Note: This was written a year before the graphical release, Dwarf Fortress Remote has not been updated for the steam version of March 2023
I recently learned you can play DF remotely, which is great for those of us who might not have much time to sit down in front of a computer and play.
Here’s a few small tips and tools for making it easier to play on iOS if you’re running it on a Mac server.
First, set up your server using mifki’s instructions
Download Dwarf Fortress Remote from the App Store.
Note that there’s a companion connection tester app so you can see if your server setup works before purchasing, but ironically I couldn’t get the tester working and just went for it.
That’s the minimum you need to start playing, but here’s a few improvements I found that made it run more smoothly.
Disable sleeping on the computer you use to play, otherwise you might wind up unable to connect. If you don’t want to do this, the app Wake Me Up can send a Wake-on-Lan packet from the app or via a shortcut.
I made a shortcut (Strike the Earth!) to launch the game over SSH and start the iOS App. For some reason launching dfhack from terminal like a normal Unix executable didn’t work for me, but opening from finder did, so this uses AppleScript to remotely tell finder to launch it. I recommend assigning a static IP address for your Mac.
A second shortcut (It Was Inevitable) kills the terminal and therefore the game, which is useful for certain hangs or crashes. I may or may not have also used this to cheat and close the game without saving after an unfortunate drawbridge incident.
And finally, a third shortcut (Praise the Miners!) allows you to run dfhack commands remotely. The default server install doesn’t have any plugins, so you need to download the appropriate version of dfhack to your Mac, currently 0.44.12-r2, and drag dfhack-run to your dfremote-complete-4412-Mac folder, libdfhack-client to your hack folder within that directory, and any plugins you plan on using to the plugin folder within the hack directory. Note that installing every single plugin causes the app to crash when viewing workshops, not sure which one was the culprit. Since most of my game time was clocked pre-dfhack and I’m not very familiar with it, I’ve only used this for exploratory mining designations with the dig plugin’s digexp diag5r command, no guarantees about any other plugins’ functionality.
To enable SSH and configure it to work with shortcuts, see the instructions here. Note you can use your password instead of an SSH key, but something about storing your password in plaintext on your phone seems insecure.