Latest Dwarf Fortress patch notes are brilliant

Dwarf Fortress' seemingly never-ending development means more brilliant patch notes.

Dwarf Fortress is one of the most ambitious, complex world simulations ever crafted - and it can be a nightmare to play (be sure to check out Dan Pearson's feature, Learning to love Dwarf Fortress, gaming's deepest simulation, to find out why).

The game has a tendency to... do its own thing. Once, for example, it started inexplicably killing cats. (Chris Bratt - remember him? - did a whole episode of Here's A thing on that very subject, and it's in the video below.)

Over the weekend, the game's co-creator, Tarn Adams, who's worked on Dwarf Fortress for over 15 years, released version 0.44.11, and with it some sexy patch notes.

The patch revolves around expanding your influence in the world. Once a site becomes linked to you, you can now send a messenger there to request workers, or send dwarves from the fort out to them.

But my favourite part of the update has to do with fixing issues the poor old dwarves were having with negative thoughts. The dwarves can also now experience permanent changes in their personalities and intellectual values due to events in their lives.

Look at this patch note gem, filed under "new stuff":

• Mulling over long-term memories can lead to shifts in intellectual values and personality changes

That's a design for life, if ever I saw one.

And under "major bug fixes" we have the following:

• Changed horror calculation from seeing a dead body
• Stopped similar memories close in time from taking all the memory space
• Stopped stuttering lag from repeated vegetation connectivity checks

Dwarf Fortress remains a fascinating game - and according to Adams, development won't stop any time soon. Indeed, he told Chris Bratt (remember him?) he fully expects to spend another 20 years getting Dwarf Fortress to version 1.0.

That's a lot of brilliant patch notes!

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