Sitting here playing dwarf fortress for the first time in months, i came up with a good idea i think. It would most likely be a long term / mid term plan for toady if he wanted to do it. But i think it would be really great to have!
Idea:
Aside from normal dwarf fortress and adventure mode. I would love to be able to create a scenario. So i'm suggesting adding in a "Scenario / Scenario Creator" options.
Mainly you could either design a 1x1 to 10x10 sized single map. Which would be the surface view of dwarf fortress when you have already embarked, not the main world veiw map before embark.
You can edit the map in anyway possible, Add dwarfs, dig, smooth walls engrave, be able to add everything possible. Once you make a scenario map you could then save it to a map file, which then you could load up from the main menu of dwarf fortress.
There's Several good things for a scenario creator...
First off of course, it would be fun to be able to make our own scenarios. Or making our perfect Fortress!
Second, it could also be used to make tutorials to teach newer players.
Third and Most Important... It would help Greatly in testing the game mechanics.
For toady, when he is coding new stuff in, rather then having to test it by starting a map and making a fortress and such. He can simply start a new scenario map, He could then have a flat piece of land which no other game elements running for the most part, so he could test just the one certain thing he is coding.
For us It would be a awesome drawing board for making perfect fortresses
Of course this would be "A lot" of work, and i'm sure toady has better things to do. The only thing that would convince him to do this soon or anytime soon, would be the amount of time he spent testing his code would have to be a lot of more time then it would be to code a scenario editor and the SE would have to shorten the testing time down by a lot to be useful to him.
Another thing, i wanted to mention, at first a lot of the tutorial / normal scenario options wouldn't need to be programed in. You would just have to set the game up so it can run a small map like that without outside interference. You could setup also later on which traders come to the map, and what they carry and what they need. So you can setup a scenario so that you have to export 1000 barrels of Dwarven Rum to the Human traders.
Be really fun to have!
Hope you already have something in the works toady, have this already planned for a long term goal, or if you didn't then you will add it as a long term goal
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Topic: * Scenario Creator * (Read 895 times)