Tarn's about to be traveling for a little bit but in the meantime, there's a fancy new public beta branch on Steam for folks to try the following fixes for 50.08:
Major bug fixes
- Cleaned out lingering data from autosaves and manual saves that could cause corruption if multiple worlds were active.
Graphics additions/changes
- Added graphics for many child/baby creatures.
- Added hatchling state for dragons.
- Added crop/sprout pictures for outdoor plants.
- Added outdoor sapling graphics.
- Added palettized boulders.
- Ice wall graphics updated.
- Smooth ice wall graphics added.
- Added more fortification images to indicate direction and material.
Other bug fixes/tweaks
- Stopped dwarves without working grasps from trying to get goblets to drink, failing, and dying of thirst.
- Allowed most water-based jobs that use buckets to use partially-filled water buckets in addition to empty buckets.
- Made stocks screen open faster.
- Made all stockpiles not include the refuse option.
- Stopped refuse piles that also have armor/finished good settings from degrading contents.
If that sounds interesting to you, right-click on the game in your Steam library and choose Properties -> Betas -> click the None dropdown to pick public beta. And let us know in all the usual places whether you see a disaster in the making. If all goes well, this patch will be out in a couple of weeks!
In the meantime, if I understand correctly, DFHack ("the Dwarf Fortress Modding Engine") is launching literally tomorrow on Steam! That team of volunteers is entirely independent from Kitfox and Bay 12, but have our blessing to keep working their magic as best as we can without stepping on each others' toes. It has a lot of interesting extensions and tools for different user experiences, and is planned to be totally free. So keep an eye on it if you're curious.
Thanks to all who came to the PAX East panel and/or party. I heard Tarn and Zach had an excellent time, so I hope ya'll did too, minus one known decency violation from the bouncer (we're still agitating angrily about this to the management btw). Relatedly, if you heard or saw anything problematic about the Lucky Strike staff's conduct, please do let us know so we have the full picture of what happened at the venue.
Have a great day!
Tanya