Kitfox and Bay 12 share plans for Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode update on Steam

rockpapershotgun.com:

Kitfox and Bay12 have struck the earth, manufactured a thousand stone blocks, and laid out a roadmap for the Dwarf Fortress Steam edition's Adventure Mode, together with some forthcoming updates for the existing fortress management mode. Adventure Mode, in case you've been living under a rock (which I guess you probably have, if you've been playing Dwarf Fortress), is the open world roguelike RPG element of the game, which lets you roam the enormous realm you've generated and even tour/loot/disturb the unquiet spirits of your own, abandoned fortress. Alas, there's no word on a release date for the Steam edition's Adventure Mode beyond "not this year".

As with the Fortress Mode stuff, the Steam remaster's Adventure revamp builds on what already exists, though adding the new non-ASCII interface and graphics will take "some months". As detailed in a Steam changelog, the "basics" include overhauling the world map with hundreds of sprites, devising a mini-map and implementing procedural portraits for humans, elves, dwarves, goblins, kobolds and animal people.

Having sorted out the above, the developers will work on individual actions and menus, keyboard and mouse support "for all play styles". The patch notes explain that "actions are challenging because they can be initiated by clicking the play area, through buttons and hot keys, or by accessing a full list. There must be several ways to perform the same action based on context, play style, and input method."

After that Kitfox and Bay 12 will work on the "major features" or "biggest risk items", which will "hopefully" take a few weeks apiece, "but it's hard to say since they each have multiple sub-systems and open design questions to be solved between code and art".