NOTE: The Long Night is split between the old steam version and the beta DFFD version currently, for reasons out of my control. The 8.00 and beyond changes refer to the DFFD version until the versions can be synced.
8.14
-Flashlights and lanterns added to adventure mode. In a world overshadowed by abandoned superstructures, light is key for those unblessed by night vision. While navigation in the dark is trivial for posthuman life, normal humans benefit considerably from these tools. I hope they provide a fun addition to early-game adventure mode. Campfires will also emit light as a large lantern.
-In addition, all light has been overhauled for adventure mode. If you are in a dark area, you can see lit areas independently of your default vision radius. If you are in a light area, you cannot see into a dark area with a flashlight. In light you are exposed, in darkness you are blind but hidden, unless you have a light source or are some kind of inhuman nightvision-having creature. This applies to monsters as well. If you are playing a relatively normal human, a flashlight or lantern is a must.
-Underguards now possess considerable advantages! They will increase speed, endurance, and strength. The biggest are the strongest, the lightest are the fastest, and the ones with the best endurance are right at the middle. But even the slowest will make it as if you are wholly unencumbered, even as you use cannons and greatweapons.
-Significant speedup to worldgen
-Glowtiles added to all creatures. Some will be murky shadows, others will properly glow. I think you ought to be able to see something if it isn't stealthed or otherwise hiding, even if it is outside the vision area proper. Especially if there are so many places hide now. Getting a glimpse of something scampering across a gap in the wall feels fun to me.
-Ammo types are now visually distinct. Bullets are small dots while missiles are larger triangles, for example.
-Flamethrowers added. These are very lethal, but nerfed compared to vanilla flame damage. Humans are not bundles of straw, they can burn but won't go up instantly, especially with armor on. Even so, they are good for controlling swarms. They also have very robust anti-friendly-fire AI, so let me know if they keep torching your own troops. Tactical positioning is key for using these weapons. All civs have a small chance to spawn with them.
-Beam weapon family added. While plasma guns deal heat+concussive, beam weapons deal heat+piercing, favoring accuracy over hosing targets down. However, they require a relatively long time to charge up, creating openings. Also, stronger beams like those from sniper or cannon weapons can penetrate multiple targets, though bigger ones may not be penetrable.
-Ruins will be made of boulders (chunks) rather than blocks. Keeps things simpler.
-In fortress mode, ruins should not regenerate after saving and loading.
NOTE: all armor in a civ is now procedurally generated. However, due to the need to fix a reported bug, I had to ship this before the descriptions could be finalized. As a result, the descriptors are not visible. This will be the next big update. However, you should be fine as the weight class is what matters mechanically, which is sill visible in the item's name.
8.13
-Reduced pop-in for tower spawns in adventure mode
-Fix to issue of being unable to select pets at embark/adventure start, they are also cheaper
-Fix to game freeze under niche conditions (fort mode NPC falls into an unrevealed chasm)
-Fix to being unable to craft ranged weapon ammo in adventure mode
-Non-posthuman adventuring companions will also need food and water now. They will use food in their inventory, in beasts of burden, and if you are near a lake or river, they will path to and drink from it. If you are in a friendly, populated site, they will find meals on their own. Keep your people alive and they will produce resources for you if you give them scavenging tools!
-Update to roaming animal logic. Predators your size will follow your carefully, sticking to cover before they strike. Pack hunters will try to surround you before going in for the kill. Larger ones will follow the old rules, just hunting you down because they think they can win. However, a large group can make them flee, they will no longer be suicidal. In addition, animals will be spawned into adventure mode chunks and will leave in time. If you wait in a single area without moving, different creatures will move into and out of the area. A patient hunter can snag prey without needing to travel, but make sure you don't end up the meal of something worse.
-Wetlands biomes back, they will now be full of pools. This means deserts will shrink a bit but this new variety should make up for that, rendering wetlands visually and mechanically distinct from forests. You will need to use the updated worldgen settings for this.
-Various optimizations across the new code
8.12
-New ranged weapon branch, plasma weapons. These will throw a gout of molten plasma at foes, inflicting scorching damage over time but not completely immolating targets. Plasma weapons are built around inflicting pain and slowly heating up a target until they expire, with a bit of kinetic punch thrown in as well. This is a rare weapon family so enjoy it if you can find it. However, plasmech civs will always have them if you want to test them out
-Wilderness locations (non-site maps) will not despawn ruins or change appearance when you return to them in adventue mode, they should be wholly deterministic now
-Deviant Cycaste will no longer be overly represented in animal populations
-Additional optimizations in fort and adventure mode
8.11
-fix to floors and walls not being autosmoothed when they should
-fix to the new gigantic tunnels that burrow into the earth not ending in visible floors
8.1
-Avatar class entities should PROBABLY stop showing up for good now
-Super important fix: your posthumans will actually eat packet-ified meals in fortress mode. Remember, they no longer consume normal food and drink. The same resources you use to craft weapons and armor, and sustain N-matter, fuel your most powerful citizens.
-Terrain generation vastly improved. Ruin density will vary across biomes, immense towers will dominate the skyline, and rivers will be encased in giant metal pipes. In addition, everything underneath said structures counts as underground, making light harder to come by.
-As a tie-in to the above, all -caste types except cycaste can cave-adapt. In dense biomes, carve out little nooks to remind them of the sun to avoid this, or turn them into posthumans that no longer care.
-Snow will now pile on top of structures, not below them, when wandering around in adventure mode.
-Vast improvement to all the terrain generation. While loading between chunks may lag, moving around once everything is done loading in should work perfectly. Major lag is now confined to starting a fort, starting an adventurer, and exiting fast travel as an adventurer, along with a minor hiccup when traveling to a new chunk as an adventurer. Everything else should be bearable if not completely fine.
-Some fixes to adventure mode predator hunting and corpse retrieval logic, and for prey movement logic. it should be much more consistent now.
NOTE: this update came out a little early due to my discovering the food issue, but I think a lot of this stuff is pretty neat so tell me how it feels to play in. I'm especially interested in how bearable the lag is outside of the aforementioned scenarios, which cannot be helped for now. Also, bear in mind the flora situation is in-development thanks to the new tech I'm unlocking, so it will probably change.
8.05
-weapon-bearing creatures are back, and considerably more efficient to create in worldgen. In addition, they will fire actual projectiles, bullets and such, rather than materials named to be similar. This should make them much more dangerous, and make purchasing WEAPON or MILITARY class organisms more desirable.
-some other fixes to generators, they're at least 30% more efficient as a baseline, so everything should be way smoother overall when genning a world
-plastcrete blocks can also be made into plastic
-tweaks to ore materials, should be a bit easier to get their associated minerals
8.02
-Fix to some nanomachines having the wrong innate abilities
-Fix to profession names
-You can make fuel by processing meat in the still workshop now
-Outpost Liaisons shouldn't be Avatar-class anymore (game doesn't like it)
8.01
-fix to crafting civweapons
8.0
-New color set. I have struggled a lot between mood and readability but this might be The One. Feedback is appreciated and remember, the old versions exist as legacy options if you prefer bright colors, earthy colors, or something else.
-New worldgen files. Due to some things outlined below, changes made this new configuration optimal. Nothing has been lost, but I have shifted stuff around to take advantage of cool new features. The main thing was that I needed grass and trees to make pretend buildings, but now I don't. This opens up new opportunities for aesthetic cohesion.
-Change to civ spawning. They will now more commonly be of caste species. The reason is because I have devised a mix of animal person equivalents, transformations, experiments, and other tricks to turn every civ into a diverse assortment of posthumans, mutants, and various other sophonts, and thus I need less individual civs overall to have the same amount of playable races available. If you want to play a fort of a specific posthuman species, turn your citizens into that species.
-Intelligent species will now spawn in the wilderness as well as civs. However, unlike vanilla animal people, they will be fully equipped with weapons and armor. They can also be recruited as adventuring companions, giving you a way to replace fallen allies even in the depths of the wilderness.
-New tools can be crafted that allow you to scavenge resources from the wilderness in adventure mode. By handing them to an adventure mode companion, they will produce specific resources for you periodically, incentivizing accumulating noncombat followers and keeping them alive. The longer you travel or wait while a follower holds one of these items and has a backpack, the greater the odds of getting something. This is also impacted by the Forager skill.
-Guns now have magazines, explosives, and so on. Cover and maneuver mechanics have also been implemented. NPCs will use cover and try to flank you if possible, and overall guns should be way more fun to use and play with.
-Terrain vastly altered, much of the map now consists of a sprawling labyrinth of plastcrete or superstructure. No more renamed grass tiles and tree towers. The world is now a multilayered quasi-architectural landscape which incentivizes melee fights, sneaking and flanking, and vertical maneuvering.
-Predator behavior altered. DNGR-class organisms will not mindlessly kill, they will try to pull away individuals or run off with their corpses.
-Predators and other monsters will hunt your adventurer by sound. Go into stealth mode to sneak away.
-Posthumans will need to consume three specified materials or they will die. N-matter can function as a substitute for any and fulfill all needs simultaneously. The frequency of needing to eat corresponds with affinity levels and size class. Bigger size+more affinity= more frequent consumption of the relevant material. In adventure mode, posthuman party members will also need to eat, so don't forget them!
-Metals changed. There are now seven core "metals"= N-matter, meta-alloy, computing substrate, energetic compound, hyperbiology, nanite condensate, and hardlight. These can be combined into six technological paradigms: heavy and defensive onco-tech, lightweight acro-tech, brittle but strong dura-tech, aggressive and powerful nano-tech, keen-edged and ultra-light holo-tech, and generalist, adaptable biotech. Each civilization will have access to one type, which will determine your default strengths and weaknesses. If you want a different one, you need to trade or raid to get it. This information is available in more detail on the website (not currently because it isnt on the main branch so just ask if you need more detail).
-Armor will self-repair over time
-Adventurers can dismantle most items for their base components in the crafting menu.
7.12
-Final(?!) fix to plasma life melting under particular circumstances
-Ghosts will no longer appear
-Generic rock blocks will be replaced with a plastcrete material
7.11
-Fix to caste lifespan discrepancies
7.10
-Fix to hardlight organisms being too strong when big
7.09
-Plasma-based life will no longer be unhittable
7.08
-Plasma-based life will no longer boil or melt arbitrarily
7.07
-Final(?!?) fix to homogenization of tissues
-Fix to being unable to start as an adventurer with metal weapons
7.06
-Fix to remaining errors with domestic animal gen
7.05
-fix to the fix to homogenization
7.04
-Fix to crafting hardlight/hyperbiology
-Fix to tissues not being properly homogenized
7.03
-Released on steam
-DFhack features should now be functional if they weren't before (at the very least it should be more efficient)
-Fix to anarchs remaining on the screen when a higher ranking archon is selected
-Fix to some civs not having domestic animals
-Fix to not being able to start with hyper-tech
-Fix to werebeasts spamming transform ability
7.02
-Fix to some description errors
-Fix to locaste descriptions
-Fix to anvils
7.01
-Fix to hyperalloy crafting
-Fix to some typos and other issues.
7.0
MAJOR!!! DFHACK INTEGRATION! You will now need DFhack to access three important features.
-Megabeasts will eventually leave after a few weeks or months have passed. Gigantic horror stalking the land? Wait it out in your bunker. This applies to both forgotten beast and megabeast variants.
-Stored food decays over the course of a few months to about a year. Prepared food lasts longest. The less ingredients in the prepared food, the longer it lasts. Choose between luxury vs food security.
-If you turn your citizens into posthumans, they do not have a noble position, and their mood gets low enough, there is a chance they will straight up abandon your fortress. You turned them into hyper-evolved supersoldiers, they no longer need to hang out with you to survive and only their personal inclinations and connections motivate them to stay. Turn your whole fort into posthumans and you might collapse arbitrarily if you have a bad few months. However, anything with -caste in the name (except cycaste) can be considered a captive populace, so there are less consequences for mistreatment.
-Updated advanced worldgen params, built around the new features
-Many under-the-hood fixes to smooth things over and make life easier.
-Domestic animals are now procedurally generated and assigned to every civilization. Different civilizations will have different strengths and weaknesses. One might have big mounts while another might have a swarm of small war animals, for example. Want more variety? Take animals from other civs.
-Megabeasts are now greatly diversified, divided into various forms and with unique loadouts and abilities.
-A new class, the Avatar rating, will take over civs and act as a living deity and force multiplier in the lands they rule.
-Experiment night creatures added. Militaries will turn subjugated populations into posthuman monsters to fight for their civ. They can also join your fort.
-Werebeasts added. Some entities will wear the skins of humans to infiltrate their societies.
-Magic system radically overhauled and expanded. Divided into Nanomachine, Energy, and Digital techniques, and paired with the "Affinity" system. The higher a creature's affinity, the better it resists undodgeable attacks from that technique class and the easier it is to learn more powerful techniques of that class. Anyone can learn the best stuff, but high affinity means it is cheap to do so.
-Invader civs added. "Demons" and their "goblin" hordes will be procedurally generated, erupting from the ground and doing what these kinds of civs do best, providing an existential foe for the player to contest with.
-Necromancers overhauled, they are worse now.
-Tombs will now spawn their own techno-zombie hordes. They are even worse-er.
-Civilizations vastly expanded and streamlined. There is now a consistent set of rules divided (loosely) between hereditary, appointed, and elected officials, and further split into more niche political groups and survival strategies. Each civilization's name reflects these traits so it should be easy to see where a given one stands.
-Vastly improved creature generation system allowing for randomized, dynamic stats, speeds, weapon configurations, and other traits.
-Descriptions overhauled to maximally convey information as effectively as possible
-The ground is now procedurally generated. All "stones" and "minerals" have in their name a percentage chance of yielding "metals" when smelted. Juggling between using these materials for building and processing them for resources is key. It should also be much easier to construct things. NOTE: Due to a DF bug, this doesn't work. It will be fixed very soon, but for now the minerals don't get added. So I manually genned them and put them in the objects folder. That means the values won't ever change until this is fixed so consider this a placeholder.
-Transformation into a higher being has been made much less rigid. With the affinity system, transformations now have a much greater gameplay importance. If your enemies have a low Digital affinity, for example, then you should turn your citizens into high digital affinity posthumans, cheaply teach them digital techniques, and use them to gain a major advantage. But then, there's a risk of encountering a natural enemy to your own build, so make sure to not put all your eggs in one basket.
-Nomenclature updated. The goal of this pass was to further refine the naming scheme so that it provides maximal information in a clinical and efficient way. However, no particular type of creature was lost, just shuffled around. Deviants, Transhumans, and Replicas can now be found in the biomech category. Biomachines are now demimechs. All robots are cybermechs. Impurities are nanomechs, Engrams are holomechs, ghosts are plasmechs. Sapient specimens get the -morph suffix, domestic ones get the -drone suffix, megabeasts get -calamity, gods and demons get -deity. The rest use the -mech suffix. Shells are now cycaste, degens and neotenates are now excaste, cyborgs are now nucaste. All the -mech archetypes will have 2 to 4 subvariants with different aesthetic and statistical differences. For example, the old deviants are now the "Solar Imperial Era Biomechs with an interaction classification of Deviant (DVNT)". Replicas are "Transitional Era Biomechs with an interaction classification rating of Sophont". Transhumans are "Modern Biomechs with an interaction classification of Sophont." This allows for far more diversity both narratively and mechanically, with the broader archetype classification determining things like tissue layers, affinity ratings, and other special traits.
-We're back to normal parchment books. I really, really tried to make datachips work but they don't. I suppose in a digital world suffused with evil viruses physical mediums are once again pretty tempting.
-tissues are now homogenized. No more 1 million slightly different kinds of kidney.
-No more specific tech. Meta-Alloy or Meta-Technology is now combined with N-matter to make Hyper-Technology, which is used for armor and weapons. Everything else is meta-technology, which should streamline things. Also, ammo is now just energetic compound. "wood" is now Paleo-Technology, so plain mechanical stuff, cogs and hinges.
6.1
-Fix to autogun tablets being named cannons
-fix to missions not being possible
-fix to core programs not being craftable
-a bunch of under the hood code tweaks to make future stuff easier.
6.09
-Fix to N-cores being too costly
-Also you can scrap other forms of tech for N-matter now
6.08
-fix to world generation
6.07
-fix to biomass thread creation
6.06
-fix to meta-alloy not being usable for chains/furniture. May not need to start a new save for this but not sure.
6.05
-fix to some positions not appearing where they should.
-fix to error with civilization generator code.
-fix to NPCs not using the special attacks of their weapons appropriately.
-change to N-core possession frequency in a civ, it should now still be rare, but no longer vanishingly so.
6.04 Changes:
-Initialization of the new version of the mod on steam, all features described on this website.