Data file locations =================== When Dwarf Fortress is started via /usr/games/dwarf-fortress (or the accompanying desktop menu entry) it will look for data files in these locations: * /usr/share/games/dwarf-fortress/gamedata (for vanilla dwarf-fortress data contained in the Debian package) * /usr/local/share/games/dwarf-fortress/* (for data installed by the local administrator) * $XDG_DATA_HOME/dwarf-fortress/* (for user data, usually refers to $HOME/.local/share/dwarf-fortress) If a file with the same relative path is contained in more than one of these directories, the files from the latter directories take precedence over the former. All modifications made to data files made by Dwarf Dortress during gameplay (such as saved worlds) are retained in $XDG_DATA_HOME/dwarf-fortress/run. Installing data files ===================== (The instructions below describe installing into $XDG_DATA_HOME/dwarf-fortress. The same instructions also apply when installing into /usr/local/share/games/dwarf-fortress) If you want to install additional data files such a tilesets you can just drop the additional data files into as subdirectory of $XDG_DATA_HOME/dwarf-fortress preserving their intended directory structure (e.g. if the installation instructions of the files your are installing tell you to install something into the dwarf-fortress directory at data/art/ you should put it into $XDG_DATA_HOME/dwarf-fortress/something/data/art). Note that some directories, such as raw, which normally exist in a dwarf-fortress installation may not exist yet. In that case just create them as needed. Modifying configuration files ============================= The configuration files for dwarf-fortress (i.e. those from data/init) are kept in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/dwarf-fortress (i.e. ~/.config/dwarf-fortress). When dwarf-fortress is started, configuration files found in the data paths described above will be copied to the configuration directory, if no file with the same name is already present. -- Sven Bartscher , Tue, 26 Feb 2019 21:49:24 +0100