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[zagibu]

As you might have noticed, there is now a cool site finder utility on the DF embark screen. The only problem is, that you still have to manually generate world after world and run it through the site finder.
Don't despair, for you'll be given the brand new and oh-so-great DF Auto Site Locator: http://www.geocities.com/qrphome/asl_v0.2.zip

Well, it's actually just an AutoIt script that generates a bunch of worlds and scans them using DF's above mentioned built-in site finder. You can let it run over the weekend, or during the night, if you are hunting for this very special location that can only be found in 1% of all worlds...

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Download and install AutoIt
2. Download Dwarf Fortress and unpack it to a new location
3. Change the default embark rectangle in data/init/init.txt to values of your liking (this will be used during the scan). DON'T CHANGE ANY FULLSCREEN SETTINGS!
4. Configure the world_gen.txt file. Make sure to change the right section (all world sizes have an own section, make sure you modify the values of the correct one)
5. Download the DF_ASL script and unpack it to the newly created DF location
6. Change to the asl folder in the newly created DF location and edit the DF_ASL_bla.au3
7. Start dwarf fortress in windowed mode
8. Run the DF_ASL_bla.au3 script. You can abort it anytime with ctrl + c. Try not to hit any other keys during the scan, or the script might get confused.
9. After the scan, make sure to close DF and delete all data/save/regionX folders (or move them to another folder). This is important, because if you start the whole process on an unclean DF instance, the output in DF_ASL_locations.txt will be wrong.

If the script never leaves the start screen, the pattern files provided with the script don't work on your computer. There is another script called DF_ASL_Pattern_Utility.au3 you can run that tries to create patterns in an interactive way. Also, if the script behaves strange, you can try to increase the  menu_delay and key_delay values in the script. They are responsible for the small pauses during script execution, and if your computer is slow, they might be too short, and the script might send keys to DF when it's not yet on the proper screen. I suggest doubling both values until the script behaves as expected (though it probably doesn't make much sense to go over 10000 for menu_delay and 2000 for key_delay).

Old version: http://www.geocities.com/qrphome/asl_v0.1.zip

[zagibu]

New version is up with support for unlimited number of worlds and logging instead of exit, so the scan process continues if a suitable site has been found.

[Milksquid]

It sounds nice, but it would have to be super awesome for me to download yet another program and fiddle around with the configuration.  Good hustle though. You get a creativity and hard work award.

[isitanos]

Thanks! Pretty easy to set up, and works as advertized. Some locations are REALLY rare though: I didn't found my choice combination in 130 "smaller" worlds.

[zagibu]

You say it. I think there is still a problem in the site finder, in the current version, so this might have something to do with it. I still didn't find a 5x5 spot with magma pipe, flux and other features...but yeah, I'm also generating large worlds that go up to year 1050 and this takes some time, obviously...

[zagibu]

Toady seems to have fixed the problem. I just ran a quick check of the new version and it found dozens of spots.

I also found out that you can generate worlds with end year 1 to speed up the whole process a lot. Then, for playing, just regenerate the world using the same seeds but with your desired end year...it seems to generate the same world, at least concerning the terrain.

[isitanos]

I'm working on a version of this tool that searches each generated world for several combinations of "wishes": for instance if I want magma and a bunch of other criterias, it tries a search with those criterias plus magma pipe, and then those criterias plus magma pools. It's not very elegant right now, as you have to define manually each combination, but I may still release it once I have tested it.

Zagibu, is your script in the public domain or under some license, and can I release a modified version? You could take some inspiration from my modifications later on if you want to implement the same features in a cleaner way.

[zagibu]

All my stuff is completely free. You can even sell it, I don't care.