Slaves to Armok: God of Blood, Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress

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• 05/16/2008: Okay, stage 6 is up to where it's going to be for the release. I'll be into the bugs on Monday. Stage 8 is the only remaining stage that should take any time at all (and not nearly as much as stage 6's month and a half), though the revisiting of stage 4 will probably also have a hassle or two.
• 05/14/2008: I've handled the largest problems now, though there are quite a few things I'd like to do, and quite a few that need to be done before it really looks reasonable. In any case, I'm going to wind down the pre-bug-cap part of stage six this week and start the bug cap phase on Monday. For the bug fixes this time around, I'll mainly be going through my stack of thirty saves.
• 05/13/2008: Down to a page of notes for stage 6 now, although it's unfortunate to put off interesting things. In any case, I've added a string filter to most of the legend screen categories, and while it's not the mouse, it'll still let you navigate between the entries much faster than scanning for names manually. Crimes in adv/dwarf mode now act according to the raws to the extent that that's possible (not much at all, but a start), and dwarf mode neighbor selection and a few other things which were affected by the ethical framework changes have been updated to the point that it's playable again, although neighbor selection in particular will be removed by the third army arc release.
  
  While testing the string filter, I ran a medium world. There were two overlapping goblin empires, and they kept abducting each other's children. I'm not sure what I think about that. Nguslu Crestednightmare for example was abducted at age 3 and then abducted again at age 6 by the original goblin civilization, but by goblins from a different site than his place of birth (so it wasn't exactly a rescue mission). Nobody takes care of the children as foster parents at this point, so without a guiding hand from his birth parents, Nguslu didn't start worshipping his culture's demon until he was 22, by which time he had already been an unsuccessful baby-snatcher for some years.
• 05/12/2008: Another grab-bag day with nothing interesting to report. Stage 6 always seems to have one and a half pages of notes left, with the content of these notes becoming more and more esoteric, so it's almost time to shove all of that off to dev and move on. I still need to handle some of the civ/site issues (depending on entity organization, you can have entire civilizations declare war on sites within a civilization and vice versa, so they need to be able to ally with each other/unite etc. to compensate for the population discrepancies) and ethical framework matters (particularly how the new entity tags relate to dwarf/adventure mode).
• 05/09/2008: Now that the human, dwarven and elven children can be snatched in world gen (they snatch kobolds if they manage to find them, though that might not last since kobolds shouldn't be able to integrate into other societies), I've retooled religion acquisition a bit, since the dwarf baby shouldn't worship a dwarf deity that he or she never actually learned about. Now (world gen) children learn about religion a little later in life than birth, and godless critters living in towns with temples have a chance of picking up religions. Nothing complicated yet, but it's something. So... the goblin snatchers, who were very successful before I activated the guards, got their tower populated with several generations of dwarves that managed to outbreed the goblins. Some of the older abductees imported belief in Dasel, one of the dwarven gods, and since there were more dwarves and in fact more believers in Dasel than in the demon, they constructed a temple to Dasel by the dark towers. The demon, being a godless critter, decided over the course of a few years that Dasel was worthy and began worshipping Dasel at the temple. The few goblins remaining still worshipped the demon. I've since stopped powers from worshipping gods, because it's out of character for what a power means in the stock universe, but it was kind of funny in any case.
  
  Then I created a pocket world. Kivish Soarcrafted the dwarf was abducted at age 3 and moved to the Cruel Tower in Felldweller. He became a farmer and married Olin Roofchanced, another abductee, and eventually joined the guard. The humans and goblins were fighting a lot at this time, and the demon and many goblins were slain in the wars, as well as Kivish's wife. Kivish then personally led four defenses against the human onslaughts on the dark tower, and by the year 33 there were only 11 defenders left. In the year 34, only 4 defenders remained, and Kivish became the leader of the goblin civilization, such as it was. More attacks followed, and in the year 35, Kivish stood alone against twenty four human attackers, defending Felldweller and a goblin baby that had been born in 33, the only other resident. Kivish was victorious, but the dwarves then launched an assault on Felldweller, and Kivish faced 22 dwarves in the Forest of Dashing outside Felldweller, killing 4 of his own kind before being fatally shot by a crossbow bolt. Although the dwarves were victorious on the field, the humans slipped in and installed a new leader in Felldweller, who lived alone with the goblin child, Amxu Blottedvile, for a year before more humans decided to move in, establishing a temple to Odel the goddess of truth called the Truthful Temple in 37 and a mead hall called the Muscular Voice in 54. The original human city declared war on the dwarves after this and was eventually conquered, and the humans there died out over fifty years, with dwarven populations established in two mountain fortresses and the formerly human town. Felldweller, now a human-populated dark tower, never went to war again, but without support from the original human city, the humans left there eventually died out. I'll have to check out exactly what happened there.
  
  Amxu had entered the priesthood of the Truthful Temple by this time, and as the last of the humans aged and died, Amxu, the last goblin in the world, became the high priest of the Cult of Honesty, worshipping the human goddess of truth alone in Felldweller. Amxu continued in this capacity for 157 years at which time play began. I decided to start an adventurer, and I only had two choices -- a human from the dark tower (it doesn't check for existing critters, just the controlling culture), or a dwarf from any of the the dwarf-controlled sites. I started as a human in Felldweller. It was a strange place. There were three goblin towers, a full set of empty stores, many hovels, the mead hall and the Truthful Temple. I met Amxu there. I asked him about his family, and he told me about several goblins that had died in the wars 300 years ago. Then I joined the temple so he wouldn't be so lonely and retired there. I guess I'll die of old age eventually though. That can't be helped, since he's the last immortal in the world.
  
  There were a few other snatcher-related occurances in other worlds. A dwarf was snatched at age 10, became a hunter at the goblin site and eventually led an attack on the dwarves twenty years later. The goblin leader must have been overzealous, because the attackers numbered 19 against 72 defenders in the dwarven fortress. Still, you can see why the goblin leader thought there was a chance, since the dwarven general of the goblin attack force managed to personally kill 51 of the dwarves before being struck down.
  
  I also had an elf abductee decide to become a (quite successful) baby-snatcher upon reaching adulthood.
• 05/08/2008: 'bout halfway through snatchers and item thieves. The snatchers will snatch actual world gen babies and bring them to their goblin sites, but the item thieves are stuck referencing abstract goods from the entity item lists for now (awaiting the Caravan Arc again). I guess these are the first world gen "adventures" in the sense that a few critters, namely a given party of snatchers or thieves, go through a sequence of related events and overcome obstacles together. For example, snatchers have to sneak or otherwise get passed the world gen guards (who finally have something to do) and occasionally the victim's family members, with any related duels/etc. that occur being placed under the same (poorly) named abduction historical event collection, just as battles are placed under wars. I'll post some logs tomorrow if I finish up or get coherent something compiled.
• 05/07/2008: The kobolds are surviving world gen again. Next up is baby snatchers and item thieves though, so kobolds will put themselves back in view for a bit -- I'll need to do one more thing to safeguard them (make them flee their caves briefly when retribution for all the historical baggage they start racking up finally comes). There's a tracking skill in the game now, but it's just used in world gen for the time being. This forces the scouts to locate their caves, and since kobolds don't seek anybody out now, they have an easy time remaining hidden (entities that don't have the same tags don't get the bonus, though living in a cave still confers some safety from detection). They also won't start any full-scale wars on their own any more.
• 05/06/2008: Spent some time today cleaning up dwarf/adv mode ramifications of a lot of the world gen changes to entity definitions, since friend and foe don't mean the same thing compared to the absolutes from before. Before the third release, dwarf mode isn't really going to be satisfactory compared to the histories, but I've gone through and tried to clean things up so that, for instance, the goblins won't just sit and do nothing if they weren't at war during world generation, though there's still a bit to do here and there. At the third release, they'll do roughly the same things they are doing during world generation (and if this includes receiving a goblin envoy or even a goblin caravan in rare and strange circumstances brought on by world generation, that's what you'll get). For the first release, I'm just trying to get by with some sort of playable-sensible dwarf mode to tide everybody over.
  
  Also, I think you can safely walk a (human or other) adventurer into any goblin tower that isn't at war with your civilization (and retire there), and that's not really a bad thing on some levels, but every culture will need to have their own way to greet people with which they haven't had prior dealings. This will all be sorted out in the second release (that's the plan, anyway).
  
  I guess the forums have been the thing to slip off the overfull plate lately. I'll try to find time to finally go and sort out bug reports and read suggestions tomorrow. I haven't done this since Apr 30 according to my little notecard.
• 05/05/2008: Another Reward day today. We got twenty more out between us (more Threetoe than me), leaving twelve on the list. If you didn't get yours, we'll be there pretty soon now, though it's Dwarves tomorrow.
• 05/02/2008: Nothing all that interesting to report for the last two days, slogging away at the details. Next week we'll be continuing along with similar things.
• 04/30/2008: Worked out a bunch of the issues with skill gain and army deaths today. Demons get their starting skills now -- Engror the Spidery Furnace stood against 20 dwarves and prevailed, though he was later shot by a marksdwarf, which I suppose is fitting enough. Aside from special attack kill causes for the history events, the battles are pretty much handled at the minimum level I need. The next major issue is working out some problems with civ vs. site AI. Then I need to fix up some issues with an ethical framework related code gutting that occurred previously and make some of that carry over into dwarf mode. Finally, I need to work on the kobold issue (that they die, always). Those are the last large parts of stage 6. There are also several minor things, many of which can be put off.
  
  As stated previously, stage 6 is going to be the lengthiest stage by far. I could also spend a lot of time on megabeast world gen AI, stage 8, but it shouldn't be like this, since they just aren't as involved. Stage 7 is trivial and stage 10 is probably just a few days, unless standard worlds eat up 3GB or something while they are being generated, in which case I'll need to spend more time on cleaning. Stage 9 might be skipped... for the third or fourth time. Of course, there's the bug cap to consider between each stage, and I've got 25 or so to do for next time, but if the subsequent stages don't take this long, subsequent bug caps will be easier to reach.
  
  Also, the onset of longer days is going to force me to pull my hours back a bit (the sun is shining right now, no good for trying to get to sleep), so bear with me if I become grumpy as I set my alarm for, like, 1PM... or even noon.
• 04/29/2008: The continuing mission. I've got them reclaiming sites now instead of splattering ruins all over the place, though they haven't yet learned to be cautious in the first place. I also ran my first standard sized 257x257 world since adding most of the new stuff. The Age of Myth ended ~140 and the Age of Legends passed into the Age of Heroes around ~280 when another of the demons died. There was a giant elven civilization spreading southward through an enormous forest, and by the time they reached the southern mountains where the goblins were, they were able to send an army of over 2600 elves to attack. The goblin civilization was nothing but ruins after five years (they could never mount a defense of more than 130 gobs, quite tragic).
  
  I also encountered some more strangeness with site conquests. The latest bug had an elf that had becom assimilated into a dwarven site, but who still identified with his civilization, lead both the attack on and the defense of the dwarven fortress when the elves came seeking revenge. I sorted out half of what was going on there, but there's more left to do.
  
  I had my first pocket world that ended with all the sites intact (except for the kobolds -- they never survive). There was one of each type of site, and the dwarves managed to conquer the goblins immediately and install a new ruler, then they did the same with the elves around the year 11. Goblins and elves became used to the dwarven way of life and even sent some of their citizens back to the capital. The humans were never at war with the dwarves, and a few hundred years passed in peace. The dwarves even built a tunnel between their capital fortress and the dark tower. There are currently no rebellions or revolts or longing for the past, so even when the dwarven overlords died and elves and goblins took the leadership position of the dwarven site entities that controlled their homes, they continued to pay (abstract) tribute to the capital and do things the dwarven way. This will certainly change as I add more for them to do, although after 150 years of being ruled by the dwarves, maybe some of them should remain satisfied. Religions are all passed down through the parents though, so the elves were still worshipping the forest spirit, and the goblins were worshipping the long-deceased demon. I suppose that could play a role in their decisions, along with whatever else.
• 04/28/2008: I messed around with how territory is handled during conquests today and shifted the basic territories over to overlapping site-based areas instead of just using the civilization level. I had to drop the vague border lines after that. I'm using cycling symbols -- it doesn't look as nice as the borders in some ways, but I think it more accurately reflects what's going on as well as what I'd like to go on and it should be easier to work with. Although it handles site destruction better now, they'll still try to settle areas repeatedly that aren't safe for them. I put up a couple pictures (here and here) and a movie on Markavian's DF Map Archive. You can also download the movie if you can't get it to work there. The goblins repeatedly wipe out groups of elves that try to reclaim the western forest. The last group was 35 elves -- they were immediately attacked by 200 goblins. I'll probably work on getting them to reclaim sites or avoid areas entirely tomorrow (instead of constantly making new sites). I'll also have to teach the goblins to finish the job, but the last elven cities are still too far away for them to care at this point. This is the same world I mentioned last time.
• 04/25/2008: Nothing interesting for today. Next will be getting the administrators to act more reasonably (that is, not completely inherit the conquered culture and take revenge) and getting regional territories to change more naturally as conquests occur.
• 04/24/2008: Wars that are completely over (that is, one side very lost) are now registered as such in the minds of the winner, so they don't feel so overstretched. The result on the first (smaller, 33x33) world I generated was an everlasting goblin-dwarf war in which one goblin led all the attacks for 250 years and personally killed forty dwarves. The defenders were winning too often though, which came down to a bug with ranged attacks. When I fixed that, the goblins in the same world destroyed almost everybody, placing several towers throughout the entire mountain range and leaving ruins both on the mountains and anywhere close to the mountains. Two elven sites managed to survive in a coastal forest, since they were too far away from the mountains in the west, but everything else was razed. This didn't stop the demon from being killed by a kobold in Year 2 though -- the main issue being that world gen demons aren't yet given the very high unarmed skill which serves them quite well in regular play (right now, DF is used to finalizing such abilities at the end of world gen, so I have to push some priority realizations back to the beginning of time), though that kobold still needed a lucky roll to get passed the demon's other strengths (size and fire breath, for example).
  
  I also sited battlefields and added some battle-was-here maps to the legends entries. It only takes 10 year snapshots of the entire map at this point, so it just uses the final map for the battle locations at this point (it could specifically save local region snapshots for every battle to the disk later at little cost).
• 04/23/2008: Continuing on with the same sorts of things. Right now it picks one of the combatants' languages to name their wars and battles. Ideally it would let them both name each event, but while it's choosing one, I guess it should go with whichever group can actually speak sensibly. You can view the wars/battles/important duels in a nested way, but when kobolds are involved, it just says things like "Shroler began." and "Jreengus occurred." The names given to these sorts of events by other civilizations aren't much better, but at least you can tell what they are when they call something the Molten War or the Siege of Nails or... the Assault of Troopers... or the Conflict of Attack...
  
  In the latest pocket world, the first age ended in the year 9 with a dwarf-demon duel. The Age of the Titan took up the rest of the 300 years.
• 04/22/2008: I finished most of the legends text and started fixing up some of the problems that I mentioned before. It happens that, during the movement of historical figures, dead spouses and children were being brought along. The search for families that are free to move was also being used to narrow the search for administrators of conquered sites. In fact, the human administrator that was placed over the elves in the second war log I posted last week had actually died 10 years before, killed by an elf. This has now been fixed, unfortunately.
• 04/21/2008: Pretty much B12 administrative work today, but I managed to clear out my inbox (been a while) and get several of Threetoe's donation rewards sent out (and a few of mine). There are still 26 donation rewards left to do, including one from about a month ago... We'll try to get to them when we can, but I'll probably also be getting back to work cleaning up various issues from the war log I posted.
  • fixed a crash with lots of stone in the stocks screen
• 04/18/2008: Okay, that's a first pass on the mechanics of battles over sites. There are still a ton of loose ends, and lots of legends text to write up. I'm going to have to run some tests to see what sorts of improbable things it is doing now. Actually, let me see if I can get a rough log set up...
  
  This is really rough, but here is a pocket world's war log. And here is a pocket world's war log with more interesting yet strange things happening. It still has pretty much every imaginable problem, but even so, it looks like it will all work out well in time.
• 04/16/2008: Um, well, we've got slavery, mass executions bordering on genocide and corpse mutilation reminiscent of Assyria now. I'll probably need to set up the ability to randomize the ethical framework of a given entity definition for each instance of it within boundaries, or all of the humans will be quite untoward at this point. Also keep in mind this is world generation only, though any slaves and their descendants that are still alive will be at sites in adventure mode, and people will be able to talk about what's happened. Everything is in the raws, so you can take out body abuse, slavery and any of the other stuff if you don't want it to be there.
  
  Next up are refugees, imported administrators and the initiation of (very fake until the Caravan Arc) tribute relationships. My birthday is tomorrow though, so nothing at all is promised for then aside from a cake, which I won't be able to share with any of you, although I guess some of the energy I take from it will be turned into more game.
• 04/15/2008: I'm still finishing off the implementation and some of the ramifications of the five actions I listed last time. I'll be able to set up and post some historical event lists and other information once that's handled.
• 04/10/2008: Mostly spent my programming time today plotting out a roadmap for conquered sites. All of the links between entities, historical figures and sites make it sort of a messy situation. For now, they'll take one of five actions: completely destroy the site, "plunder" and move on (which doesn't mean anything at this point in terms of tangible goods), demand "tribute" (nothing again, but it's a lasting relationship), do the same but also export a new ruler to the site, or take the site over completely (dealing with current residents and moving in their own).
  
  A complete site take-over is sort of a strange thing, but it would come out of wanting to use the site but not being able to control/use the existing population (e.g. kobolds, though nobody wants their caves now anyway) or if there were no population left. Depending on the settings in the ethical framework, individuals in the conquered population might be enslaved, evicted or killed. Even if there isn't a complete take-over, some might be enslaved, killed or flee and become refugees.
  • started handling conquered sites
• 04/09/2008: Now if a world gen hunter is killed by, say, a giant lion in the savage wilds, it'll name the lion and make it into a historical figure. Unfortunately, giant lions only live 15 years on average, so the poor thing is destined to be nothing more than fodder for artwork and chatter unless the kill happens right before world generation starts. Perhaps we could let them linger on if they are successful, and in any case, during those years, the creature can have a bit of fun tormenting the civilization further once I get to stage 8. For now, I still have to handle conquered sites, make wars end and add legends mode reports of wars/battles/duels. That's all short or long depending on how deeply I go into it.
  
  The latest pocket world didn't even have any goblins -- just a kobold cave. Everybody declared war on them within the first year, and after five years and several attacks, only Bufushagus remained. The resourceful kobold managed to harass and flee from their armies until the eighth year, and by then Bufushagus had managed to kill five humans, two dwarves and an elf. The northern humans and elves were also fighting for 140 years. The elves lost their leader in 61, but they eventually managed to eradicate their enemies, led by one of the leader's seven surviving children (three others had died during the struggle, two during the same battle). Wars don't terminate yet, so even after they'd won both of theirs, the elves decided not to pick any further fights, thinking they were already busy enough.
  • finished first pass on battles
  • moved world gen adventurers over to army battle system for their beast duels
  • made historical figures out of victorious hunted beasts
• 04/08/2008: Still chugging along. I went back and cleaned up some new world gen crashes, and I also wanted to check on the speed (seems fine so far). I had it output some rough lists of war causes while I was there. Goblins and elves don't appreciate each other at all over a variety of issues (though the elves care much more about it than the gobs), and it's often amplified by a rivers vs. fire religious dispute. The goblins' demon ruler also decided to target a human civilization that worshipped youth (because the demon is partial to death). Elves start wars with everybody right now over views on plant killing. Kobolds get in a lot of trouble because they can't communicate with others, and that's the main reason their wars start at this point (it'll also simulate item theft soon), but one human site singled them out for being godless. Dwarves and humans pretty much always get along, unless there's a fluke religious incompatibility with an aggressive zealot ruler involved, though I imagine things will be more interesting when they can fight over shared resources.
  
  Pocket worlds seem pretty lively. I might have to work a bit to make sure they aren't always down to one civ by the time you start. Perhaps they aren't meant to have long histories.
  • continued world gen battles
  • stopped mayor from ignoring labor list
• 04/07/2008: Hopefully I'll be done with the battle calculations tomorrow. Then there are just a few odds and ends left in stage 6, and the rest of the stages should take less time than this one did.
  • started world gen battles
  • did some more history handling for wars/battles
• 04/04/2008: They'll start wars and select sites to go after now. World gen doesn't worry about exact army locations, since it needs to go through the years quickly, but they'll sometimes have battles on non-site squares to break things up, and the specific world map square is recorded for use later on. The last part of stage 6 is doing the battle result calculations and recording some facts about the duels and deaths that occur. The same calculations will also be used for megabeast fights and the hunting of savage wilderness creatures (it has been rolling a placeholder die for those up until now). The rest of the release after battles is megabeast troublemaking and cleanup pretty much, but it will still be a while yet.
  • handled history creation for wars and language additions for war/battle names
  • handled entity knowledge of site locations
  • handled attack site selection
• 04/03/2008: Okay, they pretty much just need to take the plunge now and start having incidents.
  • did basic calculation for combat strength of historical figure/creature
  • handled diplomatic biases from ethical matches/mismatches
  • added basic ethical framework to entities
• 04/02/2008: Currently working on more reasons for them to be upset with each other. What I've done so far is just based on prior bad acts and religious differences. The civilizations only have specific tags referring to different moral structures (respect for trees/animals, baby snatching, etc.), so I might generalize ethical frameworks with a new system of tags so it's not just checking special cases. Right now, dwarves and goblins would sometimes be chatty because dwarves don't care about torture and they often worship fire, which the goblin's demon is aligned with. If dwarves view torture with more skepticism, at least they won't form alliances based on religious similarities. Once goblins have baby snatching adventurers and the demon is often given to world conquest, it'll be better. If humans attack goblins because they have glowing red eyes and sharp teeth and oddly-colored skin and pointy ears, we'll be at a good place, but I don't have most of those variables yet. I don't suppose elves would be put off by sharp teeth, specifically, since they like wild animals. All of these aesthetics will tie into images of loved/feared deities later... but none of that for now -- just some simple moral generalities. I'll also do some leader personality effects tomorrow, I think, in terms of how aggressive, reckless and ambitious they are, and perhaps a very small amount with trade agreements to reflect what already happens in dwarf mode later on.
  
  I should have my first world gen army battles soon, provided I work through the annoyances that come out of civilization vs. site level AI (depending on the leadership structure, culture and situation, sites of the same civilization will act with, independent of or against each other).
  • added leader evaluation of neighboring entity beliefs based on religion/status as power
  • handled basic evaluation of current attitude based on recent historical events
  • allowed important historical figures to have personalities during world gen
  • changed scouting a bit
  • got rid of human civ leaders
  • removed entity groupings
• 03/28/2008: I'm below the bug cap, so I can now move on to stage 6. I messed around with some of my old BASIC programs today. This image is from BASIC dragslay, which gave rise to C dragslay, then various pre-Armoks, Armok and DF. I have a vague impression that I wrote my first pass on BASIC dragslay in 6th grade, thinking about it while I was walking to that classroom, but it might have been as late as 8th grade in '92. There were so many little projects I was flipping between I really can't remember. And I just found 390 of them sitting on my computer. The folder is missing the really early stuff as well as all of my C programs, but it's enough to entertain me for a bit. I think the C stuff is on a CD or floppies at my parents' place.
  • stopped placing container in one of its contained containers from locking up the game
  • made constructions remove engravings, debris and other objects from their square on placement
  • stopped aerial births
  • stopped blood from hanging in the air
  • made snow-covered dyer's workshop in different construction states distinguishable
  • fixed some inconsistencies with child name capitalization
• 03/27/2008: The "This is a large ." problem should be handled now, at least the main ones. It wasn't allowing crafts to be formed from horn/amber/ivory/coral and so it defaulted to a gem, which didn't know how to display its name. I gave those materials their appropriate crafts now, and I've made gems display any material name to help out with any future problems. You still can't use those materials yourself... that'll happen at some point, but probably not for quite a while. Tomorrow will be the last bug day before world gen wars next week.
  • allowed dwarves to dig up from ramps provided a ramp wall is in place
  • stopped "large " items with blank names from appearing (one instance of it anyway)
  • allowed entry into dangerous liquids using careful movement
  • hid more wall connections in adventure mode
  • stopped channeled walls above constructions from leaving rocks inside the construction
  • made sleeping mesh with unconsciousness effects better
  • made unconscious diplomats/traders trigger traps
  • stopped smoothing under roads
  • stopped snow from being generated at the bottom of the ocean
• 03/26/2008: Not much today, some compiler crashes and other oddness slowed me down a bit, but it seems to be working again. Anyway, fewer batmen and other flier creatures should die in chasms at random now, through subterranean river dwellers will still jump off waterfalls for no reason. You can buy bolts/arrows now from human town stores. Also having counted a few bugs that were obsolete/didn't reproduce, I marked off ten and have to do nineteen more before moving on to stage 6. Whether or not I finish bug cleanup tomorrow depends on the bugs I pick and compiler weather.
  • increases adv mode store inventory and added ammunition to weapon stores
  • stopped adv mode sleeping for air-breathing swimming and drowning creatures
  • allowed "grounded" fliers to continue flight
  • fixed problem with world map display size on chargen/embark
  • made rain/snow shift locations with rest of objects on map shift
  • fixed problem that would introduce a space at the beginning of some lines of conversation text
  • decreased willingness to eat carried mud in adv mode
• 03/25/2008: Okay, I'm through with everything but the bug cap for stage 5 of 10 of this release. I have to fix 30 or so critters, and that's beyond what I can do in a day, so it'll be a little while. World generation wars, stage 6, is likely the last time-consuming stage, so hopefully we're actually beyond the halfway point for this release already.
  • updated some of the current war/relations/history code
  • made forbidden/on fire state of items respected in a few extra places
  • made children grow up anyway if they somehow miss their exact coming of age date
• 03/24/2008: Stage 5 is proceeding smoothly, and I'm trying to be done with its non-bug portion tomorrow. Then I have to get the bug list below 340... and the bug list has grown back up to 368 since I last brought it down to a cap. Once that's done, I'll use the new infrastructure I'm creating to make civilizations fight during world generation.
  • added infrastructure for collections of historical events (e.g. wars/battles)
  • changed how diplomacy states are stored
  • gave immigrant woodcutters proper soldier settings
• 03/21/2008: I've made world gen remove redundant roads and did some other work with how junctions are formed. There's a new set of pictures (with colors to make roads easier to see) up at Future of the Fortress. The week was slow, but I'm more happy with the images now. Local roads are still in need of repair, but I'm putting that off until the release is closer. On to world gen wars.
  • stopped roads/tunnels from tracing previous routes and handled junctions
  • allowed undead/invaders to fight
• 03/20/2008: Tomorrow will be the last day I work on transportation networks for a while. I have enough for armies, so next week I'm jumping up to stage 5 regardless. Whatever loose ends absolutely need to be handled will be handled at the end of the release cycle.
  
  Also at Future of the Fortress is another preliminary road picture -- this time a small map. You can see dwarves alternating between roads and tunnels and see the humans choose between skirting streams and crossing them, with varying degrees of success.
  
  I've got bridges and tunnels realized locally now. The current tile layouts are very basic, but it was neat to see a tunnel running through the mountain and bridging a chasm without a catastrophic failure.
  • finished first pass on local road maps
  • finished first pass on local bridge maps
  • finished first pass on local tunnel maps
  • various other transport network tweaks
• 03/19/2008: Various B12 hats being worn to day, and rarely the programmer one. Local realizations of bridges tomorrow, and hopefully tunnels too.
  • roadsers roads
• 03/18/2008: Still slogging along. I've posted some very preliminary pictures at Future of the Fortress of some detailed maps with roads and tunnels (and pixel bridges). There are various unfinished bits I need to work on (tunnels bridge rivers for example, some road networks double up on a connection, etc.). The pixel bridges that occur occasionally in the tunnels away from rivers are bridging chasms or cave rivers. A few of the images have tunnels connecting otherwise disconnected portions of the map.
  • roads roads
• 03/17/2008: I've got a first pass on roads done down to the intermediate map level. Laying the paths down is a bit more annoying than rivers, since they have to properly avoid the rivers that are already there, and when they do have to cross them, they need to try to do it in one step rather than running along the river's length. It'll place bridges at those points tomorrow. Hopefully I can get done with this soon, since it's fairly boring work. I still need to do the local realizations and some other odds and ends, though. Then we'll be on to world-gen wars.
  • more road work
• 03/14/2008: This will take a little while, but I'm trying to make the system support more than just roads so I can use it later. The first pass will include roads and bridges, and I'm considering world-level walls and tunnels if they won't burn a lot of time. I've (almost) got civs planning out the road/tunnel networks they want to try to build now, and I'll get into the world/local realizations early next week.
  
  I've also smoothed out cliffs for the most part. There will doubtless be some bugs from this, and we'll definitely want to get occasional cliffs back in (once you can climb, anyway), but they were everywhere and made moving around almost impossible. Now it does some local smoothing first and you can pretty much walk anywhere you want, unless you hit a river or the ocean. The resulting lack of flat patches means that dwarves walking on a mountain side will switch z levels more frequently (rather than using long staircases in cliffsides to switch levels all at once), so I might allow pinning the camera to creatures to help keep tabs on them, but I don't know if I'll get there or exactly what form that will take.
  • smoothed out local landscapes
  • added entity tags for a few world constructions
  • set up infrastructure for world constructions
  • started road network calculations
• 03/13/2008: I suppose carving fortifications in walls is abusable as far as uncovering bad places underground, but it's the responsibility of whatever you find down there to break through into your fortress, and the critters aren't very good at that in a variety of ways. Feel free to exploit until then. While I was testing construction removal on a glacier, a skeletal polar bear came by and guzzled my wine and stole my plump helmets. Anyway, I just managed to slide in under the cap, so I can start world gen/town roads tomorrow.
  • made digging out ramp walls update connectivity properly
  • gave work dogs and cats names upon adoption
  • displayed number of assigned hunting/war beasts during assignment
  • fixed up problems with continued designation job selection
  • stopped constructions and frozen liquids from floating at the bottom of the chasm
  • stopped construction removal from leaving open spaces in ice
  • stopped ocean waves from pushing merchant and horses free from wagons
  • made carving a fortification unhide adjacent squares
  • made freed tombs respect no pet init options
  • made pregnancies count toward the baby cap
  • made heat/cold damage effects for items work faster
  • stopped dungeon master from constantly putting on cloaks
  • stopped dwarves continuing training if the building becomes forbidden
  • allowed wagons to go through ashes
  • hid adventure mode site compass if not in regular mode
  • fixed display problem with text viewer scroll bar
  • fixed problem with recursive body glosses
  • stopped debris on the ground from coloring flashing ramps
• 03/12/2008: Well, I thought I'd be able to start stage 4, he he he. I finished stage 3, but I didn't get to any bugs. Stage 4 will begin tomorrow. I'm about 15 bugs off the cap now, so I'll start with there. After that I'll be doing world and local town roads. They won't have much of an impact on your dwarf mode games for this release. It'll take more work to allow your dwarves to link up any roads you've made with roads on the world map and will probably require the ability to send out armies on the map first.
  
  Some of the technical parts of trash-talking by your enemies are antiquated, so I haven't merged them with the new kill chatter of townspeople yet, but it'll happen at some point. Most of the civilians in town now have a specific profession instead of just being called peasants. The first mayor I talked to had been a mechanic for 35 years and a fishery worker for two, and I later met an elf that bragged about killing two giants by name.
  
  I've restricted the professions available to the entities (dwarven professions are the same as ever). It's not mod-proof at this point -- if you take carpenters away from a civ you are playing in dwarf mode, you'll still be able to build carpenter's workshops, but you won't be able to bring carpenters with you or select their associated job during play in the labor list. I'll get to the rest of the defects later, but it's not a priority. Right now elves and kobolds have the fewest available professions, because the professions they'll have when they are finished are going to be more exotic.
  • added more explicit job permissions to entity defs and handled some ramifications of that
  • made civilians take entity appropriate jobs during world gen and gain skills over time
  • allowed people to talk about their professions and kills in a basic way
• 03/11/2008: I almost made it through, but I got stuck on an annoying world gen hunting bug for a while. I'll finish up stage 3 tomorrow, and I'll probably be able to make some progress toward the stage 4 bug cap as well.
  
  On the bright side, there are now more appropriate people to bring along on your adventures again. I joined up with a married couple. They both used swords, but they weren't part of the town guard so they agreed to come along. The wife was a hunter (and had killed a wolf and two cougars during world gen before I met her), and the husband had been wandering for a few years trying to make a name for himself killing mythical beasts and hadn't met a single one. While we were journeying through the hills on the way to a goblin tower, a pack of seven wolves attacked. The husband got his throat torn out by a wolf that became named Couragebasements. While his wife skewered another wolf, unaffected by dwarf mode thoughts of misery, I killed the other six, including Couragebasements. This wolf was distinguished on my kill list (the other five were grouped together with the region where they were killed). We then went on to rack up some more victims at the goblin tower before eventually dying there. My goblin kill list got a little cumbersome, and it doesn't yet list the primary profession of the goblin, but it gives the names and races, at least (and the undead status). You can view the kill lists in any mode, though you can only view your own kill list in adventure mode (and only your dwarves at this point in dwarf mode).
  
  Later on I suppose hunters in world gen should be found with clothing and trophies relating to their kills, but that likely won't make this release. They can't even talk about it yet (I got the wife's kills from legends). I'm doing the talking part tomorrow, among other things.
  
  The dragons and their other megabeast friends are collecting kills as well, though they won't be able to cause real trouble until a later stage of this release. The hydra that survived world gen had fended off 22 heroes, and a bronze colossus that was destroyed in the year 55 managed to defeat five elves, three dwarves and two humans first. By the end of world generation, the majority of the semimegabeasts like minotaurs and giants were dead, and all of the ones that were still alive had killed multiple heroes to stay that way.
  
  All of these deaths of civilized creatures has the fortunate side effect of keeping the populations below their limits more often, which leads to a wider range of birth dates for races like elves and goblins. Goblins don't try to dragons, but they do hunt regular creatures and suffer losses there. Wars will amplify this.
  • added tags to control world gen adventuring behavior of entities
  • made world gen hunters contest wild beasts and record kills
  • recorded all kills by historical figures during regular play
  • allowed viewing of kills in adv mode, dwf mode and legends mode
  • added framework for world gen civilian professions and tracking time spent working
• 03/10/2008: There are now plenty of adventurer types floating around, and they'll kill off the large critters during world generation to push the ages forward a bit. I added some extra creatures so that the world looks more or less the same as it does now by the time they are done. Once I get world gen army fights done I'll balance the numbers again (it's stopping the clock around year 300 now). First I'm going to mess with this for another day and I'll also try to get to some other professions in town. I'm also going to incorporate the new kill tracking system into regular play so that it'll know how many of each sort of creature every historical figure has killed (and roughly where), whether or not the kill itself is another historical figure. The reason I'm doing this now is for skill determination after world gen, but it should be fun to view the information for your own population in dwarf mode and for your own adventurers, and I'll set up that display tomorrow if things go smoothly.
  
  Hopefully the daylight savings cloud over my head will be gone tomorrow. If I have a good day, I should be through stage 3.
  • added addition location/state information to certain historical figures and adventurer/followers
  • allowed hist figs to hold undead information
  • made megabeasts, semimegabeasts and underground feature creatures take on the undead character of their region
  • added more kill tracking infrastructure
  • let civ adventurers kill mega/semimegabeasts during world generation
  • made world generation stopping point depend on era
  • made vegetation removal behavior based on entity tags rather than site type
  • allowed entities at peace with wildlife to settle in savage areas
• 03/07/2008: Various bugs fixed. We'll probably be back above 350 open bugs in a day or two at the rate they are cropping up, but I won't bring them down again until the next stage. Monday will see various professions among non-players in the adventure mode towns, including mercenaries and adventurers at some basic level (mainly for creating legends during world gen and joining your group).
  • fixed crash from having no items available to bring to the depot
  • fixed problem with slaughter job spamming over inaccessible creatures
  • improved accessibility checks for various jobs
  • fixed problem with the king coming early and not actually showing up
  • fixed problem with wagons not unloading at the depot if you have more than one
  • made smoothed walls display correctly when designated for dig
  • stopped selected embark area from changing when civ is changed
  • placed silk cloth in the correct item category during embark
  • fixed problem with blank thoughts from old caves
  • stopped item names from spilling under point values in embark item list
  • made cage occupant list scroll before reaching instructions
• 03/06/2008: I lowered a lot of the support numbers and was able to make the population cap a bit softer for world gen. The total number of historical figures in a standard world is about the same, at least in the worlds I've tested, but they don't hit a wall in quite the same way as before, and the removal of a small hard cap allows some human civs to get much larger than others. I also took another look at ghost towns and ended up fixing a problem that was causing more of them than necessary, though they'll still happen on occasion. More images up on Future of the Fortress. You can see one of the large human empires in the northern part of the first standard map. It bumps into the circular influence of a kobold cave at its southern border -- the kobolds claimed the area around their cave before the humans got there, so they were able to make a nice round shape. Once I get to wars, such a round shape will likely be short-lived. You can also see a civilization that crossed the water in the west of the first standard map, and the purple 'U' civilization in the southeastern corner of the second standard map has seven or so components gained in the same way. The humans in the small map tried it out but were stopped at the beach by cursed hills. The elves on that map also chose to live in the 4 tile eastern forest rather than the larger one to the west because the smaller forest was a good forest.
  
  I removed some of the elven biome support numbers. Now they'll just claim forest territory, so they'll often have strange borders where the trees meet other biomes. Most of the non-elven boundaries are still fairly clean, though there are some doubled-up borders there as well.
  
  The next step is to get bugs below 350 as the first part of release stage 3.
  • added very small territories around sites in old saves
  • cleaned up the era/maps view in legends a bit
  • added more variability to selected colors for territory symbols
  • fixed problem leading to extra ghost towns
• 03/05/2008: Entities now claim territories during world generation. It isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they'll at least tend to form boundaries at rivers when there are others pushing against them and they prefer their favorite biomes when they are constrained.
  
  I've put some medium map images on Future of the Fortress. These were exported using the new historical maps feature of legends mode. It currently saves snapshots of the world at ten year intervals, and you can scroll around the map and move back and forth in time. You can also flip between the brown territory view and the regular map view. The slight expansion in territory during the later years are a result of the primal savage areas being tamed by nearby cities. The lone red symbol on the left is a kobold cave's territory -- they got stuck in the middle of a savage region and weren't able to spread out.
  
  The somewhat unsightly map symbols are derived from their civilization's symbol and the color descriptor raws. So some of the goblins in the lower left look like they've got perhaps a blue cave crocodile on their red banners (and the ones below that look like they've got a chest). The humans at the top left have a tree, while the dwarves on the right have a red dwarf on their banner. It doesn't yet pay attention to what sorts of dyes/cloth colors the civilization can actually produce because those are limited at this point. Boundary lines are disconnected in some places because the civilizations in question don't both claim a single square. Ghost towns (now displayed as ruins) are a bit more common now. I'm not sure if I'll change that or not, but I think it's coming from the inferior site selections available to them now that they are restricted to their own territory (rather than a large circle).
  
  There are a few loose ends to deal with for tomorrow, but I should probably also be able to begin the third stage of this release.
  • made entities claim territory during world generation
  • associated character/front/back color to entity symbols
  • added ability to view historical territory maps from legends
• 03/04/2008: Mostly thinkering instead of tinkering today. I should be set to blast through a great deal of territory coding now.
  • added framework for civilization territory
  • handled various era odds and ends
• 03/03/2008: The second stage of this release is up for tomorrow. This means defining claimed territories for civilizations during world generation more explicitly, rather than the overlapping spheres it uses now. I'm hoping to make them more apt to stop at natural boundaries like unsuitable biomes and rivers as they claim areas, but what I'll be able to do in a day or two will probably be less satisfying.
  • fixed a problem that would allow continued designation jobs to mess with other designations
  • stopped export restriction mandates from being violated by trader goods (no dwarves were punished, but noble becomes upset by this)
  • made soldiers lose inappropriate jobs like training when their squad is put on duty
  • stopped journey friendships from influencing leadership selection on embark
  • handled an issue with job persistence when a dwarf joins the guard
  • added some additional checks for well completion for well jobs
  • handled eras in legend mode
  • fixed item contaminant adjective spacing and duplicates
• 03/02/2008: The Power PC version is up and reportedly working. I also fixed a few things when I was reading bug reports. My brother's days off keep changing, so I'm just going back to a Monday-Friday schedule for the main DF work.
  • fixed gender swap in legends/relationships display of deities
  • fixed problem with infinite rejections in world gen that came from loading custom parameters
  • fixed a few problems with adding/deleting world gen parameter sets
• 02/29/2008: Snagged a few more PPC critters today. It's running on the PPC Macs now, and some progress has been made on save compatibility between platforms. It's mostly working, but there were still a few discrepancies which have possibly been handled now.
  
  I've added some details to the next release's write-up on Future of the Fortress.
• 02/28/2008: It'll now change the name of the Age you are in based on what's happened in a rudimentary fashion. This includes after generation -- I had a completed pocket world go from the Age of <titan name> to the Elven Age to the Age of Dwarves as a direct result of my play decisions. The second transition was somewhat brutal. The world was covered by a good forest, but that didn't mean any elves needed to live there. At this point, larger worlds stay in the Age of Myth during generation because none of the megabeasts/powers die. I'm going to try to get them involved (and sometimes dead) during world generation before the next release, as part of world gen wars/conflict. Ultimately, you'll be able to stop the clock early if you want to keep a lot of them around, but I don't know if I'll get to that this time around.
  
  Continuing along with Power PC work as well. Two definite problems squashed. If it tests out, I'll be able to put up a new Mac version tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll keep at it.
  • added basic dynamic era naming
  • made at peace with wildlife tag apply only to natural creatures, and updated some of those tags
  • stopped natural creatures from ambushing adventurers that are at peace with wildlife
  • fixed crash bug related to rain destroying webs in evil forests
  • fixed problem causing low baby caps to affect population cap
• 02/27/2008: Mac-age lately, fiddling with files and breaking Windows saves and fixing them. We've made a lot of progress on the Power PC version -- Kobold Quest is running on one, and we're doing some more tests with DF. If it works out, I can post a new DF version. In any case, I'm starting up on the next Army Arc release tomorrow, and I'll keep working on the PPC version if there's more to do. I'll put up a PPC version whenever it's done, so it won't be tied to the next Army Arc release if there ends up being a delay there.
  
  The three and a half hour IRC interview I mentioned a while ago has been posted on Gamasutra. It has been edited into a more standard Q&A format, which is good, because the IRC format of the original really led to a lot of interlaced questions and responses that'd be confusing to sort through. Also, conveniently for me, the side rants were removed, he he he.
• 02/24/2008: Released Dwarf Fortress 0.27.176.38c
• 02/24/2008: Today was mostly spent vainly chasing after the Mac Power PC bug(s), but the 38c release should include a few welcome fixes anyway, assuming the site sprawl stops. I'm not sure if it's related to the infinite rejections that also sprang up. I can't reproduce either problem here, so it's somewhat difficult to hunt down their causes.
  • fixed problem with cleaning of site support numbers (possible cause of site sprawl)
  • fixed problem with command line generation of non-standard worlds
• 02/23/2008: Released Dwarf Fortress 0.27.176.38b
• 02/22/2008: Today ended up slower than usual since I screwed up my back somehow sitting in this chair and needed to move around a bit. Anyway, the new map sizes seem to be working. As I mentioned on the Future of the Fortress thread, an unmodded 17x17 world complete with history and offloading will generate in about 5 seconds (over here at 2.59GHz/1GB), which should be useful for people testing mods, though 17x17 is so small you might step that up a bit.
  
  The bug count is 332 now. This isn't the 300 I set for my goal in moving on to the next phase of the Army Arc, but I think I've done quite a few welcome fixes and I'll probably be moving on after the release tomorrowish. This doesn't mean I won't be continuing to clean things up. I'd still like the bug number to keep going down slowly if possible, and I'll also be doing work in addition to the Army Arc as usual. I don't anticipate the next phase will take very long -- almost certainly not as long as the first world-gen/religion release, though since I'm throwing in the first pass at leader AI regarding simple diplomacy/warfare decisions, it'll pay to be a bit thorough.
  • forced units on chains to remain on the same z level as the chain unless they stay directly above/below the chain
  • made the at-peace-with-wildlife tag work in adventure mode to stop the elf-unicorn conflict
  • made all undead respectful of one another
• 02/21/2008: I don't suppose the first dev item was a good idea if I'm trying to cut down on bugs. Smaller maps don't care about biome distribution at this point, so they don't have as many rejects (although that means there are going to be some strange ones buried in there). The 17x17 maps are cute -- in the ones I've made, there've been one or two sites for each race (although I think it puts megabeasts in each of the two caves, rather than kobolds... that'll probably be changed), and there was one peak and one volcano.
  • allowed either world dimension to be set to 257 (current), 129, 65, 33 or 17
  • fixed problem with screwpumps failing to update connectivity map
  • fixed a few problems with plant jobs not being stopped when seasons or settings change
  • fixed problem with digging channels in frozen brooks
  • fixed a problem with map generation of large caves
  • added option to create world bypassing parameters screen
  • made liaison from saves converted from 33g appear
  • stopped swamps from draining into premade dwarven cities
  • stopped goblins and others from being your buddies when you settle on their site after adventure mode
  • stopped sale of uncaged small animals to merchants in adv mode
  • stopped coin and temple engravings from referring to future events
  • made dungeon masters happy with their cloaks and boots again
• 02/20/2008: The post-artifact lag is gone now, and a lot of the other damage from the last release has been cleaned up. I'd like to make the new "jump back to dwarf mode" behavior of the relationship screen more general, but there's some messiness to it with older screens preventing this from happening immediately. More bugs and little thises and thatses tomorrows.
  • made traps safe for friendly outsiders again
  • stopped hunters from being interrupted by their prey
  • made dwarves place artifact in workshop after creation
  • removed artifact claiming and hiding (until Artifact Arc)
  • cleaned up problem with reclaim squads being placed on edge
  • refined embark aquifer display
  • made falling/pumped water placement respect floors over aquifers
  • fixed problem causing dwarves to target harmless insane people while making evil creatures spare them and babies
  • made thieves and their support groups respect each other
  • fixed problem causing sneaking thieves not to actively avoid dwarves and other potentially hostile creatures from a distance
  • added init option for pause on autosave
  • added init option to show embark confirmation even if there are no potential problems
  • added button to go back to main dwarf screen from relationship/unit view
  • allowed items to be forbidden from the stocks screen
  • allowed zoom-to-dwarf from the military screen
  • made furniture changes to room update rent immediately
  • stopped booze food from melting, even though it probably should
  • stopped chats/art appreciation from happening during pause
  • made scrolling in room list work properly
  • stopped artifact engravings from having incorrect symbols
  • fixed incorrect thief ambush message
  • added tag to force clothing/armor item type to appear in entity realization
  • removed defunct *_SETTLEMENTS tags
• 02/19/2008: There are still issues of course, but I think Mac DF is ready for people to mess around with now. I'll put it up with the next release, which will be on Saturdayish. Next is four days of bug fixing. I doubt I can get below 300 open bugs this time around, but it might be close enough to count. Recently introduced critters will be first on the menu.
  • made movie file I/O OS independent
  • did a first pass on PPC endian support for all saved files
  • added in eli's Mac sound code
  • extended Mac keyboard support
  • various other Mac tweaks and cross-compile warning code cleaning
• 02/15/2008: Released Dwarf Fortress 0.27.176.38a
• 02/15/2008: I had a swordsman sent to assassinate the high priest at the goblin fortress Skullsprofane, so I traveled over there and killed about 30 goblins, including the high priest Stozu Wickedvoice where he was sleeping in the Chapel of Ghosts. There were hardly any goblins left alive when I was done.
  
  I went back to the human warlord, and he told me to return to Skullsprofane and kill Kutsmob Powermonstrous the goblin hammerlord. I didn't give myself much of a chance, but I managed to break his hip... before he shattered my knee and took me apart. It was close. He and his shield were just too powerful though -- it was an iron masterpiece with a leopard bone image of himself ascending to the leadership of Skullsprofane more than 1000 years before.
  
  So I did what I usually do -- start up another adventurer to try to finish the job! I tried a swordswoman and was blown apart against a wall. Then I tried a sneaky crossbowman but Kutsmob blocked most of my shots with his shield -- the one that hit him in the wrist he simply pulled out and dropped as he continued to scan the area. Eventually Kutsmob lured me into the tower, after which he jumped out and hit me five times and crushed my chest in. Then I tried an accomplished pikeman with no armor and no other skills to go for a quick killing blow, but still no luck. He was there by himself now, just waiting for more adventurers in a fortress filled with blood, rotting body parts and scattered clothing.
  
  I figured, okay, I'll give it one more shot, since his fifth kill will give him a name, which I'd then share with you in this story. I started up a halberdier with balanced skills, more or less like my first two adventurers. I took the task from the human warlord and set out for Skullsprofane. As I was walking toward his stronghold, the Doomed Tower of Dread, an iron bolt flew passed me. A guard! I had missed one. And there was Kutsmob, standing on top of the tower, hollering various insults about those that had come before me.
  
  There was an opening in the fortifications through which I could rush to meet him. And I did -- but when I was just a few steps away I was shot in the back. I pressed on, taking a swing, and Kutsmob leapt backward. I ran at him and another bolt shot by. I charged, slashing down... and split Kutsmob's chest open! All of the major organs were pierced, and he fell over wheezing. I hacked down again and again as two more bolts stuck into my body. Just as he breathed his last, I was shot in the leg and fell over. Crawling now, I made my way over to the body of Kutsmob and picked up the iron shield. Then everything went black...
  • made archery trainees stand instead of firing if necessary and possible
  • formalized caves being different sizes and allowed them to go slightly beyond 3x3 on midmap
  • controlled cave populations more carefully based on size
  • respected frequency in choosing cave/feature pops
  • made adv mode site map handle sites that aren't 3x3
  • added 530 words
• 02/14/2008: The historical events and end-game fixes took longer than I expected. Things are going all right though. Tests and a release tomorrow, most likely. Tomorrow means Saturday morning, of course.
  • created historical events for various masterpieces created by dwarves and for masterpiece losses
  • made unhappiness from lost masterpieces depend on number remaining
  • did zooming to buildings from building list
  • added baby+child absolute cap and adult percentage to init
  • fixed problem leading to blank engravings in end-game area
  • fixed problem with end-game features not working in reclaim
• 02/13/2008: I guess it's actually the 14th when this goes up. Any relevant portion of my anatomy having already been absorbed and reassigned to the hermit-center of my brain, this is what I did for Valentine's day.
  • made dwarf chats improve conversation skills
  • added personality/skill/pref compatibility check for dwarf chats
  • made friendship/grudge building dependent on compatibility
  • made suitably compatible dwarves become romantically involved
  • allowed dwarves to get married
  • made starting dwarves have established friendships from the journey
  • stopped parties from being organized during the first year
  • added screen for viewing/zooming to all relatives/friends/pets/etc. of given unit
• 02/12/2008: Not a bad day, and I might have actually fixed a few bugs that someone wanted.
  • turned off clothing rot thoughts (until Bug 323 fix)
  • made vermin hunting dwarves check periodically for newly available food
  • added init option for rent to always be *0
  • allowed squad selection to occur over Z levels
  • stopped shallow ice melting over the ground from destroying buildings
  • made traps work against map feature creatures
  • stopped work order jobs from being placed in mood buildings
  • allowed adv mode player thief to travel after site is offloaded
  • stopped dwarves that are too injured to hold items from getting moods
  • stopped mood dwarves from occasionally selecting odd workshops they are standing on
  • stopped magma mood dwarves from selecting unfueled magma buildings
  • stopped slaughter and caging jobs from making dwarves drop their babies
  • stopped ponds from attempting to fill themselves from the same activity zone
  • made dwarves fill each component within a single pond zone
  • stopped physically led creatures from triggering traps if leader knows trap location
  • stopped vegetation from growing up in submerged tiles or under buildings
  • made submerged trees/shrubs/grass die
  • made vegetation growth respect dead vegetation values for evil regions
  • gave prepared food temperature information
  • stopped retirement while holding store property
  • tweaked plant gather numbers
  • got rid of mood building conversion (too many new side issues)
  • made metal ranged weapon construction jobs use weaponsmithing skill (mainly a mood fix until raws have more info)
• 02/11/2008: Blew through some of the easier bugs today. The overall number of open bugs hasn't dropped by much since there were several reports over the weekend. I'm still aiming to get below 300 open bugs -- I'll probably release on Friday and then continue along with it.
  • fixed capitalization problem in conversations and a few other typos
  • fixed a few gender swaps in conversation text
  • fixed problem with river fetching function that screwed up embark texted and placed odd streams
  • fixed problem with blank squad names
  • cleaned up lag on dwarf mode civ list
  • made buildings placed over dig designations remove them
  • stopped dig jobs from working through buildings
  • stopped chasm bottoms from blowing apart falling units
  • fixed problem that caused itemless floor constructions to confuse walls built above them
  • allowed item demands to be satisfied by items in more than just the core room types
  • made jobs that dip into containers check forbidden status of inner items
  • stopped cleaning of forbidden and inaccessible items
  • made rents reset when rooms are resized
  • stopped kobold and languageless entities from crashing name selectors
  • made items supported by trees fall when tree is chopped down
  • added adv mode minimap support for Nx1 and 1xN buildings
• 02/08/2008: I emptied out the top three levels of the magma pipe into a large underground chamber, and then I watched the lava bubble its way back up the pipe. I did some save compat work with this, but I can't guarantee there won't be some kind of horrible calamity where a previously dormant volcano starts to erupt on load.
  • fixed problem with world generation civ region selection
  • stopped temples from being placed against unallocated areas
  • stopped cave entrance from sealing up after settling in dwarf mode, and other related oddness
  • handled some cleaning problems in world gen
  • fixed mem leak with architectural info
  • added some more checks for stale complaint meetings
  • more robustly handled case where meeting target and meeting initiator are one dwarf with two appointments
  • added filling information to volcanos and made volcanos fill slowly
• 02/07/2008: The save pile is empty now. Fullscreening on the Mac works. Next up is a lot of bug-fixing until the number feels less oppressive. I'm not sure how long that'll take. It depends on which bugs I pick. Then I'll plot my way through world generation wars, so that the world in-play can be prepped for continued trouble.
  • bit of map code refactoring
  • fixed problem with activity zones in forts that are placed over human sites
  • added some extra checks for hammer jobs
  • added location checks for mechanism jobs
  • fixed problem causing soldiers to stop if they were unable to reach visible opponents
  • tweaked civilian versus wilderness beast behavior
  • fixed problem causing stalled and duplicate meetings
• 02/06/2008: Various issues dealt with. Tomorrow I'm going to work in some Mac code that I received to try to resolve some of the remaining problems there, then back to the save stack (8 left).
  • fixed problem that stopped pathing critters from walking around each other
  • sped up pathfinding a bit
  • fixed potential cause of infinite fluid bugs
  • fixed problem with pathfinding of building destroyers
  • fixed problem leading to floors not being placed above some constructed walls
  • fixed problem causing magma pumps to not start up correctly
  • stopped blank material coverings from occurring on creatures
  • added extra path check for item storage jobs
  • sped up item placement verification on site load
  • fixed problem with item placement for sites loaded locally
  • sped up item occupancy flag removal on pickup
  • added characters to display floor/wall engraving quality
  • handled bridge stability problem for bridges placed before surrounding constructions
  • cleaned out mining jobs with invalid destinations
• 02/05/2008: Fixed up a few crash bugs, though I ended up mucking around on the forums a lot because of the new release and the some odd goings-on with the forum software. I've got 19 saves left to check, and I'll be working on those until they are done. Then I'll try to get the total number of open bugs down below 300. I might release a few times while I'm doing this or not, depending on how fast it goes. Once I feel like I've got a bit more breathing room, I'll be continuing on with the Army Arc, following the outline at the Future of the Fortress.
  • updated workshop profile variables
  • fixed crash bug with lava going off the bottom of the map
  • added projectile validity check on load
• 02/04/2008: Released Dwarf Fortress 0.27.173.38a
• 02/04/2008: Mac portage... there are still various gigantic problems with the peripherals (sound/movies/BMP export/etc.), but there was quite a bit of progress. I generated a world with the same seed on both of my computers and got the same exact map and history. It was a bit of a chore though since the order of RNG calls between MSVC and XCode was different based on compiler optimizations (so I had to break some expressions up, once I found out what was going on). I can't guarantee there won't be a lot of addition problems along these lines. I then went on to mine a tunnel in dwarf mode and join a temple in adventure mode. Speed was fine, except in a few places where the number of refreshes needs to be cut down (unit offloading is the big one).
  
  I'm at a point where I can't continue without some email correspondence, so I'm going to release the Windows version now. I'll just be bug fixing with more frequent releases for a while though, so as soon as the main Mac issues are handled I can get the port out with one of those. I have the actual code transfer/Mac compile/archive process down to about a half hour which I can mostly spend working on other release procedures, so once the initial problems are sorted out everything should actually go smoothly from now on.
  • various Mac port work
• 02/01/2008: I've fixed up the last of the issues I had scheduled and I've written up (but not yet posted) the dev updates for the coming version. I'm still on track for Tuesday.
  • updated in-play civ hist fig list
  • stopped children and babies from joining you on your adventures
  • sped up art creation code
  • handled a problem with incorrect party placement in mead hall
• 01/31/2008: I'll be done with the non-Mac stuff tomorrow, and hopefully I can pound through the Mac stuff on Monday. Depending on how that goes, I'll have something up on Tuesday.
  • fixed problem that stopped caravans from coming
  • fixed problem with liaison arrival time
  • updated old save goblin towers and building names
  • allowed number of each civ placed to be set
  • sped up some end-of-game cleaning code
  • printed a bit more information about what's going on after history has run but before world generation is complete
  • put drunks back in
  • allowed anybody with an adventurous or excitement-seeking personality to join your party
• 01/30/2008: I've now begun the testing phase. Most of it is working out. There are some parts of the legends screen that I need to speed up. The caravans didn't come, so I have to fix that, but the human invaders came, this time with a pikeman on horseback with a squad of crossbowmen that killed my starting dwarves. I have two more quick tests to do, and I need to sort out the rest of the problems that I found during testing. It amounts to a day or two of work.
  • added bias toward important events in conversation and artwork
  • allowed adventurer to ask people about their families
  • patched up various small problems
• 01/29/2008: Continuing along attending to minor issues. People can join the guard of their site now during world generation, and the game keeps track of their skills, so it can use and improve them during the army battles which will come later. I'm hoping to get to the testing stage tomorrow, after which I can do the Mac port and release. Quite a few things have changed within the program, and it might take a few days to sort out any kinks that have developed, especially with regard to save compatibility.
  • added preference for adventurer not starting in ghost town of civ
  • allowed debug information concerning ruler lists and deities to be exported
  • fixed problem causing adv mode citizens not to sleep in their homes
  • updated king arrival for dwarf mode to support current leader and spouse
  • updated site guards to new system and handled their assignment during world generation
  • adjusted some of the moving-in code for housing
• 01/28/2008: I'm still working through some minor issues. Next I have to figure out why all of the merchants run out of their shops at night to sleep in the mead hall instead of their own rooms. "It is said that the lower floors of The Abbey of Echoing can be thought of as a representation of caverns for the glory of Osman Tinechoes."
  • updated goblin towers to new system
  • handled a problem with excessive temple memberships
  • added some architectural comments
• 01/25/2008: The minimap is useful. It doesn't take you directly to caves yet, but it gets you within a 48x48, which is good enough for now. It can get you exactly on top of any building you find or are told about in a town. There's also a little list of nearby sites and a compass direction, with quest sites always appearing. It's still sort of unformed, but an improvement over nothing. I managed to run off to a quest cave and get killed by a giant cave spider anyway.
  • cleaned up some broken temple maps
  • added discovery flags to abstract buildings and recorded site entrance locations
  • added adv mode minimap for viewing nearby sites and site locations
  • allowed player to join temple entity
  • allowed non-leaders to give suggestions for service locations based on their memberships
  • allowed viewing of structure histories in legends screen
• 01/24/2008: Stiiill working on this religion stuff. There was a temple map embedded in a hill that was very buggy that I have to deal with. Religious people now give you very general advice about how to live your life.
  • finished basic temple maps based on architectural information
  • fixed problem with period spacing in art descriptions
  • fixed problem with initial visible world map in adv mode
  • gave priests and high priests outfits
  • gave various buildings names
  • made current building name display at bottom of screen
  • fixed problem creating open space squares at sites
  • added some more conversation text
• 01/23/2008: I've fixed up mayors and other transition issues that came up at the end of world generation. You can see the high priest and the rest of the priests hanging out in the temples now, and you can set their graphics if you want. I decided to go back to temple maps after that and linked some architectural concepts to the spheres of deities, which in turn can be realized as specific elements of the temple's architecture. For instance, the temple to a sky god is much more likely to have an open ceiling, and the temple to a god of darkness is more likely to be constructed using black stone. The system is specific to temples and deities now, but it can be extended later to cover cultural and personality properties as well as additional building types later on. It would be nice to have every structure in the game operating under the same framework. I'm also going to tie this new information to conversations a bit this time around. I've included some vague justifications for the sphere/arch-concept links to facilitate this. I guess things always take longer than I expect, but I should finally be finished with these temple additions soon.
  • updated the conversion from historical figure to unit at the end of world generation
  • did display for priests and allowed optional graphics for them
  • linked some artistic/architectural concepts to spheres
  • selected from among temple architecture elements through sphere relationships
  • started temple maps based on architectural information
• 01/22/2008: I did an interview that lasted three and half hours, which was about two hours longer than I expected. It was fun... yet draining. I'll put up a link when it's posted (this one is text instead of audio). I got priesthood inductions working properly and gave names to the temples. Now I'm moving on to mayors and other issues that come up during the transition from historical figure to unit in town.
  
  Members of the Trustworthy Cheerful Cult worshipped Nosem (healing) in the Clear Cathedral of Consideration.
  
  Members of the Doctrine of Devils worshipped Tabmik Frothedbloat the Putrid Sucker (disease) in the Ungodly Silty Shrine.
  
  The goblins formed the Sect of Graves and built a temple for their demon overlord called the Doomed Bad Chapel. Their demon god was named Uktong the Sinful Curse of Nightmares, but because it doesn't yet understand that the bad bad goblins should be building and living in creepy towers, it says "In 1, Ukton the Sinful Curse of Nightmares took up residence in a hovel in Scorpionstunt." The temple wasn't even in Scorpionstunt. It was over in Greaseprofane.
  • added temple names and some more words
  • sped up some legends code
  • worked some more with temple entities
• 01/21/2008: The people that worshipped the god of luck named their group the Accidental Temple. The god of children and lakes got the Young Order of Lobsters. There's a bit more to do with this tomorrow.
  • set up entities around temples during world generation
  • removed ruin map generation
  • changed how abstract buildings are stored
• 01/18/2008: Well, not a bad week, even if there wasn't a release... again. I walked around town in adventure mode, and after seeing a lonely and empty temple there, I'm definitely going to flesh them out a bit Monday. Then Mayors and Macs. Maybe I'll put off updating nomads, since they aren't so important.
  
  I also recorded some more information during world generation (marriages, becoming shopkeepers, moving, building construction events, etc.), and the stories were fun to read, though somewhat sparse of course. A dwarven couple got married and were tending shops for 9 years in one town, but when it was time for a new town to be founded, they moved out of their hovel in the capital and one of them became the Mayor of Minesavant while another continued as a shopkeeper at a new shop there. They lived on like that for 80 years. It has little histories like this for 160,000 critters right now... 720,000 historical events... so I might need to stick some of them on the disk and do some culling. This could affect the quality of generated artwork though, and some other things, so it'll have to be careful. The numbers are only going to get higher when the temples are peopled and wars cause displacement and battle events to pile up. It's kinda cool to bump into somebody now though, anybody, and know that you can trace their ancestors back 1000 years to the 10 founding couples of their civilization. It made me think about the dev notes involving heredity and passing natural and supernatural traits of all sorts down in varying degrees... it would be pretty straightforward now, once the traits themselves exist.
  • made people in world gen build and work at shops
  • added historical events for site/histfig link changes
  • made people in world gen build mead halls, temples and keeps
  • cleaned up some housing odds and ends
• 01/17/2008: I've gotten through the home building/upgrade part of the world generation buildings update. Next it'll be shops/shopkeepers, keeps and possibly temples.
  • made families build and move into homes during world generation
  • sped up the legends screen
  • added display for all histfig/entity links in dwarf mode thoughts screen
• 01/16/2008: Preeetty much finished the first pass on religions. This release still requires buildings, migrants and hist fig finalization. None of that should be difficult, though I suspect finalization will throw a bug or two my way. I suppose that will cause me to blow apart.
  • HIDDEN FUN STUFF
  • did legends write-up for deities/hist figs
  • added duplicate name checks for deities
  • allowed deity race to be appropriate local animals
  • 60 or so new words to fill in some sphere/deity gaps
  • associated dwarf mode units to available targets of worship
• 01/15/2008: My interview with GeekNights has been posted. A god of fate was named Sahthet Seersmoke the Creepy Silence of Owls. Doing names took longer than I thought it would... working with symbols+spheres was sorta painful, though many of the deity names are passable (at least under the current guidelines that bind all names into the "name compound the stuff of stuff" format), so it was worth it. I put up a new world generation log.
  • associated hist figs in religious civs to targets of worship in varying degrees
  • did names for deities and forces
• 01/14/2008: Continuing along with world generation basics. Civs can now be given religion in a few ways. The gobs now worship a demon that actually exists on-site to break things up a bit (the tags give you a bit of control over the class of creature it uses). Dwarves have specialized pantheons, humans have fully randomized pantheons, elves worship regional spirits, and kobolds worship nothing. I don't really want to get bogged down in specific stock cultures, but it's good to have lots of tokens that it can tweak/randomize later on.
  
  I'm going to do a bit more with religions tomorrow -- enough so that the pantheons are visible in game on the legends screen at least. I also have to update building creation/storage, nomad placement and mayors, and perhaps successions of shopkeepers/merchants for the buildings, though that might wait. That should leave the game in a playable state more or less like it is now. Non-nomadic migrants will probably wait for wars to cause displacement.
  • added religious information to entities during world generation
  • added a few entity tags for controlling religion
  • fixed some entity spreading issues and sped it up
• 01/11/2008: They spread out now. It's a bit sluggish during the first 30 years or so when the most breeding and initial town founding is going on, but it seems to be leading to a pretty satisfying pattern of settlement throughout the world, except in the savage and inhospitable areas. We'll see how the pattern holds up when they start fighting. First I have a few loose ends to tie up (mayors, migrants, etc.). I should be able to get those fixed up halfway through next week, then I'll probably fix a few bugs and put a version up before I start world-gen wars.
  • did creation of new sites spreading into sphere of influence
  • added spheres of influence around entity sites
  • worked with succession and breeding a bit more
• 01/10/2008: I successfully navigated around a few pitfalls today, such as marriages to immediate relatives and marriages to the dead. Perhaps later for plot stuffs, but not now. The civs start out with 10 married pairs each, so it's already sort of a white rhinoceros situation, but hopefully it will work out. If you have a non-breeding immortal race forming an entity, it creates singles instead of pairs at the beginning, and that's all it every makes. Mortal races that don't have genders can't currently form civilizations, since they'd just disappear before play starts (unless the lifespans are very high). The numbers can be modded.
  
  I've compiled a list of the rulers of all the civilizations during a test. There are 10 civs for each of the 5 races. The list is here. Even though there aren't any wars yet, the population cap causes some of the lines to break because the rulers were unable to have children.
  • did marriages and child birth during world generation
  • did baby/child/adult state changes during world generation
  • finished basic succession for vacant positions during world generation
  • sped up binary insertions somewhat
• 01/09/2008: Getting started on the breeding and the spreading. Yesterday I did an interview for a podcast which I'll link to when it goes up -- should be early next week.
  • started succession for vacant positions during world generation
  • made hist figs age and die during world generation
  • updated creation of leaders and starting populations
  • added entity tags for world gen population size/control
  • removed lieutenants for now
  • barred non-breeding creatures that don't live forever from world gen civs
• 01/07/2008: Starting civ placement has been updated, and you can do a lot more with it now that the entity tags are sorted out if you like to add your own entities. It still picks just a few neighbors for you to interact with for each dwarf mode game, but one of the main goals of the Army (and Caravan) Arcs is to eliminate that system. The next major goal is to get them to spread and fight during world generation. Some of the infrastructure there will carry over to the regular game, but things happen on such an accelerated scale that a lot of it will be more abstract.
  • updated placement for regional entities
  • updated placement for cave entities
  • added start biome tag to entities
  • unified creature/wood/plant biome tags
• 01/04/2008: Ended up working on dev pages and mucking around with forum registration with the Lord Packman. There have been some dozens of non-posting bots signing up every day. Hopefully there will be fewer of them now. It was also my mom's birthday. The bear statue was appreciated and is now in the center of the living room awaiting transport to its final destination outside.
• 01/03/2008: Okay, I've sorted out the entity tags now, and I'm ready to get back to civilization placement and the new histories/wars. I won't be able to release tomorrow since civilizations aren't currently placed on the map, but I'll do my best to slip out some release with a few bug fixes while I'm working on this stuff.
  • changed how neighboring entities are selected
  • updated how the invasion flags work together
  • added entity tag for skulking invasion types
  • added entity tag to control general grouping
  • added entity tag to control diplomacy type
  • added entity tags for season and progress contact conditions
  • added entity tags to control whether bodyguards are present
  • made bodyguard types depend on entity
  • added entity tags for diplomats/merchant nobility
  • added entity tags for biome support
  • added entity tags to control leader/lieutenant unit types
• 01/02/2008: The current entity tags were too general to start the history rewrite, so I've started a process of breaking them apart that will continue tomorrow. This will also allow modders to have quite a bit more control over civilization placement and properties. Tags like "MOUNTAIN_SETTLEMENTS" and "BABYSNATCHER" shouldn't have any hidden or wide-ranging implications when I'm done.
  • added entity tags for default site type and site preferences for migrants and hist figs
  • added entity tag to allow use in undead ruins
  • added entity tag for friendly color
  • added entity tag to order adventure mode char gen entity site listings
  • added entity tags for sphere alignments and art modifiers
  • added entity tags for forest-type trade rejections
  • added entity tag for body abuse
  • added entity tags for forest-type target behavior/equipment
  • added entity tags for nuisance-type skills/equipment
  • added entity tags to tease apart animal/plant use in place of forest/babysnatcher
• 01/01/2008: Since we don't have the resource tracking that the Caravan Arc will bring yet, I've added some religious information to give them something to fight over. For the next few days, I'm going to be messing around with how the initial civilizations spread and how their histories are created. Then I'll get them to fight during world gen, and once that's working, I'll get it to happen during regular play, first on the world map, then in adventure mode, and finally in dwarf mode. Here are some very basic example pantheons from what I've done today (they don't even have names yet, since I'm going to handle that through entities that spring up). Of course, there are lots of extensions possible with religions and how they work, but I'm just going to leave it in a skeletal form for now.
  • created sphere-based pantheon during world generation
  • defined sphere relationships
  • added various new (effectless) spheres to the game

2007 Log
2006 Log
2005 Log
2004 Log

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