★

Here’s the release we’ve been working on for nearly eleven months. I’ve tried to collect the major changes below, but it won’t be a complete list. I hope you enjoy the game!

• cities in adventure mode that have various buildings, dungeons, items, livestock, etc.
• protect your community from secret vampire dwarves or hunt them as an adventurer
• defend your fort during the full moon or risk a werewolf infestion — hunt/be hunted as an adventurer
• face armies of the dead in dwarf mode or visit their necromancers’ towers and learn their secrets as an adventurer
• evil regions where the dead and pieces of the dead can come alive, with evil mists and rain
• tombs built in world gen which can be visited in adv mode, either beneath towns or out in the wilds — beware the dead!
• revamped justice/witness/death notification system in dwarf mode
• immigrants to your fortress will now be historical figures whenever possible, which means more family relationships and history for each one
• dropped items/bodies tracked between plays in the wilderness anywhere in the world
• more battlefield information tracked/war dead raisable in world gen
• all sponsorship animals and their giant/man versions are in the game now
• various new abilities for creatures (see file_changes.txt for list and syntax)
• adventurers can use creature abilities/learned powers and they can be tested from the arena
• new site travel map to make navigating towns easier
• reading/swimming/observer (for traps) relevant in adv mode now
• established historical figures can lead bandits
• rivers block movement in adv mode travel
• eating/drinking required in adv mode
• ingested syndromes are now possible
• ability to make campfire (from ‘g’) and warm items at campfire/fire/magma (from ‘I’) in adv mode
• traps work in adv mode, once spotted they can be ignored
• gems now have different cuts
• necromancers can write books about various topics (all books are in their towers as it stands)
• moon phase indicator in fort
• alphanumeric world gen seeds and some more world gen params (see file_changes.txt)
• the legends xml has a lot of new info for historical figures
• buffer overload from aborted world gen fixed
• fixed cave-in-on-embark issue with hidden underground structure, and a few others
• designations over z levels all at once now possible
• unit screen divided into four sections
• rivers/pools have ramps now
• able to trade portions of stacks in both modes
• messed with adv mode currency trading and made items teleport to you
• tweaked how fire damage works
• made vision work through floor grates and bars properly
• fixed some road/bridge problems
• crystal glass items possible again
• tweaked adventure mode swimming and alt-movement readout (use alt-movement to get into a river you want to cross)
• skeletons/zombies replaced by animation effect
• demons masquerading as gods will try a little harder
• restricted mandates so they’ll be more reasonable
• stopped blank map from being exported when you back out of detailed map export

★

Count me in.

The craftsmanship is excellent; I highly recommend Evan.

ThreeToe here. While Toady One is busy putting on the final touches for the next release, I thought I’d give you some details and impressions I’ve had while testing it.

Adventure mode is about 100,000x as fun. Huge cities with dungeons filled with loot and ancient pyramids crawling with undead. The new city maps are just awesome, and the fact that you have to eat and drink now really adds to the feeling of going on long journeys.

Dwarf mode is enriched as well. Most of the migrants you get now are historical figures, meaning they have their own skills and family lineage that goes back to the dawn of time. One thing I like doing is turning all the new rangers into marks-dwarves because they are already good at it. Another thing I noticed, but I hesitate to promise anything, is that the game runs way faster than before.

I caught a vampire too. A fisher-dwarf accused the expedition leader, who I knew was innocent of course. So I had my sheriff drag the fisher-dwarf to the dungeon. I had no hammer, so he had to wait to be executed while we forged one. After 50 hammer strikes I knew I was right, because he lived.

I think this release will be numbered among the mighty. And it’s coming right around the corner.

Can’t wait.

★

★

I have a land line that was included in my super cheap, super good deal Comcast cable/internet package.  Even I don’t know the number.  At least twice during the infrequent time of when I do watch TV (usually a recorded episode of The Daily Show or Colbert Report), my viewing will be interrupted with a phone call on this digital line.

Only the phone doesn’t ring.  I don’t have a phone.

A pop-up window interrupts my TV viewing.  A window which I must acknowledge to close.  Caller ID is displayed in the window and it’s usually a bank or Verizon.  I don’t get it.

Small, it has been my constant companion waiting for time’s erosion to take hold and open it in an exponential deluge. Why did I just notice it now? Why is it there in the first place? Why me?

I don’t know. I never know.

But isn’t that what life is?

I’m getting sucked in and it hurts…

★

Working in a startup is a career path but, more than that, it is a lifestyle choice. This is similar to working in investment banking or academia. Those are three very different lifestyles. Many people will attempt to sell you those lifestyles as being in your interests, for their own reasons. If you genuinely would enjoy that lifestyle, go nuts. If you only enjoy certain bits of it, remember that many things are available a la carte if you really want them. For example, if you want to work on cutting-edge technology but also want to see your kids at 5:30 PM, you can work on cutting-edge technology at many, many, many megacorps.

So, so good.

At the end of the day, your life happiness will not be dominated by your career. Either talk to older people or trust the social scientists who have: family, faith, hobbies, etc etc generally swamp career achievements and money in terms of things which actually produce happiness. Optimize appropriately. Your career is important, and right now it might seem like the most important thing in your life, but odds are that is not what you’ll believe forever. Work to live, don’t live to work.

★

…if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject—which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.

★

★

Why not the same thing for TV sized displays? Imagine watching a baseball game on a TV where ESPN is a smart app, not a dumb channel. When you’re watching a game, you could tell the TV to show you the career statistics for the current batter. You could ask the HBO app which other movies this actress has been in. Point is: it’d be better for both viewers and the networks1 if a TV “channel” were an interactive app rather than a mere single stream of video.

Collect them in a Newsstand-like folder on iPhones and iPads, and make them the “home screen” of a future Apple TV.

Boom.

★

At the end of the day, my biggest complaint here, is that the Occupy Wall Street movement is targeting the wrong people. The fat cats on Wall Street aren’t the problem — they just saw a shorter check-out line and stood in it — the real problem is the government agencies made to protect us from these situations and their failures to do just that: protect those that elected them, preferring instead to protect those that paid to elect them.

The last sentence makes my head hurt, but I think Ben is correct – we have a bought Congress.

★