Two ways to play your map — the full server, or an instant walk-only preview.
Playtest vs Dry Run
The Playtest button in the zone editor's toolbar is a split button with two modes. Click the main button (a ▶ play icon — it becomes a ⚡ bolt when Dry Run is active) to launch your last-used mode; click the chevron (▾) next to it to pick one explicitly:
- Playtest — full server. Publishes your content, connects to the real game server, and plays your game exactly as players will. This is the existing playtest flow, unchanged.
- Dry Run — no server, instant. Opens the zone you have open in the editor in the real game client in seconds — no game server, no publish, no waiting. You walk the map, and that's the point: it answers "is my map right?" while Playtest answers "does my game work?".
The editor remembers your last choice per browser, so a plain click keeps doing whatever you did last. The very first click defaults to Playtest.
When to use which#
| Playtest | Dry Run | |
|---|---|---|
| Launch time | Seconds to minutes (publish + server) | ~2 seconds |
| What runs | The full game server | Just the client, fed by the editor |
| Movement & collision | Real | Real — same walkability rules as the live server |
| Terrain, objects, walls | Real | Real |
| Combat, mobs, NPCs, quests | Real | Absent |
| Saving progress | Yes | Nothing is saved |
Use Dry Run while you're painting: walk a cliff edge, check a bridge is crossable, confirm a doorway lines up. Switch to Playtest when you need anything a server does — fighting a mob, talking to an NPC, testing a quest.
What Dry Run does NOT simulate#
Dry Run is deliberately walk-only. There is no combat, no mobs, no NPCs, no quests, no farming, no chat, and no persistence — nothing you do in a Dry Run is saved anywhere. Resource nodes don't spawn either (their placement is rolled by the live server). A "DRY RUN — no server, walk-only" badge stays on screen so you can't mistake it for a real playtest.
Choosing the Dry Run character#
By default the previewer wears your project's default avatar (the same look a brand-new player gets), or a plain built-in sprite if you haven't set one up. To walk your map as one of your authored characters instead:
- Open Characters in the editor.
- Use the Dry Run character dropdown at the top of the page.
- Pick any character — the preview uses that character's avatar and name. Pick Project default avatar to go back to the default.
| Option | What the previewer looks like |
|---|---|
| Project default avatar | Your world's default player avatar — exactly what a fresh player gets |
| Any character | That character's configured avatar (sprite, scale, recolor), with its name over the previewer's head |
The choice is saved with your world, so everyone editing the project previews with the same character. It only changes the look — Dry Run stays walk-only, and the character's stats, items, and abilities don't apply (those need a real server, i.e. Playtest).
If something works in Dry Run but seems broken in Playtest (or the other way round), remember they load content differently: Dry Run reads straight from the editor's saved data — no publish needed, so anything you've saved (including autosaves) shows up immediately — while Playtest plays what was last published to the game server.
Walkability is play-accurate#
Dry Run does not trust the editor's rough walkability preview. It rebuilds collision with the same rules the live server uses — tileset passability, object passage grids, building walls and doors, elevation steps. If you can't walk somewhere in a Dry Run, players can't walk there in the real game either.
Gotchas#
- Stale images. Your browser caches map art aggressively (up to a day). If you replaced a tileset or object image and a Dry Run still shows the old art, hard-refresh the preview window (Ctrl+Shift+R) to force fresh copies.
- Hosted preview links expire. In the browser editor, launching a Dry Run creates a private, expiring preview link for the map (it works even when your project has no game server running — that's the point of Dry Run). The link stays valid for about an hour; after that the preview window shows a "link expired" message — just launch Dry Run from the editor again.
- Don't share the preview link. The hosted preview URL grants read-only access to that zone's map and art until it expires. It's meant for your own browser, not for sending around — anyone with the link can view the zone while it's valid.
- It's your current zone. Dry Run always opens the zone you have open in the editor, at that zone's starting location (right-click a tile → Set as starting location, or the World Config → Starter Spawn tab) — or the map's center if none is set.
- No server means no server systems. Day/night, weather, calendar events, and anything else the server drives won't advance in a Dry Run.