Welcome to the Archive
Welcome to the Dwarf Fortress Map Archive (DFMA). Dwarf Fortress is a popular single player sim game, (still in ALPHA mind) made by bay12games.
This here website is a repository and online viewer for player created maps exported from the game. The site revolves around an optimized file format (.FDF-MAP), which can produce files over 2000 times smaller then the ouputted bitmaps (for a 28 layer map) and 20 times smaller then equivalent PNG files. This makes them small enough to upload and transfer across the web without chewing up bandwidth. God forbid someone trying to upload the 150MB output file from a midsize fort, we can deliver exactly the same map for ~100kb!.
How to use this site
This site is for uploading and sharing (viewing) maps from Dwarf Fortress with your friends, family etc.. I'm sure you'll figure it out.
First I suggest you download SL's DF Map Compressor. Then do what the diagram says:
Also look out for Points of Interest; created by users of the archive, each map can have a navigatable list places that describe the fortress or world.
Updates
2008-08-09
- Uploaded new version of CMV Flash Player (again, thanks to gonbon)
- Flash player now resizes itself to support larger movies (width and height) recorded with the new release of Dwarf Fortress
- Removed endless list of movies alongside ungrouped movie clips.
- If you enter in the name of the fort or the world a clip was recorded when you upload then movies with the same name will be grouped
2008-07-19
- Added report problem page/form for registered users to send messages to myself and the moderators
- Links to the page can be found on the left "Report problem / contact" or from below map entries "(Report problem)"
- Feel free to use this form to report spam or to send any feedback and suggestions you have
2008-07-10
- Fixed bug on movie comments page where page 2 and beyond directed to the map comments page (thanks to Zaratustra)
2008-06-15
- Added Browse maps by description search option, and made that part of the Any* search as well
- Continuing work on Isometric map viewer. Working on independent version separate to current map viewer.
- So far have stripped back to loader / decoder, white screen... long way to go
- Will be recruiting graphics artist or some such in due time (isometric tile template)
2008-05-07
- Added feature: Setting default Point of Interest for a map
- When adding a new PoI, or editing an existing one, there is now a checkbox labelled "Make default for this map"
- When viewing a map, if there is a default PoI, the map will be focused on that location, instead of centering in the center of the map
- Thanks to Mister Six for prompting me to add this feature
- For example, on Crystal Umbra the Entry Corridor is selected from the start.
Credits
Thanks to SL for his great DF map encoder/compressor, without which I would not have had the inspiration to build this site. Also thanks to him for modifying his program over and over to get it to work with my Flash viewer.
The Flash map viewer was created by Markavian, aka John Beech. An avid fan of DF and computer programming. Markavian has been working with web technologies such as PHP, MySQL and Flash for over 6 years, in an effort to make the web a more useful place.
Links
- SL's website: (shadowlord13.googlepages.com) - DF Map Compressor, Readme
- The DF Wiki: (dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com) - Best DF documentation on the net, a huge help
- Bay12Games: (bay12games.com) - Official forums, updates, dev news, and other fun games!
- DF Map Archive discussion: (bay12games.com) - Items for discussion can be found here
- Strike the Earth: (striktheearth.com) - Original DF Comic artwork
- DF File Depot: (dffd.wimbli.com) - Mods, utilities, tilesets, graphicsets, save files
- Markavian's website: (mkv25.net) - Graphics, experimental stuff, exploration
- Caek: (mkv25.net/caek/) - The cake is not a lie