story! (link, forum)
• 11/20/2018 Ack, sorry for the delay! I have returned from Switzerland, but I fell ill there and was slow to recover from the jet lag / sickness combo. But I am back, bearing worldgen civic positions and craft guilds and guildhalls. There won't be a video of the talk, but it's covered reasonable well by this live-tweeting.
  
  So, yeah, as I wrote last month, this won't necessarily mean full guilds are returning to dwarf mode, but we take our steps on the journey as they come. There's a new craft guild entity type with generated positions and so forth, favored by cultures that are into craftsman/dwarfship, so the framework is being constructed, anyway, as usual. I also did the market-town nobles and did the court positions for them. So we just have religion and corruption to go before returning to villains.
• 11/01/2018 Here's the Bay 12 Report for the month, along with Future of the Fortress Part 1 and Future of the Fortress Part 2. Got most of the way through the castles and nobility changes and will be turning toward some link-building additions for the town government and industry.
• 10/23/2018 This week involved a lot of bug-fixing from last week, so there's not as much concrete progress to report. For instance, a human trading company called the Present Hall was wildly successful trading various leathers and bones for crafting, and eventually had enough clout to open a branch warehouse inside a dwarf fortress for the first time. Can't resist that draltha leather. This turned out to be a strategic error, as two short years later, a forgotten beast obliterated the fortress, the warehouse, and killed everyone inside. So, what's the correct response? Close the destroyed branch? No, no, you stimulate the (non-existent) economy by hiring local. Forgotten beast, you're the new (ruined) warehouse administrator, congratulations! Those sorts of fixes were straightforward, but more time was burned with screwed-up resource lists, naming problems and some stability issues.
  
  After muddling through that, we were going to move to some basic religious organization and link formation, as mentioned last time, but we instead decided to pause and nail down the boundaries for this pre-villain spree and reassess the proper order of implementation. The plan now is to do the intermediate market-town/castle/fort nobles for humans first (this has been in the cards to secure some solid villain hideouts/strongholds), get those integrated with the new court/household positions, consider a few higher households when enough territory has accrued (similar to the dwarf county/duchy system, with the new subordinate positions), and handle some basic movement and link formation there. Respect the large market towns a bit with some civilian bureaucracy and industry representation; it's not the scheduled return of the guilds, as that requires certain code infrastructure, but a counterbalance to now-rampant nobles feels necessary. Then religion. Then we'll be ready for the simple non-villainous crimes and corruption that live on top of these systems and are also important for blackmail etc.
  
  So. Once that's done, we should have more than enough material for villains to feel robust in their scheming. Don't let me say otherwise, he he he. In some sense, we've been a bit silly with the additions, as usual, but this is fine. The demands of a proper-feeling feature lead us on such journeys from time to time.
• 10/16/2018 As promised... a bit more toying around with villain-tangential world generation. With the Big Wait slowly approaching, there's a sense of wanting to put in place some interesting new broad dynamics, and that's causing this slight wander through feature land, I think, but we will get back to the villains-and-release before too much longer.
  
  This time, we added traveling merchants and companies piggy-backing on the more abstract industry/trade sim that already exists, so you'll get a small window into that (which has been almost entirely invisible, but there, for years.) At their peak, the companies will form multiple trade outposts in other civs along the trade routes to facilitate more cross-civ link formation. Going to do the same thing with religion as well, so everything isn't just isolated market-site temples, but more connected setups, sometimes with a larger organization that can also facilitate link formation, across civs if I can manage it.
  
  DFFD individual file size limit is now 500MB, up from 300MB.
  
  The YouTube link to my specific talk at the Roguelike Celebration has been posted.
• 10/09/2018 I've returned from the Roguelike Celebration! Thanks to Noah and the team for setting up an amazing event and allowing me to go on about vaguely relevant topics.
  
  My talk will be posted at their YouTube channel in the coming days. For now it can also be found on Twitch. Due to the nature of the event, it focuses more on adventure mode, but of course much of the material applies to fortress mode as well.
  
  Back to work!
• 10/01/2018 A Bay 12 Report appears. A Future of the Fortress Part 1 drinks the magenta potion. A Future of the Fortress Part 2 sits on the throne and vanishes.
• 09/22/2018 More link forming the last some days: rulers attending lectures and bonding over scholarly interests, people bonding over art at performances, people becoming friends at athletic competitions, or not necessarily friendly as rivalries are formed. Athletic competitions were limited to intra-civilization participation, which wasn't great for forming links, so I looked at the trade routes and diplomatic state. Now a competition which occurs in a city linked to another peaceful civilization by trade can accept competitors from that civilization. After that was implemented, we even had a dwarf and elf become friends, before the war started. Of course, they bonded over a foot race, which the elf won, which didn't seem entirely fair in retrospect.
  
  I also allowed the variable-position cultures (humans and goblins) to form many more administrative positions to give them layers for the intrigue to operate over (the dwarves already have many layers, from the bookkeepers over to the landed nobles and monarch.) Now they can end up with a keeper of the seal, a royal justiciar, a chief housekeeper, a master of beasts, and many other randomized possibilities, depending on the values of the culture, its permitted professions and other traits. The positions overlap with the current dwarven responsibilities, though there are a few new ones. This doesn't mean much yet, specifically, but there will be some practical considerations implemented before we're through.
  
  In particular, I'm almost feeling ready for Villain Conspiracy Attempt #2, but I'll likely toy around a bit more with crime and garden-variety corruption to make the situation even more amenable to larger-scale bad deeds and blackmail.
• 09/16/2018 Relationships are quite a bit more fluid now, and I managed to scrunch the data down so that the historical figure legends display shows all of their various dalliances, which was a concern for a bit, as there is a lot of activity. I also made every battle a historical figure participates in, even as a regular soldier, part of the figure's chronology now, which helps reconstruct narratives such as the one to follow.
  
  In a smaller island I ran for 150 years, I picked out the first human I found with a second marriage to start digging. This was Zicab, a ranger in her youth who quickly decided to pursue a life of poetry. Her first relationship, with a fishery worker named Innah, lasted for three years. They didn't get married, but Zicab had a daughter, Nulce, before they broke it off. Right after the breakup, Zicab became involved with Innah's childhood friend, Rabin the monster slayer, and after four years they got married.
  
  During the marriage, Zicab began a poetry apprenticeship under Kifino the elf, a member of the Maligned Whispers, a performance troupe which operated out of goblin territory. This didn't stop Zicab, and she moved off to the pits to study, leaving Rabin back in town. They'd periodically see each other at the big annual foot race for the Celebration of Purifying (everybody in this story seems to compete in the foot race and spear throwing competition), but it wasn't meant to last - Rabin was killed by Shedim Murkyurns the hag of twilight, a constant menace, often attacking the children of the city (Zicab and Innah included), leaving Zicab a widow. The next year, Zicab met the high priest Rozmo of the Pungent Coven, worshipper of Pastro, goddess of misery and torture, and they were married before long. After producing three notable poems, Zicab was murdered by a goblin armorer in the pits (who was later devoured by a giant lion, so that has a happy ending.)
  
  Zicab's daughter Nulce also had a rough time of it. After the apparent rite of passage of being attacked by Shedim as a toddler, Nulce joined the Pungent Coven and became a farmer. The elves were often attacking these communities, and Nulce proved herself in the Clash of Growling, becoming the General of the human civilization, the Union of Creatures, a few years later. The elves attacked again, lead by the immortal tactician and notorious tamer of giant mosquitos Princess Salo Larkfires, and during the defense of the outlying town of Goodbinds, Nulce was struck down by an elven elephant, and later put to rest in the Tomb of Shields.
  
  Before the tumult, Nulce had been involved with a poet and local lord named Uthal, and together they had two sons, Urwa and Kammat, and a daughter Artuk. Uthal died alongside Nulce in the defense of Goodbinds, but the children survived, the oldest seven years old at the time, safe for the time at the Pungent Coven's town of Snugglemerged. (and, yes, Shedim tried to kill both Urwa and Kammat as children.) Urwa became a bandit after being played by a goblin spy, and Kammat also took up a life of crime, but Artuk became a farmer and Pungent Coven member like her mother, and also fought in the elf wars, where she formed a close friendship with a woman Athrab, who would later marry her widower step-father Rozmo the priest. Artuk soon gave up on fighting, and became a poet like her father and grandmother, moving again to the goblin pits, where apparently all poetry in this world is written.
  
  Artuk's life of poetry went on for a decade, which saw the writing of 'The Sun Sets on Devourers' and her superstitous worship of a rampaging swamp titan. Then Salo Larkfires and the elves came again, in 105, this time attacking the goblin cities with giant great horned owls and badger people. As a performer, Artuk didn't participate in the defense, but she ended up being pressed into elven service for the next attack, fighting in several assaults on goblin pits, even striking up a war buddy relationship with an elf, Ditari (notable for multiple simultaneous lovers and affairs, which isn't all that common right now.) Under elven rule in the pits, the threat of being murdered like her grandmother passed, and Artuk died of old age around the end of world gen in 144. She left behind her long-time lover Ip and their four surviving children (the two youngest being swamp titan worshippers with elven childhood friends), as well as an elven apprentice of her own.
  
  As for the child-hunting hag Shedim, after turning the tables on seven monster slayers, she finally met her match in the slayer elf Nemile Shellsfair, a veteran of every battle of the elf wars, who was only outdone herself when she challenged the bronze colossus (joining 209 other notables, and two cities.) The elf warleader Salo Larkfires, born a few years after the world was created, is still alive. She never had a romantic relationship, but had three close childhood friends: Yonali Cobrasalve, slayer, killed by a giantess in 43, Ameli Glenpicks, veteran and tavern keeper (survived), and Yawo, who died as a teenager fighting in the Attack of Claws in 17, where Salo's predecessor Cimathi Wasprifts was also shot and killed, paving the way for Salo's rise and her eventual conquest of the known world over the following century.
• 09/08/2018 All right, the weather has returned to normal, and I am also somewhat but not entirely restored. The first of the new worldgen links to come in was childhood friendships. This performed its function of connecting people up admirably; after 100 years in a small world, one third of the 4600 historical figures had at least one childhood friend. Then came the war buddies. War is sadly common in the game, so this also worked pretty well, and unlike childhood friends, these relationships are more likely to cross site boundaries. Along with family, this was almost enough to tie members of a civilization together.
  
  After that came the worldgen romantic relationship rewrite. Worldgen marriage is no longer instant. There was a lot of data sorting and accounting to do here to keep things processing quickly, since most of the thousands of figures are involved in these calculations, so we haven't gotten to the triangles, infidelity, rejection and jealousy yet. But that will be a subject of the next log, he he he.
  
  The above would be sufficient for the villainous plots to function, but we'll likely do a few of the other bits we alluded to last month so that the details will be more varied, and so that the initial interactions of the villains and their agents with people in the target communities are more plausible. Specifics are still cooking.
• 09/02/2018 The promised Future of the Fortress: Part 1, Part 2. And here is an episode of KakeBytes where I ramble on about Dwarf Fortress.
• 09/01/2018 Here's the Bay 12 Report for this month. I have the first FotF post done and am working on the second half, but couldn't quite finish tonight. Should be up tomorrow.
• 08/29/2018 Around this time last year, on the August 10th dev log from 2017, I mentioned seeing the weather report with the Smoke icon, instead of Sunny or Partially Cloudy or whatever we'd expect this time of year. Up until a few days ago, we had that for an entire week, and it was awful. Hauling more furniture, then laying down for hours with an acrid tongue short of breath, unable to open windows to cool the room down. Visiting Grandma in the temporary care facility for her 95th birthday; she broke her hip picking blackberries last week but should make a full recovery. So, I wasn't prepared for this and didn't get a lot of work done; I delayed the dev log in hopes of having one good day, but it didn't happen. The efforts will continue, and I shall endeavor to toughen up for what is apparently our new August reality for next year, though I'm not sure how to practice for this one.
• 08/18/2018 After setting up several interconnected intrigue data structures and running some test plots, we concluded we need a bit more meat in world gen for the networks to transfer seamlessly over to fort mode without every starting situation feeling too similar once it gets outside your play area; for instance, there are no friendships in world generation, among many other things, so villain friendship exploits which will be used on your fort aren't available earlier. In order to make the networks which exist when worldgen ends rich and diverse, we have to bring a bit of parity in. So that'll be the next push. Nothing too drastic, but some interpersonal drama and some new positions, stuff that forms links. Links, links, links. For humans especially, the villains in criminal organizations would often be faced with a single town leader as the entire 'organization' they were targeting, in a city with thousands of people and dozens of disconnected historical figures, which is not just silly but fundamentally at odds with what we need to pull this off.
  
  Lots on the table, even touches of crime, religion and industry -- we're definitely not jumping into the realm of the future property/status/law push, but there are some easy power structure linkages and flavor which should be compatible with future additions without consuming time we don't have. It's unclear what will be new to fort mode; friendship obviously isn't new for fort mode (once it is fixed, anyway), but e.g. romantic rejection and jealousy are quick-to-do villain-ready vectors, and that would work out in the fort in a straightforward fashion. That said, since only some of these will be done, it's important not to dump an idea list here. I will report back with implemented specifics from the grab bag next log! This'll be fun.
• 08/11/2018 Sorry for the slight delay here. The 90+F temps have returned, and Zach is also moving, so there was and will be dwarfy furniture hauling and other non-temperature compatible activities that make the whole enterprise slow and broken down. Everything will be fine. There was even dwarfy animal hauling today, involving Tuklus and Evie the cats, the guinea pigs Bowie and Sid, and Salvadora the iguana (who was moved in a cat carrier separate from her cage.)
  
  Despite all the minor adversity, the world gen villains are chugging along. We decided to let them use the identity system to give themselves mysterious aliases if they feel so inclined (most of them don't, but the worlds will always have a few takers.) In my last test world, a human high priest who valued cunning and decided to hatch a villainous scheme was also taken by a flight of fancy and called himself 'Kashi the Secretive'; his name was not Kashi, but he wasn't creative enough to go outside of his own language either, so the human-language name itself is a first clue ('kashi' means subtle ...) A human necromancer called herself 'the Urn of Phantoms.' That one is also sort of a giveaway, at least narrowing it down to a necromancer or a vampire, but they are all a bit on the nose right now. Moreover, that necromancer was motivated purely by her zany sense of humor, which somehow survived the transition to ageless and evil immortality. The vampire general, on the other hand, decided upon an alias out of a need for extravagance and privacy, on top of feelings of distrust, choosing to go by 'the Sense of Starvation', which seems fitting enough (the other vampire I saw was 'the Scratch of Proliferating,' which I guess also works!) The world also had a dwarven mayor going by Bandmist the Evil, unusually obsessed with intrigue. You never know when these tacky schemers will strike, but you'll come to fear their very scary names.
  
  (For old hands that noticed: yeah, "<X> the <adjective>" names are possible now. It's not a language rewrite, but I decided to support that form, which was already possible in the existing structure.)
• 08/01/2018 This link goes to the monthly report. This is Future of the Fortress 1. This is Future of the Fortress 2.
• 07/28/2018 Riding the 'H' horsies around is fun. Mount the horse, dismount the horse or jump from the horse, lead the horse like a merchant (through doors so it doesn't get trapped on one side, because the horse can't open doors on its own.) Use horses and other pack animals to carry the extra weight, packing items on to the animals, friendly and functional critters. All of that seems to be working correctly.
  
  There isn't much to add as I've just been cleaning this stuff up and going through the heat wave with everybody else in the world. For controlling mount movement, I went with a command system that transfers your intention into the mount's head when you press a movement key. So if the mount is having an important issue of some kind, like being terrified, it won't necessarily follow your command, though they are pretty good about obeying. If the mount hasn't received a command for some time, it can start ambling around a bit. These same command structures will be usable for giving short local orders to your party members and other companions when I get to that, conveniently. Though it is odd that that makes them all like little horses and horses made it there first. I haven't yet tested velocity transfers and so forth, but if it's working as intended, riding by somebody on your mount and attacking them will transfer velocity to swings and so forth.
• 07/21/2018 Continuing to mess around with the new party-pet-equipment stuff. The plans for villains as they stand now (destined to change and otherwise run into obstacles):
  
  We already have all of the characters we need: demons, necromancers, vampires, bandits, criminals, as well as potentially ambitious and cruel people of all kinds (civilization leaders, site leaders, priests, position holders like bookkeepers, all the way down to the occasional craftsperson or wandering musician, if their personality is right.) As usual these days, we'll start in world generation to get the basics in, then move those mechanics to play and on into both modes. In world generation and out of the play area, certain parts of schemes have to be abstracted, so we'll likely have a new skill along the lines of 'intrigue' which will determine certain success rates and so on, and we might find some use for it in play as well. The ambitious and/or cruel people with a knack for intrigue will be the successful villains, along with those that have game-systemic advantages (like a demon or necromancer, or a monarch.) The system should be working when the nexus of the world's villainous activity is occasionally off in a village somewhere, while other times it's the well-known monster at the heart of the goblin wasteland. Most likely, there will be many networks operating at once.
  
  It's the network part that's important; none of our in-play ideas for investigation and infiltration will work if there isn't a web of activity. So our first major goal will be to make villains enthusiastic network builders. If they don't have a specific artifact to steal or revenge to plot, they'll still be seeking to ensnare the powerful and influential in their web. This will require us to understand loyalty and trust in-game a bit better than we do now, but a lot of the existing reputation and relationship systems will help when it comes to other important factors like love, fear and respect.
  
  Since a villain won't always be a position-holder in a civilization or other entity, and we don't want the full weight of the entity object clogging up the gears, we'll be handling a lot of this activity via the more streamlined agreement system, which is currently used for adventuring companions, fortress petitions, and a few other matters. The agreements we'll use here will be specific plots, and include at least two parties to the conspiracy, whether that's the original villain and their agent, or a handler lower down the chain and their agent, or an agent and somebody who has been compromised. Due to the structure of these links, the web will always connect back toward the villains, at least while one actor is alive in each link. Each plot will have a specific goal, as well as relevant locations, objects, and so forth, all there to be recounted by a captured agent, or used to taunt you when you fail to stop them.
  
  Individual plot goals might involve the villain's core objectives: acquire artifacts, positions, and pets, and punishing their enemies through assassination, imprisonment, kidnapping, theft, insurrection, or invasion. But plots can also be aimed toward adding another layer to the network. If a visiting agent has turned a fortress bookkeeper, the bookkeeper can attempt to compromise their friends, family and other position holders. If your mayor, nobility, sheriff or guard captain is compromised, we won't end the game, but we'll make it increasingly interesting for you.
  
  Naturally, we need to prevent high-level position holders from being flipped by the first agent that enters the capital, especially in world generation where everything is more abstract. Our plan here is to have a reasonably basic form of counter-intelligence; at the minimum, the supporting characters associated to a target will be able to use their intrigue skill, along with the target's, to root out spies and otherwise prevent infiltration. These safeguards won't be as strong around lower position holders and regular civilians, which will lead to the sort of nesting we're looking for as the plots advance. Of course, there will be occasions where agents simply get lucky, for as long as it lasts.
  
  We have plenty of levers available to compromise targets in the game as it is now, though some of them will have to be somewhat abstracted. Promises of rewards for greedy and ambitious targets, especially if the villain or intermediate agent has such things to offer (artifacts, positions, or more abstractly, a portion of a site's available tribute for that year), fear (for their life, or a family member; more interesting blackmail isn't as easy with what we have though we might attempt something), ideological alignment (easy to check with the value system, though factors like loyalty will need to be accounted for), and revenge (can we blame the player for the death of a family member? what if the player removes a dwarf from a long-held position? or evicts them to the broader world, where the agents roam freely...) are all possibilities. It would be highly, highly suspicious if one of your dwarves suddenly had an artifact, but if we have the agent pass them some valuable non-artifact jewelry, would you notice? We'll be searching for gray areas like this for your entertainment, heh.
  
  Fortunately, due to the work we did with vampires years back among other things, it should be pretty straightforward to give you means to defend yourself. Witnesses will be able to report suspicious activities; the agent will need to meet with a compromised dwarf, after all, and your helpful dwarves might on occasion notice the gifts you overlooked. You might also suspect something yourself if you see the two of them talking too often in a crowded tavern (or are they just buddies?) Once you're sure, you'll be able to arrest a dwarf (any dwarf.) However, you must present evidence. For our purposes in the game for this time, that just means guessing right, as with the regular convictions: you'll need to accuse the correct dwarf of a conspiracy with the correct agent. Failure will upset everybody in the fortress, as with the current wrongful convictions. Arrests that don't lead to accusations will also lead to negative thoughts for everybody.
  
  In the interest of exposition (as the game is confusing enough), a correct accusation will lead to information about the plot, as far as that dwarf is involved. If you manage to arrest the agent, and have properly identified a conspiracy, they'll also give you a hint one step farther up the chain (or you'd never be able to figure it out, most likely.) Then you can send out your own agents to pick up leads on the handler, who will provide more information if captured. Of course, disrupting a plot might make you a target of the villain's complete power set, and defeating their assassins and invaders will sometimes bring you closer to their identity (especially in the case of a non-obvious villain.)
  
  Adventure mode accusations can work similarly, though you'll have to be much more specific than the current "hey, you're a night creature!" blanket accusation you can currently level. We're still working out where adventure mode investigations are more likely to start, as you'll need some hook like the current quest rumors to get you into a position where you can ask anybody anything. If you're a big enough hero, you might simply be targeted, and that will set you on the track.
  
  On the other hand, given that it wouldn't be too difficult a change to give you the ability to hand one of your companions a task in a fort-style map interface, and we'll have a lot of new tasks available, we're also thinking about trying our hand at adventurer villainy as well. If somebody off in a village can topple the world, it might as well be you. The main obstacle would just be getting the conversations with your agents to work correctly, on top of the general work we'll be doing above. The same applies to fort mode to an extent, once you can send your agents out.
  
  Now it just remains to be seen what we can get done! He he he.
• 07/14/2018 Here's an interview I did with Crit Hit over on their YouTube channel. I also finally updated the media stuff on the links page, including the link to the myth generator talk from GDC 2016 which was apparently missing!
  
  On Dwarf Fortress, the villain planning has continued; we should be starting coding there soon, but for this week, we started adventure mode parties, equipment and mounts as a more straightforward item. You can now create as many characters as you want when you start adventure mode, and they'll start together as a party. There are new equipment and mount/pet pages, as with skills and attributes, where you customize your character(s) from an additional point pool. If a character is in your official starting party, you can swap control between them freely when you are playing, vaguely similar to traditional party-based RPGs where you designate a party leader, though your other party members act with more autonomy when you aren't controlling them. Though we are planning on adding full turn-based control mode for combat purposes, which you can turn on and off, perhaps for this release as well depending on how smoothly villains go. So. Start with two people. Start with a few friendly dogs. Start with a horse. Start with a giant elephant. Start with three or more named shoulder-riding hamsters... or more... I suspect there might be some point-pool abuse here if we don't set sensible limits.
• 07/07/2018 Just some cleaning before we embark on the villain changes. There's a new offloading popup that can come up on the season change if you have enough activity in your world; it can take a little time in larger worlds, but that's all time that is no longer intermittent lag and it's also less time overall due to reduced redundancies. If you have an autosave, the offload will be incorporated into that, so autosaves might seem slightly longer (if so, you are also getting the same lag reduction.)
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Fixed crash from corrupted units
  • Made baron elevate to count properly
  • Removed intermittent lag from off-site conceptions and births (added seasonal unit offloading)
  • Made squad orders respect successful site conquest (so new members don't try to reconquer)
  
  Other bug fixes/tweaks
  
  • Fixed broken display for multiple adventurer agreements
  • Show proper mission text for messengers instead of No Job
  • Made tantruming dwarves cancel activities
  • Controlled how market links are formed somewhat
• 07/07/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.12
• 07/01/2018 Here's the report for the month. And here are part one and part two of the monthly Future of the Fortress Q&A.
• 06/23/2018 There are now peaceful and not-so-peaceful ways of expanding your influence in the world. Once a site becomes linked to you (through prosperity or by conquest; you'll see a message), you can send a messenger there to request workers, or send dwarves from the fort out to such sites (from v-p). This only works on historical figures, so you might find you don't have off-site workers available at first, though some sites do have them. This release should also improve the issues dwarves were having with negative thoughts, and they can also now experience permanent changes in their personalities and intellectual values due to events in their lives.
  
  Note: Insurrections were such a problem in sites that I had to turn them off for your fortress's holdings; we'll get back to that later. It wasn't even the insurrections, really; the dwarves were bailing on the occupation immediately because they were afraid of insurrections.
  
  New stuff
  
  • Your civilization will send out groups to found sites near prosperous fortresses
  • Existing sites near prosperous fortresses will associate themselves to those fortresses
  • Added ability to take over sites and install administrators
  • Can view your new holdings from the 'c' screen
  • Can send workers off-site and send out messengers to request their return
  • Mulling over long-term memories can lead to shifts in intellectual values and personality changes
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Fixed hauling route crash
  • Fixed problem causing county stage to be skipped in noble elevation
  • Stopped all visiting barons from being elevated along with your baron
  • Changed horror calculation from seeing a dead body
  • Stopped similar memories close in time from taking all the memory space
  • Stopped stuttering lag from repeated vegetation connectivity checks
  
  Other bug fixes/tweaks
  
  • Camping refugees will be awake during the day now
• 06/23/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.11
• 06/15/2018 Two in progress: the ability to ask anybody to leave your fortress, for one of your hill settlements or otherwise. People will get upset if you kick out their relatives and will leave with their immediate relatives, and so forth, so it isn't an unlimited power. If you have outside settlements, people will go there, and you can choose a specific one, but they might not remain there forever; at the same time, they will not return in subsequent immigration waves. You can't ask nobles or elected officials to leave, as (presumably) they are the ones exercising this power.
  
  The second addition is messengers. These are a new occupation that are only used now to request people from the hills, but they'll likely have other functions later (including a few of the missions currently done only by squads, like demands for surrender and tribute.) You can request that a specifically chosen group of non-position-holding same-civilization historical figure from one of your associated outlying settlements (e.g. regular civilians at the site) come to the fortress; they'll return with the messenger and be given the same privileges as the usual immigrants (that is, immediate fort citizenship rather than the residency petition process.) You can recover occupation soldiers in this fashion.
  
  Other work this week included ironing out issues with the peaceful realignment of existing nearby same-civ settlements to your fort as your economy grows (forts that you place in the thick of your own civilization won't need new settlements founded), making refugees stop sleeping forever in adventure mode, and another bucket full of conquest errors. Later, the peaceful realignments might include other civilizations as well, so you could become the focal point of some human villages, for example. The outside interactions will continue to become more interesting as we go.
  
  Release is likely ~this time next week, finally.
• 06/08/2018 After several annoying bugs, including every noble in my civilization showing up in my fort at once, and much real-life tumult, I finally had a well-behaved, seemingly not buggy, peaceful hill dwarf settlement appear outside my fortress! It was very satisfying to see it colored in on the new world map overlay, as an indication that the game overall is entering an entirely new realm of story potential, as sparse as they'll be at first. Around 50 dwarves moved in to the new site, and they named it Reignseals. Their newly elected mayor was Lokum Bridgedrove, a historical dwarf that had ten years earlier fought a harrowing battle with a werewombat. My fortress was on a one-tile mountain in the middle of a swamp; my new neighbors sensibly founded their site eight tiles away in the nearby grassland. The sites don't send emissaries yet, so for now it just pops up a little announcement box with the name and direction so you can find it easily on your map.
  
  This should complement the new conquest mechanics nicely for people that want to grow some sprawl around their fortress without using armies. The land-holding conditions used previously to elevate the fort to a barony/county etc. have been repurposed for attracting off-fort migrants, historical and non-historical populations pulled from actual sites in your larger civilization (so they need land access, as well as correct biome squares nearby.) As your economy improves, the number of sites founded on the outskirts of your fort will increase as well. Being elevated now depends on the number of sites attached to your fortress, whether occupied or peacefully founded, rather than the economic trigger numbers directly.
  
  I should be able to get to the civilian exchange with off-fort settlements now, which'll put us close to a release, finally.
• 06/01/2018 Future of the Fortress this month was another two-parter (missed the single post byte cutoff by a few hundred!): Part 1, Part 2. And here's the report to start off June.
• 05/25/2018 You can now give your squad dwarves orders to stay at sites they've conquered, or to demand a site's capitulation if you'd like to avoid a fight and still occupy it. Dwarves sent on these missions will form a new site government with an administrator, just as has happened previously in the non-player battles, and the site will become part of your unofficial holdings, sending tribute. You can view all of your categorized holdings with a new map overlay that also shows the diplomacy state with other civilizations. I haven't seen one, but I imagine they are vulnerable to insurrections, like all occupations.
  
  Now, the measly annual tribute isn't really compensation for losing a squad or more of dwarves, especially since you can extract tribute without leaving anybody on site already. So we're going to press on to peaceful hill dwarves and then incorporate your occupied holdings into whatever mechanics we get to there. In particular, being able to recall your soldiers and send your civilians out to the hills is in the works, though we're also trying to get the next release together as soon as we can, so it will be a bit thin until a followup release. At the very least, we'll have hillocks around your fortress and some kind of interaction with them in place for next time.
• 05/18/2018 I've updated the memory system for next time. Horror thoughts for strangers' bodies have been downgraded quite a bit, and all memories have been grouped into categories now, so that memories from one category can't snatch up all the brain real estate (so they'll only remember the worst violent happening in a given stretch of time, rather than eight of them; this isn't ideal, but I'll save better memory clustering for when I have more time.)
  
  Memories will also change in nature after a year or two; the associated emotion will change to something less extreme, and as this happens, dwarves can undergo permanent changes to their personality facets and intellectual values. When this happens, it'll be indicated in the personality readout with a bright magenta clause that doesn't go away when the thought goes away, so you'll be able to catalog what has happened easily. It'll tell you which way the facet/value changed, as well as the event that caused the change and the year. For instance, a dwarf that was mortified after their clothes rotted off their body might later reflect on this incident with amusement and become slightly less interested in decorum and less bashful, while a different dwarf might react with unease remembering a similar event for the rest of their life, but also develop some empathy. Overall, that means there are now little character arcs for the dwarves, which should be pretty fun, though there's a lot more to do there.
  
  I also fixed the vegetation lag; if your fort was having a little hiccup every, say, five seconds, it'll possibly be cleaned up for next time.
• 05/11/2018 Started off with a few bug fixes for next time. Most notably, the elevation of dwarves from baron to higher noble levels was skipping count and also elevating every baron it could find on site, including those that were nobles attached to other places. Also fixed a hauling route crash. Diagnosed a major source of periodic stuttering lag as being related to vegetation, but I haven't fixed it yet. I'm also planning on toning down the memories from seeing little corpse bits like teeth which can now traumatize people for the rest of their lives, and making other related changes. Then we can get into dwarf site administration and your fort's hill dwarves, as well as whatever we decide for adventure mode, and probably fix some more bugs. That should form the next release.
• 05/05/2018 Here's our next effort, which should change the general situation regarding the (often inebriated) fortress dwarves and their lack of apparent stress. Part of this involves a new system of memories, which we'll be improving as we go now. You'll be able to see these in thought paragraphs as they are remembered, so don't worry if they aren't apparent at first. There were also other problems with inebriation and overall stress balance; some of the latter will be ongoing, if we've overcorrected, as varied long-term forts are difficult to test, but we'll continue working with it.
  
  I've updated how the adventurer information log works. It's hopefully a bit more useful for navigation now, when it comes to adventuring and reporting back what has happened. Old saves might not have everything linked up at first. Hearing rumors again and so forth should make the log start to work better for them. You can also cross narrow rivers in travel now (the ones that are jumpable or near jumpable at a sprint.) Uncrossable rivers will display with double lines in the travel view.
  
  New stuff
  
  • Made short and long term memories of emotions and their circumstances
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Fixed crash relating to religion trying to store holy relic without a temple
  • Stopped inebriation personality alterations from being permanent
  
  Other bug fixes/tweaks
  
  • Balanced stress effects
  • Allowed nicknaming of all buildings/zones/stockpiles
  • Can now zoom to item and unit for item inaccessible announcements
  • Added dwarf-style personality and other information in adventurer description from status screen
  • Updated adventurer log screen
  • Allowed adventurer to cross over narrow rivers in travel map
  • Shows status of single assigned workers in q/t workshop menus
  • Separated thoughts for seeing somebody die and finding the body
  • Changed how drunken fistfights work
  • Side-stepped unit load failure, creating substitute unit upon irreversible corruption
  • Added check for duplicate items from returning squads and others to avoid crashes/corruption
• 05/05/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.10
• 05/01/2018 The month's Bay 12 Report is here. And here is the Future of the Fortress: Part 1, Part 2.
• 04/21/2018 I've mainly been looking at the adventure information screen, trying to make it somewhat usable, more than just giant alphabetical lists that don't relay much pertinent information. You can now have it only show entries that are personally related to you, sorted by priority, for example, and zoom to the location where you last spoke to somebody, including your commander and other such bits of information that might slip through the cracks, especially if you haven't played a save for a bit and become confused about your place in the world. It needs more, but I'm going to move on for now. Next up I'll be cleaning up some more bugs. Then this release should be ready to go.
• 04/14/2018 The changes to stress are in. There are three main elements (paired with several small fixes that came up along the way): all of the numbers have been rebalanced, the overbearing effect of alcohol has been diminished, and there's a new memory system that emphasizes the ongoing effects of important events over lots of small day-to-day pleasant/bad feelings.
  
  The numbers might change, but the current system allows for eight short-term memories, which are the emotion+event combinations that have had the highest positive or negative impact on the dwarf over the last year (on a rolling basis). Every so often a dwarf can "remember/relive/dwell upon" the memory, if their personality leans toward the given emotion (positive or negative), and receive an additional stress change. Once a year passes, a short-term memory can be saved to one of eight long-term memory slots (if it is stronger than the current memories), or else it is forgotten. Long-term memories periodically return to affect the dwarf forever, until they are overwritten.
  
  Later, we might group the long-term memories according to stage of life, keeping more of them but changing their impact values over the years and also use grappling with long-term memories as a way to provide permanent personality/value changes and new life goals and so forth. For now, the existence of long-term memories will suffice as a form of personality change/character arc on its own.
  
  It'll take some player testing in longer, real forts to see if various parameters need to be adjusted, but initial testing showed differences from the previous behavior. Dropping a boulder on somebody and then leaving my dwarves unattended outside with nothing to do for a year resulted in tantrums, depression and oblivious wandering, so it seems to be working. When the first long-term memories were stored for one dwarf, it was horror at seeing their lover die, grief at their lover being dead, and fright at being haunted by their dead lover, with proper impact values not likely to be overwritten any time soon, certainly not by the old culprits of seeing nice furniture and completing jobs, though those still decrease stress a little bit day-to-day when experienced and are thus good to have in a dwarf's life. (I wasn't aware of their relationship status when the boulder fell; that's just how it turned out, sadly.)
• 04/06/2018 Here's a half-hour video interview with Zach and I, which includes various childhood pictures and other bits. Bonus footage here and here. This was for the the On Doubt channel, where other such videos can be found.
  
  For the next version, so far I've fixed a worldgen crash, changed the handling for the nemesis unit load error (it tries to patch the corrupted world now), allowed recentering on the item in "item inaccessible" announcements, added a worker status line in the view for workshops that have one worker assigned, and added the ability to give nicknames to all buildings, zones and stockpiles.
• 04/01/2018 And the linux freeze fix process broke projectiles. So that's hopefully all working all around now. The Bay 12 Report is up. Here's the Future of the Fortress Q&A for the month: Part 1, Part 2.
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Made projectiles and weapon traps work again
  
  Other bug fixes/tweaks
  
  • Changed w.g. population calculation for conflicts
• 04/01/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.09
• 03/29/2018 This should stop Linux from freezing. It also includes some other bug fixes that could be quickly incorporated.
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Stopped linux from freezing
  • Fixed crash from demanding tribute from parentless site entities
  • Stopped artifacts from moving out of backpack and similar when at old forts or lairs
  • Properly stopped imprisoned dwarves from claiming positions in fort
  
  Other bug fixes/tweaks
  
  • Made dwarves visit museums properly
  • Stopped every tribute rejection from being attached to your fort's history
  • Cleaned tribute/spoil reports between forts properly
  • Added military tactics and leaderships as relevant skills for squad-leading nobles/appointments
  • Made uniform settings copy properly when pasting schedule orders
• 03/29/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.08
• 03/18/2018 Off to GDC this upcoming week. The plan is to try to get a version up fixing a Linux freeze and other issues as soon as possible upon my return, and assuming that leaves us in good-enough shape, to start in on the recently updated dev list in early April.
• 03/12/2018 This is a stability patch for the last release. A few raid-related crashes are fixed, as well as some strange behavior related to stolen livestock. To get the full fix for stolen livestock, old saves will need to add [PET] to beak dogs and unicorns. This isn't crucial; if it isn't done, those animals will no longer be stolen in that save. But if you were experiencing the bug, the existing animals will be broken until the tag is added.
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Fixed crash from returning certain kinds of contained loot
  • Fixed crash from exploring entity-free site
  • Stopped certain failed tribute raids from staying out forever
  • Stopped certain stolen livestock from being treated like half-citizens
  
  Other bug fixes/tweaks
  
  • Fixed sieger behavior that caused them to mill around outside for too long
  • Stopped stolen livestock from being attacked after they are named
  • Fixed failure to give half of the one-time tribute items
  • Allowed military tactics as starting skill choice on embark
  • Corrected one-time tribute text
  • Made it produce a proper spoils report if only livestock are stolen
• 03/12/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.07
• 03/09/2018 Here's the first substantial update to the fortress's world map screen. New raid options are available, and it shouldn't be hard for you to antagonize your neighbors now if that's what you want to do. Use the 'd'etails option when preparing the raid to set what sorts of actions you'd like your raiders to perform. Skills and equipment matter, and skills can be improved during missions. The skill of your best tactician is important (you'll see feedback in the mission report.) If you demand tribute on an ongoing basis and the target site agrees to your demands, you'll receive something like a merchant caravan on an annual basis a few seasons after the initial demand. They'll drop goods off at your depot and depart. These goods can be carried off immediately for storage, but there's a new report so you can look at a complete list of what was delivered; the same is true of spoils from raids.
  
  A few notes on the bug fixes below: the identity fixes won't stop bad feelings from existing conflicts in old saves. Also in old saves, distracted animals might still appear to be broken at first, but they should sort themselves out after a bit.
  
  New stuff
  
  • Can pillage and raze and demand tribute from other sites
  • Dwarves on missions can now can gain skills
  • Military tactics skill is now gained and matters in off-site battles
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Fixed several problems causing the meeting queue to get gummed up
  • Made monster-type critters and non-monster-type critters have proper hostile again
  • Allowed people in the same squad to know each other's identities
  • Made scribe copy job cancel properly to free up materials
  • Fixed calculation of available writing materials in library
  
  Other bug fixes/tweaks
  
  • Various speed tweaks
  • Made clean job work inside and on outdoor constructions
  • Made clean jobs continue to nearby tiles
  • Made drunkenness make you less private instead of more private and fixed a typo there
  • Made dwarven adventurers experience trances properly
  • Made non-historical populations defend sites post w.g.
  • Made off-site raid stealth success depend on site
  • Fixed broken flags on merchant historical event
  • Stopped dwarves being dragged to cages/chains from trying to clean the floor
  • Stopped live generals from being elevated from zombie populations
  • Stopped animals from developing need for alcohol after experiencing trauma
  • Stopped unintelligent creatures associated to civilizations, like domestic animals, from worshipping gods when given historical status
  • Stopped animals from revealing the location of artifacts to questers
  • Stopped animals from forming grudges and other chat-based relationships
  • Sped up legends loading in high-artifact worlds
  • Stopped rooting around in the dirt from resetting path
  • Fixed issue causing certain older army units from not appearing
  • Fixed a few errors with abstract skill calculation for armies
  • Reconciled bandit's map and in-play valuations of opponent strength to stop aborted ambushes
  • Disallowed certain flying/swimming/visual/projectile/attack moves involving half-stairways
  • Made branches/twigs burning over walls leave behind a floor properly
• 03/09/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.06
• 03/01/2018 Here's the Bay 12 Report, and here's this month's Future of the Fortress reply. We've updated the development page as we steer the DF ship through bug-fix and small change waters as they mix with an upwelling of Fun, ultimately arriving at Mythical Magic Harbor, where the vessel will be in dry dock for some time. With the new dev page comes a new Future of the Fortress thread.
  
  The next version itself is almost ready; hopefully it won't be much longer.
• 02/22/2018 Razing is now complete. If you manage to drive off the inhabitants (whether you destroy all the structures or not), the site will become uninhabited and switch symbols on the map. Damage should be reflected in human towns if viewed later in adventure mode, but in sites without damageable structures, the inhabitants can still be evicted. An entire civilization you are at war with can theoretically be reduced to migrating refugee groups, but I have no idea if that can be achieved with a fort's worth of dwarves in practice. Skill and equipment matter and have a large effect on individual skirmishes, so it might be possible if you train and outfit squads very well. We'll get to combining your forces with other, larger forces off-site later.
  
  Skills can now be improved by off-site dwarves, and they'll learn the appropriate combat skills as well as be rewarded for stealth. I've also implemented the military tactics skill, and, along with leadership and organization, it skews rolls in battles in opposition to the opponent's tactician skills (they gain skill as well.) You are also assessed the terrain penalties for attacking certain sites. All of what's happening here is reflected in the mission report.
  
  Non-historical figures will also defend their sites (in particular, vaults are no longer automatically robbed when you send one dwarf to them.) This leads to your dwarves facing large numbers at times, but I made it a little less abstract than the world generation method, so the results should be somewhat less silly (which generally isn't good for your dwarves, as world gen fights sometimes have a single historical figure slay hundreds at a time, but the dwarves' full squads are also respected, so the new worse odds are mitigated.)
  
  I've decided to go ahead with allowing you to demand tribute from sites, and that'll be the last thing before the release. Others demanding tribute from you and the ability to place administrators over conquered sites will happen with a future release, but this is a start.
• 02/15/2018 Pillaging and razing are now options from the fort mode 'c' screen. You can bring back one piece of loot or one livestock critter per dwarf that returns from the raid (you can decide to turn either option off before they go.) Since we don't have actual production to replenish site stockpiles yet, we're handling it with a simple placeholder variable. The size of the raiding party vs. the current population of the site determines the depletion percentage, and the percentage repairs itself 1% per day if the site is inhabited. The percentage is the chance that an individual dwarf's loot action fails. So a ten dwarf attack on a small village can cause future pillaging to reduce returns or fail outright for months, while a 150 dwarf raid on a capital might cause a ~10% dip in returns for a few weeks. In the (distant) future, this can be replaced by numeric resource piles. Livestock, on the other hand, is actually taken from the site's animal population pools, regardless of the percentages.
  
  On my first attack on a human village, the dwarves returned with a yak, a goose, and an alpaca, as well as a nicely decorated yak waterskin... and somebody's oaken crutch. When I sent a single dwarf to sneak into a goblin tower, she came back with a pair of silk goblin shoes. We might end up weighing them against picking up a bunch of junk after I try some larger raids, if the results are always that disappointing, he he he.
  
  I still need to clean up a few issues with the razing code and make non-historical figures defend their sites. We're also considering throwing in an ongoing tribute option if the winds are favorable.
• 02/08/2018 Scamps turned nine today!
  
  We're starting in on the first changes to the world map 'c' screen in dwarf mode, allowing dwarves to openly attack sites rather than always trying to stealthily raid them, in case you are trying to start some trouble. We'll also likely address the larger populations not being involved in these conflicts (currently you instantly win if there are no historical figures on site), as well as adding the option to bring some loot back, but we'll see what happens as we test it out, as there could be unforeseen issues. Today I handled some problems with the razing code that made it unready for fort-mode-level scrutiny.
  
  This week I fixed various bugs. There was an issue causing questers to yet again not leave the fortress, this time because drunkenness was causing your dwarves to become more private instead of less private, leading to questers never being able to get rumors from people. I've also removed that strict requirement from them, so questers'll leave after a while regardless of what they learn or how much they socialize.
  
  Adventurer dwarf trances work again. Animals no longer become distracted from being unable to drink if they've experienced trauma, or from being unable to worship gods they shouldn't have been worshiping in the first place... and they don't reveal secrets in the tavern, or form improve grudge/acquaintance social relationships. Also fixed a siege issue where live generals were being elevated from zombie populations.
• 02/01/2018 It's time for a monthly report! And the Future of the Fortress reply.
• 01/27/2018 We started this week looking at libraries, and eventually fixed a few issues causing scribes to eventually stop copying written material. The plan was to visit a few of the new bugs from there, but one of the library saves had 200 dwarves and 60000 items, so I took a look at it. It started at 13-17 FPS, and now, some days and a few dozen tweaks later, it's running at 22-26 FPS. Some of the gains are universal, some depend on, say, how many chickens are in play. It also had a very barfy above-ground tavern, so I took the opportunity to alter the cleaning code so that they'll clean inside non-subterranean areas, as well as outside areas on constructions and buildings; they'll also chain cleanings so they at least get a good swath of a giant green smear before moving on. More needs to be done with cleaning, but this should help.
• 01/20/2018 The fixing continues. An old bug gumming up the mayor's meeting queue is fixed, and I made the queue slightly more robust in general. The megabeasts and other style monsters had entered another period of non-hostility in adventure mode; this is repaired. Bandits ambushers had a similar problem due to broken skill assessments, as they were calculating their odds incorrectly. A few little bits: critters should no longer be able to make illegal flying moves through half-completed downward stairways, and there was an issue with tree fires corrupting certain floor tiles.
• 01/14/2018 One fix on top of the last release, for visitors that had become broken, acting like partial residents. Any broken visitors themselves are unpatchable in affected saves, so it was important to get this one up quickly. Old saves are compatible as usual, and should not get new broken visitors, but visitors that are currently acting strange will still be acting strange, and likely will not depart.
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Stopped certain visitors from being treated like (buggy) residents
• 01/14/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.05
• 01/10/2018 This is another bug fix release to start the new year. A few of the bad five-second freeze/lag problems caused by the new release have been fixed, and large beasts should move off the edge of the map again. Over in adventure mode, inappropriate creatures shouldn't yell 'identify yourself' and companions should participate in conflicts as they used to, and some other issues of reputation should be solved, especially among citizens of the starting town.
  
  Major bug fixes
  
  • Stopped displayed artifacts from duplicating on retirement/offloading of site
  • Made attacking giant monsters path to targets properly again
  • Stopped extraneous dwarf mode conversation text generation (freezes)
  • Stopped negative artifact location rumors from passing around so much (freezes)
  • Made removing first stop of hauling route w/ assigned vehicle not cause issues/crashes
  • Stopped crash caused by yielding to muggers
  • Stopped creatures from asking for identity when they shouldn't be able to speak
  • Fixed problem with companions and other close people not always recognizing your relationship to them
  
  Other bug fixes/tweaks
  
  • Made returning mercenaries stop petitioning for sanctuary (existing petitions will still be there)
  • Prevented unirrigated etc. top-left corners etc. from stopping planting in farms
  • Stopped inaccessible pile tiles from stopping bin/barrel placement throughout pile
  • Allowed stairs to be carved in ice that is one tile above stone properly
  • Added building item TSK indicator to ground items as well
  • Stopped designations for removal of ramps/constructions from working on hidden tiles
  • Removed incorrect back instruction from burrow naming
  • Properly saved freeing hf in relevant historical event (Quietust)
  • Fixed a few cases of historical event for identities reporting wrong historical figure
  • Fixed kitchen job hotkeys
• 01/10/2018 Released Dwarf Fortress 0.44.04
• 01/08/2018 I've been working on bugs, of course! Highlights include fixing two separate causes of stuttering lag, making beast invaders move properly again, a couple crashes, and an artifact duplication bug. You can check up on the complete progress here at the tracker. That link will continue to be a comprehensive list for this upcoming release, but as we transition into bugs + small usability tweaks + little features, note that only the bugs fixed appear there.
• 01/01/2018 Happy New Year! Here's the year end report. And here's the Future of the Fortress reply.

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Dwarf Fortress started October 2002, this log was started around the same time as the "back to the dwarf game" thread.