17.12.17

Hi everybody. We just pushed version 17.12.17 to Steam and itch.io. This patch is compatible with saves from 17.12.02 or later. We fixed some critical issues on Mac/Linux, solved a couple of usability/AI bugs, and started taking a crack at memory leaks and performance issues that crop up late game. Those are really the most pressing issues to solve at the moment. We’ve written a few simple tests to help us track down memory leaks and performance degradation that occurs after playing the game for a few hours, and have already found and fixed a couple of problems.

One of the well known problems we hope to solve soon is the bird population explosion, which we have definitely verified is real! After a few hours birds tend to cluster in low areas with hundreds of eggs.

Meanwhile, we’re hoping to get one more content update out by Christmas. Our artist has been pixelling away at various jolly creatures and resources for the candy-cane forest — the elf equivalent to the undead’s haunted forest.

Changes in this version:

• Fix critical crash on startup for Linux/Mac caused by incorrect file path syntax while loading tutorial and tilesheet data.
• Upgrade SDL for Linux/Mac to the latest version.
• Ensure that on Red-hat and other Linux distributions, system SDL can be used.
• Fix cave mushrooms/fungus not spawning or becoming invisible.
• Fix moving beds using the move tool causing them to appear 1 block higher than they should.
• Fix somewhat rare crash caused by water mesh not allocating enough space.
• When a dwarf dies, ensure most tasks get reassigned to another dwarf.
• Fix selection buffer issue which was causing some objects to not be selectable when above the current slice.
• Turn off rainfall producing water — this was causing major performance degradation over time. Rain will still fill blocks that already have water in them to full height, but no longer produce water blocks in thin air.
• Fix memory leak caused by creatures trying to restock items when there was no stockpile (for example, carnivores trying to restock meat)
• Fix memory leak caused by autosave not cleaning up type caches.