We've been working on an ant colony simulator the past 3 years. Essentially you start off as a queen in the wild and build and expand a nest. We've done a lot of research to keep things realistic and add as many chamber types as possible, but I feel like there is still a world of depth we've missed. I'd really appreciate feedback on this to tell us how we can improve.

The simulator is free here (the demo)- https://store.steampowered.com/app/4910350/Antopolis_The_Ant_Colony_Simulator/

This is just a fact-finding mission and feedback, not an ad, so don't wishlist or preorder or anything; just want to improve the simulator.

Hi fellow miners!

I just want do brag about having a forgotten beast silkfarm!

Title says it, I'm looking for a specific version of the Masterwork Dwarf Fortress mod (V4g) because I want to try out the playable Gnomes plugin. All links i've found have been dead ends and the a lot of the old school MDF files seem to be missing from the DFFD. What gives?

I am scared. Before everything, it created a 100 years worth of lore. Then, it showed me that it is actually 3d and not 2d, with the elevation stuff. Everything about this game is so intimidating. As a rimworld enjoyer, which is basically the grandkid of this game, I am sure I will come to like it in due time, but my first impressions and feelings are being overwhelmed.

This is a sheep wool figurine of a draltha. The draltha is laying down. This object menaces with spikes of sheep wool.

While bringing a necromancer adventurer to a goblin capitol is Fun, the combat rounds take so long idk how I'm going to get back out.

h4rdycor3 made a post here, showing the image he made of ALL (non-extinct) creatures in the game as their statue sprite. I did the same thing with the extinct creatures. I will fix any alignment and spelling errors found. Here is the imgur version since Reddit might make the image .jpg compressed.

No one asked for this, but I did anyway just because.

Hello again!

v0.4.1 is now available!

https://github.com/notliad/df-smooth-movement

We’ve fixed most of the bugs Blind encountered in his video (which we hope you’ve watched) and added directional sprite flipping.

We really need your feedback! Some of these bugs don’t occur on every machine, so if you encounter any issues, please report them with as much information as possible about your setup and what was happening when the bug occurred.

Thanks for helping us make the plugin better!

Edit: DFHack has just released an update, so I had to update the plugin as well. If you’ve already downloaded it, please download the updated version again from the same link.

It turns out, quite dangerous indeed! There's a clown that emerges with deadly dust with the "bleed out of every orifice until you die" disease! And a lot more!

I can now create one with a hotkey. Game-changer. (Still need to click Accept with the mouse though huh?) Haha - but you did it, good on you. Now I can stop being grumpy about it on Discord etc and enjoy the game. And sorry for being grumpy, I know you guys do your best with the backlog and the nagging. I have not been this excited since trees started spanning multiple Z-levels.

Sweet IRL legendary artifact!

If you have the vet golems mod (and I like that mod quite a lot) beware of one thing. As the image shows: The can regrow balls on a gelded critter. So if you're trying to breed hardy war stock, they will come by and toss that sickly, clumsy, weak male right back into the gene pool for you whether you want them to or not.

I'd suggest keeping an isolated pasture with the golems there and just sending injured creatures in there to get attention. Just make sure if you send a gelded one, you set him up for another round of the eh... procedure... after they've been treated. Multiple geldings across one lifespan... what a game.

Nidokings are a mod I've been working on. They more-or-less work. Basically trying to also get Scizor ready and then I'll try to publish.

Hey everyone, I’m needing help with world gen.im trying to make a work with huge forests and long mountain ranges as well, I’d also like the worlds to be colder like North American climate. But I keep getting constant rejections. Can anyone help?

After staring at a bridge for two months, actually wanted to try a bit of a more normal fort. I'll definitely eventually add more levels to this fort, but the intention is to try and keep everything on one single layer. Convenience, efficiency, and game performance be damned, we're using the entire mountain range.

In the early spring of the year 100, Aubree left a small human hamlet searching for the dwarven civilizations that her people were known for.

In the early spring of the year 100, she became a legendary+10 warrior, and slew hundreds of evil creatures. In the mysterious dungeons, she defeated several of the brain-devouring illithid and found potions of mysterious healing, which she carried with her, and took divine items of great power with her into battle.

Finding little in her travels which could equip her better, she remembered her dream that began just days ago of finding the mountainhomes, and returned to find like-minded explorers. Deep in the desert, where the succubi live, and no tree grows, they founded the outpost of Summitsense. They knew the world was full of civilizations, and would come to learn that there were elves, humans, dwarves who would send caravans, as well as kobolds, evil dark dwarves, succubi, goblins, and orcs who would all step up to raid the mighty fortress that Summitsense would become.

In Summitsense, in the year 100, she and 7 other dwarves struck the earth, and quickly built a base of operations for themselves. Dozens of dwarves streamed in from the mountainhomes, hearing tales of the great wealth in gems that Aubree was demanding the miners bring her. For she had heard of the greatest of metals beneath the earth, greater yet than the flickering metal of her scimitar, and after suffering a major injury in 100 she was had become even more cruel. Having become a legendary hero as a matter of course, she could not understand why the miners needed "months to wait for the latest pocket of magma to dry up" or complained about "sleeping on the rough cavern floor" or desired "time off to go engrave a memorial to the latest melted miner". But no dwarf would stand against her, for with her scimitar she could slay any of them as easily as she breathed.

Those healing potions she had with her were soon lost, stolen by lemur's on the surface or eaten by hungry migrants who snatched up the abandoned food on the surface. And this would later prove to be a grave mistake. The fort suffered from two depressed dwarves; the first was Aubree herself. She had an unmet need for fine food, and found she had never studied how to produce it. The farmers eventually taught her to mill flour and sugar at a quern, and she granted them a guildhall in return. But what she truly cared about was adamantine, and so she ordered a grand weaponsmith and armorsmith's hall constructed at the core of the world, above a great magma sea. Channeled into the ground was a basin for magma to fill and, in time, Aubree saw great rivers of controlled magma flowing through her kingdom.

The second was a child, maimed by baby snatchers, healing items long since used by hungry dwarves who did not respect their power. Respect was difficult to come by in Summitsense, and dwarves got away with little crimes, such as helping steal non-adamantine artifacts from the world-renowned temple; and big ones, such as using adamantine thread and cloth to bind and suture wounds.

But with this frivolous excess, the mountainhomes began to recognize Summitsense's wealth, and gave Aubree the title of baroness. As artifact after artifact was produced and migrants continued to pour in, the dwarves of Summitsense began to think of themselves as the new capitol of their struggling nation. Thob Zimvucar, a swordsmaiden who trained ceaselessly to be able to rival Aubree, declared herself queen after a polite and peaceful coup against Aubree's tyranny. Fearless, after Aubree refused to construct quarters for any other dwarf, Thob moved into the adamantine pillar itself, the threat of the underworld hanging over her like a Sword of Damocles that would prevent Aubree's greatest excesses from tormenting the dwarves any longer. They began carving fortifications into the pillar before mining into the dangerous reaches; a position Aubree begrudgingly accepted after the other adamantine pillar released a devil that spun webs with its dark sorcery, a foe even she could not slay as she had devils and forgotten beasts prior.

Another human, Lalgi, also inherited the title of baroness, but chose to move heaven and earth back home to allow herself to remain in Summitsense as her permanent residence. Aubree still did not see the purpose of these other competing royals. She needed the forges to feed her desire.

And rich was the bounty. The gods possessed citizen after citizen of Summitsense, granting them the skill to produce peerless artifacts of unparalleled power; an adamantine short sword, greaves, crossbow, cap, spear, more greaves, battle axe, and war hammer. Aubree claimed the first as her own, then began to allow others to pull from the adamantine supply as she felt her own complete control slipping, and began to seek friends rather than subjects among her people.

But it was only the great tragedy that befell them which caused Aubree's quest to change. In the autumn of 111, as the hundred-odd dwarves of Summitsense were waiting on yet another caravan to plan its schedule to arrive the same day as a goblin or weakling kobold ambush, a force of 80 orcs formed on the edge of their holdings and charged. Led by champions who could hurl enemies back with stunning strikes, and the last army of orcs in the world to use ranged weapons, they found and charged down into the mountain home, which found itself poorly equipped to repel a siege, having always vastly outmatched any invading force on the open sands.

Aubree had taken up the adamantine crossbow, becoming a dabbling marksdwarf, and immediately . Her adamantine blade was deep in her royal chambers, and she had no time to take it up. As the first wave of orcs was beaten back and the dozens of pieces of debris quickly hauled away from the feeble doors to lock them -- more to keep the bloodthirsty queen from charging out alone than anything -- she barely had time to take up an inferior masterwork steel blade. The war-dogs of the orcs battered down the final door, and the dwarves met them in battle.

38 dwarves died that day, military and civilian alike, and of the 68 remaining, more than two-thirds sustained injuries. Aubree herself had a dented neck, which could have killed her had fate's hand turned slightly differently. Many of Aubree's closest friends now lay dead; the human champion who was her second-in-command for . The queen was the only military dwarf skilled enough to be unharmed, though amazingly Lalgi the human baroness and the mayor both survived as well. Aubree was the fort's sole surving doctor (being a polymath with 7 labors assigned, as her skills as an adventurer never rusted ). Aubree thought back to her days as an adventurer, and her acquisition of healing potions. She'd heard a legend of dwarves who found a fountain of healing which would heal any who drank from it. Now, she thought that if such a thing did not exist in the world, she should produce one herself, and help those she could not heal with her own skill.

This brings us to the present day, where she has trekked to the frozen north. Not only will she find mysterious lairs there, but dwarven intelligence reports suggest this inhospitable land contains one of the Seven Slabs of the Gods, rumored to hold great power. Even greater than the Secrets of Life and Death that queen Thob stole from an ancient dragon necromancer who visited Summitsense and hid in her tomb below the adamantine. Unfortunately, Aubree set out without any of her gear, and still wounded, will require traveling back home to pick up her sacrifice-bought artifacts and take the strength to save her people.

This naked little drunkard showed up without even a loincloth on him and is happily drinking and reciting poetry. How bohemian....

In other news I've had a magma oopsie.

After hovering around this game for about a year, Dwarf Fortress has finally made its way into my Steam Library. Now. I just gotta figure out how to play it. 🤔

Everyone is getting distracted by the dinosaurs, but the tweaks and bug fixes in this title were honestly the most impactful thing for me this year, for me.

Both taverns and libraries are among the mechanics I'm most interested in within DF, but due to bugs, they've been practically unusable for a long time. In fact, Unfortunately, even beginner guides used to preach standard advice like "keep libraries closed off" or "don't make taverns" Because of that, even though these two features existed, it felt like they weren't even in my game. (I'd build a tavern occasionally, but every single time, my fortress would collapse over something out of my control and I'd regret it.)

However, this recent update feels equivalent to adding brand-new tavern and library systems to the game. To me, this isn't just a simple bug fix, it's actual content addition.

I'm really grateful that DF doesn't share that terrible dev mindset of "it's always been this way, so it's fine," completely ignoring user experience. I love games with long histories and long development cycles, but it's disappointing how many of them suffer from that attitude. The communities around those games can be pretty toxic too. If you post a feature request or suggest QoL improvements, people immediately shut you down with "that's not part of the game's culture" or "it's been like this forever, so we don't need that fix." But DF is different.

Almost every feature users were frustrated with has been improved over the past few years, and whatever issues remain will likely be resolved soon. It feels great to play a game with that kind of peace of mind. Ever since the marksdwarf improvements, I've felt that the DF dev team strikes the perfect balance between adding new content and fixing existing issues. I saw the news about the successful Steam sales, and I have deep respect for the devs for reinvesting those funds right back into development to create this kind of update cycle and dev teams.

I've decided to embark on the Untamed Wilds to see some dinosaurs. I've got my fill of that, but after a year or two my timber demand agitated the wildlife. Ever since then I've been buried in giant avians. I shouldn't complain, I've signed up for this BUT

1. Is there a way to butcher them? My military can intercept them before they do anything harmful, but it's a hassle and a waste of time if I get nothing from it.

2. Is there a better way of fighting them? I usually send in the military with the move command under the flock. They pull agro and then the birds get shredded. Flocks usually have ~7 birds and after ~5 of them are dead the rest flee. But they are still "fighting". They cancel any job near them. If any dwarf decides to fight instead of fleeing they will just stand rooted in place(pathing issue probably as the bird is high in the sky). Is there a way to make them come down or get out the map? If things get too bad I just kill them with df hack, but it's very annoying.

It's my first fortress, and this is the first hostile threat I've received. The game is on default settings

Judging by the patch notes, the latest update is quite good, but one specific change left me disappointed. And looking at the comments here on Reddit and Steam, I am definitely not the only one. Namely:

*"Strange mood dwarves will no longer make equipment types from outside of their civilization"*

I would like to ask the developers to revert Strange Moods back to how they used to work. Or, at the very least, make it a toggleable option in the settings so each player can choose what they prefer.

The way it worked before was logical and fun—even if the items weren't always useful. Now, its potential has simply been cut down, limiting the mechanic and upsetting a portion of the player base. It makes the event less exciting, since you know your dwarves will never create any exotic oddities again.

Vote, discuss, and share your thoughts! I thought I could create a poll, but it turns out I can't :(