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
=============================

If you want to modify the configuration files of Dwarf Fortress,
namely init.txt and d_init.txt, you can edit them in
$XDG_DATA_HOME/dwarf-fortress/run/data/init/. If the files in question
are not there or the directory does not exist, you may create the
directory and copy the default configuration files from
/usr/share/games/dwarf-fortress/gamedata/data/init/.

 -- Sven Bartscher <kritzefitz@debian.org>, Sat, 17 Mar 2018 15:25:09 +0100