Dfterm3

This is a remote Dwarf Fortress playing software. It quite unfinished but it somewhat works. You can play and chat while enjoying Dwarves killing themselves.

The "official" site for Dfterm3 is just a forum thread in the bay12 forums:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=129995.90.

Overview

Dfterm3 as a software has two parts. One part is the Dfterm3 server and the other is a Dfhack Dfterm3 plugin[1] (which currently works only on modified Dfhack[2]). The Dfterm3 server acts as a HTTP and WebSocket server that together implement a web interface for playing Dwarf Fortress. The Dfhack Dfterm3 plugin runs with Dfhack in the Dwarf Fortress process and talks with the Dfterm3 server to manage screen data and input from the web interface to Dwarf Fortress.

[1] https://github.com/Noeda/dfterm3-plugin

[2] https://github.com/Noeda/dfhack

Installation instructions for Linux

First, get yourself the Glasgow Haskell Compiler. Its name is usually "ghc" in Linux distributions. Make sure you get GHC version 7.6.3. Many distributions have a GHC from the 7.4.x series and that one is no good. The latest Haskell Platform (2013.2.0.0) uses the correct GHC and you might want to grab its binaries if you can't get the required software from your Linux distribution.

Next, get yourself the Dfterm3 source code:

$ git clone https://github.com/Noeda/dfterm3.git
$ cd dfterm3
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

Now, install all the dependencies:

$ cabal install --only-dependencies

Installing the dependencies might take a moment and may require some development libraries to be installed. Next, configure and build dfterm3.

$ cabal configure
$ cabal build

If everything worked, you will end up with a dfterm3 binary in ./dist/build/dfterm3/dfterm3. You can copy this binary to somewhere reachable from PATH or whatever you want. Whatever you do, this binary should be run so that the working directory contains web-interface directory. For example, if you want to run it directly from the source directory, you could just do:

$ ln -s ./dist/build/dfterm3/dfterm3 ./
$ ./dfterm3 --admin-password
$ ./dfterm3

The --admin-password command should be run first because there is no administrator password yet. You need the administrator panel to configure your Dwarf Fortresses. For the command I presented above, the administrator panel can be accessed from http://127.0.0.1:8081/admin/.

Now, to configure Dwarf Fortresses, you need Dfhack that has a Dfterm3 plugin included. I have put the source code at https://github.com/Noeda/dfhack.git. Refer to Dfhack on how to compile and install this. The important thing is that you end up with a dfhack script in the root of the Dwarf Fortress installation.

Start up a Dwarf Fortress normally and then, in the dfhack command line, write the following command:

[DFHack] # start-dfterm3

This should make the Dwarf Fortress visible to Dfterm3. Go to the administrator panel (see earlier) and you should see the Dwarf Fortress there (it takes at most 20 seconds for it to appear after you write start-dfterm3). You can write in the name of the game that you want others to see and click "Register". The game should now be visible to anyone who points their browser at your computer at the port you gave in --websocket-http. For example, if your IP-address is "1.2.3.4", then the address would be http://1.2.3.4:8080/ (remember the last slash '/').

File hierarchy

src/              Haskell source code
main/             Haskell source code for `main` function.
web-interface/    HTML, JavaScript and other client-side files needed for
                  the web interface.