Castle Otu

The humble blog of Knight Otu, likely to become mostly about Dwarf Fortress for the time being.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 08/05/2026 - Dwarf Fortress 53.15 Released

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

This patch adds some quality of life features, fixes some bugs, and addresses some issues with the extinct creatures patch. A key cause of overindulging tavern patrons was fixed. Dinosaurs grow more slowly and dinosaur people have their missing attack types. Divine objects are visible, generally, and visiting scholars should stop walking off with your books and scrolls. And many more! General updates () Fanciful (but existent) creatures like unicorns appear again and have their materials tracked. This also caused some issues with zombies coming back to life (and then dying immediately because of their rotted state.) () Tavern goers will no longer order a drink from every single tavern keeper in the bar and drink them all, causing them to die of acute alcohol poisoning. () Tavern keepers will now refuse orders for drinks if the one ordering it is sufficiently drunk (if their personality allows.) () Dwarves will exercise self-control and not order alcohol from tavern-keepers when drunk (if their personality allows.) () Saves can be sorted by most recently played now. () Ordered potential memorial slab engraving jobs by urgency and added some coloration. () Visitors should no longer steal fortress library books (or other fortress items.) () Disabled "be with family" need until isolated residents have ways to visit, be visited by, or contact distant family. () Added confirmation for changing or clearing hotkey recenter locations. () Added various missing attacks to the extinct creature people. () Changed growth rates for various extinct creatures. () Changed egg size and clutch size for various extinct creatures. () Stopped caravan from bringing food when it wasn't needed due to seed and drink overcounting. () Strengthened effect of unconditional surrender. () Stopped player messengers from being given conflicting diplomacy goals (such as declaring war and making an alliance.) () Stopped dwarves from being trapped in guildhall skill demonstrations when they have unmet social needs. () Strange mood dwarves will no longer make equipment types from outside of their civilization. () Fixed broken xml export for historical negotiation events. () Wilderness creature type number further depends on the size of each region. () Click the bottom stockpile button now goes directly to adding a new stockpile. () Gave recenter information to building destruction and toppling announcements. () Stopped tantruming dwarves and others from targeting farm plots for destruction. () Announcement and report recenter buttons should properly close their menus again. () Added description to top of burrow menu. Graphics updates () Procedural weapons and armor images appear, and procedural weapons appear when held (worn armor will have to come later.) () Stone short sword should now appear as held item properly. () Made skill blocks of administrator candidates easier to parse. () Improved display of game load/worldgen errors. () Quern and millstone cursors appear properly when placing them. Displayed cauldrons properly in night troll lairs.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 08/03/2026

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

Here's a brief report for August. Future of the Fortress was more characters this time: Part 1, Part 2.

[knight-otu]

Not a Devlog, but from Toady

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

The Bay 12 Forums are experiencing issues (cannot reply to posts, view member profiles, etc.) No estimated time on a fix yet, since we have no idea what's going on.

[knight-otu]

The forums appear to be working again, and Toady has stated as much on the devlog page.

[knight-otu]

Not a Devlog, but from Toady

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

The Bay 12 Forums are experiencing issues (cannot reply to posts, view member profiles, etc.) No estimated time on a fix yet, since we have no idea what's going on.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 07/01/2026

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

Here's the report to start the month of July. Here is the reply for the Future of the Fortress.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 06/25/2026 - Dwarf Fortress 53.15 Released

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

This patch adds a hundred animals that went extinct in the real world. Each of these animals also gets an animal person. You'll need to create a new world to see them. There are five options for the frequency of the extinct animals. You can have them in untamed wilds, small isolated areas, every wilderness, or even domesticated by most civilizations. You can also keep them extinct. This release also brings a graphical update to existing animal people. You can now see their held equipment and some of their bodywear. This should work in your old saves without a new world.

[fuckyeahdwarffortress]

Kitfox Games 🦊 (@kitfoxgames.com)

We're Back! A Dwarf Fortress Update. 100 dinos and extinct creatures are coming June 25th. (And yes, you will be able to eat them) 🦖https:

Good news! The Dinosaur Update is coming out June 25th!

I suppose we'll be in the Fields of Flowers and the Jurassic Parks soon - personally, I can't wait to raise up tyrannosauruses and have an army of killer dinosaurs. I'll just have to make sure one buddies up with a Human Swordsman and Goatman Wizard.

I am hoping that we'll also see dino-animal-folk as playable races in Adventure Mode, but we'll see when it drops!

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 06/01/2026

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

A report for June. A reply for the month's questions.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 20/05/2026 - Dwarf Fortress 53.14 Released

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

This small patch fixes a crash to do with the changes to announcements from last time.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 13/05/2026 - Dwarf Fortress 53.13 Released

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

This patch gives messengers more tasks, like the ability to make peace and improve or open trade relations. You can assign messengers in the same menu where you assign other positions like the manager and broker, and you can give them missions from the world screen (button on the lower right.) There are also some optimizations and other fixes. Diplomacy () Your appointed messengers can now do a variety of diplomatic missions from the world screen. Make peace, declare war, make contact, and improve trade. You can also seek alliances if you have the monarch in your fortress. () Increased the priority of messenger actions. () It's possible to open trade with humans and elves before their usual time if you send a messenger. You can also open trade with multiple civilizations of the same type. () If traders don't make decent profits and you do not engage in negotiations, trade will taper off. () Added confirmation to mission interface. () Changed some colors on mission interface. () Added a dialog line for dwarven traders from other civilizations. () Fixed issue where turning enemies off lead to early caravans (requires resetting difficulty to apply). General updates () Optimization: zombies don't consider their surrounding until disturbed. () Optimization: throttled creatures trying to repeatedly failing path. () Added announcements for residents and creatures that have begun throttling pathing. () Can view activity details again from the residents list. () Stopped scroll bar from disappearing when closing bins near the bottom of the trade list. () Increased the maximum number of announcements that can be saved. () Prioritized the removal of sparring announcements from the announcement list. () Tries to repair corrupted musical instruments upon load. () Did some exception handing for map saving and loading. () Added the ability to display all logged errors on screen (useful for debugging mods etc).

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 05/01/2026

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

Here is the May report. Future of the Fortress is a two-parter this time: part one, part two.

It's been a while since we got a two-parter, I feel.

[knight-otu]

Dwarf Fortress MtG Cards

Yes, really. There are/will be Magic the Gathering cards, official ones, with a Dwarf Fortress crossover. They use Ascii screenshots from the game for the art, and it's five cards (possibly plus one bonus card, but it's unknown if it's a generic one or one specific to the product). They're a Secret Lair, a product sold directly by Wizards of the Coast, and I think they're currently limited print runs, so chances are you're not going to get one, but it's exposure for Dwarf Fortress, and probably more money for the Adams brothers, so that's fine with me.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 04/14/2026

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

Here's a quality of life patch that addresses various issues. You can see your active petitions now and it's harder to disband squads accidentally. Clothing wears down more slowly. Selecting items inside bins during trade works more intuitively. You can see the products and required items for jobs in workshops. Soldiers wear boots properly. See the full list below. General updates Added display of accepted petition building projects (guildhalls and temples). Added standing orders to automatically accept or reject citizen petitions and various residency petitions. Added standing orders allowing mining designations to globally ignore new warm/damp stone warnings. Squad disband icon is no longer a red X that looks like it closes the menu. Disbanding squads now requires confirmation. Items suffer less damage from age and worn items wear down more slowly. Traders bring clothes properly sized for all fortress citizens and long-term residents. Added tooltips showing products and required materials when adding new tasks in workshops. Changed behavior of bin selection in trade menu. Clicking the bin now selects all items inside as well, and these can be unselected one at a time. Clicking a selected bin unselects all of its contents. You can now click anywhere on item listings in the trade/barter menus to select the item. Added a select all button to the move-goods-to-depot menu. Made squad soldiers remove shoes properly if they conflict with their uniform's boots. Reordered work order buttons. Clicking on name of work order or shop text allows number entry. Made the difficulty setting "priesthood unit count" properly effect temple petitions. Closing the unit selector no longer also closes menu that opened it. Made stone use and children's chore scrollbars work properly. Changed citizens label to residents in unit list to reflect all who are listed. Show residency vs. citizenship status on unit summary sheet. Shows the deity being worshipped in meeting hall location info box. Shows the deity being worshipped in location assignment list. Shows location type in meeting hall location info box. Shows location type in location assignment list. Shows current guildhall existence/petition status when choosing a new guildhall. Shows current temple existence/petition status when choosing a new temple.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 04/06/2026

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

The first part of the month I'm working on a routine patch. This time around we're focusing on some more long-standing usability issues. I've changed how bins work on the trade screen so you can select all the items by clicking the bin, and then uncheck items if you want to remove a few (rather than the other way around, which was weird.) You can also click anywhere on the entry rather than having to hit the checkbox. There's a list of accepted building petitions for temples and guildhalls now so you can remember them and check on your progress, and more information is shown in location lists about the religions and guilds and petitions. Traders bring properly sized clothing, including a proportional amount for any oddly-shaped long-term residents and citizens. They also bring more finished clothing. I also made clothes wear down more slowly. I added tooltips when adding a new workshop task to show the product and required materials. I also reordered some buttons on the work order menu.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 04/01/2026

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

Here is the report for the month of April. And here's the Future of the Fortress reply.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 03/31/2026

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

Hello. Since the last patch, things have been afoot in Magicville. I spent some time on magical populations of people, and the infrastructure we need for that. For instance, a world can have an earlier civilization where everybody can links to one of the procedural generated magic forces and use effects more freely than the lab-using wizards of the fort mode era. That sort of thing is in now, with the relevant objects generated by lua but available in the regular interaction txt files. The next chunk of time I spent working on the labs, since Jacob provided over three hundred images of lab bits for me to use ha ha. The game can now construct images of workshops supporting a variety of different vibes, from botany to rune-carving to orbs and mirrors to necromancy to brewing and alchemy to scrolls and books to lightning. We've kept them the standard 3x3 tile size to make it all manageable, but there are some animations (for mechanisms, electricity, candle flames, etc.). It's pretty wholesome. I'm going to switch gears now to the next routine patch, for sometime mid-Aprilish. So far it seems like magic work and routine patches will co-exist nicely, which is good. If I can keep up a monthly patch cycle while making progress on the magic/army/diplomacy release, that should be good enough.

[knight-otu]

Toady's Devlog for 03/04/2026 - Dwarf Fortress 53.11 Released

Toady One writes on the Dwarf Fortress Development Log:

Here's another routine patch. Notably, good food should make dwarves happier and they should seek out better food. I've been sick through February so the changes are a bit sparse, but I should be back at things now. General updates () Made happy food thought levels easier to obtain (more in line with newer food values). () Dwarves seek good meals more aggressively and value better foods over worse ones more precisely. () Stopped dwarves from forgetting friends/grudges they rarely meet after a few years. () Added item dimension check to strange moods to make sure they don't gather e.g. infinite cloth from hospital zones. () Stopped world gen interrogations from sometimes disordering known site records. () Fixed crash issue with error-logging for certain modded languages. () Fixed some potential multithreading stability issues. () Added some crash-proofing to conversations. () Worldgen now aborts instead of quitting the whole game when a raw object is missing. () Fixed issue causing deletion of nemesis records for units. () Made several distance calculations euclidean instead of rectangular. () Fixed issue with temperature check so that certain items (butchery products etc.) respond to temperature properly. () Changed filesystem for certain setups to support UTF-8 strings. () Fixed problem causing party tactical AI settings to be unchangeable. () Fixed display problem for desired metal cages and chains in dungeons. () Fixed problem causing generated creatures to not be immune to their own poisons. () Stopped channeling in the undiggable underworld. () Made choreographers and composers use existing music and poems for their works instead of always making new ones. () Made werebeast types duplicate if necessary rather than creating blobs (only applies if werebeast curse number set higher than 72). () Fixed typo in angel descriptions.