New Version 18.10.17

Hi everybody, we’ve just pushed the latest version of DwarfCorp, 18.10.17 to Steam. This version is not compatible with old saves. This is the version we intended to release on Halloween this year plus some important bugfixes.

Partnership with MassDigi

I’m excited to announce that the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute will be helping us promote DwarfCorp so that we can reach a broader audience. We’re still in the planning phases, but this means we’ll be in development a bit longer before leaving Early Access. Right now, we are targeting Q1 2019. This is great news for the game, as it means that we’ll have more time in our polishing/bugfixing phase while also getting some much needed help with advertising and business development.

Project Status

As we had only allocated enough money to pay our team through October 31st, our contracts have ended, and it’s just down to two people again — Matt (programming) and Wilson (art). We’ll continue polishing and fixing random stuff until our official release date in Q1 2019, after which we will re-assess our situation and determine the best course of action (whether to continue developing the project or move on to something else). That may involve selling the project to a 3rd party. We’ve been working on this project for nearly 7 years at this point, and we both have full-time day jobs and families!

Changes

• AI: disallow dwarfs from digging through player built walls.
• Crashes: Fix several dozen crashes that arise from the graphics device resource being lost during gameplay.
• UI: Fix tutorial screen placement when the UI scale factor is something other than 1.
• Bug: Fix bug that preventing building with darkdirt or planting next to zones.
• Bug: Fix issues placing existing items in a craftitemtask.
• Crash: Fix crash while trying to path plan using a dwarf that has been sent on a mission.
• Performance: reduce the total number of creatures that spawn per biome, especially large snakes.
• Performance: you can no longer disable fog of war.
• Bug/design: Volcanoes now have shafts that go all the way to hell. Volcano lava now works correctly when loaded from an existing world.
• Bug: Fix voxel types getting out of sync in old save files (this breaks all old saves).
• Balance: reduce rate at which you can hire new dwarfs.
• Art: fix some bad offsets for dwarf noses.
• Bug: make linux/mac auto keyboard-repeat work.
• Balance: make molemen dig less often.
• Bug: The time it takes for creatures to get to your trade port no longer counts against their time in the world (the timer for them to leave starts when the first creature reaches your trade port).
• UI: Fix some layout issues with announcements on traders.
• Crash: Fix crash that occurs on the trade screen while holding down a mouse button and shift clicking.
• UI: Fix issue with glass block preview art.
• Bug: Fix target tracking for flying creatures.
• Bug: Disable performance reporting altogether as it was sometimes crashing.
• Bug: Fix save/load issues that occur with turrets and flags.
• UI: Inform the user why a trade envoy left — was it because you offended them, they are at war, or there was some other issue.
• UI: Fix selection art remaining when a creature is sent on a mission.
• UI: Clearer naming of brew/cook tasks.
• Crash: Always write crash logs in release mode for easier user debugging.
• Bug: Fix issues with dwarves sleeping while performing other tasks.
• Bug: Fix many boredom tasks accumulating and dwarves doing them all at once (gambling, going on walks, etc.)
• Bug: Fix creatures getting stuck floating in the air while mining.
• Graphics: make picked up objects track the dwarf position better.
• Performance: many performance improvements to pathplanning and physics.
• Crash: fix minimizing the game causing crash while FXAA and bloom are both enabled.
• Performance: fix small memory leak on leaving the game and starting a new one.
• Bug: Fix GUI elements not updating correctly in the main menu when the game is paused.
• Graphics: force dwarves to face whatever it is they are buildling.
• Balance: kill creatures that can’t swim if they find themselves in water (scorpions, spiders)
• Bug: Fix bug that was causing “flee entity” tasks to get reassigned to other dwarfs when the dwarf in question dies.
• Bug: Fix player not being able to see changes in their money supply while trading.
• Bug: Fix the gambling pot not disappearing when gambling has been interrupted by fighting.
• Bug: Fix terrain disappearing after loading the game multiple times.
• UI: Reorganize the main menu. “New Game” is now the same as what “Advanced Game” used to be. “Debug World” is now called “Special World”. There is a new option called “Random World”. This is equivalent to the old “New Game”
• UI: Polish the finance screen, include more stats, and plot the change in some of those stats over time.
• Graphics/Performance: pre-generate all scene geometry before the game starts so that it doesn’t annoyingly pop in.
• Bug: Fix building floors (somehow this broke?)
• Graphics: preview art for floors and walls is now semi-transparent again.