PyLNP: A launcher for Dwarf Fortress

PyLNP has a variety of useful features to manage settings and configure the base game. It can also manage, configure, install, and run a wide variety of related content - from graphics to color schemes, and utility programs to content-replacing mods.

It forms the core of various bundles for new, lazy, or impatient players - such as the old “Lazy Newb Pack”. While this project is just the launcher, you can download a complete bundle for Windows, OSX, or Linux put together by members of the community. See https://dwarffortresswiki.org/Lazy_Newb_Pack for current links to these.

If you have a question that is not answered here, go ahead and ask it in the Bay12 forum thread for PyLNP.

Documentation

Indices and tables

Usage Instructions

There’s not much to it: run the launcher (see below) then click the buttons to configure your DF install, change settings or graphics, merge and install mods, run utility programs, start DF, and more.

This section should probably be larger, but it should be clear how things work from the tooltips if you hover over a button. If not, ask in the forum thread linked above! The customisation section below, intended for advanced users and those compiling a custom package, may also be helpful.

History

PyLNP started as a port of LucasUP and tolyK’s Lazy Newb Pack Launcher to Python, making a launcher available on all the same platforms as Dwarf Fortress.

The new edition includes many new and improved features; some of the non-obvious ones including:

  • Dwarf Fortress can be placed in an arbitrarily-named folder.

  • If multiple valid DF folders are detected, you will be asked to select the desired instance. This allows you to manage multiple installs separately with the same launcher, though this is not recommended.

  • A new menu item, File > Output log has been added. This opens a window containing various messages captured while executing the launcher. If errors occur, they will show up here, and are also written to a file.

  • In addition to excluding specific file names from utilities, you can also include specific file names, if they’re found. Simply create a file include.txt in the Utilities folder and fill it in with the same syntax as exclude.txt.

  • Multiple utilities can be selected and launched simultaneously.

  • Utilities may be automatically started at the same time as Dwarf Fortress.

  • Color scheme installation and preview.

  • Installing graphics sets by patching instead of replacing init.txt and d_init.txt. This preserves all options not strictly related to graphics sets.

When something goes wrong

You may experience error messages or similar issues while running the program. As long as it has not crashed, you can retrieve these error messages by opening File > Output log. The contents shown in here can be very useful for fixing the problem, so include them if you report an error.

If the program does crash, you can look at stdout.txt and stderr.txt which are automatically created in the application directory and show the same contents as the output log inside the program. Note that these files get overwritten every time the program launches.

Please be as specific as possible when reporting an error - tell exactly what you were doing. If you were installing a graphics pack, mention which one (provide a link to where you got it). If the problem is with a utility, make sure the utility works if you launch it manually - if it doesn’t, then it’s a problem with the utility, not with PyLNP.