Multi Dwarf / DFCapture — multiplayer Dwarf Fortress in your browser

A DFHack plugin that lets several people watch and play one shared Dwarf Fortress through a web browser. The host runs the actual game & everyone else opens a link and gets their own independent camera, controls, menus, and HUD.

The big thing I wanted to preserve is that this still looks like Dwarf Fortress. The browser is showing the game's real rendered pixels, and the streaming has been improved so it can send only the parts of the screen that changed.

Video showcase of the mod — older version though

What can you do with it?

• Every player gets their own camera, zoom, elevation, follow mode, cursors, pings, and bookmarks.

• Mine, chop trees, gather plants, smooth, engrave, build, place exact furniture, and manage stockpiles, zones, burrows, and hauling routes.
• Manage work orders, labors, workshops, kitchen rules, standing orders, squads, uniforms, schedules, hospitals, locations, nobles, and most everyday fortress administration.
• Use the trade depot and barter with merchants
• See alerts, petitions, diplomacy, reports, native popups, announcements, and what happened since you last connected.
• Chat, see what the other players are doing, and attribute buildings, zones, stockpiles, and work orders to the player who created them.
• Assign dwarves to players, favorite up to five of them, and keep small MMO-style HUDs open for their health and current activity.
• Player owned dwarves! Assign dwarves to yourself and favorite them to add them to your HUD.

Important notes

This version is built for:

• Dwarf Fortress 53.15
• DFHack 53.15-r1
• Windows x64
• Fortress mode

The versions have to match. The plugin will not load in a different DFHack version. Apparently this works with Linux with Proton though.

This is meant for a trusted LAN or private VPN. I use PiVPN / WireGuard; Tailscale also works. Don't forward the server port directly to the public internet.

Remote interaction is blocked while the host is saving, loading, or shutting down. The browser will pause and show a notice until the fortress is ready again.

Please keep normal fortress backups and include your DFHack logs when reporting a crash.

Install

1. Install DFHack 53.15-r1 directly into your Dwarf Fortress game folder.
2. Download dfcapture-v0.9.71-DFHack-53.15-r1.zip from the Releases page.
3. Extract it, then copy the included hack folder into the Dwarf Fortress folder that contains Dwarf Fortress.exe. Merge it with the hack folder that is already there.
4. Start Dwarf Fortress normally with DFHack loaded.

The separate Steam DFHack folder is not the install for this plugin. The files need to be in the actual Dwarf Fortress game folder. DFHack needs to be installed the old way:

<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

Usage

In-game, open the DFHack launcher (Ctrl-Shift-D) and run:

gui/dfcapture

A small window lets you start/stop the server

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

• You: http://localhost:8765/view?player=YOURNAME
• Friends: http://<your-LAN-IP>:8765/view?player=THEIRNAME
• Example: http://192.168.1.202:8765/view?player=player1

Friends need to be on the same network or connected through your private VPN.

Use a different name for each viewer. You can also open another player's link locally if you want to see exactly what they are seeing.

If you prefer the command line, load a fortress and use:

capture-stream-start 8765 0.0.0.0
capture-stream-stop

Build from source (developers)

This is an external DFHack plugin, so it builds as part of a matching 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 repository into dfhack/plugins/external/dfcapture_public/.

3. Configure DFHack using its normal Windows build instructions. I use Visual Studio 2022.

4. Build just this plugin:

   cmake --build dfhack/build/VC2022 --config Release --target dfcapture_public

The result is dfcapture.plug.dll. Copy it, the web/ directory, dfcapture.lua, and scripts/gui/dfcapture.lua into the matching locations shown above.

cpp-httplib is vendored in third_party/cpp-httplib/, so no extra 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 third-party notices and license text are in NOTICE.