Bay 12 Games Forum

Hi,

So this is a dfhack script that does web page based df multiplayer. As with all things in life there are some caveats:

• arena only (for now?)
• control is *indirect*. There is no good way to directly control a unit AFAIK. And there is an issue of "multiplayer turn based control" on top of it. So you guide the unit you control. Though you can arm it, haul items, etc...
• done by a madman. A normal person would have used a web server with https support, i've implemented http server on top of tcp/ip...

Server running on: Offline (should really automate this indicator somehow...)
Source code on: github

How to host yourself:

• Get win64 version of df. Install it.
• Get the scripts from: here

(green button: clone or download, then download zip)

• Extract files so that all of them are in df/hack/scripts/http (e.g. core.lua would be df/hack/scripts/http/core.lua)
• Optional: modify hack/scripts/http/core.lua to change port etc...
• Optional: modify equipment.txt, unit_list.txt, etc... For your own balance and choices
• Start DF arena mode (the fort mode is still not very developed
• type "http/burrows"
• Designate a burrow and name it "SPAWN_MOBS"
• type "http/server2" to start the server
• Enjoy!

Features:

• User management: users have username, password and unit
• Unit control: click on map to move unit. Loose control as the unit goes into a rage and fights other units
• New unit button!
• Tilebased display (sorry no graphics yet)
• Newest AJAX technolgy evah
• Server autopauses if there is no players
• Awesome arena action
• Unit creation
• Unit naming
• Combat reports
• Item buying. Kills give 5 money!
• Numpad controls (thanks for idea KittyTac)
• Highscore
• Spectator mode
• Chat , maybe with immersive distance to hear etc.. too lazy for the rest of it
• Equip and haul items
• Save your char builds using NEXTGEN localstorage HTML5 TECH

TODO:
Bugs and other lack of features:

• No encryption or https: use non-main passwords
• Up ramps wonky
• Slow startup: the game is on my HDD so please wait until it spins up if for some time it was idle

Roadmap:

• Tactical mode: As spectator but also place units. This mostly needs clientside work
• Co-op mode: Defend fort from waves of enemies
• Fort mode: Play as existing or "visiting" units. Do (or not) jobs. Start (or not) jobs. Drink all the beer and pass out. Fun for community forts
• Sometime in the future: adventure mode - not sure what to do with fog of war

Suggestions are welcome. Also i'm not a web dev so this should look awful for them

Intro
Most stories are about characters. About their lives and troubles. About their rises and falls. However some stories are about the more static, more permanent things. More indestructible, more evil, sometimes more pure, about the objects of power. You might know one such story about a throne built from swords…
This is a story about a dungeon. Or to be more precise what lies in the abyss that this dungeons leads to.

But it can be a story about you…
What is it?

There is a underlying (quite simple) system that governs the dungeon in question and adventures in it. However as forum play tends to take longer, i suggest this: the players in this forum are a committee for adventurers guild. You have a fixed income that you can spend to create characters that will venture into "the dungeon". I'll post how it plays out.

The defining thing about this dungeon is that it persists. Other players play in it. Other things happen to it. I hope little by little it will get filled with corpses explored.

How to play

Your guild has 100 gold to organize an expedition. You can spend money like this:
Hirelings:

• warrior 20 gold - close range damage dealer
• ranger 30 gold - a ranged damage dealer
• wizard 40 gold - flexible ranged damage dealer

Equipment:

• suit of hardened leather armour 30 gold

Due to the fact that your guild is new no experienced people come to you so you have to do with newbies (heroes will come later).

When hiring a person you can define him/her/it as much as you like (Note: people tend to die there, so don't get attached to them ). That includes equipment that they bring (that will be priced on the spot) and how they behave (e.g. run if you are wounded, or try to shield others from damage).

Future
If this goes well i'm hoping to do e.g. irc session...

Current status

Money: 20gp.
Guild:
Characters:

So i wrote a little help/tutorial (to be continued, maybe with something more functional) for gui programming with dfhack. You can find it here

Also i'll try and answer/help any questions in that regard here.

The relevant help section is here: linky

Ideas for future topics, not in any order:

• making new widgets DONE!
• direct render/key input
• overlay screens
• making new buildings with custom screens

So i was working (on/and off) for quite a while on getting multiplayer to df. Now i have semi-working framework for that, so i want to share with potential programmers that want to help. So here goes: branch of dfhack

Idea is to develop various ways of multiplayer. Some could even work in parallel. What i mean by that? Well server would broadcast what "modules" are supported, then if client has that module it could use it's functionality. To give more concrete example: server can allow to "look" at world, i.e. client can request a region of df (x1,x2,y1,y2,z). How this functionality is used is up to the client. Client can make a simple observer program or combined with e.g. module that allows to control individual dwarf, maybe some dwarf possesion thing.
So far there is only one working module. And can be improved. It's called "mod_control_view". It allows client to ask for general window into df.
Few other ideas of modules:

• Inspect: gives info about <X> where it can be a position (tile type+ items+units in tile) or unit (by id, and then  returns some info about it)
• UnitControl: some way of controling unit. This needs research- what can we do to units from lua side? what works, what does not? and so on
• DesignationControl: a way of marking dig/chop tree, etc... designations. Could include building designations

I started working on "UnitControl" module.
Server is actually very self contained and if nobody wants to make gui or needs many features it can be left as it is (though i'll probably add a way for modules to receive ticks)
A client is two part: base and view. Base is network stuff and bare minimum for client to connect + module logic. View is a gui with logic to use those modules. Other types of clients will have other guis and views.


So what are your ideas and thoughts? I'm hoping to do some more work over the weekend and maybe releasing a client (server needs full dfhack rebuild) to play around. I'll post updates here, maybe a tutorial how to create a module.

Edit: some more links: Most of code is in lua some of it is in offscreen module that allows to draw stuff that is not on game screen. There is also my (crappy) socket implementation in lua and a syntax nice-ifyer

A wish for somebody with modding skills to design a few workshops. Requirement is that it would look good in default tileset. It can have animated parts (those need to be said separately. Here is the wish-list:

• embalmer - a workshop that would 'fix' bodies, you would not want to bury your dwarves in pieces? (or resurrect )
• dragon engine - a dragon fire breathing machine, i would like it to be one tile wide (also needs 4 variants- for each direction) and would be nice to have gear icon
• a machine powered undead controlling obelisk - i would like this to be a bit bigger
• Lazarus machine/phylactery/some other thingy? - a quite big building that would also be machine powered, would resurrect dead unit

Thanks
also current ugly dragon engine in action here

So there were few ideas and suggestions floating around about implementing light in df. This plugin allows that (and more).
eye candy:
Current features:
Stuff occluding/emitting light

• Water/Lava
• Ambient air -> just ocludes
• Citizens
• Sun -> just emits, can change color with time, can change time it takes to cycle, can lock
• Ice
• All materials
• Constructions and veins

Things to-do so i won't forget (in no particular order):

• twbt compatability- currently it sort-of-works with twbt legacy mode. Make it work with both and make it faster
• Elle ideas - namely make each tile have 4 corner colors this would allow walls to be lit up by two light sources
• full map mode - a screenshot (or HUGE machine) mode, that takes into account ALL the lights in the map
• faster rendering - currently it uses quite stupid way of tracking light. Also move occlusion and sun propogation to threads

In more detail: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=128487.msg7409464#msg7409464

This is a thread where i will post my dfhack scripts and/or scriptlets (and their associated news). Also questions and suggestions welcome

• Adv mode to fort mode switch (you need to be on some site), soon dfusion will have site creation
• Real time adv. mode- you will probably die. A LOT
• next dfhack version- advfort

Also I don't remember on which dfhack which features appear so some of these scripts might only work with dfhack from github.