Hypothetically Asked Questions
…what the hell is this?
It's a webpage that converts Dwarf Fortress CMV files into MP4 files using the H.264 and AAC codecs.
I don't know what any of those things are.
Alright, here are some links:
- Dwarf Fortress is a game made by Tarn Adams, his brother Zach, and his cat Scamps. In the game, you control a fortress full of dwarves who don't listen to you, and also there's no way to win the game.
- CMV is the name of the proprietary file format Dwarf Fortress uses to record videos.
- MP4 is a commonly used media container format.
- H.264 is a commonly used video compression standard.
- AAC is a commonly used proprietary audio compression format.
wha… HOW?
The CMV decoding code is based on cmvjs, but the actual video encoding is done with ffmpeg. In your browser.
This page uses a custom version of ffmpeg.js with just the components needed for this page. It also uses pako to decompress parts of CMV files.
But… Why?
Mostly because I was bored on February 15th, 2018.
I don't want to play Dwarf Fortress. Can you play it for me?
Yes! You can install df-ai in your copy of Dwarf Fortress and then pretend I'm sitting with you in front of your computer.
