Dwarf With Friends v1.0.0-beta.3

Dwarf With Friends v1.0.0-beta.3

Beta 3 is mostly about making Dwarf With Friends harder to break. It has been through several
hours of real fortress play with two browser players, repeated saves, returns to the menu,
reconnects, and full game exits. Saving and returning to the menu now works reliably, and a full
exit finishes cleanly after a short delay instead of hanging forever.

Linux hosting is here

There are now separate downloads for Windows and Linux. Pick the one that matches the computer
running Dwarf Fortress. Adding Linux support does not change the Windows plugin or installer.

The Linux package includes its own plugin, setup script, host launcher, DFHack installer, and
cloudflared setup. Core streaming and hosting work on both platforms. Linux currently uses the
shared host camera and placeholder unit portraits because the independent native map renderer and
native portrait renderer call Windows-specific Dwarf Fortress code.

Saving and quitting are much safer

Beta 3 closes several different ways the game could become stuck while saving, returning to the
menu, or quitting:

• render-thread waits now have a firm timeout
• new world requests are stopped while a fortress is unloading
• active network connections are woken up during shutdown
• teardown no longer tries to re-enable an overlay while the whole process is exiting

In the final playtest, saving and returning to the menu succeeded. Quitting the game took about
three seconds and then closed normally.

Portraits fail safely

Native unit portraits have better guards, pacing, and error handling. If portrait generation is
not available or fails, the browser stops retrying and falls back to a simple glyph portrait. A
bad portrait request should no longer turn into a request storm or threaten the host game.

Fortress management fixes

• damaged stockpile settings are repaired when they are loaded instead of being passed deeper into
  Dwarf Fortress
• disbanding a squad now performs the same important cleanup as the native game
• stockpile, zone, placement, and automining requests have stronger validation and clearer errors
• server endpoints are more consistent about reporting whether an action actually succeeded

Contributor and developer improvements

Beta 3 includes two pull requests from William Wilkins, also known as catagris:

• PR #2 bounded a render-thread wait that could otherwise stall forever
• PR #3 added the Linux build, installer, launcher, and packaging path

The public repository also gains Windows native-build CI, platform-aware test coverage, and new
documentation for the browser dependencies, Dwarf Fortress memory access rules, network protocol,
maintainers, and project lineage.

Downloads

• Windows: DwarfWithFriends-v1.0.0-beta.3.zip
• Linux: DwarfWithFriends-v1.0.0-beta.3-linux.zip

Both packages target Dwarf Fortress 0.53.15 with DFHack 53.15-r2. The setup launcher downloads and
checks the correct DFHack build for its platform.

Still beta

The common fortress flows are in good shape, but plenty of interface work remains. Trading, some
parts of hospitals and justice, missions, diplomacy, petitions, and other less common screens can
still require the host to use the native game. Linux support is new and has had less real-world
testing than Windows, so Linux hosts should report any platform-specific trouble they find.

Dwarf With Friends v1.0.0-beta.2

Dwarf With Friends v1.0.0-beta.2

A compatibility + fix release, prompted by the beta's first field bug report
(issue #1 — thank you!).

DFHack 53.15-r2 (the headline)

The plugin is now built for DFHack 53.15-r2 — the current release, and the version Steam
auto-updates to. beta.1 was built for 53.15-r1; DFHack refuses to load a plugin built for any
other release, so beta.1 on an r2 install failed with
capture-stream-start is not a recognized command.

If you installed DFHack yourself for beta.1, run DWF Setup.cmd again after upgrading — it
installs 53.15-r2 if DFHack is missing, and re-installs the mod either way.

Clothed dwarves

Units on the map are now drawn with their real in-game composited sprites — clothes, dyes, and
all — instead of the static base creature art. (The compositing pipeline shipped in beta.1 but was
never switched on; dwarves rendered "naked" in the browser as a result.) The sprites stream in as
DF renders them, so allow a moment on first load. Kill switches, if anything misbehaves on your
hardware: capture-unit-sprites off (and capture-unit-census off) in the DFHack console.

Clearer failures and setup

• If hosting fails because the plugin didn't load, the host panel now explains the actual cause
  (DFHack version mismatch or missing plugin) instead of echoing the raw DFHack error.
• Setup no longer waves through a DFHack whose version it cannot read — it asks you to confirm or
  installs the known-good version. Version detection also works on stock official DFHack zips now.
• Docs spell out that the desktop shortcut and Dwarf With Friends.cmd are the same thing, and
  that the host panel opens in your browser. TROUBLESHOOTING has a section for the
  not a recognized command error.

Install and host

1. Extract the release zip.
2. Run DWF Setup.cmd and follow the setup page in your browser.
3. Open Dwarf With Friends (desktop shortcut or Dwarf With Friends.cmd — same thing), choose
   Start hosting, load a fortress, and share the friend link (and the join password, if you
   set one) from the host panel.

See TROUBLESHOOTING.md if setup stops or the friend link does not appear.

Known issues

• The stale-build-sidebar crash window from beta.1 remains (rare; needs an upstream change).
• On worlds with pre-existing save corruption, generating a missing unit portrait can trip a fault
  inside DF's own view-sheet code. The generator now shuts itself down for the session on the
  first such fault and portraits fall back to simpler sources — you'll see a
  portrait view-sheet generation disabled line in dwf.log if it happens. Healthy worlds are
  unaffected.

Licence and credits

Dwarf With Friends is AGPL-3.0-only, runs on DFHack, grew out of SourceAirbender's multi-dwarf /
dfcapture, and continues the multiplayer approach of DFPlex and webfort. See the repository's
NOTICE and LICENSE files for the full credits and licence texts.

v1.0.0-beta.1

Dwarf With Friends v1.0.0-beta.1

This is the first public release of Dwarf With Friends: simultaneous multiplayer for modern Dwarf
Fortress. The host runs the live game and friends join from a browser link.

It ships as a beta: the everyday workflows of fortress play are built and tested, and we've
played full co-op sessions on it for weeks — but it hasn't met the wider world's hardware, forts,
and habits yet. Expect rough edges on rare screens; report anything odd and it will get fixed.

Before you install

• The host needs Windows and Dwarf Fortress.
• Download DwarfWithFriends-v1.0.0-beta.1.zip from this release, not a source-code archive or branch.
• Setup installs the supported DFHack version (53.15-r1) and cloudflared automatically if they are
  missing; a portable Node runtime is bundled in the zip.

Important for existing installs

DFHack loads every DLL in hack/plugins/. If a new dwf.plug.dll is installed while an old
dfcapture.plug.dll is still present, DF would load both — two copies of the plugin contending
for the same HTTP port and DF state, behaving erratically rather than crashing cleanly.

DWF Setup.cmd removes these old files automatically — it quarantines any obsolete
dfcapture.plug.dll and hack/lua/plugins/dfcapture.lua when it runs. If you are upgrading by hand
instead of using setup, delete those two files yourself before starting the server.

Install and host

1. Extract the release zip.
2. Run DWF Setup.cmd and follow the setup page in your browser.
3. Open Dwarf With Friends, choose Start hosting, load a fortress, and share the friend link
   (and the join password, if you set one) from the host panel.

See TROUBLESHOOTING.md if setup stops or the friend link does not appear.

Known issues

• If a player deletes a building at the exact moment the host has the native build sidebar
  open on that same building, the host's next click in that sidebar can crash DF. The window is
  narrow (it requires clicking a stale build menu) and rare in normal play; a proper fix needs an
  upstream change and is planned. Everyday deletes — including deleting things other players are
  merely viewing — are safe: the game's interface caches are cleared before anything is freed.

Licence and credits

Dwarf With Friends is AGPL-3.0-only, runs on DFHack, grew out of SourceAirbender's multi-dwarf /
dfcapture, and continues the multiplayer approach of DFPlex and webfort. See the repository's
NOTICE and LICENSE files for the full credits and licence texts.