Development arc

Toady One has outlined specific Arcs that will be accomplished during the development of Dwarf Fortress. There are 21 near-term arcs in total, and not all may take the same length of time to complete. Each Arc also encompasses certain cores, requirements, bloats, and power goals originally listed in the main Dwarf Fortress development page, which has since been replaced but is still available at the consolidated development page.

Current Arc(s)

Army Arc

The Army arc is possibly the biggest endeavor out of all the current Arcs, and may be one of the focuses at the moment. Development will take many more weeks until its final release. One of the largest releases, 0.31.01, introduced many army arc features.

Caravan Arc

The Caravan arc is the current focus, and has been since 0.31.17 (its first release). (Status unknown as of v0.44.05, possibly completed.)

Arcs

• Army arc
• Caravan arc
• County arc
• Life cycle arc
• Presentation arc

Current and future releases

Over the last few years, Toady One largely scrapped the arc system in favour of a private roadmap, where each choke point consists in a list of "notes", i.e. features that would be necessary for a release. The notes and roadmap are kept private because they have been proven to be too time-consuming to maintain in public, as they may be subject to frequent change.

Major past named releases (among many minor ones) are:

• The night creature release (0.34.01): added necromancers, mummies, vampires, werebeasts as well as a complete undead overhaul. Other notable additions include evil weather, improved human sites featuring catacombs, sewers and dungeons, and a number of animals added to the game.
• The world activation release (0.40.01): allowed many world generation activities to carry on during normal gameplay, as opposed to a static world. Other notable additions include non-human sites, multi-tile trees, retirable fortresses, claimable non-player fortresses and a great variety of plants and additional animal people.
• The tavern release (0.42.01): added taverns and visitors to the game. Other notable additions include fortress temples, libraries (with scholars complete with a knowledge system), a paper industry, art forms (music, dance and writing) and non-dwarves citizens.
• The artifact release (0.44.01): added non-player artifacts to the game. Other notable additions include the ability to send squads of dwarves off the map (on a mission to raid sites, rescue citizens, retrive artifacts, explore ruins and so on), secret agents, non-player questers and improved kobold sites.

The future releases are scheduled to be:

• The villains release (0.??.01): adds villains to the fortress, giving them goals and the ability to subvert other people into various corruption activities such as embezzlement, sabotage, kidnapping or assassination. Other notable additions will include improved relationships (divorce and remarriage, children outside marriage, different kinds of friendships), improved religions (featuring prophets and monastic orders), trade companies, craft guilds as well as new sites (monasteries, bandit forts and the return of castles).

• The myth and magic release (0.??.01): scheduled to be a very long release cycle, it will add myth generation to the game and a magic system that will tie to the original myths. With the presence of "fantasy ratings" that alter how magical the world will behave (from only humans to a world filled with the strangest creatures), it is expected to be a complete overhaul of the game that will dramatically alter its gameplay.

• The starting scenarios release (0.??.01): will expand on the laws, property, customs and status framework to provide reasons for your fortress to be and guidelines on how to govern it (different kinds of migrants, different standings regarding the mountainhome, different diplomatic relationships, etc.)

• The boats release (0.??.01): will feature, well, boats, with all that entails (ports, maritime trade routes, pirates, and so on). Probably multi-tile creatures as well, as mechanics on how to make boats (floating superstructures) work will be borrowed to make multi-tile creatures as well.

• The economy release (0.??.01): will piggyback on the new trade and property stuff to establish a new framework that will completely overhaul the old (and deactivated) economy system.

External links

• Consolidated Development Page with Near-Term Arcs