40d:Utilities

Here are third party applications developed for Dwarf Fortress.

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.

CMVPlayer

Download CMVPlayer.zip

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.

3Dwarf Visualizer - a tool to view maps in 3D

Bay12Forums Thread
Download 3Dwarf by Sinoth.

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.

Rick's utilities

Fabulous tools made by the marvelous Rick. All Hail Rick!

Outdated tools (v0.27.169.32a): reveal.exe tileinfo.exe

Outdated tools (v0.27.169.33a): adjuststart.exe heal.exe reveal.exe

Outdated tools (v0.27.169.33b): adjuststart.exe heal.exe reveal.exe warp.exe

Outdated tools (v0.27.169.33c): adjuststart.exe heal.exe reveal.exe warp.exe

Outdated tools (v0.27.169.33d): adjuststart.exe heal.exe reveal.exe warp.exe

Most Current tools (v0.27.169.33e, none for v0.27.169.33g yet, unless you use memory.ini for the v0.27.169.33e tools):

Current version out of date? Have skills to find the newer addresses? Check Rick's user page for details on memory.ini.

adjuststart.exe

Download adjuststart.exe Modifies the starting number of dwarves and/or the starting points. adjuststart.exe <dwarves> <points>

Instructions: type cmd in run, put in the location for adjuststart.exe, navigate to the DF main menu, change the starting dwarf number and points in this format: C:\location\adjuststart.exe 10 9999 (gives 10 dwarves, 9999 points) then hit enter.

heal.exe

Download heal.exe Heals creature limbs (any creature you can highlight with V basically). You can optionally hurt a creature by specifying -hurt on the command-line arguments.

reveal.exe

Download reveal.exe Makes as much of the map visible as it can (eg, it can't reveal unallocated map blocks) Run while Dwarf Fortress is running.

If you want to reveal the entire map, go to the furthest Z level down you can get to, and designate the entire bottom to be mined, then remove the designation, then run reveal.

warp.exe

Download warp.exe A creature warper, similar to teleport, but properly sets occupancy flags of the tiles with some limitations (eg: if there are multiple creatures on the source tile, the occupancy flag will still be unset).

Dwarf Foreman

Home page. 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 recognise 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.

This handy utility would be an ideal complent to an updated LabourDF.

Source code is available.

To make Foreman compatible with .33g, download the new version and update the config file as shown below. - Originally posted by Mu.

check=008c407c
critter_start=01427B50
dwarfidpos=01248AC8
profession_start=45c

StartProfile

Jifodus wrote a little utility that lets you maintain profiles of your starting dwarves. Works for versions 0.27.169.33b, 0.27.169.33c, 0.27.169.33d, and 0.27.169.33e. Check the readme to find out how to switch between the different versions. If you wish to patch the executable yourself, please check the utilities talk page.

Discussion thread

Obsolete: StartProfile utility

StartProfile utility

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

0x517A5D's utilities

Enable Magma Buildings

Helper utility for Rick's reveal.exe
enable_magma_buildings.zip

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.

Regional Prospector

regional_prospector.zip

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!

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.

Teleport

teleport22.zip -- Teleport dwarves and other creatures

Version 2.2 is really now 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.

Water

water.exe -- 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.

Lava square

lavasquare.exe -- 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.

Macro Programs

A program that lets you program scripts/macros so that when you press a certain key combination, or in any other fashion activates the program, a series of keystrokes is sent to the active program instead.

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.