40d:Utilities

Here are third party applications developed for Dwarf Fortress.

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.

Movies, Screenshots, Map Files

DF Map Compressor / DF Map Archive

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).

The map compressor was created by Shadowlord in May 2007. Extract from the website :

"The DF Map Compressor is a program I made to encode Dwarf Fortress fortress or world map images into a much smaller format than is possible with normal image formats. Here's a quick summary of how it works: It determines the size of your tiles from your DF font file (or asks you), splits the map up into tiles, identifies duplicate tiles, writes out every unique tile image, and then writes out a list of ID#s for each tile position which points to the tile image for that tile. What it outputs is piped through the LZMA compressor (the one used in 7-zip), to compress it further. The .df-map file which it writes out is usually less than 100 KB in size. (By comparison, a PNG of the same map can exceed 2 megabytes, depending on how well you compress it, whether you change the color depth, and whether you are using a graphical tileset or detailed font)."

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

3Dwarf Visualizer

This is NOT realtime, that is still a long, long way off. What this does is read the map out of your computer's memory when DF is running and save it to a file it can read. It can then open that file and show you your fort in glorious 3d. Still in beta, obviously.

CMVPlayer

First released by Jifodus in April 2007. This application enables playback of the DF movies (.cmv) without starting DF. It also provides some more functionalities, such as :

Rewind
Pause
Play frame per frame

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

DwarfHeightmap

A utility that imports 24bit greyscale bitmaps into world_gen.txt for use in DF's map generator.

Terrain Visualizer

View worldmaps in 3D! This utilizes version 0.28.181.39d's built in Legends Mode map exporter and a generic HeightMap terrain visualizer. Nothing super fancy, but neat to look at. Get the 3D Terrain Viewer here, follow the instructions in the Bay12Forums Thread if you need help getting set up.

Or if you want super pretty maps, see this topic, and get Terragen!

Major Utilities

Dwarf Companion

Created by Bartavelle, the Dwarf Companion is a graphical helper utility for dwarf fortress that aims to fill the gaps in the user interface. It allows for some nefarious cheating. For example, you can now mark your nobles as butcherable, and change possessed dwarves to fey moods.

Dwarf Foreman

Makes switching jobs on and off for large numbers of dwarves simple. Dwarves are grouped by their profession, or custom profession if they have one. By clicking on the graph you can enable any job for all dwarves with that profession. Still in alpha for this version of DF, if it doesn't recognize one of the new professions, check the file debug.txt in the directory you run foreman from.

Though prone to crashing currently, saving and exiting DF, starting foreman and then starting DF again will usually get it working again. Zorba would also appreciate it if you'd email him the crash log located in the Dwarf Foreman directory when this happens (zorba-foremancrash@pavlovian.net).

Dwarf Foreman currently allows you to change the jobs of visiting merchants, outpost liaisons, children, and any other dwarves that aren't normally controllable. It is unsupported but occasionally hilarious, and allows you to finally put those lazy dwarven children to work.

Source code is available.

To make Foreman compatible with v0.28.181.40a, update config file as shown below. Use the talk page for previous versions of DF.

check=03186cb3
critter_start=0158222c
dwarfidpos=0138e698
profession_start=0474

Gibbed's Dwarf Fortress Tweak

A toolset with many modules for tweaking / editing Dwarf Fortress memory. Check the full article for more details.

Modbase

Modbase is a great tool made by Sean Mirrsen which allows you to freely swap mods and tweak game settings. For version 0.38c.

Minor Utilities

DF Log Parser

A perl script written by Mephansteras that parses through the logs to show what civs owned what sites, what their overall populations were, and what the overall population levels of cave critters were. The output file makes it pretty easy to see how the various races are doing.

You will see: Each Civilization, with overall ruler. Each site in that civ, with the local ruler. A summary of every entity in that civ. A summary of every civ, by race A listing of every Ruin A listing of the total populations of cave critters A listing of the total populations of civilized creatures

Raw perl script - requires perl Executable version - does not require perl

DF World Generator

Swiftly written supplement to the command line world generator. Written in Python, so you have to have Python installed to use this. It must be run from the command line and be in the DF Directory to work. Running the program with no parameters will provoke a short help-me dialog which will explain how to run it properly. Enjoy!

Dtil

Dtil is a general purpose tool host that supplies a dynamically generated SDK for plugin authors.

Embark Anywhere

Code based on 0x517A5D's Regional Prospector (above), allows you to embark ANYWHERE, how well that works depends on where you decide to go. Pure water areas are a suggested no as you can't do anything.

Enable Magma Buildings

You need this utility in the case that you used the reveal utility, and you had not yet discovered any subsurface magma. (If the hide utility is ever updated, you could also hide a few magma tiles and then dig them out. That worked in the old version.) Because there is no actual flag that controls whether magma has been seen (the game searches a list, probably a list of notable events), I had to patch the game's code. This means you need to run the utility every time you start dwarfort.exe.

This utility has been made version-independent. It is expected to work with future releases of Dwarf Fortress.

Just dig it out!

A utility by Jifodus. Disables warning messages about damp stone and hot stone. Thread

Nano Fortress

A utility that will allow embarks to 1x1 locations.

Teleport

Teleport dwarves and other creatures. Version 2.2 is independent of the DF version. (33c)

Caveat: The teleport utility does not correctly set the occupancy flag for map squares. As a results, dwarves will permanently crawl through the square that you teleported them out of. In addition, you cannot build structures in those squares.

Miscellaneous

These utilities were never designed with Dwarf Fortress in mind, but have been adapted to its use.

Accent Removal

Certain tilesets leave a bunch of funky icons in the names of your dwarves! Replacing accented letters with normal ones in the raws fixes this problem.

AutoHotKey

AHK lets you define global hotkeys to send a sequence of keystrokes. For example, you can have alt+w replace b-C-w-Enter-Enter to make wall building much easier. See Macros and Keymaps for a how-to and some example scripts. See Category:ahk scripts for a list of user submitted scripts.

Winmerge

This utility allows you to compare folders or files. It highlights anything that does not fit in with the other file, so that you can see if you want to merge them into one file or not..

Outdated Utilities

These programs are for previous versions of Dwarf Fortress, and have been left untouched for some time.

DFWall

An utility for automation of mass constructions. Features three modes:

1. Rectangle rewalling - quickly build a rectangle of walls/floors using: a) the same saved material every time (DEMO) b) any material with at least 1/10/99 units

2. Quick reselect (for ANY single unit construction) - save that green glass box and never again have to look for it between all the bags!

3. Pattern construction - make a pattern file and have stuff constructed according to it (DEMO).

For more details look here: Thread

Dwarvis / MapExtract

This project is meant as a 3rd party utility for the cult-game dwarf fortress. Its purpose is to eventually provide 3-dimensional visualization of static snapshots of the ingame world of a given fortress.

Latitudes

Latitudes is a utility that, when on the embark map screen, shows the X/Y coordinates of the current region. Until Toady adds proper support, this will do the trick. Works in .32a through at least .33g. Technical notes: uses memory injection, so it may be flagged as a suspicious file by anti-virus programs.

Lavasquare

Another quick hack to make a 7/7 unit of lava on the currently selected square. Ignore the random text it spams, as it was quickly adapted from a map query tool, and I didn't bother removing the print statements. Only works with version 33e. To hack this executable for a later version of dwarf fortress see the talk page.

33g version plus autohotkey script: http://www.sendspace.com/file/xsl6gs

Regional Prospector

For Dwarf Fortress 28.181.39a and newer: [1] For older versions: regional_prospector.zip(Careful, download link contains images of pornography as ads.)

Dwarf Fortress 0.28.181.39d and newer implement some of the functionality of Regional Prospector.

A simple but very helpful utility that shows hidden map features at embark time. If you're trying to find the perfect start location by repeatedly embarking and revealing, give this one a shot!

Map key:

≈ volcano; magma reaches the surface

~ underground magma pipe or magma pool

≈ underground river

~ underground pool

# chasm

£ adamantine and pits

This utility has been made version-independent. It is known to work with all releases from 32a to 33g. It is expected to work with future releases of Dwarf Fortress, as long as the embark code doesn't change too much.

Discussion and kudos can be left here.

StartProfile

Jifodus wrote a little utility that lets you maintain profiles of your starting dwarves.

Check the thread on the forums for the latest download link. (Aug 01, 2008)

Incidentally, if you try this utility, please report success/failure in the utilities talk page.

Water

Quick hack to refill ponds. Run this while your fortress is up, and it'll restore any "murky pool" tiles (i.e. the floor of ponds and lakes) to 7/7 water. If you've tunneled into a pond, it'll still refill but will flow out normally. Only works with version 33e due to its "quick hack" status. Note: If there is lava in a murky pool, it will be raised to depth 7/7.