You mess with the horns, you get the beast, ACK!

[quote="rld"]Anyone have any other suggestions for debug commands that might be helpful?
[/quote]

See if you can find a copy of DUNGEON, which was the predecessor to ZORK that was written in Fortran and ran on the PDP-11 minicomputer.

There has been a release of DUNGEON that runs on the PC. Well, there is a cheat/debug system built into DUNGEON called GDT. It will basically allow you to
* show every message text by entering its number
* examine and change game variables, flags and settings
* examine and change arrays
* move user anywhere
* open and close some/all doors
* lock and unlock some/all locks
And other things. It might give you ideas.

Found it: http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXsource.html - Search this page for Dungeon, there are 10 related files in the group. Once you have it running, bring up GDT and try the help.

Normal game commands
--------------------
-/+  
   Change combat message speed
Ctrl-V
   Sound on/off/volume


Cheat/debug commands
--------------------
TAB
   Reload editor files
~  
   Show transparency mask/status
Ctrl-B
   Switch keybuffer on/off (not sure what this does exactly)
Ctrl-F
   Flight mode on/off
Ctrl-G
   Show free memory amount
Ctrl-H
   Restore HP/MP to maximum levels
Ctrl-L
   Show current location
Ctrl-T
   Show current time
Ctrl-W
   Warp to a specified location
Ctrl-X
   Run a specified macro
Ctrl-Z
   Turn on invisible mode

Looking at the part of the code in O_PLAY0A.PAS which implements the various cheat/debug commands, and trying to think if anything else useful might be added here for game development.

One thing I definitely want to do is fix it so you can use the variable PEEK/POKE command (Ctrl-P, when debug mode is enabled), to read/write both sets of variables (A-Z and A2-Z2), not just A-Z as is currently implemented.

Anyone have any other suggestions for debug commands that might be helpful?

....
The current cheat/debug/special key list is:

[code]
Normal game commands
--------------------
-/+
Change combat message speed
Ctrl-V
Sound on/off/volume


Cheat/debug commands
--------------------
TAB
Reload editor files
~
Show transparency mask/status
Ctrl-B
Switch keybuffer on/off (not sure what this does exactly)
Ctrl-F
Flight mode on/off
Ctrl-G
Show free memory amount
Ctrl-H
Restore HP/MP to maximum levels
Ctrl-L
Show current location
Ctrl-T
Show current time
Ctrl-W
Warp to a specified location
Ctrl-X
Run a specified macro
Ctrl-Z
Turn on invisible mode

[/code]