Hello again!

These last few weeks I've been bouncing between all sorts of adventure mode topics. This tends to happen, as the point of doing adventure mode before fort mode is to see all the new features up close, and there's always lots to do.

I started with the ability to control multiple characters in adventure mode. This means entering tactical mode, and controlling some or all of your party as combat (or any situation) progresses. You can still control a single character most of the time, and the rest of your party will follow you around. People that you invite to join you later on cannot be controlled directly, unless they are retired adventurers from previous games, but you'll still be able to give spoken orders to them.

I've also been working on maps. After so much time working on history generation, there are many new or changed locations that need tiles now. Earlier, we changed necromancers so that they'd spread a kind of blight aura slowly out from their towers over their history of necromantic misdeeds. It grows every time they animate bodies, for example. In play, these areas have dead vegetation. Demons of various kinds have also been given the spreading evil treatment, though instead of dead vegetation, with their regions you'll often get eyeball-grass and nightmarish critters. In order that the world not slowly go to evil permanently, these evil regions fade over many years. Fort mode games can run over several years, so this isn't purely theoretical, but it might take a few games.

While messing about in the evil areas, we also decided to give undead lieutenants some more magical powers. These are undead that, unlike the more common animated zombies which are in the game, maintain their souls from their previous life and are able to act independently. They can be raised by necromancers, including any player that gets their hands on the secrets of life and death, as well as certain demons. The easiest powers to do were based on existing poison code, which modders have already taken advantage of, allowing them to blind, suffocate, paralyze, open wounds of various kinds, nauseate, cause dizziness, and so forth. I also added some completely new effects, including the ability to summon creatures, change the weather (they like heavy fog, which complicates ranged weapon use), and propel enemies off their feet (this effect applies a force, so smaller enemies fly several tiles, while an elephant might not be affected at all.)

I've also done maps for shrines, which unlike the temples we already had, can be in much smaller locations, perhaps just a tile or two on the side of a building, but they can also be entire plots of land. Their placements and objects of devotion are chosen according to the history of the sites where they are found. This necessitated the addition of altars, and I also included divination dice in some of the shrines. Since I was already working on magical powers a bit, I went ahead and threw in a divination system where rolls of the dice lead to various curses and blessings, depending on which face or faces shows up. Long-time followers of the game know that the addition of dice is part of the procedural dice/card/board game generation system we've been planning for years, and divination seemed like a good way to get a small piece of that in without biting off the rest before I get this final Classic release and then the Steam release together.

- Tarn

Kitfox's Note

If you're headed to PAX West, make sure to drop by our booth (#6120). We'll have the Dwarf Fortress trailer playing, our other games, and mostly importantly... both Tarn (Toady) and Zach (ThreeToe) will be there for the last two days of the con.

There will also be a panel, but more details to come on that after. Cheers!

Victoria