Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 76: Tarn and Zach Adams Discuss Upcoming Release

Episode Date: November 27, 2022

The Adams Brothers join us to discuss the upcoming release.

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfy. Every couple weeks or so, your hosts gather to talk about our favorite game, Dwarf Fortress. So let's join your hosts, Roland. No, this is good, this is good. I was just asking if I'm, like, hot enough. Tony. Kirk. Like, Kirk Cameron from the 80s TV series, Growing.

and Jonathan. Dwarf Fortress Palooza for a wonderful, wonderful episode. As they present insightful, irreverent, and often incorrect analysis. This episode, Dwarf Fortress creators Zach and Tarn Adams, join your hosts to talk about the upcoming release. Hi there. It's all about the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns and stuff. And always remember, losing is fun.

Tarn, Zach, Adams. Welcome back to the show. Thank you. I guess your lives have not had anything at all going on lately. No, there's no reason to sleep. And I gather you guys have been working on something lately that everyone's pretty excited about. Yeah, yeah, lately and over the last couple years. Right, exactly.

I think the second episode of this podcast featured the initial Steam announcement. So, is that right, Roland? Something like that, yeah. Like second, third, yeah. So, well, I think the third one had Krug smash on. So I think the second one had the announcement. And away we go with our, with our, what, two year, two and a half year long party now. Cool.

Is that right? Wow. I think so. Okay. Well, of course. Tarn and Zach would know that better than we. Well, fantastic. Well, I'm really glad you guys could be here.

And, I mean, how has it been? Like, what has worked? I'm sorry, just to get in with these hard-hitting questions. But I'm just curious, like, did moving towards Steam and Kit Fox and working with a publisher, did that kind of fundamentally change how you do your development? Or do you feel like you can kind of still just, you know, do it the way that suits you? Well, not for the last three years now. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's all been really directed toward the graphics interface, or just reworking everything. I mean, most of the time we would work, like, toward a design. You know, coming up with things as we went along, kind of, and now it's more... Yeah, it's kind of untested in a way. I mean, because we haven't tried a big feature arc yet, and so coordinating artists at the same time on things that are either unrelated or related to the upcoming stuff. We haven't really tried that yet.

Now, we did, when we changed the end game, when we did the kind of labor rewrite, when we rebalance the economy, all this stuff that's been happening over the last couple years, that didn't directly involve artists. There was no difference there. It just happened. So I'm optimistic.

So are those things, the rebalancing, is that things that are in 4705 that got released on the last one, or is that new gameplay changes that are going to be in the new release? That's all stuff that happened since 4705. Those three things I mentioned, I believe, all happened after. So they're just going to go right into the main line. Yeah, there's a whole bunch of new stuff. Oh, that's really interesting. Oh, wow, gosh, you guys have been really busy.

I was kind of wondering if it was just really difficult to take what you'd already done and kind of bash it into this graphical Steam format. But in addition to doing that, you guys have also added new stuff. That is very exciting. Yeah, it's not a lot of ease of use things. It's not rather than crazy new features. Yeah, there's a little bit of that. There are some new features, but it's mainly stuff like,

auto labor and and the just the buttons and stuff. Yeah, the tutorials. And when I mentioned the economy rewrite, that was, I mean, partially just because it needed to happen because some of that stuff is ridiculous. But

the, like changing the values of things so that like a masterpiece muscle craft isn't worth quite so much and rebalancing the food and that kind of thing. Like that, that is just good to do. but it's also a lot of the things we've been doing

are aimed at new users, just making sure the initial experience is a little bit tighter than it was before. Which benefits everyone. Yeah, yeah. For sure. I think that's one of the things that I've really been hoping for is things that can make it a little easier for new users

because I guess I'm so detached from the new user experience sometimes when I tell my friends about it and I say, it's only going to take you a couple times to get it, you know, to figure it out. and you'll be, you know, building soap workshops in no time. And, you know, they just kind of look at me and say, don't recommend things to me again. Like, no, I promise, I promise.

I'm like, no. So I'm pretty stoked about that. So I can, you know, bring more people along who I genuinely think we'll enjoy it. There's just so much there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, go right ahead. About the economy that you changed, in the first little snippet that we saw in some upload,

there was something about like hard economy normal economy is that what you changed can can we change economy from the balanced mode to like the unbalanced mode yeah i mean the the difficulty settings are a bit perfunctory when it comes to the economy stuff right now that just makes it harder to get a baron um and so forth so you you have to work harder to get to the milestones i mean that's going to be more for people that just want to say hey i got the monarch on hard which would take, you know, a long time compared to on the normal mode. But that's not all that happened. Like unrelated to that, we also just rebalanced all the prices and made the caravans

much smaller in the beginning. You just get a couple of mules at first instead of like a giant wagon or whatever. And you'll have to take care of your nobles if you want wagons. Oh, no, those guys. Come on. You're so cruel. You can't just send them to the river to. to drown?

Here's a nice locked room for you. Yeah, you'll still get mules, but yeah, the actual integration with your society requires hanging out with the people in your society instead of putting them in specialized pits. Cool. I was wondering if they were going to have an implementation or if you were going to have an implementation of supply and demand so that whenever you flood the market with, you know, marble rings, if suddenly the price of marble rings, would drop.

No, that's the kind of thing that's, that's more like the actual economy stuff that we, I believe we've been threatening to do since 2007, and it never felt like the right time. We've always been just, I don't know, it's always something or other. Yeah, like the, when we, when we tried to make the dwarves buy stuff with their own coins, like the original, quote unquote, economy release, that was a big, yeah, that was more like the homelessness release because no one could afford these rents and people did. There was no actual pressure on the landlord to reduce the rent because the landlord was just the computer. So it just, yeah, it was more like, you know, I have no mouth and I must scream.

That's kind of how the computer was. It's getting a little too much like real life at that point. So you're losing that fantasy element. I can understand why that might be delayed. Well, to be fair, I just wondered if it would happen. I didn't necessarily think it was a good idea. We'll be back to it. We'll be back to it.

We'll just be a little more careful. what do you think your biggest surprises were when you started working with well one a publisher who seems like they've been great and and two the steam thing like was there anything you were like wow we did not see that coming and that was challenging but but we're cool it's a lot easier i think than we like the the publisher made uh working like they took a lot of the of the paperwork that we just did not know how to deal with like i don't know if we'd be able to do this on our own we would need help with hiring people. We just had no idea how to do that. And working with them and interviewing for people. I mean, they went to the, they went to the community, actually, to get most of the hardest, at least at first. And, you know, I don't know if we could have pulled that together. So they really helped out. And I don't know. I didn't expect to be that easy. I don't know. Torn. Yeah, no, I mean, it's really hard to come up with things that were more difficult than we expected because everything has been pretty,

smooth i mean i mean part of part of it just from our end is that when we we have had a lot of side projects as we kind of mention um not just like like the ones that are actually released on the internet are all like curses games or stuff um and there was like world war one medic or whatever which was a graphical games and and a few of the the really bad games that were up there but like our actual side unreleased side projects have elements that are like pixel graphics and stuff. They're not good pixel graphics, but they're technically, like, engaged with a lot of things about pixel graphics, like gluing together sprites and transparency and all that kind of stuff. So things that might have seemed like they would be difficult for us, we actually

had a lot of experience with. And there was some new stuff, I guess, like when we started doing streaming on FMod, and we ran into a whole bunch of mess with that. Because we have, like, 15 musical tracks now and 16 shorter musical tracks, 23 ambiances. And you can't load it all into memory because it takes like two gigabytes or something. Yeah, this is what people most impresses them when they play it from the first time is they're like,

whoa, the music. Yeah, this is crazy. Yeah, so yeah, no, we're streaming those all off the disk. And the version of F-Mod we've been using for like 18 years or whatever it actually had a crash that they fixed like 17 years ago and we just didn't care because we never when we asked them for the license

for the original version they're for the old version they're like what what are you guys doing? Yeah so we just actually just last week or two weeks ago we went to FMod 2022

so yeah fancy fancy newfangled streaming sound and yeah yeah so that that was a bit of a shift anyway i don't know how i'm going to react to not having the tarn adams guitar soundtrack in the background of my dual fortress game it's going to be very strange oh oh it's there it's there i was about to say are you the are you the creator of some of the new no well it's it's there in in in the inspiration yeah the i mean they use the for the title song which is a seven-minute

track now they they use the old title um music in the sense of composition not audio and the original uh but now it's layered and it's got counterpoints it's got vocals uh yeah we're not quite to the level of boiling point but but we're getting there like like the uh the the the best best uh video game songs of all time obviously but uh but the uh it's pretty good we got we Yeah, we've got at least three songs with a vocal element. Take it to the boiling point. Yeah, we're working on it. All right.

If we're correct, that only plays when you're installing the game and you never hear it again. But it's like an entire song. Yeah, yeah. We could have done that. We should have had install music. So Katie Perry confirmed for the next release? Yeah, I don't know. Sorry.

Sorry about that. We're going to try. We're going to try our best to call. collaborate with all of our heroes in the future, for sure. Of course, yeah, that's obviously something that I'm sure is super important. Cool. Attention members and guests, Logan Hastings, administrator of the Grand Guild Hall, the Diamonds of Steel,

invites all metalsmiths of the Guild of Crystals to observe the artifact now on display in the hall. Etoastmering Dalai M. contained languishes the greed of speech is a sheer sheep wool chos and all crafts worship is of the highest quality it is made from sheep wool cloth this object is adorned with hanging rings of llama wool and menaces with spikes of sheep wool and alpaca wool come learn and enjoy fellowship with administrator logan hastings at the diamonds of steel on the seventeenth level of ivory channels You know, one of the things I've seen with Steam is there tend to be multiple tracks of things. Like there's the main release and there's the, you know, I'm up for the not quite beta, but sort of beta. And then there's the, this is probably going to crash and ruin your game kind of tracks in Steam.

Are you guys looking at doing any of that or is it, are you guys going to stick to your standard? Like, this is the way we do it and it works for us mode or have you made any changes or thoughts? So we have three branches right now just during the testing. Just during the testing process, we had the Steam Workshop testing branch, the regular testing branch, and then the release branch. And so we know how those kind of work now. We're going to need to kind of up our game a little bit to get a real sort of stable experimental thing going that's like a little faster on our feet with that. But that's the plan. Now, I'm not sure if we're going to do it like because people like to have.

old versions, especially where as save compatibility is concerned, but of course we don't often break save compatibility. It is broken for the Steam release for weird reasons, not actually the reasons we were expecting. It has nothing to do with the graphics. It was like something I had to change about trees or whatever. I was like, I just couldn't bring the saves along. It's really frustrating. But the new release, we're not really planning to break saves again if we can help it until maybe the magic or something. But at that point, and maybe at certain other points, if people care about some change or another,

you know, I noticed like Factorio has like 15 different versions up on a branch, right? And we can do the same thing and also have an experimental branch. It makes a lot of sense when you've got the game, you know, potentially just being like Insta downloaded by however many thousands and thousands of people will have it in their libraries to be a little more careful. so the so the so the save updates weren't broken by the graphics but just due to a change with the trees I feel like there's an elf something to do with the elves ruining things there obviously yes of course all those elves always it's always those guys reminds me yeah the

new the new agitation system the new elf diplomacy and savage regions uh yeah no there's there's quite a few changes yeah it's like there's actually quite a few changes. Okay. As we're going, yeah. No, just, yeah, it's just every, every little thing that we interact with. Three years. We couldn't resist when you do stuff out there.

Yeah. Can you elaborate just a little, can you elaborate just a little bit on the elf agitation system? That sounds awesome. So there's a couple, a couple things, actually. So there was always like underground agitation that was supposed to bring forth the forgotten Beasts and the underground civilizations and some of that had kind of bit rotted over time or was never really kind of in there in the first place but now it's all all in there the

appearance of Forgotten Beasts now depends on how much you've been mining and chopping trees in the actual and farming because it's important now there's another change the farming change farming is more important in natural underground caverns you get a much higher output if you can defend yourself down there. And that's one agitation system. Like the poison blow darts are back and everything. And then there's the... Yes, I actually got destroyed by

fish, underground fish people. I was testing this. Yes. And then there's the above ground agitation system in the wilder regions which can set normally peaceful creatures off. they get an agitated name in front of them so it would be like agitated

giant porcupine or whatever and then they're no longer friendly and that that is that corresponds to your your lumber industry up top oh okay so that is a little bit like the the Rimworld system where sometimes

the game sends you like a mad porcupine or mad squirrel and tries to like attack your people yeah it's important important to respect the animals you know talking about the forgotten beasts we've seen a lot of like sprites of bare men and and wars but how do the procedural generated monsters look uh they they they're we we intentionally kept them uh because we had a certain amount of time to work on it we intentionally kept them kind of shadowy um and vague like they don't

use bright colors right now. I imagine we'll get to that when we have, like, there's just so much to do, right? So we, but we do have, that's not to say they aren't built from like a hundred pieces or whatever. Oh, wow. I'm not a hundred pieces. I mean, there are 100 pieces total or something. Like, I don't know. There's horns and eyes and mandibles and proboscuses and general body Shaves. Yeah, general body. There's like, yeah, because you guys, you know there's like, what is there, 200 and 20. It's always either 170 or 220. I don't remember which. Like, there's, there's like mammoths and also serpents and blobs, right? So we put those into 12 categories, I think. It was either 12 or 16, maybe 12. I don't remember. That it uses as the base body type. And then each of those

base body types can get horns, wings, trunks, the number of eyes, certain ones like the quadruped body can also get the hexapod and octapod, but then there's also the spider shape and et cetera, right? So there's quite a bit, quite a bit in there. And that will get better over time as well. Oh, okay. So we do actually get to see them, yeah. Yeah. And that's neat. And then we have the minute. I'll go, go, go, go ahead. I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say that, yeah, I remember that I think that that announcement and some pictures of that sort of thing was actually released maybe a year and a half, two years ago. It's, it's those, those, am I correct?

It would have been, if we did release Forgotten Beast two years ago, that would be, and I don't remember this, but if we did, that was the, those were like four preliminary drawings by Mike, and then Mike left right at that time. So we had to take a completely different tact. Those were bright. I mean, I like those. Those were really nice and colorful and cheerful.

And, yeah, we had to tack away from that. But we should get some color back. We'll have to think about it. And then there's also the mini versions for like the experiments that aren't gigantic. And it's currently also using those for like night trolls and wear beasts. So, but wear beasts are getting special purpose graphics a little bit after release that are for every specific creature, like all 72, are going to have their own sprite. Well, Tarn, you just reminded me of something that I've got to bring up here. I've got to ask.

So we had a long conversation on an episode a few months ago talking about where beasts. And it seemed to us that with the 4705 release, the occurrence of Warebees decreased quite a bit. You're not supposed to mention that to him, man. Come on. What are you doing? You're not supposed to mention that to him. Come on. I was just wondering, is that something that actually might have happened in the release? Or is that just a coincidence and we're projecting biases into it? Either ones. No, we did. We did.

I just don't remember if it was in the 4705 or for this release, but we intentionally released. Yeah, we felt like, we felt like it was too harsh on new players to get a wear beast on the second year or something like that. Yeah, because they're like, they're like worse than getting a hydra or something, right? Oh, yeah. Unstoppable. Yeah, so it's actually harder. So, so, yeah, no, we, we changed the triggers on that. But I wouldn't swear that it was for 4705 because I just don't remember.

It's been so long. And that was like pre-pandemic, too, or mid-pandemic, I don't remember. Yeah, I need it. I think, yeah. Well, we had you folks on just before the pandemic blocked us all away. Yeah, which was in... Time is relative. January of everything. Yeah, I think that we talked in December of 2019, and we released it on New Year's Day of 2020, I believe that's the case.

But, hey, that's good to know that it might not have been our imagination because, yeah, my first fortress downfall was to a where beast, my first one that I had going for the amount of time. And it's just because I didn't know what was going. on and suddenly everyone's killing each other when the full moon came so it was beautiful yeah that's that was just one of the great things about it does yeah what what kind what kind was it oh gee it was a wear llama yeah the best kind i've written to wear giraffs too yeah word giraffe is my favorite the last time my fortress was destroyed it was wear mammoth oh yeah they're no I kind of. I think so. Yeah, there's like, where hamster is probably closer. Oh, no. Yeah, they're friends. Yeah, it's hard to remember because it's not like a one, as people have noted, it's not a one to, yes, there are where cavies. Uh, that there's, it's not a one to one correspondence between what's in the game, right? There are certain animals that can beware creatures, but they're not actually in the game at all. Um, which is really weird, but that's just how it turned out. Of course we have, yeah, we haven't done the, like, Pleistocene release or whatever.

I don't know when the mammoth walked the earth. What era wasn't when the mammoth walked the earth? But we need those, yeah, like saber-tooth cat things. But there was the bigger ones, right? The ones that are like... We were thinking about prehistory deuce as one of the sponsorship drives back. Yeah, but now, now it's not... It would be about a sponsorship drive.

It would just be about fun. Just throwing them animals in there. Although we might still need a voting system, right? and the game doesn't even have ferrets like oh there's a lot of what there's like there's a lot of animals that we were missing of course we were just adding animals forever

we would just do it forever and then of course do specific behaviors more for more of the animals like yeah lovingly render but we use democracy to make that happen yeah now we could do voting I mean maybe maybe now that we've got more sound

we can put all the songbirds in properly so that the because we have ambience with like the chirping and stuff but we could put the right chirp. You can use the Merlin Bird app to figure out where you are, geolocated, and get me the right bird sounds for that much. There are four different calls for the Jay. Yeah, now we'll need to have a decision tree then or whatever.

Do you feel threatened? Are you trying to make friends? So as the Steam initial release comes out, we're going to have, it's going to be the Fortress Mode release. After that, I'm assuming you'll be working on getting adventure. mode up and running um so we've got classic an arena on the on the really short term roadmap uh because we're like 16 days out so it doesn't look like we're quite going to finish we finish steam workshop that's we haven't actually announced that yet even though it's been like 20 days uh because you want

to cut that oh no no no no no we've mentioned it to people uh it's like yeah it's just like it might be It might be, you might be the second, second people we've told about it, but I don't remember who the first were. So it's either and now, it's coming in. Yeah, it's coming in eventually. I didn't watch the blind Q&A the other day, so it may have been on there. Yeah, like, yeah, that may be. That may be. So, yeah, so Steam Workshop is in the first release. It's in the initial launch release. Yeah, I should do a devlog. It's just these last few months, especially, like the devlogs just completely slipped. I can only imagine. Yeah, yeah. I really need to put a, put a devlog up like today. But anyway, the, yeah, so we'll have Steam Workshop is in.

And then the other two things we were trying to get for release was the classic and arena mode. But now those are just going to come like immediately after. I don't know a week or two or three, however long it takes, right? But that's the thing we're going to be working on. The only reason there's a little wiggle there is because we also could have, you know, bugs, things that are people screaming about. Like if a lot of people need a bug fixed, it don't have to be fixed, obviously. And the launch is, you know, it's just a completely unknown territory, having a launch this large.

Yeah, they warned us that the press would, like, drive us crazy in these last few weeks, which is true. And then, but they warned us that, like, after the release, it's going to be a thousand times worse. So hopefully we can. Oh, boy. Yeah, we'll see what happens. But, but we're, that's the, that's the plan. And once we're back to normal, that's, that's going to be something we can focus on pretty easily. And then adventure mode.

and that that is a whole giant i don't know how many menus are there like 90 menus or something silly who knows hi aye aye aye i just made that number off the top of my head but like every key every key on the keyboard takes you to a different menu right it's like there's the and there's ones that are like really half-assed like the statue toppling menu or something there's like two different ways to interact with buildings i think where you can pull levers and is that it and there's this whole lock picking thing that's totally just jank and stupid there's a lot of things about adventure mode that's like do we really want to update that menu or do we want to update the whole mechanic right or whatever um and that's going to

just keep dogging us through that but uh it's still i mean so it's a big project um and that's another one where it's like this this this one in particular i'm not sure how much there's going to be like experimental branch stuff on that or if it's just going to be one big drop like six months later. It kind of depends on how experimental or experimental branches. We'll have to kind of figure out, you know, just how low do we go?

Because it'll be crashy, ugly, no menus and just an awful mess for the first couple months. And, yeah, so, but that's the plan. And then finally, the return to the villains and on into Army siege stuff.

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Yeah, I was kind of wondering if now that you can kind of see past the steam release if you guys have let yourself think about the things that you would like to work on next as opposed to the things that you have to work on next. Oh yeah, yeah, that's where Villain starts, right? that's that's with villains um which was a release we dropped like halfway through to because we had to pivot to the steam release so like in the adventure mode villain stuff never happened and like six of the plots never happened in dwarf mode we got those artifact heists in and they actually happen sometimes right yeah that stuff can work but but we don't

have the overthrowing of your fort by coup or the uh um assassination plots um or the uh the the it's not quite an artifact heist, but just like the bribery and stealing of resources and things that happened in world gen, but don't happen in fort mode. And then over an adventure mode, there's the whole two-sided coin thing of like investigating villains, but also leading a villainous organization or being a part of a villainous organization. And which just means plots. I mean, it's not like villain, like it doesn't have to be cartoon villain, but you're Or villain is more like an actively working NBC. It's, yeah, villain is like not exactly the, it's just the name of the release, but it's more complicated than that.

Yeah. I mean, none of the plots are, are pro-humanity specifically, but it does a, yeah, it makes a good story. Yeah, yeah. But you're like, like, for instance, when the dwarves also get the ability to do some of the plots, like an assassination attempt might be on like a or something, right? So that's like the opposite of villainy here. It's more like go on a heroic assassination quest like most computer games. Right.

About the Steam release, when it comes out, we've heard that the Linux support will be added at some point later, right? Yeah, and that's in progress. We're just trying to find the right people. We have a candidate now. So this is not something that isn't happening. This is something that is happening. You know, I know, I know people in both the Mac and Linux communities get, you know, worried about stuff just either disappearing or never happening.

But, you know, we've had it. It's just, it was, it's so hard to line things up for launch. And this one costs money. So it's a different matter, right? And like, we just couldn't use it. Like, the volunteers did a great job. they kept us up and running for like the last 14 years on Mac and Linux

but it's not something you could put a put in a store just we don't we don't understand the Apple like certification process or whatever it's called and the and like Linux we were sim linking these libraries and

maintainers were yelling at us and etc we need to not be doing anything wrong there and just get at working normally in like a normal Linux setup, not quite to this point of,

I mean, normal Linux is open source, right? It's not, that's normal Linux, but over, I mean, in non-opensource land,

we'd like to at least make it compatible with the, the, and I'm not even sure there's something that's like, generally thought of as a normal Linux distribution. I don't know if it just means Ubuntu or something. It's got to work on something, right? It's got to work on like three or four of the best ones,

not best, the most populous ones. and hopefully that is doable. I know that it's in the Ubuntu repository. I can't remember what version is. I know it's not one of the, I think it might be like 4701 or something like that, but that is actually in the Ubuntu repository,

and that one will run straight for the command line, but you're not going to get the latest one from that. And if you do run the latest version of Dwar Fortress, you'll have to know a little bit of something about the libraries and which ones you need to finagle with. So, Tony here, he is a strong, Mac M1, or actually M2 now proponent, so he's been... I liked it.

I was really into the Mac. I mean, I've got both, you know, I play both sides of the game. But yeah, the Mac's single core performance, very, very appealing for people who play certain games that thrive on single core performance. And so, yeah, I was just, you know, I was just sort of selfishly wondering, like, is that part of it too, or is that a much harder kettle of it? fish to get into the Apple. Oh, no, it's, I think, I think it'll be the same because on, on this one, it's less about,

well, it's partially about finding, finding the, the right program or whatever, but it's, it's also, uh, they've, if, if I'm not incorrect, they've done Mac releases. And so they've gone through the kit Fox has gone through the, uh, the, the, uh, the new hoops, um, in terms of certification and, and so forth. I mean, that, that, that, that, that is like an ongoing support. thing to some extent to see, you know, if we, so we need to continue to work with people on that, and hopefully it won't be a problem

because Apple likes to obsolescence to sysify things periodically, which is, of course, really frustrating for developers. Like their CPU, basically, for example. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a

tricky, tricky to stay afloat, but we'll, we'll, you know, if it's, if it's in a bunch of steam libraries for Mac, of course, we're going to try and try and keep it running and and and I anticipate once once this this new systems in place that we should have no trouble just with the continued kind of simultaneous the same with classic right right we're like classic is delayed now max delayed now lynx is delayed down but of course adventure mode is delayed now arena is delayed everything is because of just we've

taken three years and we've got to we've got to start you know putting the game out and but after that it should all just be like the same set of compiles and it all just happens at the same time and everyone gets simul-launched or whatever it's called for subsequent versions. Cool. Okay, cool. So about the artwork, do the dwarves look like your artistic visions, the new artwork of the dwarves, or did they take another approach with their art?

Well, we picked through the, we had two choices, and we picked Mike's dwarves. We liked Mike's d'rars better. Yeah, yeah, and Mike has a very kind of harrowed look to the dwarves, even by default. they look a little depressed. So I think it's appropriate for the themes of the game. I'm really looking forward to seeing the art on my computer. Yeah, there was a, there was, we were originally not sure we could actually zoom the, the, the, the, play area so you can actually see them better because the, it was still

one to one with the letters of ASCII. So the dwarves had to be the size of a letter. And we weren't sure we could actually zoom in. So you can actually see this. So the dwarves are going to be really tiny. And we're like, okay, this is going to be really tough. And then we figured out how to zoom in. And we're like, okay, this is going to earn us of like hundreds of thousands of more fans by

just being able to see the dwarf. Yeah. It's nice. It doesn't break the pixel art really at all. There's a few weird little artifacts around the edges of certain items that are I mean, they're hard to see. But yeah, no, surprisingly, the old SDL version zoom that people were using to just kind of zoom in and see the letters bigger or their tile sets. It works with like this, you know, like 16 layers stacked on top of each other or whatever with multiple Z levels and all that.

Still works. And it isn't slow the game down or anything. So, yeah, it's great. Do the new graphics work similar to the old graphics and tile sets where we saw lots of people modifying them? Or is it a completely new system that is not related to the old way at all? Well, like the old way didn't even have items or walls or anything except for creatures, right? I mean, in terms of, I mean, there were like D.F. Hacks style mods, but just in terms of like vanilla type. modifiable objects with the graphics like just changing a letter or whatever or or saying

hey use this sprite sheet it's basically an entirely new system there's a few few things that are the same i think the tile page format might be the same or whatever but there's so many more things that you can do uh that um i mean it is it does feel completely different and the there's a new layered type which we use for the dwarves humans cobalds and goblins, which allows you to do, to query body parts and professions and items and hairstyles and hair length and eye color or whatever, skin color, hair color, hair curliness. And pick from among, you know, I mean, we have, I don't know if it would be a thousand or more tiles just for a dwarf. for whatever um i mean that number is going to be off by a bit but i know there's like 180

hair just by itself or something right there's because there's like 17 styles and then also 17 again for curliness or something like that and then also six different hair color groups um so it adds up right i mean that file is like a mega and a half the one that that has the five civilized creatures uh it's a giant txt file and But a modder does not need to engage with this system if they don't want to spend. You know, because, I mean, we had, you know, to, I mean, we've had a total of like five artists working on this thing, I think, and we've been working on it for years. So, like, like, modders always eventually, you know, like catch up and move beyond existing stuff. That's just, that's kind of the appeal of it.

But it's going to take a little longer than it used to to get there at this time. And do you, have you been working with anybody that's been trying to build mods for this yet? Or is that something you're just saying, well, look, when it, when it releases, the doors are open, go crazy. Yeah, we have about, we have four, yeah, three or four, three or four people helping with that. People, people, people, people that have done a lot of modding. And they've also gotten to upload to the workshop and test that out. and then over in Future of the Fortress we posted the basic mod format what kind of info you'll need I mean mods are basically going to be like existing mods if we're talking about like classic type

mods or mods that don't involve changing the graphics those stuff those are all almost going to work with the exact same formats from before so that that will be pretty quick to update but but it's just going to be things like like if you're trying to do a steam workshop mod and you have a bunch of existing creatures, then you're going to want to, I mean, you're going to need to make a 32 by 32 tile that works or it's going to be more of a classic style mod.

Okay, wow. Yeah, that was another question I had. So 32 by 32 are the tiles. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, but yeah. Yeah, I mean, 32, there's a lot of things that we want to change. Like we want to support more tile sizes and stuff.

And it's not going to take super, super long. And I've marked all the places I need to change and update and so forth to get that in, but it's just not going to be a launch. So if people wanted to try 64 by 64s, I know a few people were looking forward to taking a shot of that. First of all, it's going to take you a long time. But also, yeah, there's a few things I need to change,

or if people wanted to do 24 by 24s or something like that. And then, of course, I mean, there's still classic mode. I mean, classic mode is not 32 by 32. Classic mode is 8 by 12, and then whatever, or it's whatever font you're using, right? You can use your font. that's similar so like old df hack style tile sets it'll take them a little wild update stuff obviously to get it to work with a new version but um that that should all kind of be like before

once classic is launched cool that that sounds great so it sounds like um for the classic for the classic release anyway it's not going to be changing all that much there was always a lag of a month or two before all of the uh all of the mods got caught up with the latest release of dual fortress anyway so it doesn't sound like it's going to be that bad for for that side of things yeah i don't know which side of oh go ahead yeah well i was just going to say that and and and and and and and and and and and and you even reached out to the the df act people um uh recently so uh like we're we're not yeah every everything should be i mean we're going to try and support you know to the extent that we always did at least um to keep that kind of pipeline up and

running, uh, even, even with the steam, the steam version, uh, we don't think there's going to be any big headaches there. Yeah, my entire playing career, I've leaned so hard on DF hack that it's hard for me to, to see the, the word DF hack stops and where vanilla starts, you know, whenever the, uh, when the release came out 4700, uh, back when it did, we all, all three of us played vanilla for a couple months just to get ourselves. used to it. But once the DF hack and all of the mods got updated for it, I went straight back to to run on graphics and tile sets and DFHack and TWBT and all that kind of fun stuff. We tried our best to remove the need to do that.

Yeah, there's still a few things. Like, we haven't done anything with anything new with blueprints or stuff like that. So I think, I mean, there's always going to be room for it. Because even if we do eventually, you know, get in systems that, that, you know, capture what people feel is missing, then there's just going to be a whole new tier of things that are exactly like that, right? It's a never-ending process of improvement, just like the game itself. Yeah, and I would always imagine with DF hack, it's pretty, I mean, that's a pretty invasive way to make changes to a game. I think it's directly injecting into the memory. I always wondered, does that, did that always, did that ever give you guys pause when you're like, wow, I wish they wouldn't do that? Or if you were, or you always just like, no, this is cool,

go nuts. No, I mean, they, they, when I say they, I mean, this is obviously a specific person in this case, emailed me at one point, it was some years ago, and was like, you know, it takes a while to update these memory addresses. So, you know, if you put in a few markers, you know, that look a specific way for D.F. Hack to, like, glom on to, like, something that looks like, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight or something that I can always find, and then just list all the, uh, the important addresses, um, of memory after that. That would be like a huge time saver or whatever. And I just did that.

Yeah, that's amazing. That's just, yeah, yeah, it's great. Yeah. Ah. That's great. Okay. Attention members and guests, potato bomb, administrator of the Stoneworkers Guildhall, the Tin Mountain invites all members of the Tin Hall to observe the upcoming

stone crafting workshop. Zasset-Ducimical, legendary engraver, will demonstrate the craft of lead engraving on the 10th of sandstone. You won't want to miss it. For more information, contact Potato Bomb on the 17th level of ivory channels. Come learn and enjoy fellowship. Well, we're not going to take up too much of your time. I know that you guys have a busy day, I'm sure, in front of y'all.

And so thanks so much for being on with us. Roland, you got anything else that you have burning to ask? Yeah, one question, actually. What is your favorite new sprite or sprites? Oh, it's got to be the wear panda. It's not going to make it. Unfortunately, it's not going to make it out in release, but it should be like, what, the next update or something?

Yeah, it'll be really soon. It'll be really soon. get the wear creatures the wear creatures are great i hope you put it on a t-shirt because that sounds amazing just for the talking points alone t-shirts t-shirts i saw the uh the announcement that there's going to be some df swag some uh some merchandise that's going to be awesome yeah yeah i mean we we that that was something that that kind of caught us by surprise on the fan gamer site uh so i haven't actually talked to to to tanya about that yet because yeah i mean that was just announced But, of course, I mean, we were involved in those, because I remember I saw on the site that it said, like, pending final.

These are mockups pending final approval, right, or whatever it says at the bottom. Yeah. But I've seen those. Like, I've seen those. We've seen them. Zach and I have both, like, looked at the, we chose some of the designs. Yeah, yeah. So these are, these are, I don't know if there's going to be little changes, but those are basically approved designs.

Well, I hope you all are getting a cut. I mean, I imagine that's how it works. It's not the, yeah, I mean. These things are never really. They don't really make a lot of money. But, no, I mean, it's an indirect money. I mean, it's a walking billboard for your video game. So it's not, yeah, I mean, it's not really about the money per se for a shirt and a mug and stuff.

Somebody hacked together a t-shirt on some website somewhere that I bought because I couldn't find any other Dwarf Fortress T-shirt. It's just the dwarf smiley face and it says, or strike the earth on it. I wear it anytime that I'm in. a gathering of people hoping that someone will come up to me and say, hey, Dwar Fortress, but it's not happening yet, unfortunately. A long time ago, somebody gave us a Dwar Fortress bumper sticker, but it had no, it was just asky of a dead elf and a plump helmet, I think. And I put it on my car, and it's so cryptic that I was sure that nobody could find it,

but now every time someone gets behind me and starts flashing their lights, I'm like, what? Oh, I know what's going on. Oh, that's great. That's great. You know, I had a weird conversation with somebody. I went to a rock and gem show last summer, like trying to dream the pandemic. And I was there with one of my kids and we're talking about stuff and my kids into geology. And I know a lot about things like Micah and Microclient and, you know, like I seem to know a lot about that stuff now and could really talk to this guy.

And he was talking about how video games melt brains? He's like, how did you learn so much about this stuff? And I was like, well, through a video game? So he's like, what, what? There's a video game that did educate people at geology? So there you go. You might have a whole new hidden market there with the desert rat gem guys. Yeah, yeah.

I remember when someone got through, they like didn't. I don't remember what their class attendance was like, but they, Dorf Fortress got through like a midterm, geology 101 midterm. It's like name five oars of iron and they're like, well, boom. I got you. Pig iron, no problem. I know how that works. I'm not how to make steel.

I'm opening a mill in the fall. Terrific. Galena, that was the one that I actually got some brownie points on a tour one time. He's like, and we're mining Galena, do you know what we make with that? And I was like, as a matter of fact, I do. So thank you for that. You've made me look good. Well, thanks so much, guys.

It's always a pleasure having you guys on. And we're just super excited to see what's coming. Yeah, don't have to wait long either. It also sounds really goofy. But honestly, thank you so much for all of this work that you guys have done for donations for these last, however many, was it, 20 years? 20, what was 2006, right? Yeah, we probably formalized in 2007. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah.

But for goodness sakes, thank you guys so much for putting all of. your freaking life into this because it's just been a joy to play this game it's I tell people this isn't a game it's a hobby and yes I thought I thought you were talking about the stories and the crown rewards when you said all the work you're putting into donations I'm like yeah we did that for for quite a while no no you've done I mean I've done this for so long yeah we've done this so long supported by donations failed to scale it no I can't believe you guys kept that up as long as you could because I you know when I signed up I was like I can't ask you to do that just update the game that's not you know like I asked and it is framed on my wall right here

you're standing in front of a keg so it's it's amazing amazing oh boy so yeah thank you all so much I really do hope that this is just a huge success for you and that it that it gets you all that you folks deserve because you deserve so much well you're you're definitely getting out there because my wife who knows nothing about this stuff is like, hey, you know Door Fortress. I read about this in The Guardian. And I was like, okay, well, that's, oh, right, sure. So, amazing. Great work, guys. Thanks Okay. Thanks. All right. So I suppose that we will talk to y'all next time, everybody out there. Until then, thank you so much, Tarn and Zach, for coming on and sharing info with us.

And I guess, until next time, happy Fortresson, people. Thank you. And happy Thanksgiving, everyone, except for Roland. yeah thank you for coming on and see you bye bye bye bye bye this has been the dwarf fortress roundtable podcast you can find all our past episodes at df roundtable.com stop by and leave a message or suggestion in the comments section for this episode while you're there you can subscribe to dwarf fortress roundtable or find us in the podcast service of your choice you can find video content on our YouTube channel, and you can send us an email at Eurist at DFRoundable.com. That's UR-I-S-T at D-F Roundtable.com.

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