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[Kamamura]

Hello, I was not really following the development process too closely during the recent say 3 years, can you please tell me:

1) How is the game scaling on modern CPUs? I have Core i5 8600K now, is the game still 32 bit single thread, or was there some effort to rewrite the code?

2) Were there any improvements regarding the interface? I was watching videos of Rimworld, which very much reminded me DF + reasonable interface, and I thought the game could greatly benefit from something similar.

3) Last time I watched some worldgens and tried adventure, the hot topics were books. Endless tomes about shelving books, binding books, and about writing about books, scribbled by necromancers in secluded towers. What's the hot topic of the current phase of the development?

4) How about the military? I remember it required insane micro, and that the dwarves never dressed properly nor fought as a unit. Is it any better?

5) How about bugs overall? During the last 3 years, would you say they are on the rise, declining, or about the same level?

6) There was this very nice Phoenix GFX set I always used, but then I read something that its autor/maintainer died, or went insane, or something, is there any similar set as a replacement, or did anyone overtook maintenance?

Thanks for any info in advance, and yes, I could scour the forums for answers, but I don't have the strength, so this is me asking for a sort of favor - if you have the energy to write a short summary, I would be thankful.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Hello, I was not really following the development process too closely during the recent say 3 years, can you please tell me:

1) How is the game scaling on modern CPUs? I have Core i5 8600K now, is the game still 32 bit single thread, or was there some effort to rewrite the code?

2) Were there any improvements regarding the interface? I was watching videos of Rimworld, which very much reminded me DF + reasonable interface, and I thought the game could greatly benefit from something similar.

3) Last time I watched some worldgens and tried adventure, the hot topics were books. Endless tomes about shelving books, binding books, and about writing about books, scribbled by necromancers in secluded towers. What's the hot topic of the current phase of the development?

4) How about the military? I remember it required insane micro, and that the dwarves never dressed properly nor fought as a unit. Is it any better?

5) How about bugs overall? During the last 3 years, would you say they are on the rise, declining, or about the same level?

6) There was this very nice Phoenix GFX set I always used, but then I read something that its autor/maintainer died, or went insane, or something, is there any similar set as a replacement, or did anyone overtook maintenance?

Thanks for any info in advance, and yes, I could scour the forums for answers, but I don't have the strength, so this is me asking for a sort of favor - if you have the energy to write a short summary, I would be thankful.

1. Single thread 64 bit now. Can create massive worlds without crashing. Not much performance improvement though.There's been some optimizations since 40.x though so you might find slight improvements.

2. Not really. Newer features have better interface (popups for instruments, civ screen map, etc) but no noticible overhaul.

3. Artifacts and coming right up, villains. Read through the devblog to see what that's all about.

4. Just Works for me without micro. Depends on your expectations I suppose. No great improvements since 2015.

5. Lots (as always)

[quekwoambojish]

1. Better in general, but I’m not a wizard

2. No and yes. No because UI hasn’t change. Yes because quests now are indentifiable via the map interface for adventure mode.

3. Hot topic is villains, but it’s not there yet, it’s about to be. Raiding offsite is a big one now!

4. Not really. But I’ll say that the raiding is a major component of having a good time, with limited micro to use. You can pick sites and send dwarves to attack.

5. Declining for sure. 3 years ago was A very bad time for bugs in my opinion. The siege bugs (and overpowered zombie) made unmodded DF unplayable for me back then, they are mostly fixed now.

6. I don’t know

7. Welcome back! Enjoy the new raid system, and look forward to villains and a long wait for the big myth with magic release

[Shonai_Dweller]

The main issue right now isn't exactly bugs, but the stress system was overhauled and the balance isn't quite right yet. That's due to be addressed over the next few releases. Frankly I'd rather have that than the lost siegers of 40.x...

Oh yeah, adventurer interface gets a little better each time, and is about to improve again with the villains release (actual parties and tactical party combat, woot).

All in all it's a fairly good time to come back. There's a Big Wait coming up (early next year) where Toady will spend a few years rewriting parts, overhauling systems and adding new ones. So the focus for the next few months is getting the game into a fun playable, stable state with villains and raiding and possibly improved sieges and off-site armies to play with (although villains is taking much more time than intended so we'll see how the rest of the plans go).

[Kamamura]

Big Wait??? 

I the context of DF development cycles, that sounds outright scary.

[feelotraveller]

6) There was this very nice Phoenix GFX set I always used, but then I read something that its autor/maintainer died, or went insane, or something, is there any similar set as a replacement, or did anyone overtook maintenance?

Could you be thinking of Phoebus? If so there is an up-to-date version: https://github.com/DFgraphics/Phoebus

Regardless I would recommend having a look around at different graphics sets since there are definitely some newer candidates as well as some of the old.  Check the DFwiki page http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Graphics_set_repository and the Tilesets and Graphics subboard http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?board=28.0 for options. 

And welcome home. 

[PlumpHelmetMan]

Big Wait??? 

I the context of DF development cycles, that sounds outright scary.

Not too scary. A projected 2-3 years at most, and we've already been through one or two development cycles that weren't much shorter than that. The community treats it as a big deal more just on account of the highly-anticipated content than the actual length of the wait.

Anyway, welcome back. Hope you have fun with all the new content that's been released in your absence.

[Dorsidwarf]

If you're back after a long time, I'd definitely read up about the changes to the dwarven psyche. Dwarves are much more easily upset, and placating them is no longer a simple matter of ensuring the mountains of their friends corpses are counterbalanced by a nice shiny dining room.

Also they keep being turned into psychopaths by being rained on to such a degree that they mull over it until their personality shifts.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

All of which is fun, but also frustrating if you're not prepared for it. The stress system needs some tweaking either way, IIRC Toady plans to work on that a bit after the villains release but before the Big Wait.

[Saiko Kila]

Hello, I was not really following the development process too closely during the recent say 3 years, can you please tell me:

1) How is the game scaling on modern CPUs? I have Core i5 8600K now, is the game still 32 bit single thread, or was there some effort to rewrite the code?

The faster single-threader, the faster the game. Scaling is almost 1:1 with the clock, and newer processors, which sometimes sacrifice clock speed for faster performance of newer commands (not used by DF at all), or for faster multithreading speed (more cores but slower), can suffer. This can be offset by faster memory controller or not, depends. Bigger cache also gives a boost, and faster memory too. You should have no problems with i5 8600 K at all, because it's one of the fastest single-threaders, unless you have low memory (you cannot really have SLOW memory).

[sketchesofpayne]

Hello, I was not really following the development process too closely during the recent say 3 years, can you please tell me:

1) How is the game scaling on modern CPUs? I have Core i5 8600K now, is the game still 32 bit single thread, or was there some effort to rewrite the code?

The faster single-threader, the faster the game. Scaling is almost 1:1 with the clock, and newer processors, which sometimes sacrifice clock speed for faster performance of newer commands (not used by DF at all), or for faster multithreading speed (more cores but slower), can suffer. This can be offset by faster memory controller or not, depends. Bigger cache also gives a boost, and faster memory too. You should have no problems with i5 8600 K at all, because it's one of the fastest single-threaders, unless you have low memory (you cannot really have SLOW memory).

So I suppose this site would be a help in choosing a CPU for a dwarf fortress player?
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

I have an Intel i7-3770K which is at the 2,083 benchmark.  Since playing DF44.12 the game has been more stable and runs faster than any version of DF before.  Even with a 200+ dwarf fort on a 4x4 embark with a lot of livestock I was staying at 20FPS.  It would dip to 12FPS if one of those damnable buzzards spooked my livestock!

Last month I was actually messing around playing a fort in DF40.24 and I had performance issues and occasional crashes.

[Saiko Kila]

Hello, I was not really following the development process too closely during the recent say 3 years, can you please tell me:

1) How is the game scaling on modern CPUs? I have Core i5 8600K now, is the game still 32 bit single thread, or was there some effort to rewrite the code?

The faster single-threader, the faster the game. Scaling is almost 1:1 with the clock, and newer processors, which sometimes sacrifice clock speed for faster performance of newer commands (not used by DF at all), or for faster multithreading speed (more cores but slower), can suffer. This can be offset by faster memory controller or not, depends. Bigger cache also gives a boost, and faster memory too. You should have no problems with i5 8600 K at all, because it's one of the fastest single-threaders, unless you have low memory (you cannot really have SLOW memory).

So I suppose this site would be a help in choosing a CPU for a dwarf fortress player?
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

I have an Intel i7-3770K which is at the 2,083 benchmark.  Since playing DF44.12 the game has been more stable and runs faster than any version of DF before.  Even with a 200+ dwarf fort on a 4x4 embark with a lot of livestock I was staying at 20FPS.  It would dip to 12FPS if one of those damnable buzzards spooked my livestock!

Last month I was actually messing around playing a fort in DF40.24 and I had performance issues and occasional crashes.

Yes, single-thread benchmarks are better than comparing clock speed, and the best kind of benchmark approximating performance in DF (apart from one specifically running DF) is single-thread integer tests. For example look at this comparison:
https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-3770K-vs-Intel-Core-i7-8700K/1317vs3937
At first 8700 K looks as if it was twice as fast, but scroll down to the Nice to Haves/SC Int (single-core integer speed), and 8700 K has only 23% lead there. Which would mean ~25 FPS over ~20 FPS. Which isn't that much, though of course every bit helps in bigger fortresses and in bigger worlds.

Technically DF also uses some floating point calculations, so you may look at mixed speed single core tests, but most of calculations are integers.

Number of dwarves and animals (plus visitors) is more important than overall size of the embark, but size starts to make difference when you dig deeper, and if you have more trees and such.

One note about the cpubenchmark (the one you quoted), the clocks they give is not the true clocks used in tests, but the ID string used by processor, which is rather base speed. Effective clock when using Turbo mode or similar would be higher. But the score stands.

As for crashing, the current version is better than these v.0.40xx, but still sometimes it can crash. Also sometimes I have issue in x64 version when there is a memory leak and all available memory is eaten (I have 16 GiB, so it's decidedly a leak), though it hasn't happened in the last few months.

[Iduno]

The wiki really needs a page on major changes, so people know what's new when they take a break. That's how Toady releases anyway. Just a list of the date, the version number, and what was added/removed.

When were hospitals added? When were minecarts? Inns? Taverns? When did magma pipes and caverns disappear?

[KittyTac]

Magma pipes and caverns still exist.

[therahedwig]

Magma pipes and caverns still exist.

Bodemless pits were removed somewhere between (.28.1xx.)40d and .23a. Hospitals and new military were added in .31, zombies, vampires and cities in .34, .40 was the update with the multitile trees, taverns, npcs being terrified of everything and the world activation that pissed off a lot of people, minecarts after that, .44 was when it started to become less abstract what this world activation thingy was for.

The release notes are on the site, and in every copy of the official dwarf fortress zip, and on the wiki(You'll have to go to older versions of the wiki to get the older changelog).