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Hey everyone!
Alexandra here with a bit of community news and patch 51.11. In the patch, we fixed some lost information when people leave and when they arrive. We also turned off the broken underground invasions until we fix them with the siege update and a bunch of ice related bugs that have been around for years. Theres also some new graphics going in for divine/artifact weapon tiles and the leather/metal caps in the portraits which you can see here:
Hey Urists! We are back from GDC with an update for Fortress and Adventure Mode. Next we'll be starting work on sieges, while also keeping a pace of regular fixes and improvements.
Hey everyone, It's Alexandra here as we continue along with the routine patches after Adventure Mode release. We have quality of life fixes for Fortress Mode including the new ability to use the previous material when replacing constructions. No need to go back through the menus over and over again! Over in Adventure Mode your speed is now displayed properly. Lots of other adjustment and fixes here as well. So far the lua tests are going smoothly and we are receiving really great feedback. If you're a mod-minded urist and want to play round with the lua update, you can check it out on the Experimental Branch.
Hey again! Its Alexandra with a big update including patch 51.06, the Lua beta and a few things from the community too. Patch 51.06 includes a few fixes and tweaks for Fortress Mode and Adventure Mode.
Hey Urists, Its Alexandra from Kitfox! We are back and hope youve been enjoying your time with Adventure Mode. Its been so much fun seeing you discover magical items, creating your adventurers and running into giant snakes (a more common occurrence than I thought would happen). Its officially time to enter a new era of Dwarf Fortress development. Now that both modes have been updated for the Steam version, we can focus on quality of life fixes, more modding support and brand new features Tarns been excited to add. We will be busy with Dwarf Fortress development for a long time!
Patch 51.04
Patch Note 51.03
It's finally time! Become the Chosen and go beyond your fortress in Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode. Create a character in your simulated world and -- well, as a pure sandbox, what you do is up to you! To celebrate, we've made a brand new launch trailer which you can watch here: [previewyoutube=7zY0UxSxTzU;full][/previewyoutube]
In honor of Adventure Mode launch tomorrow, we thought it would be fun to share all the patch notes for Adventure Mode since beta launch. Lots of fun stuff in here (and MANY audio fixes). Notes for tomorrow's update:
It's almost time! Adventure Mode will be launching out of beta on January 23rd, 2025. Watch the release date announcement trailer here: [previewyoutube=Kg99hUv4YEY;full][/previewyoutube] Thank you to all the urists who participated in the beta and left their helpful feedback. The mode has come a long way since it first launching in beta and we couldn't have done it without your help! We are excited to shift focus back to Fortress Mode very soon but this is also not the end of Adventure Mode development. Many updates in the future will be applied to both modes and there's still more to add to Adventure Mode in the future. As with everything in Dwarf Fortress development, it will all come in due time. More details about the next steps soon. We also have beta 28 out today with a long list of improvements and additions:
Hey Urists,
We have a Fortress Mode patch this week, with a bunch of fixes and tweaks and most notably with the new container graphics. See exactly what's inside your barrels and boxes for easy sorting!
We are still working on Adventure Mode things but won't have a patch for a few weeks which means this will be our last update before the holidays. But not to worry, it will be coming VERY SOON! When Adventure Mode leaves beta, it will unify both branches so a lot of upgrades in Adventure Mode will be making their way to Fort Mode as well. We hope you have a relaxing and restful holiday!
Hey Urists,
We have a large Adventure Mode beta patch today, including the introduction of "Chosen Mode" which gives you access to 'divine quests' from the gods. It's designed to give more guidance to players looking for a more traditional RPG experience. It's not complete yet, and this with the tutorial are the only things left to work on before we can release Adventure Mode out of beta!
To access Chosen Mode you will need to build a new world, and it should be at least 100 years old, but the god stuff kicks in right after the tutorial if you have selected Chosen Mode. Almost all 100+ year old worlds support it, but it requires the correct configuration of temples etc. so occasionally it doesn't work, we don't yet have a fall back position for that quite yet. If you un-check the tutorial on the start screen, it'll still do the Chosen stuff immediately when you start. But it's just a 'quest' to go speak to a priest in a nearby temple, and it gives you a compass to the priest. We need to do more with ensuring that players can make it to the temple. Some helping popups from the god and fixes to being stuck in castles and unable to travel will be coming as well. We are trying to catch all the cases to make it more friendly.
Players who are a bit more used to things should be able to go through the whole cycle now, and have some reasonably hard though somewhat one-note dungeons to go through with their parties. The god/temple stuff is ultimately pretty simple, but we'll have a chance to hone it through December now.
Hey Urists, Beta 24 is now live and includes the beginnings of a tutorial and audio on chargen and in the log screen. There's also a few crash fixes regarding creature variations and threading behaviour thanks to Putnam and some fixes to the audio. There's only a few little things left to clear up before Adventure Mode is ready, and one big thing (the tutorial), and then we'll be able to turn our attention back to the underlying simulation, which will generally improve both Fortress and Adventure modes.
Hey Urists, Another patch this week before Tarn heads off for a very special, important life event! In this update you'll find graphics for tracking including animal prints and prints through various materials (like water). Barrel graphics have also been updates so you'll be able to see their contents at a glance. Also classic glyphs are now in! An update for those experiencing crashes: We are still working on a fix for this. We are currently in talks with someone from Steam to figure out if it's an issue on their end or ours. In the meantime, we have a thread on the Steam forums with a temporary fix that seems to be working for almost everyone. We are monitoring the thread and appreciate any reports, especially if you've tried repairing Steam C++ redistributable (x64 version) and are still experiencing crashes. Thanks for all your help!
Hey Urists, We have a Fortress Mode patch this week which adds in a bunch of graphics that we added to Adventure Mode beta as well as some bug fixes. We are still primarily working on getting the last few features for Adventure Mode finished so there won't be regular patches for Fortress Mode quite yet. But we wanted to do this as a little thank you to the Fortress players who have been extremely patient while we've been busy with Adventure Mode. We are getting close now!
Hey Urists, We have another patch this week including a hotfix for the crashes that were happening with the beta 21 update. This issue was related to the audio engine crashing, thanks to everyone who reported the issue. Also in this update is the ability to assume different identities in Adventure Mode, palettized equipment for all the units who have dynamic portraits as well as baby sprites for humans, elves, goblins and kobolds. You should be seeing a lot of these new graphics over in Fortress Mode in a future patch very soon.
Hey Urists, Beta 21 of Adventure Mode is now live. You are now able to fully customise the personality of your adventurers in character creation. Travel in style (and destruction) with minecarts and all the features that come with riding a minecart. Well in towns are also usable now. You can raise and lower well buckets and fill your waterskin which is super helpful in human villages and towns since they always have wells, if they arent frozen.
Hello Urists!
We are back with another patch for Adventure Mode! The most notable update this time is the quest log and information screen which will help with keeping track of all the events in-game. We also have tons of new sprites for flowers, fruits and leaves for the over 180 different plant and tree species. And finally, we have baby sprites for dwarves! No more confusion about whether red-clothed adult dwarves are actually children.
Tarn has been busy with an international move but things should be settling soon and the patches should appear more frequently. Thank you for your patience through these major life events on the dev team! Weve also created a new FAQ, specifically addressing the most common comments and questions weve been seeing on Steam. Weve done a few of these community FAQs in the past but this one will be focused on Adventure Mode development and how things work behind the scenes.
Babies in the trade depot!
Hey Urists!
Work on Adventure Mode continues on with two updates of note that we've just patched in: Composing and the wrestling button. Characters in Adventure Mode can already perform to increase their reputation with other characters and maybe even get a free drink at the tavern. But with composing, your character will be able to write their own music, poetry and dances! Wrestling is already in Adventure Mode, but now that the button works, you'll be able to open the wrestling menu directly instead of going through the attack menu.
The wrestling button looks like this ^
Urists, get ready to eat meat. Butchering went live in the Adventure Mode beta today, so survival should be more feasible for more kinds of adventurers. There's a few small fixes in there too but the only other remarkable change to note is Crafting is also available -- but as in the days of yore, crafting is just about knapping stones, making wooden axes, and carving bone jewelry or figurines. If you want other crafting options, we welcome you to try mods! Within moments, I'm sure, Steam Workshop will have various new crafting ideas to explore. We'll be back with more fixes and features as soon as we can! Tanya on behalf of Bay 12 and Kitfox
Happy summer, Urists! It's been a few weeks since we've updated, so here we are with some progress. For context, Tarn is figuring out the details of a fairly major life change right now (moving to a new country), but the worst of the documentation is behind him, and Adventure Mode is humming along. Today we put up an Adventure Mode patch (on the beta branch, no password needed) with:
Hey Urists, Its Alexandra here with a small community update. Tarn is still in menu land working on the rest of the features for Adventure Mode. If youre curious about whats left to be done, we provided a list of improvements in this April update.
Hey Urists!
We are back with another Adventure Mode beta patch with the biggest addition being the bartering menus (pictured below). Tarn has also gone in and cleaned up the towns so that stuff is properly displayed on tables instead of being all over the floor.
Hey Urists! Dwarf Fortress is on sale on Steam at it's lowest price to date! Pick up Dwarf Fortress and the Fortress Mode Soundtrack for 20% off. We won't be discounting this low for a while so take advantage of this deal until May 13th. Buying Dwarf Fortress will also give you access to the public beta of Adventure Mode. We will also be patching Adventure Mode next week so stay tuned!
Apologies for two updates in two days but important things are afoot, and as I mentioned yesterday, Tarn is going to take a little rest for a week or two, so hopefully this will help make that wait more bearable. This is version 50.13 updating on the main/default branch, improving Fortress Mode! If you're not seeing it, try closing Steam and re-logging in.
Hey Urists! Alexandra is off today so you have to make do with me, Tanya. But I'll be brief. As many of you probably already noticed, beta13 went live yesterday afternoon with these fixes:
Hello Urists! Alexandra here with a post-Adventure Mode beta launch update. We hope youre enjoying all the mischief and mayhem that the beta has to offer. Some of the stories youve been sharing have been hilarious and thought-provoking to say the least. This story about stealing a shield gone wrong made me laugh a lot.
Its time to venture outside your fortress!
The beta for Adventure Mode is now live on Steam. Create a character and freely roam the rich simulated world you have made a home in during your Fortress Mode save or start fresh in a newly generated world.
[previewyoutube=dX2gnya3eH4;full][/previewyoutube]
If you already own Dwarf Fortress on Steam, you will be able to play the beta. To access the beta, right click Dwarf Fortress in your Steam library -> Properties -> Betas -> dropdown list and select "beta - Public beta branch. No password needed. Steam should automatically begin downloading the beta!
Theres also the whole new original soundtrack out now, with an hour of music from good old Dabu and Simon Swerwer, together again. You can even get a 10% discount on it and the other OST, if you already own the base game. The soundtrack is also available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Youtube and Apple Music!
Note that although you will hear versions of these songs in the game, the dynamic music system Adventure Mode uses means that the OST is the only way to reliably hear these exact compositions, as baked by the composers.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2937200/Dwarf_Fortress_Soundtrack_2_Adventure
Keep in mind this is very much a beta and still in active development. There are features from Classic Adventure Mode and planned new features that have not made their way to the Steam version yet. We will be updating the beta frequently with hotfixes, new menus, audio and art as well as fixing the inevitable bugs. Please send in your reports.
Want to discuss the beta and all your Adventure Mode trials and tribulations? Join us on the df-adventure channel on the Kitfox Discord!
Hey Urists, Its Alexandra from Kitfox here with a community update as well as some more Adventure Mode footage. Only a few more weeks till the Adventure Mode beta launches on April 17th! We know it's been a long wait, but we can't wait for everyone to start testing it out for yourself. Tarn made a bonus video showing the conclusion to the fight that was in the previous update. If you missed it, you can watch Part 1 here In these videos you can see the combat and conversation systems in action. Will the goblins prevail? Where did the wombatman go? Watch to find out! [previewyoutube=w4FKSepDVLA;full][/previewyoutube]
Hi Urists, We are less than a month away from April, which means Adventure Mode launch is just around the corner. Time flies when youre developing FUN! We wanted to share our launch plans with you as they will be a little different from what we did with Fortress Mode. The beta for Adventure Mode will open on April 17th (Tarns birthday!). Anyone who owns Dwarf Fortress on Steam will be able to access the beta. Adventure Mode will fully launch a few weeks later on the main branch. We will be announcing the official release date as soon as we can. We hope that this will give the proper time to iron out major bugs, while giving you a chance to play right away.
Hey Urists! It's Alexandra here from Kitfox with a long-awaited video update from Tarn! It's our first footage of Adventure Mode and you will see combat, the new dialogue system and a few menus in action. I don't want to give too much away so just watch for yourself: [previewyoutube=Tik2DmKCxbk;full][/previewyoutube] In the video you can hear some ambient sounds, but there are still many more sound effects we are adding to the game so it's very much a work in progress! We will have another update coming soon with patch 50.12 which is still in beta right now. We needed just a bit more time to squash all the bugs! Discuss the video with your fellow urists on the Kitfox Discord! - Alexandra
The Adventure Mode update is approaching, so let's talk about it, and the upcoming year more broadly.
Hello and Happy Holidays!
Now that we have our April release month, we'll follow the roadmap to get there. If you missed the Adventure Mode roadmap, you can read it here. Part of this involves menus!
So far, we've managed the environment/ground menu, the climb/hold menu, the jump action, conversation menu and the inventory menu, with combat actions and options up next. The Adventure menus can be fully operated with the mouse or keyboard, or whichever mix works for you, which is why you still see traditional roguelike letters next to each item.
You can also now click in the play area to open up a context menu for the tile, which gives all of the possible options, whether those are environmental options, movement options, conversation options, or the upcoming combat actions. As with Fortress mode, there are lots and lots of things you can do, so this should help you get a handle on the possibilities that you can also find down in the menus.
We've also reenabled the "Assume Control" option in the Arena for April. This lets you take control of a creature that you've placed in the arena so you can jump into the action yourself in Adventure Mode's turn-based combat rather than running the fight in real-time Fortress mode style.
Jacob has been working on statues most recently, Carolyn has been adding more features to portraits (like clothing quality and variations), and Neoriceisgood has been making more animal person portraits for all of the animal person portrait fans out there! Here are the varations for the breastplates as well as the Walrusman portrait:
See you all again in January with more updates as the work continues.
-Tarn + Kitfox Games
P.S. Special happy holidays from the Bay 12 dogs: Jojo, Una, Sun Bun and Sam!
Urists Rejoice! As you may have seen on the PC Gaming Show today, we're announcing that we have a release month for Adventure Mode which will be coming April 2024! Watch the brand new trailer with the first ever footage of Adventure Mode in action: [previewyoutube=fz1e5y4Ipzc;full][/previewyoutube] For those who dont know, Adventure Mode is the RPG mode of Dwarf Fortress, where you can create a character and freely roam the rich simulated world you have made a home in during your Fortress Mode save or start fresh in a newly generated world.
Attention Urists!
Do you think Dwarf Fortress is one of the stand out games this year? Annoyed at how mainstream awards shows look over cool, indie games? Well, now is your chance to make your voice heard because you will be able to nominate Dwarf Fortress for the 2023 Steam Awards!
Nominations are open and we want to amass a large squad of Urists to be ready for when it does. We think Dwarf Fortress would be a great candidate for both Hardest Game Youve Played and Labour of Love. We support you in whatever category you think fits best (Game of the Year?!?!) but we think these are the ones we have the best chances with!
We we will update again if we pass the nomination stage.
Good luck and happy voting
-Alexandra
Hey Urists,
Its been a little over a month since our big Adventure Mode Roadmap. If you havent had a chance to read it yet, go ahead and do that here. Since then, weve been working on a ton of new procedural portraits for goblins, kobolds and animal people which will be added to both Adventure Mode and Fortress mode. Soon you will be able to stare into the face of every single being you encounter in your fort or, bring them along with you in Adventure Mode. Watching humanoids slowly go insane from sobriety or die of dehydration was never so personal.
Here is one of the first screenshots from the new Adventure Mode, featuring an ambitious hippoman at a tavern. Maybe you can convince him to join you on your party? We also see the Adventure Mode UI coming along with your characters portrait in the bottom left as well as all the new buttons for the various actions you can do.
Below, we also have a first look at the Adventure Mode world map. As you can see, towns are represented in much more detail including roads, farm plots and homes. The little shield acts as the marker for your party as you move through the map to reach new points of interest.
We will have more to show with Adventure Mode as well as a more accurate release timeframe in a couple of weeks. If you're curious to pore over the little pixel icons and implications, Blind did a little livestream grilling Tarn and Zach over the Adventure Mode details, so check that video out here.
Hello! We are here with a brand-new development roadmap outlining our plans for Adventure Mode and updates to Fortress Mode. Please keep in mind these are estimates. We do have a date in mind but were not quite confident enough to announce it yet. All we can say right now is not this year, but hopefully well have more specifics soon. We know youve been waiting patiently, and we are working hard. We will be building on the Adventure Mode framework that already exists. This is exciting because everything is working as intended and we just need to add the interface and graphics, which will take us some months. Heres the plan for how we get to Adventure Mode release, hopefully not-too-late next year:
Hey Urists, We have a quick patch update today with fixes for Linux Mode, the tutorial and more. We will be posting a big update this week with a new roadmap for Adventure Mode and updated FAQ so stay tuned for that! Release notes for 50.11 (October 3, 2023): Major bug fixes
Here's the long-awaited 50.10! The game is now available for Linux, and this patch has some needed updates, like the ability to look at old alerts, ammo that works when uniforms are changed, and soldiers that don't hoard rotten food in their rooms.
We're going to continue now on parallel tracks. The main work will be on adventure mode. There should be more to show there soon as we get the site travel images in place and get the character running around the world again. Putnam has been working on some interface changes that should allow us to more support the keyboard/mouse interface options as we go, which I know is concerning for some people. It has taken longer than we expected to get the ball rolling generally on adventure mode, but the time ahead is clear now and we're optimistic it'll go smoothly.
We've also got more work to do back in fort mode. Some form of the full ammunition control system needs to come back for instance - we'll continue with patches like this one as we go.
As some of you might have seen on beta, here are the full patch notes:
New stuff
Hi Urists, We have an update to the beta branch with some of your most requested fixes including the ability to view all alerts and a fix for archer ammo. You can look at your old alerts now, and you can also view combat history from a creature's sheet and advance through it one step at a time if a combat is active. Ammo should work if you've made custom uniforms for archers now. Soldiers shouldn't hoard rotten food in their rooms. Lots of crash fixes and some more optimization. There's also a potential fix for dwarves being stuck in trees but it needs more testing to see how effective it is. All of the following updates are going on beta first so we can figure out what kind of problems will arise before we move over to the main branch. Thank you to everyone for being so patient with us as we get back to full strength! New stuff
Hey folks! Tarn is back from Germany and covid positive! Even a week later! Ouch! Thanks to all of you who visited Tarn at Gamescom. Despite the illness, it was rejuvenating to meet a continent of fans and watch people build succession forts at the booth. Putnam continues tinkering and improving, but in terrible luck, Tarn & Zach are also dealing with a family emergency that unfortunately continues to worsen. But the good news is that a patch is incoming, as promised, just a bit behind schedule. Tarn is back at work, mostly recovered, fixing bugs and implementing some new graphics you should be able to see by early next week at the latest. Stay safe and vaccinated! Kitfox & Bay 12
Hey Urists,
A short update this week as we prepare to head to Germany for Gamescom. While art and audio and other developments for Adventure Mode continues, we also have two much-anticipated updates coming soon(ish) for Fortress Mode.
The Linux version is almost ready, and in about two weeks we will be looking for beta testers, after Tarn gets back from Germany... in fact, it's already on the Public Beta Branch!
A patch in the works will also soon give you the ability to view all reports, pausing when a new announcement is added, and viewing a particular creatures reports.
I also heard rumors of giant animals, but those must be further off on the horizon. I guess I can already see them coming because theyre so big.
Kitfox will be at Gamescom this year with Dwarf Fortress, Caves of Qud and the soon-to-be-released Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out. Tarn Adams will be at the Kitfox booth from 2-4pm every day of the show to meet you! You can find us at booth 91 in the Indie Arena Booth. We cant wait to meet you in person!
We are also hosting an after-party on Thursday August 24th from 6-10pm. Join us for an evening on the Rhine with food, drink and tavern tales among Urists. Meet Tarn and pixel artist Carolyn (ask her about procedural faces!). Get tickets on Eventbrite
So thats all for now, but you should be seeing another update real soon!
-Alexandra
Hey Urists,
It's Alexandra here from Kitfox with a seasonal video update from Tarn. We have updates on the art and programming side of development as Adventure Mode work continues. Watch the full video on Youtube:
[previewyoutube=6s5uijK6_6A;full][/previewyoutube]
One of the most exciting new updates is that we have started creating procedural dwarf faces. This means that a dwarf's appearance will reflect the personality from their description. Here are some of the prototypes that our artist Carolyn has been making:
Watch the full video to hear about updates to Adventure Mode, the Linux version and to see a Giant Capybara!
We are also working on a new beginner-friendly tutorial series with Dwarf Fortress content creator BlindiRL. We have a complete starter guide and a tutorial on making wells with more to come. It's never been easier to learn how to play Dwarf Fortress!
[previewyoutube=a_oKQDSWw-s;full][/previewyoutube]
To discuss all the latest with your fellow urists, please join our Discord.
-Alexandra + Bay12
In this release, we're updating the engine from SDL to SDL2, and there are many optimizations to go along with it. Aside from the optimizations, SDL2 is also the stepping stone to ports. We have Linux compiling and playable; it just needs some testing. Moreover, there is now a(n experimental) multithreading option in the game settings that makes the game even faster! We also have some new individual tree graphics, and an update to grass ramps as well. This has been mostly the hard work of Putnam! Meanwhile I've started up on adventure mode - the long work of updating menus and adding audio has begun! Hopefully we'll have some progress to show their soon, as we continue updating fortress mode as well. - Tarn, the Toady One
This month we have several goals. We're going to start by getting the experimental branch moved over to the main line. The update of the engine from SDL to SDL2 is stable, and there will also be a multithreading option. It's off by default until we get some more testing done on the experimental branch, but the speed gains are significant, so it will be available in the settings as well. The update to SDL2 was the most important change for ports, so Linux and Mac versions are much closer now.
Hey Urists, Alexandra here with a big community update but first, a dev update from Tarn: (Last) week has been going well! The experimental SDL2 branch is stabilizing after a few patches, and this should pave the way for some speed increases as well as the Linux and Mac versions. Putnam got me through setting up the Windows Subsystem for Linux and it's mostly playing nice with everything, so there's some hope that I'll just be able to compile from within MSVC itself to make the Linux builds. We're having our first meeting for the adventure mode sound effects tomorrow, and I'll need to get an adventurer running around soon for that and for upcoming artwork, so that's a simultaneous thing going on. And 50.09 is also in progress - the return of the game log and we're working toward report/announcement persistence and some archery fixes/changes as well.
Hey Urists, Today's patch features the much-anticipated baby update including sprites for children and babies for many of the creatures and outdoor plants. This also includes dragon hatchings! How cute! Other important fixes for buckets and refuse stockpiles. New stuff
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