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[the woods]

Does Dwarf Fortress have a (planned or existing) in-game wizard mode, where I could create maps to test out ideas and demonstrate things without waiting on dwarf labor?

I've noticed the entry at http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev_single.html. It's sort of related:
Bloat283, DEBUG OPTIONS, (Future): Various ways to fiddle with internal settings.

I wanted to see if there were more specific thoughts or news about this that I've been missing, and I wanted to suggest features I think would make someone's life easier in the long run.

The mode would occur on a pregenerated world ([Fortress Mode, Adventurer Mode, Legends, Debug Mode]), giving the ability to carve a site without needing dwarves to dig or prepare any materials, and the ability to conjure materials and monsters out of a searchable list, like a 100% user-controlled level editor.

The benefit of this is that it would be easy to set up test cases for bug reports or new features, and players can use it to send each other world saves to quickly demonstrate a machine or setup they've discovered. You could also use this to create Adventurer Mode scenarios without taking time to keep a fortress alive (if you feel like doing things the easy way).

The rest of this is a brief description of how you'd go through building in wizard mode.

You would get a site selection screen, but no starting dwarves to prepare for embark. When you choose the site, you can omnisciently pan and scroll through the site you've selected as in Dwarf or Arena Mode, but you have mostly the same menu as Dwarf Mode.

When you designate digging, smoothing, treecutting etc, it occurs instantly instead of waiting for an in-game dwarf to do it.

If you want to build anything with the 'b'uild menu, when asking for materials to use, you choose from a static, unlimited list of all possible materials in the game, instead of any nearby rocks or blocks that are available.

You could also place dynamically generated creatures around your map, as in Arena Mode.

Anyway, I thought a debug feature like this would be helpful both for players and developers of a game which is in alpha, to quickly set up conceptual tests and flesh out ideas. Thanks for reading.

[MrWiggles]

Toady does defiantly have a Debug Mode for Dwarf Fortress, where he's able to spawn whatever he wants. I imagine its quite powerful, being able to change most game states.

I'd be surprise if we got that any time soon though. However Toady has allowed us the use of the Arena Mode, which is a debugging tool.