Been a while, hasn't it? Well, after months of work, the game finally runs on Monogame. And it's only kinda broken. Porting to Monogame has been mostly seamless except where it turns out we were using XNA wrong. Porting to Monogame also allowed me to (finally!) switch to 64 bit. What does that mean? Well, now I can release a 64 bit version, obviously, which while being somewhat faster, also means the game isn't bound to the 2gig memory limit of a 32 bit process. This means that the largest world sizes work as-is without having to hope they fit in memory. Unfortunately, a few things are still missing - notably, the sky, and all sound. So once they are working, I'll stick up the 64 bit version on unstable.

Small bug fix got pushed today. Special thanks to the fellow that provided the save with broken trade envoys.

• There is a bug where trade envoys sometimes do not serialize properly. I was able to stop this from breaking your save, but haven't found the original issue yet.

Small patch on stable that does not break your saves.

• Fixed the cancel task tool.
• Fixed the wrangle popup.
• Proper icon for the pathing tool.
• Fixed a couple of minor crash bugs that came through the error reporting system.

The stable, default branch is now in line with unstable. This will break your saves. The previous stable is available as legacy_august_2020 in the beta builds if you want to keep an existing save.

Unstable release has been updated again. The sole thing you'll notice here is an addition to the 'advanced' options during world generation - a world height scale value. This will determine how high your hills are. By default it will be set to high. You can turn it all the way from very low, which will get you a flat plain, to very high which is honestly a bit ridiculous. Been taking a bit of a break from DwarfCorp to work on a gameplay prototype / vertical slice for a very different project - a platformer metroidvania with (and this is key here) absolutely no complex AI or procedurally generated voxel nonsense at all. I am, however, getting closer to the next stable release. Things are going well with the current unstable. I do not know if the command favorites thing will make it in, but there's only a few things to clean up with missing assets for new features before I can call it ready. I have a lot of ideas for future enhancements to the game, but at the moment the only big gameplay-changing feature knocking around are steam powered devices. You would build steam generators and pipes to power machines, but what would you want to do with those machines? I would like to tie them into the rail network in some way as well. What are your ideas?

Unstable branch has been updated to what I am calling the first RC for the next stable update. In this update: [olist]

Most of the little popups in the menu are now windows that you can drag around wherever you want. [/olist]
While making this change I accidentally screwed up the scale of the overworld during generation - but, I'm keeping it. So the world is now far more hilly.

[ 2020-11-22 23:53:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Pushed a couple of bug fixes.

October time. And it actually still is October. I've just pushed an Unstable Update. In this one, we've got -

• That new command bar. It's much nicer. Less clicking I hope.
• A lot more control over world generation. I did away with that whole 'tiled' thing, now you're just creating the chunk of land you'll load into. Plus, your balloon port will drop right where you set the balloon on the map.
• During generation, you can pick which biomes you want.
  Which allows for some nice single-biome worlds.
  
• You might also find some new ruined structures in the game.

Wait it's October. Lame. Here's what's on deck - obviously the stuff currently in the unstable release, which I've learned doesn't work on Mac or Linux -

• Crossed a threshold finally and was able to break out some of the entity updating in threads. Only been working toward that for almost two years...
• Working now on the reworked menu. The current one will continue to exist but you also get a 'favorites' bar where you can stick whatever commands you want.
• This is in the unstable - there's a tool to lay down pathing hints. It essentially marks voxels that dwarves should not cross.
• Way back in the kickstarter (long before my time here) the colony would apparently be on an island. I'm thinking about bringing that back. I don't know that anyone actually likes or understands the 'overworld' I tried to implement, or the 'corporate' stuff.

Pushed an unstable release today. This is very unstable; lots of random things broken. However this is mostly because of a big change to the way dwarves are rendered and to how AI is processed. Together, these two things mean

• Performance was greatly improved.
• Shit broke.

Pushed an update that fixes an issue that could corrupt save files.

Here comes the August update - and soon it will be September - and oh god, I'm getting old. So lately I've been working on how dwarves level. Certain stats already make them better at certain things, but the only thing controlling their stats is their class (Wizards get smarter, Miners get stronger, etc). I'm working on taking classes away entirely. Instead you'll spend XP to level up specific stats. This also means that any dwarf will be able to undertake any activity. The plan is to let you choose a loadout when you hire them - they'll come with some task types disabled and with a set of equipment, but of course you can change that. This unfortunately made managers obsolete. Instead, you can promote any dwarf to manager - and this will make them happy, but also means they can't do anything else. Dwarves gain a new state called Motivation which is influenced by your dwarf to manager ratio. More managers, and they are less likely to slack off, but they'll also get angry if they are micromanaged. I've also been working on a few other things such as dwarves getting mad if there's nothing to drink. The entire next update is centered around adding depth to individual dwarves. The last thing I want to add is that I'm sorry updates take as long as they do. The pandemic has stolen from me some dedicated time I could count on five days a week. I still have a day job which has to come first and - well. If motivation was in abundant supply I'd probably be a lot more successful in life in general.

Here's the monthly update for July. There's no unstable release at the moment but it should be ready soon. Here's what I'm working on:

• A Dwarf's attacks are determined by the weapon they have in their hand, not their class. This means musketeers holding an axe won't mysteriously shoot things. It also means you shouldn't expect dwarves with no tools to be effective in combat. This is really opening the door to a pretty big change -
• I'm working on getting rid of classes entirely. Instead, you'll level up individual stats, and any dwarf will be able to fill any role. Haven't quite figured out how this will work with managers and some other highly specialized dwarves.
• This change also lets me introduce some more craftable items... like the firestaff. A wizard weapon that drops fireballs.
• How much dwarves have to pay for food can now be adjusted - from half price (which will make them happy) to 10x (which will really piss them off, but might help you grow your coffers). Also working on adjusting pay rate similarly.
• Dwarves will get mad if they have to go into debt to buy food. Oh well, maybe they shouldn't gamble so much?
• Added the ability to mark voxels as off limits. It won't stop dwarves from walking on them entirely - but it will count them as unpassable when pathfinding.
• Working on a better command bar thingy - will let you search possible commands and create a custom bar with your most used commands on it.

Not much I can say about this one except that I'm dumb, and grab it ASAP.

Pushed an update with a couple of bug fixes. Special thanks to the two users that flooded me with exception reports - it really helped track it down. It turns out if you cancelled an object placement task it would sometimes create a resource on the map that was null. And then your dwarves could pick it up. And stick it in a stockpile. And - yes, that's bad.

Minor patch pushed today. So, it turns out that I forgot to update the version number for the last one - which means if you had been playing on unstable it might have allowed you to try loading incompatible saves. Now I can't change it without making it reject any saves you might have created in the last week. So. Oops? Anyway, it's marked as compatible with the previous version so you won't lose your saves, but saves older than last week's update will not work. Also fixed - or, more accurately, patched over - a couple of crash bug that came through the automatic reporting. Only one of them made sense. The rest should have been impossible situations but - well, someone encountered them. Now they might lead to oddities in game but they shouldn't crash outright.

Wow, it's here. Finally. This update will break saves. As before, the current stable release has been made available as legacy_june_2020. If you have a save you want to keep you can find it using the debug build options in the steam launcher. What's new? Everything in the unstable updates since the last stable of course.

• May 2020: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/252390/view/2199389555894005756
• February 2020: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/252390/view/1692728892278153903
• January 2020: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/252390/view/1685967148905592333

How is April gone already? A new unstable update is out. There's only a few critical issues that need fixed before this one goes to stable. In this update: - New block types. Bricks for the various kinds of stone - you'll find them in the god menu. - Fixed all the resources that had the wrong graphic.

Evening all, I don't know how hard it's hit where you live, but I hope you're all doing well and avoiding this virus. For me, it's really shook things up. I've not been sick but my day job has taken over every bit of free time I had. Time that previously had been devoted to Dwarf Corp. At this point I don't know when things will get back to normal, or when I'll have regurally scheduled Dwarf Corp development sessions. Ah well. An unstable update is in the works. At some point these changes will make it to stable - I swear - but for now I'm still finding new bugs. I've been working on voxel shapes. This is a bit of a challenge though as most (Well - all) of the game assumes a voxel is a solid cube. So when the next unstable is ready you'll be able to place slabs through the god menu, but they probably won't play nice with physics and pathing yet.

I've pushed an unstable update. It's taken a bit longer than I planned, but that delay also allowed a bit more art to make it into this update. This is the long list of everything since the last stable release. * Dwarf equipment - * Tab added to dwarf info screen. * Remove and equip tools and clothing. * Tools required to complete tasks. * Some tasks can be completed without tools to prevent deadlock. * Dwarves automatically retrieve the appropriate tool, if available. * Equipment is shown on the dwarf sprite. * This required a lot of art and is still rough - expect the occasional stray pixel; they tend to show up as bright pink. * Added Hoes - used for farming. * Dwarves start with default tools. * Tools aquire wear and eventually break. * Some color variations of standard equipment available through god menu - will eventually be craftable. * Tools made of different materials last different amounts of time. * Wood breaks quickest - Iron lasts the longest. * New plant - Cotton * Spawns in grasslands and wetlands. * Currently unused - but expect it to be an ingredient for crafting clothing. * New voxel types - * Beam and Stucco - made from sand. * Carved stone. * New tile colors. * Improved the tutorial * New tutorial triggers no longer get swallowed and lost forever if they are triggered while another tutorial is active. * Introductory tutorials flow automatically into each other. * Added filter to employee listing. * Implemented camera hotkeys. * Shift + Number to save a camera position. * Control + Number to jump to a saved position. * Changed behavior of training equipment * It can now be removed without having to break it, and replaced somewhere else. * Breaking it through training destroys it completely. * Tasks now show why they are failing. * Hover over a task in the task pane to see a tooltip saying why the task has failed. * Some tasks are impossible - it may tell you something like "You do not have the resources", etc. * If a specific dwarf fails a task, it will display their name and why. * This is a work in progress, but most tasks should be covered. * Build voxel tasks are now combined the same as dig tasks. * Resource spawning separated from other entities in god menu. * Quickplay option - previously used for debugging - added to main menu. * Launches game with large set of dwarves into a small world. * Tweaked biome map colors to make them more distinguishable. * Tweaked plant spawn rates to make them more abundant. * Added mushrooms to more biomes to make starting with no food sources less likely. * Increased Jolly Forest and Haunted Forest appearance rates. * The Pumpking reigns... might want to avoid haunted forests unless you have a lot of muskets... * Stuff you don't care about - * Removed implicit combinations from behavior trees - really makes the AI code easier to comprehend. * Improved GUI mesh generation. * Support dynamic GUI textures - used for the palettized resources. * Better resource templating. * All dwarf layers use palettes. * Fighting the billion dollar mistake. * Bug fixes * Fixed gem-set trinkets not using correct graphics. * Fixed crafting table using wrong graphic when in resource form. * Fixed trinkets generated as part of trade sometimes not having graphics. * Fixed targets using wrong graphic when in resource form... sensing a pattern here. * Dwarves no longer faithfully follow a path even when the voxels have changed - meaning they no longer walk or swim through voxels built in their path. * Fixed issue preventing wizards from building bookshelves. * Fixed issue preventing placement of apothecary. * Fixed issue with object placement tool shutting off. * Fixed issue with teleporter stranding dwarves inside voxels. * Fixed issue that caused dwarves to fall through single voxel width bridges. * Fixed issue that sometimes prevented ladders from being placed. * Fixed issue with stockpile outline not being removed when stockpile is destroyed by fire or explosion. * Fixed issue where urgent tasks would interupt dwarves trying to sleep, causing an exhausted state deadlock. * Fixed crash when destroying certain rail pieces. * Fixed issue where some AI bookkeeping was not saved, causing tasks to fail after load.