PerfectWorldDF is a graphical world designing tool for the fantasy game Dwarf Fortress made by Bay 12 Games. It allows you to modify your world_gen.txt file in a way that gives you a great deal of control of how worlds are generated. Normally, in order to generate an acceptable fantasy world, Dwarf Fortress generates maps randomly and rejects maps that don’t fulfill certain criteria specified in the world_gen.txt file. Using PerfectWorldDF, you can directly control much of this process and decide for yourself if this is the world you want to play with.
Any of you who frequent Civfanatics.com might have seen my map scripts for Civilization IV, Civilization IV: Colonization and some of the various mods like Fall from Heaven 2. I had a lot of technology sitting around, and as a huge Dwarf Fortress fan I decided to put some of it to use here as an expression of my fandom. The world_gen.txt file thankfully exposes direct map data that can be manipulated by an external map generator, and this allows a great deal of flexibility for map generation. Once you have something in PW that you like, you can export the map to the world_gen.txt file, start up Dwarf Fortress and watch your world come to life! Personally, I have had a lot of fun just generating maps and reading the legends and watching empires rise and fall during the world gen process. It’s another way to enjoy Dwarf Fortress.
So anyway, as much as I wanted this utility to be very simple and easy to use, it kinda grew into something that needed a manual, and that is the purpose of this document. We’ll start with a table of contents.
Note: This is a Windows Forms application and as such requires the Microsoft .NET framework version 3.5 to be installed on the machine. Sorry Linux and Mac users! I have no idea if this can be run on those platforms or how to do that.
1. Quick Start Guide