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.
It’s amazing how quickly important performance and QoL features get development priority once there’s money on the table, isn’t it?
Not that I’m complaining. I tried DF multiple times over the years and always bounced off, it’s the mouse-driven interface that’s made the game playable for me. Multithreading is great to see too. I’m excited to see what the future of DF holds.
I don’t think it’s money that is doing it, it’s toady opening up the project. He’s a great guy and made a masterpiece game, but he can’t do everything. Commercialising the game was the impetus for him getting help, but Putnam in specific would almost certainly have helped him in this way any time had he asked her. She was doing free work for dfhack before, and has contributed to other foss stuff like CDDA
That is technically true, but I find it hard to believe that DF lacked mouse controls because Toady just didn’t manage to squeeze them in at any point during the decade-long development. No, it was a deliberate design decision, one that he stuck with for as long as he didn’t care how many people played his masterpiece. Now that the number of players is directly proportionate to his income, he suddenly does care.
Funny, it was the keyboard only interface which makes me love the game.
I also still love the original character graphics, I bought the steam version to support the devs.
I love the ASCIIish Dwarf Fortress… But I will admit it’s really nice to be able to see things like armor and weapons at a glance, for instance.
They hired a really talented programmer from the modding community to come in and make performance improvements. If you’re at all interested in technical bits of Dwarf Fortress’s development, checkout the update interviews they do on youtube here.
What mods did she make before joining the team?
Less ‘money on the table’ (they survived off donations before), but instead supporting a product for paying customers is a higher priority when you’ve transition to an actual business rather than an artist patronage type arrangement. Which Tarn specifically didn’t want to do before, because he knew it’d be a lot of work with a lot expectations put on him, and at the time he was solely interested in making the game in his vision in his own time.
It was the cancer scare that forced him to change approaches, so truthfully I hope that it hasn’t been too hard on him. It’d suck to turn something you loved into a stressful job just because we don’t have universal healthcare here.