Utilities

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v50.14 · v0.47.05

This article is about the current version of DF.
Note that some content may still need to be updated.

Utilities are third party applications useful for Dwarf Fortress players and modders, and this page serves as a list of them. Dwarf Fortress is a difficult game to play, and any help that can be had in the task is welcome help. This page lists utilities useful for modders and player alike. If you would like to add an article on a specific game utility to the wiki, please do so under the Utility namespace. Not included on this page: tileset repositories and graphics set repositories have been given their own, separate page. Mods have also been listed under their own Modification namespace. To avoid namespace clutter websites are considered utilities, though they really aren't, and have been included.

A subsection of the Bay12 forums is devoted to such third party programs, and contains development threads for most of them.

The Lazy Newb Pack is an effort to make Dwarf Fortress more accessible for new players by bundling and configuring utilities, graphics and tilesets, and extras such as reference material or more intuitive controls.

Launchers

Manila Launcher

A Java interface that allows easy option toggling, update and devlog checking, and tileset, mod and color scheme switching.

Lazy Newb Pack

A commonly-used software bundle with a nice launcher. Allows to start playing DF really quickly on a new machine - no need to download and integrate tilesets and tools like Dwarf Therapist, SoundSense, etc. - or even know what you need to get. The newer packs also include many third-party fixes for common bugs, which work automatically, and a large number of significant user interface improvements. The launcher makes changing settings or graphics options much easier (press button, instead of editing files) and can even remember to launch selected utilities whenever you open a game of Dwarf Fortress. See the Lazy Newb Pack page for more information, or the forum thread for your platform.

PeridexisErrant Lazy Newb Pack (windows)
MacNewbie Pack ReBorn (OS X)
Lazy Newb Pack Installer for Linux, abandoned

PyLNP

A cross-platform LNP port, written in Python.

3D Visualizers

Stonesense

Stonesense is a third party visualizer, implemented as a DFHack plugin, that lets you view your fortress in a classic isometric perspective. It runs alongside Dwarf Fortress, and can follow the main game's view, updating in real time. It is included in DFHack, and can be opened by typing stonesense or ssense into the console window.

Fortress Overseer

Fortress Overseer is the only 3D visualizer supporting v0.31. It has been completely rewritten and is currently updated to support v0.34.11 and v0.31.25. Overseer works indirectly, by using DFHack's mapexport to export a file which can then be rendered in 3D. DirectX 9 must be installed, though this requirement is not documented.

Isoworld

Isoworld is an isometric world map viewer, which can display each of the detailed maps exported from Legends Mode. It also has a pictographic view which makes finding waterfalls easy.

Isoworld can link with DFHack to display a game view at full spatial resolution in wider context, including tracking the game view. This is particularly useful for adventure mode.

Music and Sounds

SoundSense

SoundSense is a tool that parses game logs and reacts to game events with sound effects, incidental music and dwarfy comments. You can look it up on the forum thread, or directly download it at the SoundSense homepage. Due to it being written in Java, Soundsense is portable to all platforms.

Due to development having slowed down, a fork was released that most notably disables the broken auto-updater and adds the option to minimize Soundsense to the system tray.

Note that older Soundsense users may have different default seasonal soundtracks, which were removed and replaced in early 2011. These are available here.

Game manipulation tools

DFHack

DFHack is an advanced Dwarf Fortress memory access library and a set of tools and scripts using this library, providing direct object-oriented access to Dwarf Fortress's internals as if it were compiled into the game itself. Releases support versions up through 0.34.11 (as of June 22nd, 2012). Runs on Windows, Linux, and MacOS X.

DFHack has an official forum thread. Code and binary releases are available from the Github site.

As of June 2014, the current version is r5; however there still may exist some compatiblity issues with plugins and scripts who have not been yet updated to r5 (because of development that has been halted for instance).

Falconne's UI plugins work through DFHack, as do automation tools such as Autolabor, Workflow, Autobutcher, and many others.

DFHack User Interface Plugins

Falconne's Plugins

A collection of DFHack plugins that improve the in-game interface with features such as:

Search function in screens with big lists.
Ability to place furniture before it's built and have it automatically allocated when available.
Ability to place constructions with box select (like laying designations), including easier material selection and open space placement (without having to wait till adjacent constructions are built).
Easier pasturing, live happiness monitor, mouse support, stocks dashboard.

Autobutcher GUI

Binary patches

Binary patches are utilities made by users to fix known bugs that haven't been addressed by the development team yet.

This executable contains many bugfixes, including the long-standing armory bug that prevent racks and armor stands from ever being used.

Feature plugins

These plugins add features to the game.

Digging invaders, a plugin that allows hostiles to dig and deconstruct walls to path to one's fortress.
Rendermax, a plugin that implements a lighting system at the graphics level.
Dwarven Emigration, a plugin that allows unhappy dwarves to emigrate with their families.

Interaction plugins

DFHack scripts designed for use in interactions as "spells"

Miscellaneous plugins

DFHack script collection

Dwarf Therapist

Dwarf Therapist gives you an advanced GUI to manage and check dwarf job allocations, military assignments, statistics (such as attributes, personality traits and happiness), sort dwarves by various criteria (e.g. profession, migration wave, happiness, number of assigned jobs etc.) and generally manage the Dwarven Resources of your fortress in a very convenient way. This version contains the "labor optimizer" semi-automatic labor management system.

Splinterz' fork of Dwarf Therapist is the currently updated version, and available for Windows, Mac and GNU + Linux. Besides the Bay12 forum thread, there's more information on the GitHub project page. Doesn't work for DF2014 (at least on linux). see | supported game version

Dwarf Therapist Addons Repository

A collection of customizations for Dwarf Therapist submitted by the community.

Addons include:

custom professions
custom roles
optimization plans
filter scripts
new grid views

Fortress layout tools

DF Designator

DF Designator helps you build fortresses from either image files or Quickfort .CSV files. It also has a user interface that allows you to assign hotkeys to blueprints and to combine blueprints in multi z-level designs. Windows, Mac and Linux versions are available. DF Designator uses 'typewriter style' playback, and is thus very slow for large projects.

Quickfort

Quickfort is a utility for Dwarf Fortress that helps you build fortresses from "blueprint" .CSV files (comma separated values). These files are easily created and edited in an app like Excel. Most building-oriented DF commands are supported through the use of multiple .CSV files to describe the different phases of DF construction (designation, building, stockpiles, and making adjustments. Recent versions of Quickfort work by converting the blueprint into a native macro for Dwarf Fortress, then executing the macro. This allows for enormously faster playback compared to early versions or DF Designator.

Quickfort Community Blueprints

A large collection of blueprints, published to remove the last hint of hassle in creating a fortress. You can download the lot without a paid account here.

ChromaFort

Chromafort is a tool designed to complement Quickfort, by converting images into quickfort-compatible .csv files. It works with 24-bit bitmap (.bmp) files. There are a number of known issues that can affect any image that is not square, and the size must be an exponent of two (8, 16, 32, 64...); other images may show nonexistent colours and/or come out highly distorted.

Picturefort

Picturefort is an attempt to make "Chromafort, but better" - it performs the same function of converting an image to a Quickfort-compatible .csv file. Unlike Chromafort, Picturefort can handle a large number of image formats (though .bmp or .png are recommended); images can be of any shape and within reason size; and while as of May 2014 it is only available on Windows there are plans for a Linux version.

Modding tools

Rubble

A useful plugin-based modding tool that generates raws and supports easy installation of reactions, tilesets, macros, modding fixes and DFHack scripts. It is a fork of the now abandoned Blast. Binaries are available for Linux 32-bits, OS X 32-bits and Windows 64-bits, as well as the source (written in Go with building instructions). As of 4.0, a GUI is available for Windows.

Raw Explorer

A tree-based raw files browser, editor and manager.

Dwarf Fortress real-life material helper

A python script that generates raws based on custom real-life material values.

Roses' Random Creature Script

A python script that generates random creature raws.

World Map / World Gen Tools

Perfect World DF

Requires an additional (tiny) download to be functional for current versions (40.#): WorldGen.xml . Easy access to world settings for quick modification to allow highly customized world generation far easier and faster than DF's ingame advanced map maker. forum thread

Fortress World Generator

A bash script for automating world generation of large numbers of worlds on GNU/Linux.

Dwarf Map Maker

A photoshop action script which turns legends mode exported maps into a much prettier fantasy map. There is also a version available for GIMP.

Legends tools

Legends Viewer

Legends Viewer loads up the legends you can export in a much more usable format than the legends mode of DF itself. Legends viewer can open pages in new tabs, filter information on a wide range of criteria, and displays information on the map as well. Binaries are only available for Windows, as well as the source (written in C#).

It takes four files as input: the legends xml file, the sites and pops text, world history text, and a map image. It can load these separately, but it is recommended to load them as a single compressed archive (folder) - the xml can be multiple GB uncompressed for long histories, and reduce to less than 5% of its size.

If you have played a fortress and then exported legends, you may get an error about unreadable HEX characters. This is caused by Workflow, which saves it's settings as unreadable historical figures. There are several ways to fix this:

Clear the workflow settings in fortress mode before exporting legends
Edit the xml by hand, as described here (any platform)
Use the Legends Processing script (windows only), which fixes the xml and also creates a compressed folder as described above

World Viewer

An alternative to Legends Viewer that most specifically features a timeline of historical events. Binaries are only available for Windows, as well as the source (written in C#).

Remote playing tools

dfterm

Dfterm3 is a remote Dwarf Fortress playing software for multiple users through a web interface. DFterm3 enables play through a web interface, and games can also be viewed on modern - or even played if a bluetooth keyboard is attached. The web interface should work with Chrome or Firefox browsers, and there are known problems using Internet Explorer. DFTerm3 functions via a DFHack plugin, and is thus dependent on each version of DFHack.

It is a successor to dfterm2, which functions similarly using telnet instead of a web browser.

Webfort

A newer alternative to dfterm3 that functions similarly, but players must wait in a queue before assuming control for a given period of time. It also functions via a DFHack plugin. Binaries are available for Windows, as well as the source (written in C++).

DorfServer

A remote SSH-based Dwarf Fortress host software.

DFEverywhere

The latest remote playing software. Currently unreleased.

Language tools

DFLang

A language creating tool.

Toadese Language Utility

A language editing and translating tool.

DFlangOpt

A little tool meant to prevent redundancy when importing or updating language files.

Python language extraction and injection script

This simple script will extract words from language files and put them a word per line, for easy automatic translation or treatment. It can also read that list and put the translated words back in their place.

Announcement tools

DFMon

An announcement monitoring/filtering program, useful to hide some types of job cancellation spam or other more advanced filtering. Note that you can set the game to announce no job cancellations without any utilities or mods from the orders menu, with x.

DF Announcement Filter

An alternative to DFMon written in Java (and thus portable to Linux and OS X).

Filesharing websites

Dwarf Fortress File Depot

The Dwarf Fortress File Upload Service - an excellent place to store mods, community games, tilesets and other files. Courtesy of Janus; for files related to Dwarf Fortress only.

Dwarf Fortress Map Archive

Main article: Utility:Dwarf Fortress Map Archive

The Dwarf Fortress Map Archive is a large collection of user-submitted maps and videos and a nice flash viewer for perusing them. Maps are uploaded, stored, and downloaded in a special compressed format created by the DF Map Compressor; videos are stored in a compressed version of Toady One's own video-recording format.

Read more about the DF Map Archive on Markavian's User page.

Other/miscellaneous

DF Map Compressor

The DF Map Compressor encodes multiple bitmaps exported from Dwarf Fortress into a single, very compressed, .fdf-map file. The fdf-map file can then be shared with your friends by uploading to the DF Map Archive that features an online viewer (written in Flash).

Rewind
Pause
Play frame per frame

To use, simply unzip the file, and drop and drag the movie on CMVPlayer.exe.