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FR-AI / ANALYSIS

Why it is worth attention

It enhances the visual experience of Dwarf Fortress by interpolating creature sprites between tiles, making movement appear fluid while preserving the game's simulation integrity.

Who it is for

Dwarf Fortress players seeking smoother visuals
DFHack plugin users and enthusiasts
Modders interested in render-only enhancements
Dwarf Fortress streamers or content creators

Use cases

Improving the aesthetic appeal of creature movement during gameplay
Creating smoother-looking timelapses or recordings of fortresses
Enhancing visual feedback for unit movement without affecting simulation
Integrating as a lightweight visual mod in DFHack-based mod packs

Strengths

Render-only: no impact on pathfinding, saves, or gameplay logic
Simple installation via DFHack console commands
Open source under MIT license, allowing modification and redistribution
Includes a test target for the animation manager

Considerations

ABI-specific, requiring exact DF and DFHack version match
Only supports SDL 2D renderer (not OpenGL or other backends)
Limited to Dwarf Fortress 53.15 and DFHack 53.15-r2 for prebuilt binaries

README quick start

DF Smooth Movement

Smooth, render-only creature movement for Dwarf Fortress through DFHack.

The plugin interpolates matching creature sprites between adjacent tiles. It does not change unit positions, pathfinding, simulation ticks, saves, or gameplay state.

Compatibility

The current prebuilt release supports:

Dwarf Fortress 53.15
DFHack 53.15-r2
Linux or Windows x86-64
the SDL 2D renderer

DFHack C++ plugins are ABI-specific. Do not install the prebuilt binary on a different DFHack or Dwarf Fortress version. Rebuild from source instead.

Install

Download the release archive for your operating system and exact DFHack version.
Extract it into the Dwarf Fortress installation directory. The resulting plugin must be:
- Linux: hack/plugins/smooth-movement.plug.so
- Windows: hack/plugins/smooth-movement.plug.dll
Start Dwarf Fortress through DFHack.
Run these commands in the DFHack console:

load smooth-movement
enable smooth-movement

Check or disable the plugin with:

smooth-movement
disable smooth-movement

The status command prints the plugin version and whether it is enabled.

Build

Check out the matching DFHack source release and clone this repository under plugins/external/df-smooth-movement. Add this line to plugins/external/CMakeLists.txt:

add_subdirectory(df-smooth-movement)

Configure DFHack normally, then build:

cmake --build /path/to/dfhack-build --target smooth-movement

Windows builds require the MSVC 2022 toolchain used by DFHack. From Linux, the official DFHack Docker build environment can cross-compile the plugin with build/build-win64-from-linux.sh.

The plugin uses a vmethod interpose, so its CMake target links to DFHack's Lua library as required by the DFHack build system.

The animation manager has a dependency-free test target:

cmake --build /path/to/dfhack-build --target smooth-movement-test
/path/to/dfhack-build/plugins/external/df-smooth-movement/smooth-movement-test

Behavior

Movement uses a 100 ms smoothstep interpolation.
Camera movement, zoom, Z-level changes, resize, and viewport changes reset interpolation for one frame.
Ambiguous movements between identical sprites snap to the destination.
Main creature sprites crossing fire snap instead of being replayed over an unsafe layer reconstruction.
UI and

Description

Smooth visual creature movement for Dwarf Fortress via DFHack

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