You can now distribute your quickfort blueprints in mods!

Think you have a cool fortress design that you want to share with the community? The effort required to share your designs has now been cut down significantly. DFHack quickfort now supports blueprints that have been distributed with mods!

The blueprint in the screenshot comes from a mod with only two files:

• mods/myk002 blueprints/info.txt
• mods/myk002 blueprints/blueprints/from_mod.csv

with info.txt containing just the basic mod metadata (detailed in the DF mod guide). You can distribute these mods anyway you like, including from the DF Steam Workshop.

How do you make blueprints of your fort to distribute? DFHack's gui/blueprint will take a snapshot of your fort and create a series of blueprints for you. You can also make edits with a text editor or online spreadsheet app to do some really advanced stuff.

PSAs

As always, remember that, just like the vanilla DF game, DFHack tools can also have bugs. It is a good idea to save often and keep backups of the forts that you care about.

Many DFHack tools that worked in previous (pre-Steam) versions of DF have not been updated yet and are marked with the "unavailable" tag in their docs. If you try to run them, they will show a warning and exit immediately. You can run the command again to override the warning (though of course the tools may not work). We make no guarantees of reliability for the tools that are marked as "unavailable".

The in-game interface for running DFHack commands (gui/launcher) will not show "unavailable" tools by default. You can still run them if you know their names, or you can turn on dev mode by hitting Ctrl-D while in gui/launcher and they will be added to the autocomplete list. Some tools do not compile yet and are not available at all, even when in dev mode.

If you see a tool complaining about the lack of a cursor, know that it's referring to the keyboard cursor (which used to be the only real option in Dwarf Fortress). You can enable the keyboard cursor by entering mining mode or selecting the dump/forbid tool and hitting Alt-K (the DFHack keybinding for toggle-kbd-cursor. We're working on making DFHack tools more mouse-aware and accessible so this step isn't necessary in the future.

Initial screens for search and sort

The first few screens are done for search/filter/sort support! For starters, we decided to tackle the animal assignment to pasture screen and the trade screens, both of which are a frequent source of frustration for players. There is generally not enough room to add vanilla-sized buttons, so DFHack screen links will appear surrounded with red and yellow bars to to distinguish them from vanilla widgets.

The screen that comes up can be filtered and sorted by whether and where the animals are pastured/caged, by their friendliness or tame status, and by various other properties. All animals of a particular species are now listed next to each other so you can find them easily.

The trade screens got a similar treatment. There are two new screens, one for bringing trade goods to the depot, and one for doing the actual trading. In both, items that are ethically unacceptable to the traders that you are trading with and items that are forbidden to export by your nobles are automatically filtered out, though you can change the filters if you like. Both screens also make bins safe and easy to work with.

The bring goods to depot screen allows you to find the items that you want to sell and mark them for trading. For example, you can move the "condition" slider to only show damaged items and then mark them all for trade with a single click.

The trade screen provides similar filter and selection support for items being bought and sold. By default, only the contents of bins are listed and traded and the bins themselves aren't traded. You can toggle this behavior and trade bins if you like, though.

Copy/paste support

With the move to SDL2 comes new clipboard integration capabilities. DFHack's text entry fields, such as the command editing field in gui/launcher, now support copy, paste, and cut. Ctrl-V will paste from the system clipboard into the DFHack text field. This is especially useful when pasting in DFHack commands that you find on the internet! Ctrl-C will copy text out that you can paste into another application, and Ctrl-X will copy the text and also clear the field (so it's a convenient way of just clearing the text quickly even if you don't need to copy it).

Note that there is no way to just select a portion of the text, though, so all copy and cut operations apply to all text in the field.

Warm and damp indicators in ASCII mode

DF does not distinguish damp or warm tiles when in ASCII mode. This can be very frustrating for ASCII-mode players that have to play without this information.

DFHack now automatically highlights damp tiles in blue and warm tiles in red when in ASCII mode and a mining operation is selected. In other words, the visual feedback in ASCII now matches what premium players get in graphics mode.

Other new tools

Some long-standing requests were finally fulfilled in this release, with the return of a few fan-favorite tools and one new game fix.

• 3dveins replaces vanilla DF's blobby vein generation with veins that flow smoothly and naturally between z-levels. Want a more natural looking geology? Try running this command right after a new embark!
• dwarfvet allows your animals to have their wounds treated at hospitals, prolonging their life and usefulness.
• fix/empty-wheelbarrows dislodges rocks that get stuck in your wheelbarrows when a hauling dwarf gets distracted and the full wheelbarrow gets abandoned somewhere. This makes those wheelbarrows useful for hauling again. Enable this tool in the "Maintenance" tab of gui/control-panel to automatically keep your wheelbarrows usable!

New Tools

• 3dveins: reinstated for v50, this plugin replaces vanilla DF's blobby vein generation with veins that flow smoothly and naturally between z-levels
• caravan: new trade screen UI replacements for bringing goods to trade depot and trading
• dig: new dig.asciiwarmdamp overlay that highlights warm and damp tiles when in ASCII mode. there is no effect in graphics mode since the tiles are already highlighted there
• dwarfvet: reinstated and updated for v50's new hospital mechanics; allow your animals to have their wounds treated at hospitals
• fix/empty-wheelbarrows: new script to empty stuck rocks from all wheelbarrows on the map
• zone: new searchable, sortable, filterable screen for assigning units to pastures

Fixes

• Fix extra keys appearing in DFHack text boxes when shift (or any other modifier) is released before the other key you were pressing
• gui/autodump: when "include items claimed by jobs" is on, actually cancel the job so the item can be teleported
• gui/create-item: when choosing a citizen to create the chosen items, avoid choosing a dead citizen
• gui/gm-unit: fix commandline processing when a unit id is specified
• logistics:
  • don't autotrain domestic animals brought by invaders (they'll get attacked by friendly creatures as soon as you let them out of their cage)
  • don't bring trade goods to depot if the only caravans present are tribute caravans
  • fix potential crash when removing stockpiles or turning off stockpile features
• suspendmanager:
  • take in account already built blocking buildings
  • don't consider tree branches as a suitable access path to a building

Misc Improvements

• Dreamfort: give noble suites double-thick walls and add apartment doors
• Suppress DF keyboard events when a DFHack keybinding is matched. This prevents, for example, a backtick from appearing in a textbox as text when you launch gui/launcher from the backtick keybinding.
• autonick: add more variety to nicknames based on famous literary dwarves
• gui/unit-syndromes: make lists searchable
• logistics: bring an autotraded bin to the depot if any item inside is tradeable instead of marking all items within the bin as untradeable if any individual item is untradeable
• quickfort: blueprint libraries are now moddable -- add a blueprints/ directory to your mod and they'll show up in quickfort and gui/quickfort!
• stockpiles: include exotic pets in the "tameable" filter
• suspendmanager: display the suspension reason when viewing a suspended building
• widgets.EditField: DFHack edit fields now support cut/copy/paste with the system clipboard with Ctrl-X/Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V

API

• Items::markForTrade(), Items::isRequestedTradeGood(), Items::getValue: see Lua notes below
• Units::getUnitByNobleRole, Units::getUnitsByNobleRole: unit lookup API by role

Internals

• Price calculations fixed for many item types

Lua

• dfhack.items.getValue: gained optional caravan and caravan_buying parameters for prices that take trader races and agreements into account
• dfhack.items.isRequestedTradeGood: discover whether an item is named in a trade agreement with an active caravan
• dfhack.items.markForTrade: mark items for trade
• dfhack.units.getUnitByNobleRole, dfhack.units.getUnitsByNobleRole: unit lookup API by role
• widgets.TextButton: wraps a HotkeyLabel and decorates it to look more like a button

Structures

• build_req_choicest: realign structure and fix vmethods
• squad_orderst: fix vmethods

Documentation

• misery: rewrite the documentation to clarify the actual effects of the plugin