Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - DF Roundtable Extra: Roadmap Released!

Episode Date: March 3, 2022

This is a short non-episode to quickly chat about the exciting new roadmap. In it we also namecheck Ultima Ratio Regum and Roguelike Radio

This is a Dwar Fortress Rounding, Extra Edition, Roadmap Release. So our last episode was delayed because we had all of our hosts were under the weather a bit. And it turns out that may have been a little fortuitous because had we recorded last weekend and we would not have seen the roadmap released. So this is going to be a bit of an extra. we're just going to go through the roadmap items real quick, and our next full episode will have more in depth on it. So I guess this is kind of a 12-fortress action news episode.

Do we have to do that, noise? Yeah, that's good. Cut that in. Yeah, yeah, that's good. So the roadmap was released on February 23rd at 12.25 p.m. Central Standard Time. There are six items, and number one is, is finish the menus that haven't been upgraded yet. These include graphics and layout for justice, health diplomacy, and hauling. Okay. Does anybody use the hauling menus?

Could we just drop those? Save some time. I'm kidding. Is that where you hit O? I think it's the one where you hit it and you're like, damn it, what have I done? Ah, crap, did I just tell me something? Oh, I hope I haven't just ruined this for it. Yeah, it's like the really weird menu.

Yeah. It's incomprehensible to be that one. So that's different from the orders menu, right? Yes. Yes. The O is the one where you're just like, oh, that's why I think he put it as an O. Well, no, I don't use all the time because I always tell my dwarves to go ahead and clean up outside. Yeah.

Because I don't like all the crap in left everywhere. Yeah, the old menu is you're allowed to touch this, but not that. And then there's like this incomprehensible alien screeching menu that I, like, what is this? What happened? So, yeah, it's a different menu. I have not. So I don't know that I've even ever seen it. So that's number one on the item, something I've never seen.

Nice. Item number two, as the menus are finished and the graphics updates are completed, we'll move on to some important interface and usability improvements, such as tooltips everywhere, and X's to close windows, hotkey support, et cetera. All right. Sounds useful. Very nice. Yeah, that's going to go along with the windows that they've created, like the pop-up windows

that aren't, I guess, menus themselves. Do we have any quick comments about that? I'm not exactly sure, besides just finishing up dressing on the new user interface. I mean, I am very curious about the tooltips, because if it's not... I hope they don't get in the way.

Yeah, tool tips are tricky, aren't they? Well, yeah, yeah. But I hope it actually gives a item description. That would be really cool. Well, that would be cool. You know, if you hover over an axe, and it just doesn't say, like, steal axe, but actually gives, like, the entire item description. That would be really, really cool.

Pull it from legend or whatever, if it has a story. Maybe so long as it doesn't pop up. There's a code editor called, well, it's Microsoft Visual Studio. The tool tips in that always get in the freaking way. Yes, they do. Looking with your mouse, you float over a variable, or, or, or anything, and it pops up a tooltip that covers up other code, and

it's even hard to click. But, so, yeah, tool tips are tricky. Make you a stronger programmer that tests your frustration limits in real time. It's like, well, you need to learn it. It's like a life preserver. It might not always be there. Learn to swim.

All right. So item number three, at this time, of course, we've been fixing old bugs and making new bugs and fixing them. And here we'll need to focus and spend some quality time with them so that we have as smooth a launch as possible. Yeah. So, I'm fixing. Yeah, so here's where I think

they haven't quite realized what they've got at their disposal, which is to say the Steam Early Release. And I think one of the coolest things about Steam Early Release is that you can put your code out to thousands of basically beta testers who are willing to pay you

to beta test the code. And you can get a lot of feedback, and you can basically get, you know, lots of bug smashers out there, you know, for free, for you. Actually, for not, for even better, for you get paid. And, you know, that seems to be something that I think could help them because, you know, one of the things I would imagine with being a two-person dev shop is playtesting is probably not, you know, like what, they just has Zach doing playtesting, right? Like, how much could he really cover, even though I'm sure he's thorough?

So it just seems like a way to distribute the work in a very easy kind of way where then you're able to get free, you know, free beta testing, basically. You can never have one person to acceptance testing because that one person does things in a particular way. Exactly. And those particular things get tested. But the other ways, you know, don't, even though it's not a failing of the person. It's just the way human beings are. Well, exactly. And if you think about it, like I've, I've probably hit the J key, maybe two.

never intentionally when I've played door fortress I've never once hit the jkey intentionally I've hit it unintentionally a few times um it's a do yeah exactly see it's the job list so you can go down and you can see who's doing what oh that thing yeah yeah yeah so like I'm never going to hit that so if that had a game breaking bug in it I would never find it if it were just me testing but yet I will be willing to place a bet that you know somebody like techud or you know one of those other players out there who are kind of doing 3D, 4D chess in this game, use that kind of stuff regularly. And so, you know, maybe Zach does.

Maybe he doesn't. But I think we've all got our kind of way of doing things. And so I just think the more people doing things in their own way, the faster you get to some of these bugs. Well, you get the bugs out. You know, you have to fix them after. Yeah. Now, the downside is that it could end up generating so many bug reports

that Tarn and Zach can't stay on top of it. And it ends up adding more fuel to their fire. I don't know that that's going to be that big of a deal because, I mean, they may actually have a different added new bug reporting system. Right now, through Bay 12 games, they have the bug list and all of the players who are playing, you know, report bugs and upload saves. Well, I guess I would just offer that as a, in case you haven't thought of it, this might be helpful without fully understanding the consequences. of like what that could mean for them because we don't really know how they actually do the work that they do. I wouldn't want to slow them down,

but I wonder if it could help speed them up. That's, I guess, as much as I would say that. The only thing that I want to add to this is I hope that we still see the bugs because cats getting drunk because they clean themselves after getting sloshed with alcohol was hilarious, for example. Yes, right?

He's, I mean, part of the love that we have, for the game, I think, comes through the bugs. Like, think about this last round where the children would mount the parents and then ride them to death. That was an amazing bug. That was truly nice, yeah. That was a really, really, that added to my experience as a player. You know what I mean?

It just, what is it? Some artist said something like, imperfection is real. And I just feel like there's a lot to be said for that. It definitely gave it kind of a soul, you know? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I suppose this is also a big reason why the entirety of dwarf fortress is basically banned from no-context quotes on Reddit, because it's too easy. Yeah, it is. It is.

Bugs equals emergent gameplay. Yeah, yeah. So it's like we don't, you know, I'm sure Kit Fox has their, you know, regression testing and all this kind of stuff that they do or, you know, maybe they don't. I don't know. I don't know what kind of a devolution does. I don't know. it's like a dev shop or a publisher. I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know how involved they are with that. Yeah, they might just be a publisher. They are a dev shop, but I think that in this case, they maybe fulfilling the role of publisher only. Yeah, fairly. So we'll go deeper into item number three, and we'll probably take up most of the episode for our next episode. But item number four, we're not sure what level of Steam Workshop will be needed for

modding support, and it needs investigation. that's fair enough very curious yeah fair enough TBD on that one godspeed soldiers that sounds like a hard thing to sought to get so I should also say there is a there is a divider between three and four that we'll get to after we get through the list here well I would also say with some background in software development number four if you don't know that right now it ain't happening in this release if this release is going to happen anytime soon because it feels to me like that right there is going to be a big thing

to try to crack. I know nothing about Steam Workshop. Well, I just know it's like, I don't know if there's an API or... Exactly. You're suddenly... Is it an API-based thing, or do you know? I have no clue. But I, you know, I almost bet that there's a lot of people

who do and that would be willing to help turn out with this. But, you know, I suspect it's not... I mean, it's probably fairly easy to integrate because a lot of games do it, or maybe it's really hard and they just bite their teeth and do it. But whatever it is, it's been done a lot. But it's just the changes he's going to have to make to support pulling that kind of content in. And that's what I would say would be the hard part.

And that's one thing that Kit Fox is going to be able to help him with. Because Kit Fox does produce games on Steam. And I'm sure they've got familiarity with the Steam Workshop. Yeah. I don't know that. It's just when it says we're not sure what level of Steam Workshop will be needed for modding support. We're not sure means we haven't looked at it yet. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's true.

That means we know it's probably going to be a lot of a hassle, and we haven't had a chance to think about it yet. So, I mean, that's honest. And honest. That means that we have just been putting off Kit Fox's messages about this. Yeah. It's like, it's also probably, you know, I have a feeling. It just requires the most amount of messing in a non-standard way with the code that they haven't done before. And so there are ways that people modd door fortress right now, and those probably won't cease to exist.

so if people could, you know, cool it a little bit on that one. I feel like that's something people would be willing to wait for because it's not like you don't have the ability to mod Door Fortress. You just have to do it a different way until they figure out how to make it, you know, steam workshop-y. So it's like ultimately this will be a pretty awesome thing. But maybe for launch or early access, early access. Do I want to just say that again? It doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter.

Like, everyone will be cool. This is also going to tie into number six here in a couple minutes. But, okay, so number five, the old ASCII version has other game modes, adventure mode, Legends mode, and Arena mode. We've made significant progress on Legends mode, but we haven't done anything with Adventure Mode and Arena mode yet. So that's number five. Adventure mode and Arena mode. Arena mode, do you guys, I have used it once?

Yeah, same. I hit the option on the menu, saw it, and thought, you know, I just want to play to a fortress and went back to Fortress mode. Yeah, I mean, I think the one person that would probably have some interest in that would be a Krug Smash once a year. Is it Arena Mode that he actually uses for his Spatterface? I'm pretty sure. I mean, I haven't watched this year's Splatterface, but I think that's what he did last time. And he had done some, like, he modds the arena mode. because, of course, he does.

Yeah, yeah, and the whole, like, gladiator tournament is also in arena mode, yeah. Yeah. But I touched it, like, twice, and it actually had nothing to do with Dwarf Ultras because I made a character for a completely unrelated pin-in-paper RPG, and I just copy-pasted the, like, description text off him, into that thing so I don't have to write it myself you know what I mean yeah it's an RPG maker yeah it is it is I mean technically you can just use a adventure mode as well but yeah and same thing yeah I feel like that one I would back burner what about

adventure mode uh I was trying to find the Oh, I heard a cat. Did you? Is it soap season? In my household, it is always soap season. Oh, no. No, that's not true. That's not true.

The cats run the fortress here. Sorry, what did you ask? Tony, I was... It also says adventure mode. So I suspect that one would be more popular as a roadmap item. I've got to go spray a cat with water. Okay, sure. Sure, that's how you get the soap nice and soft.

Go away. I can't hear the, like, water spray. It's so funny. It's how the moisturizing happens when you make the soap. You've got to keep the cat's moist at all times. That's how you know you have a good microphone. I'm across the room spraying out of doorway, and you can hear the cat meow,

and you can hear the water come out of the... It's very nice, yeah. I feel like I'm there. But... Okay. So Adventure mode. Yes, I have played Adventure Mode three times, I think. maybe four if i remember it correctly so that's probably a no um there was a like a questionnaire

on the subreddit some some time ago like a long time ago and uh most people like 60 to 70 percent if i remember it correctly play just fort mode so only a very few people actually play adventure mode at all and there was almost nobody that only was nobody that only played adventure mode. Yeah. So I think it's the kind of thing that's like you want to play it and then you do play it and you're like, wow, that didn't really go the way I wanted it to go. Yeah.

Well, we had a few episodes, a few streams where we streamed some adventure mode. We should probably do that again because I did enjoy that. But I think I enjoyed the company of you two pointing out to me the things to do more than the game itself. that makes that make sense yeah yeah like a bit of backseat driving actually makes adventure mode a lot more enjoyable yes I think so yeah

I concur because it takes three brains to be able to figure out the effects that's also true oh my lord yeah the amount of time it took me to realize that my spider character actually had six usable arms for doing things was far far longer than I wish to admit to I was like oh my god of course he's got too

shields because he's got six hours anyway yeah it's it's really interesting and complicated and I think if you imagine like it requires you to have a good imagination and then people with good imaginations can kind of imagine how amazing it would be if it were super easy to use and like you know what I mean it would be truly incredible to be able to have open world RPG in that game yeah yeah yeah It's like this one meme, you know, like the girl sitting at the desk, like, daydreaming and like being happy about it, like thinking about adventure mode. And then she is like crying while doing her homework and that is playing adventure mode. Totally. Yeah, I agree.

It's kind of like, you know, people's vision of the, of what the metiverse is is very much like, you know, ready player one. But what it actually is is more like, I don't even know. garbage, basically. So how do I breathe? Yeah. My guy died of suffocation because I didn't hit X. Oh, no. The thing is, Dwarf fortress's uniqueness comes in fortress mode because there are, and I'm

struggling to come up with the names of them. I know that cataclysm is one of the open world roguelikes. Then I think that's like a zombie apocalypse. It is. And there's a couple more. Well, there's one that is written by a professor, an English professor, a professor from the United Kingdom, I should say. Oh, boy. Is it called word of wordal?

No. Oh, okay. I guess I was getting confused. Not, Ultima, it's like Latin. Ultima online? No. That was old school. Sounds like it, though.

He's American, though, that guy, wasn't he? Richard Garrett. It was Latin. Ultima Ratio Regim What I'm sorry You never heard of that Ultima Radio Regum

What can you call your game Is that somewhere? In this universe So go to Okay so I will Put the link to this In the show notes In the podcast topics

It's Ultima Spell like Ultima Then R-A-O R-G-U-M And it's a It's a open world roguelike from Mark Johnson.

But my whole point is there are highly detailed open world roguelikes out there which is what adventure mode is in Dwarfurtress. Of course it's set in the same universe as Dwar fortress, which is awesome.

But the uniqueness of Dwar Fortress to me doesn't come from the adventure mode. It comes from the fortress mode. Agreed. Well, I can go I'm interested in checking that out. Ultima Ratio Regnum. Yeah, it's, if you listen to Roguelock Radio, there's a podcast called Roguelock Radio.

And, wow, it's been a while since I've, you know, name-checked that, because I used to do it every episode. Yeah. But, yeah, they've not been very active in the last couple of years, but the, Mark Johnson, the creator of Ultima, Roshio Regim, however pronounced, however that's pronounced, he's often a host of Roguelock Radio. It means the last argument of Kings, in case anyone was wondering. Wow, I'm going to play that. Oh, no. Yeah, I was going to try it, too. It looks like it runs on Microsoft Windows. I have a copy of that program.

I can use that, and then I can... It sounds like a really awful game, and I love it already. I should also throw in that this item number five also includes working on Mac and Linux. builds. So you should be happy about that. Yeah, I'd say that sounds good to me. Let's do that. Let's do that time. Power that, power that up first. Move that to the top of the list.

And the last item, number six, there's the matter of Steam achievements and other various Steam features. We'd like to support whatever people are into here, eventually. So that's the roadmap. Achievements. Yeah, I I'm actually curious

about the achievements. Are we talking about like the community he's set achievements that we already have, like setting an elf on fire, killing a goblin with a civilian, killing a forgotten beast, breaching into the caverns, stuff like that, because that would be

very interesting. Okay, so that's the roadmap, and I do want to say that after item number three, which is the bug fixing one, so finish the menus, update the graphics usability interface, the X

and tool tips and stuff, and then fixing bugs. The developers have put out the question to the community, what do you want us to do at that point? We could either hold off on the release of Dwar Fortress on Steam until all six of these roadmap items are done, or go release after items one, two, and three without the steam achievements, the workshop items or adventure mode for adventure mode and legends mode.

Wait, no. We made significant process. Let me start that over. So they are asking the community on whether they would like, help me out, Tony. Yeah, they want to know, do we wait? boil the ocean and then release or do we or do we take a cup out of the ocean and give it to you one cup at a time and um you know i i guess i am um i am definitely of the the model of thinking

um don't let perfection get in the way of being done and uh i think there's a lot to be said for that with software development and the steam community is already pretty pretty open arms embracing of that kind of software development, you know, very rarely do new games that aren't like AAA titles land fully baked. Most of the games that I have and play regularly are early access. And I think that's one of the cool things about Steam is that it gets you, is that for software developers, it kind of lets them release stuff that's not finished yet so they can kind of, well, pay themselves because that's pretty neat if you're writing software. But at the same time, it also gives them an ability to get feedback in real time from players

and help build that player base, which I think can only make things better. And then it also gives the sense of a really active project when updates are coming, even though they're minor and incremental, you can do minor and incremental updates. And even with early release, you can choose, do you want to be on the, you know, the stable path or the less stable path? And, you know, the less stable path is really fun, but, you know, sometimes your games crash a lot because, you know, you're patching frequently. But I don't know. I've had some really good experiences with early access, probably more good than bad, I'd say. And it's also kind of fun because you can kind of finish with the game and put it down and then come back six months later and realize, oh, they've still been working on it.

Oh, that's awesome. And then you almost have a different experience. So I don't know. I'm a big fan of early release. I would say do whatever they need to do to get something into early release. and then just, just, you know, leverage the power of your community who love your game and want you to help it, you know, want to help you make it the best it can be.

What do you think, Roland? Yeah, I have nothing to add to that. So Kit Fox and Bay 12 games are actually asking the community what the community would prefer for, they're asking for input, of course. The community isn't going to make the decision for them, But the choices are release probably sometime this fall or so after doing the first three roadmap items or hold off on releasing until the entire roadmap is complete whenever that may be, which, you know, sounds like, you know, given the roadmap items, that could be two more years. Yeah, I was going to say all for the first three is pretty like even my jokingly hilarious things have.

I'd only kind of put it to there. So, you know, I'm like, that is a really long time between releases. It would be really neat to see what was going on there because that'll have been almost, what, nearly three years, huh? Send us an email at Eurist at DFRoundtable.com. And I'll tally up the opinions of our listeners. And I will feed that information back to Alexandra at Kit Fox Games, the community manager at KidFox.

So, yeah, send us an email on. whether you would like to see it released possibly this fall incomplete, or if you'd rather have them just wait and release it after it's complete. So, yeah, erst at DFRondtable.com. So have you guys got anything to add for this quick hit? I don't think so. I'm excited to see that, you know, that there's progress coming, and that, I mean, this is the most information, I think, on a detailed level,

strategy level that we've seen so that's pretty neat so you know i hope uh hope everybody's doing okay over there and really excited to see how this goes yeah all right so we'll get into this more i'm sure in our next episode but uh until then uh we'll catch you all next time see you oh bye Thank you.