Multi Dwarf / dfcapture — multiplayer Dwarf Fortress in your browser

A DFHack plugin that lets several people watch and play one shared Dwarf Fortress from a web browser. The host runs the game & everyone else opens a URL and gets their own independent camera, designations, menus, and HUD streamed live.

Video showcase of the mod -older version though-

Important Notes

Would highly, highly recommend playing without the portraits, this feature is experimental and causes the game to crash frequently when the host opens the Residents menu, or when both the host & remote player have the same unit window open.

Please collect crash logs and include them when submitting issues, lots to work on still!

If the remote player interacts with the game while the game is saving on the host side, your game will probably crash!

Install

1. Download the latest dfcapture-…-DFHack-53.15-r1.zip from the Releases page.
2. Extract it, then copy the hack folder into your Dwarf Fortress directory — the one that already contains a hack folder (your DFHack install). This mod doesn't currently work with the Steam version of DFHack. DFHack has to be installed the old way, directly into your Dwarf Fortress directory
3. Start the game through DFHack as usual.

<Dwarf Fortress>/hack/
├── plugins/dfcapture.plug.dll        the plugin
├── dfcapture-web/                    the browser UI
├── lua/plugins/dfcapture.lua         plugin support code
└── scripts/gui/dfcapture.lua         the in-game control window

Version must match. The .plug.dll only loads in the exact DFHack version it was built for (53.15-r1).

Usage

In-game, open the DFHack launcher (Ctrl-Shift-D) and run gui/dfcapture. A small window lets you Start/Stop the server, pick the port, choose who can connect (your network vs. this PC only (for testing))

and

Give every viewer a link with their own unique name on the end:

• You connect at http://localhost:8765/view?player=YOURNAME.
• Friends connect at http://<your-LAN-IP>:8765/view?player=THEIRNAME (find <your-LAN-IP> by running ipconfig and reading the IPv4 Address; they must be on the same network or reach you through a forwarded port / VPN). I use PiVPN / WireGuard. Tailscale also works.
• Example after starting the server: http://192.168.1.202:8765/view?player=player1

Use a different name per viewer. You can use the same link as the host locally to see what your remote player is seeing, if you want.

If you prefer the command line, after the fortress is loaded, you can use capture-stream-start 8765 0.0.0.0 and does the same thing, and capture-stream-stop ends it. To put the window on a hotkey, add to <Dwarf Fortress>/hack/dfhack.init:

For me it's: & 'C:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Dwarf Fortress\hack\dfhack-run.exe' capture-stream-start 8765 0.0.0.0

Build from source (developers)

This is an external DFHack plugin so it builds as part of the DFHack source tree.

1. Clone DFHack at the matching tag, with submodules:

   git clone --recursive --branch 53.15-r1 https://github.com/DFHack/dfhack
   

2. Clone this repo into dfhack/plugins/external/dfcapture/.
3. Configure and build just this plugin (needs the DFHack build prerequisites, please see the DFHack build docs; I used Visual Studio 2022):

   cmake -S dfhack -B dfhack/build -GNinja -DDFHACK_BUILD_ARCH=64 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
   ninja -C dfhack/build dfcapture_public
   

   The result is dfcapture.plug.dll. Copy it (plus web/, dfcapture.lua, and scripts/gui/dfcapture.lua) into your DF hack/ folder as shown above.

cpp-httplib is vendored in third_party/cpp-httplib/, so no external checkout is needed.

License

dfcapture is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0-only) — see LICENSE. Because it serves over a network, the AGPL also requires offering the source to people who use it remotely.

It builds on DFHack (Zlib), continues the approach of DFPlex (Zlib), descends from webfort (ISC), and embeds cpp-httplib (MIT). Full attributions and their license texts are in NOTICE.