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[Caz]

This must be stickied. It seems like 60% of the posts these days are from newbs asking these questions ad nauseum. Good post Arathos.

[Genoraven]

We the people demand sticification!

[Loud Whispers]

Bump for sticky.

[Tiruin]

Requesting thread to be Stickied.

[RedWick]

I dont know man, I think this is like one of those expanding universe things where distant stars are becoming more distant "faster than the speed of light".  As the game ages and more potential features are placed on the roadmap or the long term vision develops and grows, I think it probably gets LESS finished the longer it is developed.

The original concept for the game could probably have been finished 20 times over by now, but it's grown.  This time next year, it may only be 1/5 finished or something like that.  Thats what I like about this thing, is reading about the new ideas and seeing it change and grow like some sort of organic thing.  I mean, product manager's nightmare, right?  Thats why you'll never see a commercial game like this.

Actually, outside of the some conceptual tweaks here and there, the vision for DF has been pretty consistent for the past five years.

[Name Lips]

Well, eventually they want the game to be elaborate enough to not only support the sorts of interactions that exist in ThreeToe's stories, but spontaneously generate elaborate stories on its own -- simply as a side-effect of the motivations and behaviors of the people inhabiting it, and the sorts of activities the game allows them to do.

It's a grand plan!

[Kipi]

A thing to add to the graphics part:

If I recall correctly Toady stated at least once that one main reason he ended up starting Dwarf Fortress and halted the development Slaves to Armok was because the graphical development hindered the process; each time he wanted to add something he had to implement it graphically as well. This and the statement he made about the lack of artistic skills (IIRC) made the whole graphical presentation burden and thus he prefers the new style more.

Too tired to search for the threads where these were mentioned but if wanted I could try to find them tomorrow.

[Neonivek]

How about instead of spamming this you actually think of useful things to put in this FAQ.

These arn't all the frequently asked questions.

[Maklak]

100 cats in one tile was fixed. Kinda. Now they will fight and disperse by dodging till there is fewer of them. Cages are still overpowered, but a 30 war dog cage bomb will be less effective due to infighting.

I wouldn't touch the game if it wasn't for 2D tileset, where I don't have to learn what % or an @ means at the start of the game. Creatures are cleaner with letters tough, I always get confused looking at battles using tilesets. Stonesense is pretty (and so is Wesnoth), but eats some FPS, and screen space.

Toady One said something about getting through a lot of compile errors to get 64 bit version. Considering as of now the game seems to be only using 386 instructions (no MMX or SSE or other vectorization), and that very big embarks crash due to 2GB memory limitation, 64 bit version would likely be an improvement. That said, it is not a simple matter of CXXFLAGS -m64 in makefile, some errors would pop up due to pointers and long changing size, and most of all this would create some problems with libraries, like SDL, zlib, libpng, and whatever else DF needs.

Toady One said a few things about graphics in on of DF talks. ASCI is not how it is supposed to look in 1.0, and there are already so many creatures, that some letters start to run out. An official 2D tileset would be good, except it requires hiring an artist, and updating it frequently. As of now a new item or creature needs only a letter, with a tileset it would require a new picture (unless item categories from 'full graphics support' thread are implemented).

[Starver]

64 bit version would likely be an improvement.

...but any use to anybody playing it on 32-bit platforms?  Or would there need to be different versions much as there are legacy/SDL splits as well as Win/Mac/*nix versions

Which sort of leads me into my own contribution to the FAQs, but to which I don't have an FAA handy... something about game performance.  Actually, scratch the following...  It's not an FAQ, these days, now I come to think of it...There are speed-up enhancements (turning off temperatures, etc) and choices of smaller embark areas that allow relatively playable fortresses on.  There have been vast improvements in the processing of some elements of the program, even while it has been given various additional complications and new developments.

But I remember the first time I used DF.  Several times, in fact.  Set worldgens up, left them running overnight.  (Didn't know what the hell to do with them in the morning, and so did it several times, on different computers.)  These days, I can make a toasted cheese sandwich during the rare occasions I worldgen, and then spend hours upon hours upon hours sat micromanaging the fort I play (or, of course, Adventure through the world, even more stuck to the screen).  Some of it is because of better hardware of course, a lot to do with optimisations.

Anyway, aside from that...   But this bit definitely can be something FAQable: Plenty of possibilities to point towards the (many!) pathing algorithm discussions, various optimisation announcements that were made (from the look of the devnotes, there's something to be said in the new version).

[Urist_McArathos]

I sent a PM to Toady asking about a sticky request; no response yet.  I'm not sure if he's going to or not at this point, but I'm hoping so, to keep it handy for when these questions crop up again.

[Muz]

Doesn't even have to be stickied, you can just link someone to the thread when they ask the questions.

[Urist_McArathos]

True, but having it stickied means that 1) people who come here can read it first, cutting down on the number of repeat threads, and 2) it's readily available to link to the ones that post anyway, instead of eventually drifting off the front page and being forgotten by all but a few, or becoming one of those threads where we go "I believe someone made a thread about this before, but I can't find it with the search".

[orbcontrolled]

As long as the FAQ is addressing the unthinkable, has Toady ever mentioned making regular offsite backups?

[Greiger]

I don't have a quote but I recall hearing someplace (I wanna say a DFTalk) that there are backups of the source at Toady's bank in a personal vault.