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Author Topic: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released  (Read 126479 times)

thvaz

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #105 on: December 03, 2017, 06:30:53 pm »

Honestly I'd rather that some bugs be fixed when the game is a little closer to completion. I mean yes, glaringly game-breaking bugs should be fixed ASAP (and usually are in my experience), but IMO there's not much point in taking up valuable development time in fixing certain bugs that will just inevitably end up being replaced with new ones caused by future features.

Of course, I'm not sure what particular bugs you have in mind so I can't absolutely say where they should fall in terms of priorities.

The most obvious ones:

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=7161
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=9074

And there are some other things that aren't bugs per se but need a bit of balancing. For example, getting food is so easy now (apart from some extreme biomes) you don't even need to worry about it.

I used to think like you, but now I am worried on the long term survival of the project. Interest in dwarf fortress (before this release) was at an all time low since 2007, just one year after the initial release (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=dwarf%20fortress). Donations are steady however- but for how long?
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Listyg

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #106 on: December 03, 2017, 06:54:15 pm »

If I may, I would like to chip in my two cents. Namely, if you are releasing updates once in a year or two, you can't leave your releases with bugged relevant parts of the game especially if you rely mainly on donations, that's just walking thin ice and crazy. Secondly, there are significiantly more urgent things to take care of than adorable, charming, cute and all - whatever you call it - myths and magic. How is this possible that through all these years siegers STILL cannot get to your fortress by legit,normal ways unless you purposely let them in or expose yourself? Isn't situation where every player just raises a bridge and says fuck you to any invader eliminating big chunk of fun alarming? Astonishing. The game where pretty much all you do is trying to survive and defend yourself for the time being is severely lackluster with the latter.

Shouldn't game give players fun instead of players seeking fun in the game? I think this is something that has been lost in the trials of development.

I hope you will understand, should you not, it will come around eventually but hopefully that won't be too late. On the second note dwarf fortress community is really special too in that regard.

I don't know, perhaps it's just me, I just learnt the game, explored it, fell in love with it and this is something that stood out the most.

Cheers.
« Last Edit: December 03, 2017, 07:09:48 pm by Listyg »
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bloop_bleep

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #107 on: December 03, 2017, 07:33:04 pm »

If I may, I would like to chip in my two cents. Namely, if you are releasing updates once in a year or two, you can't leave your releases with bugged relevant parts of the game especially if you rely mainly on donations, that's just walking thin ice and crazy. Secondly, there are significiantly more urgent things to take care of than adorable, charming, cute and all - whatever you call it - myths and magic. How is this possible that through all these years siegers STILL cannot get to your fortress by legit,normal ways unless you purposely let them in or expose yourself? Isn't situation where every player just lifts a bridge and says fuck you to any invader eliminating big chunk of fun alarming? Astonishing. The game where pretty much all you do is trying to survive and defend yourself for the time being is severely lackluster with the latter.

Shouldn't game give players fun instead of players seeking fun in the game? I think this is something that has been lost in the trials of development.

I hope you will understand, should you not, it will come around eventually but hopefully that won't be too late. On the second note dwarf fortress community is really special too in that regard.

I don't know, perhaps it's just me, I just learnt the game, fell in love with it and this is something that stood out the most.

Cheers.

Toady didn't "leave" this update yet. Usually he releases the big update, and then several small bugfixing updates after that. He's still doing the second part.

Also, the situation is not that every player just locks themselves inside and just waits out the siege. Some players do that; other players make an agreement with themselves not to. I think that the players should be able to decide for themselves specifically which kind and how much fun they want. If a player wants to fight invaders, let them. If a player doesn't want to trouble themselves with that and instead just want to build something, let them. If you really want invaders to be able to bypass your defenses, look at the mod called "diggingInvaders," though it's generally easier to simply discipline yourself not to lock yourself in.

So, actually, the myths & magic release which you so dismiss is more important than the other issue you pointed out, at least in my and many others' perspectives. Besides, you do not get to decide how and in which order the game is created -- that is Toady's call, and Toady wishes to develop myth & magic first.
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thvaz

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #108 on: December 03, 2017, 07:40:15 pm »

So, actually, the myths & magic release which you so dismiss is more important than the other issue you pointed out, at least in my and many others' perspectives. Besides, you do not get to decide how and in which order the game is created -- that is Toady's call, and Toady wishes to develop myth & magic first.

While I agree with you that players should decide how they want to play the game (by using cheap tricks, locking themselves out of the world, etc) there is a long standing issue with fortresses not getting any sieges or getting sieges while the attackers wait outside without doing nothing, or show up and then leave without attacking. This is extremely frustrating to those players that WANT to be sieged.

And while Toady gets to decide how he develops the game, the players decide if the game is worthy of their money. If enough people think that the game don't deserve their money the project may lose its viability. Toady knows that, you should know it, too.
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KittyTac

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #109 on: December 03, 2017, 07:42:15 pm »

Fix the crashes and leave the bugs besides the glaring ones alone. Let's cut a few months of time from the release date, shall we?
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Listyg

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #110 on: December 04, 2017, 01:31:01 am »

Forgive me bloop_bleep but I believe you didn't really grasp my statement, the one that I emphasized by enlarging the font.

Also digginginvaders mod is shit with all respect and that's more than likely that is not how it's gonna look like with Beyond Quality Toady.

As mentioned it will come around.
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KittyTac

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #111 on: December 04, 2017, 02:17:28 am »

Forgive me bloop_bleep but I believe you didn't really grasp my statement, the one that I emphasized by enlarging the font.

Also digginginvaders mod is shit with all respect and that's more than likely that is not how it's gonna look like with Beyond Quality Toady.

As mentioned it will come around.

DF is not supposed to even be a game, so your argument is invalid.
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Urlance Woolsbane

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #112 on: December 04, 2017, 03:03:59 am »

Forgive me bloop_bleep but I believe you didn't really grasp my statement, the one that I emphasized by enlarging the font.

Also digginginvaders mod is shit with all respect and that's more than likely that is not how it's gonna look like with Beyond Quality Toady.

As mentioned it will come around.

DF is not supposed to even be a game, so your argument is invalid.
Not supposed to be a game? It's unusually complex and not overly concerned with balance, yes, but it's still designed as a game. Fortress Mode is essentially an RTS, while Adventure Mode is a definite roguelike. If it were not a game, you would probably not have features like forgotten beasts or the Circus. Toady's writings on its infancy make it quite clear that it began as a fantasy game with an archeological aspect, that being Adventure Mode. You'd start a fort, and when it fell your hero could go visit its ruins.

It's obviously mutated a lot since then, but to imply that it's merely a simulator seems a drastic exaggeration.
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ZM5

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #113 on: December 04, 2017, 03:38:13 am »

By all definitions DF is still a game, and his argument is far from invalid. Bugfixing is as important as new content, if not moreso.

I agree with Listyg on the difficulty. Invaders are already a d_init option - you can just remove them completely if you don't want sieges to show up. But for us who do want sieges and the like it is annoying that they take absolutely forever to show up, and even if they do there's a chance they'll just up and leave a few tics later.

While more bugfixing is still in the works for this update, I do hope Toady atleast fixes some of the issues that have been on the tracker for a long time. Aside from the morale issues, there's other stuff like wounded dwarves requiring traction benches being diagnosed infinitely, zombies respawning infinitely in sites where they're present, vampires being utterly borked (wont attack even after they're exposed - nearby peasants dont care either and don't attack the vampire), etc.

kaijyuu

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #114 on: December 04, 2017, 10:54:17 am »

Considering the nature of the game and its monetization scheme, it's a matter of balance. Toady's struck a reasonable balance of new content vs bugfixes over the years, imo.

My main wish is that the game would be sped up. FPS death is always what kills my forts, not invaders or beasts. (and please don't shout "pathfiiindddinnng" because my forts die to FPS death with 20 dwarves and a dozen animals on the entire map. It's the item code that needs to be cleaned up; it can't handle 100,000 items even when the majority of them are sitting in stockpiles and have no processing requirements)
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Toady One

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #115 on: December 04, 2017, 05:57:22 pm »

Thanks for continuing to report bugs on the tracker!  This upcoming Canada trip and other circumstances have eaten up more time than expected, so it'll be a few weeks, unfortunately, but I'll dive in as soon as I can!  I know the excess visitors in the fort are a problem, and the crashes, unknown creatures, lackluster companion enthusiasm, and artifact duplication are hindering adv mode, at the very least.

As perhaps reported in FotF at some point, stress is on the menu.  Not moving on to magic until that's handled -- alcohol might still make people oblivious in the short-term, but we're going to make them reflect on bad things, and also look at the overall stress level from all the minor positive events, etc., until we're more where we want to be.

On invasion frequency:  has being able to raid helped?  I have a few mixed impressions; more would be welcome.

Morale and http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=7161 : it looks like I was in there fixing a lot of issues.  It's kind of a catch-all bug report, and the issues I fixed look like they took many, many forms.  Saves for current issues would appreciated, with the caveat that the new identity/stranger issues are on the menu, and we might want to get that out of the way first.

I noticed a few changes in the encoding of and whitespaces in plant_new_trees.txt in the latest versions:

  • The encoding was changed from "UTF-8" to "Western (Mac OS Roman)". (Actually it probably just removed the encoding declaration and my text editor is defaulting to Western encoding.)
  • The indentations were changed from tabs to 4 spaces.
  • On line 2687, there were two tags on a single line (but separated by lots of spaces) when they had been on separate lines in previous versions.

It probably doesn't make any difference in gameplay, but if you want it, here's a version that matches the formatting of previous versions perfectly (including the Tab-Space-Tab indentation format for the "SOLID_DENSITY" lines and the line following):

https://www.mediafire.com/file/65lsif2w4bc6e75/DF_v0.44.x%20plant_new_trees%20whitespace%20fixes.zip

Sorry if these are silly things to mention.

Ah, yeah, I'd like to have them all in the same format.  I'll use the adjusted file for next time.  Thanks!

All was fine. Kept playing. It's still playable, but freezes for a few seconds every few minutes. Possible memory leak? I don't think so, because 30s after opening a new instance of DF just now, I had another semi-hang. It may have something to do with how many pets I have. Never had this happen in any other version and my rig isn't exactly shite. I don't wanna make a bug report unless I'm sure it is a bug and not my rig.

It's quite possible the new release introduced this sort of thing, the way rumors and a few other features work, so it'd be worth checking out.

Raids now are not a challenge at all. Naked unarmed dwarves easily rob anyone. Very rarely anyone is crippled or dies.
Some people say that now we have a great way to get rid of unnecessary dwarves. This is not true. They return again and again.
In addition, they bring dozens of books that are literally created from the air.
To make one sheet of the parchment in the fortress, you need a whole cow skin and other ingredients. And still, books do not consider the value of the components, right?
But any NPC during worldgen can make dozens of books from the air. And when you start the game, there are already thousands of books in the world. And your raiders are pulling them into the fortress. It devalues ​​own book printing.
I do not feel any satisfaction in such an easy way to take away the candies from babies. Not only books, but also any artifacts in general.

Yes. In my science thread, I was able to retrieve all the demon-binding slabs in the world with only 5 completely untrained embark embark dwarves. It was a very young world, though, so that might have something to do with it.

The main problem here is that non-historical populations aren't used in raids yet, and vaults have no historical figures.  There were some snags with that, but we'll do it before moving on.  Having to very likely fight even one of those beasts will make slabs properly difficult to obtain.  The same applies to necro towers and other sites, where most of the potential opponents are non-historical.
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Urlance Woolsbane

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #116 on: December 04, 2017, 07:55:35 pm »

The main problem here is that non-historical populations aren't used in raids yet, and vaults have no historical figures.  There were some snags with that, but we'll do it before moving on.  Having to very likely fight even one of those beasts will make slabs properly difficult to obtain.  The same applies to necro towers and other sites, where most of the potential opponents are non-historical.
This confuses me. I've sent my dwarves to various towers, and they've tangled with zombies of no apparent significance. Are the undead a special case?
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #117 on: December 04, 2017, 08:16:45 pm »

So...when the long wait for mythgen development eventually begins, we'll be playing a game filled with stressed dwarves, tough raids, frequent sieges and fun adventurer playthroughs? Sounds awesome!
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Toady One

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #118 on: December 04, 2017, 08:46:04 pm »

The main problem here is that non-historical populations aren't used in raids yet, and vaults have no historical figures.  There were some snags with that, but we'll do it before moving on.  Having to very likely fight even one of those beasts will make slabs properly difficult to obtain.  The same applies to necro towers and other sites, where most of the potential opponents are non-historical.
This confuses me. I've sent my dwarves to various towers, and they've tangled with zombies of no apparent significance. Are the undead a special case?

If they had names, they were historical figures raised from the dead -- the necromancers do this at the battlefields, etc.  Historical zombies remain historical figures, so they get picked up in raids.

So...when the long wait for mythgen development eventually begins, we'll be playing a game filled with stressed dwarves, tough raids, frequent sieges and fun adventurer playthroughs? Sounds awesome!

Yeah, we want to leave the game in good shape.  And hopefully no weapon crash traps...
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PlumpHelmetMan

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Re: Dwarf Fortress 0.44.02 Released
« Reply #119 on: December 04, 2017, 08:55:23 pm »

In any case...keep up the good work Toady. We all believe in you. :)
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