OLC Section 2

REDIT

"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike..."

With Redit, you can create and edit your own rooms. To create a room, the

syntax is: redit create [vnum]

To edit an existing room, you can either: redit [vnum] or goto

the room, then just type redit.

To get a list of all the room names in an area, type: rlist

OPTIONS: Once you've created a room, the follow options appear when you hit

[enter], or type: show

Name:

Syntax: name

This gives a room a name. In general, every essential word in a room name

should be capitalized, similar in fashion to the rules governing capitalization

of books and short story titles.

Area:

This just shows what area the room is in.

Vnum:

Reminds you of the room's vnum.

Sector:

Syntax: [sector name]

The sector represents the terrain of the room. This has an effect on whether

certain terrain dependent spells or skills can be used, as well as the movement

cost to move through the room. The follow is a list of sector types:

 inside: Easy movement. Note: Does NOT cause area spells to bounce, not dark
  at night, can hide. 
 city: Sector flag for cities, towns, etc. Easy movement, not dark at night, 
  can hide. 
 field: Easy movement, use this outside towns, dark at night. 
 forest: Medium movement, use for forests, various plant affects druids can
  use, dark at night, can camo. 
 hills: Medium movement, use for hills, dark at night. 
 mountain: Heavy moment, dark at night, some terrain affects, can camo here. 
 swim: Use for water rooms that don't require a boat/flying, dark at night, 
  water dependent spells work here. 
 noswim: Use for water rooms that do require a boat/flying, dark at night, 
  water spells work here. 
 unused: Use for virgin rooms, pristine in their nubility. So soft.. sweet... 
  sweet... soft... flesh.... 
 air: Need fly to move in the room, dark at night, some earth spells don't work
  here, air spells do, etc. 
 desert: Heavy movement, ground, one day (but not right now), increased thirst. 
 underwater: Requires water breathing and fly/boat to move, dark at night, 
  various spell changes. 
 underground: Always dark, certain race regens effected, certains spells 
  affected, can hide here. 
 road: Easy movement, not dark at night, can hide. 

Room Flags:

Room flags determine what you can and can't do in rooms, as well as what sort

of access spells like summon or gate have to a room. To get a list of the room

flags while in redit, type ? room

Here's a list of room flags, and what they do:

 dark: Room is always dark, requiring a light source. 
 nogate: No one can gate to or from room. 
 no_mob: Wandering or tracking mobs cannot enter this room. Will stop 
  mpwander, but not other progged movements. 
 indoors: Area spells have a backblast affect , weather not seen. 
 nosum_to: Nothing can be summoned to this room. 
 nosum_from: Nothing can be summoned from this room. 
 noneforyou: People who where in this room will only see "none." 
 vault: Used only for house vaults. 
 noyell: Yells in this room are not heard outside. 
 private: No additional persons can enter this room, assuming the room
  is not empty. 
 safe: No one can attack/start fights in this room, including mobs. (This should
  almost never be used). 
 solitary: No more than one person in room. (Should be used seldom, if at all,
  as it's open to abuse.) 
 pet_shop: Any mobs that reset in the room whose vnum ia immediately AFTER 
  flagged room will be available for sale. Example: You flag room 69000 as 
  pet_shop. Room 69001 has a hen resetting there. If people type 'list' in room
  69000, a hen will be available for sale. 
 no_recall: No one can recall from this room AND no one can teleport or  
  spiritrune to/from there. 
 imp_only: Only bastards may enter here. 
 gods_only: Only gods may enter this room. 
 heroes_only: Only heroes may enter this room. 
 newbies_only: Only characters levels 1-5 may enter this room. 
 law: Marks a room as quittable. All rooms in major cities should be this. 
 nowhere: No one else in an area can locate you on ‘where’ if you are in 
  this room. 
 nomagic: No spells work in this room. 
 guild: Used to mark rooms of a guild, to bar entry to outsiders. Note:
  We don't need this with some of the newer guild progs, such as those featured
  in Earendam. 
 noweather: The weather is not visible from this room. 
 uberdark: Nothing will illuminate this room, no exits are visible, no one 
  appears on where.
 laboratory: Alchemists can only concentrate potions/pills in a laboratory, and they get +1 alchemical power.

To add any of these room flags to a room, use the following syntax: In redit,

type the name of the room flag.

Health/Mana Recovery:

You can set the rate at which a player gains and recovers hp/mana in a room.

The scale is measured in percent points, so a health and mana of 100 means

"regenerates as normal." Lower values would indicate worse regeneration returns,

 higher values would indicate better ones. 

To set the health and mana rates, use the following syntax:

heal [rate]

mana [rate]

move [rate]

and remember, [rate] should be an appropriate percentage value.

Clan:

This identifies room's that belong to a particular house or organization.

Generally, you will only rarely set the house of a room (such as when

building an area for a particular house).

To set a room's house, the syntax is: clan [name]

Acceptable names: Champion, Raider, Conquest, Guardian, Seeker,

Shunned, Merchant, Wanderer, Knight

Fount:

Syntax: fount [frequency] [order] [positive]

Order and positive are from 2 to -2, with higher integers being associated with more ordered and more positive energy. Frequency is as follows:

  always        (a fount is always present)
  often
  occasionally
  rarely
  never         
  default       (uses  the area setting)

Shades:

Syntax: shades [density] [power]

This controls the shade generation settings.

  DENSITY      POWER
  teeming      powerful
  crowded      strong
  normal       average
  uncrowded    weak
  empty        powerless
  default      default    (uses the area setting)

Description:

The description is what people see when they look at the room. There is a

separate editor just for room descriptions, accessed within redit. To access it,

type desc while in redit.

The follow are editor commands, which can be accessed from a blank line within

the editor:

@: Leaves the editor

.f: Format. Formats the current room description.

.c: Clear. Clears an entire room description, returning it to blank.

.s: Show: Shows everything currently in the description.

.r: Replace: Used to replace one string with another.

Syntax: .r 'old string' 'new string'

Important note: Old string counts spaces, and you cannot use the '

character in your string, as it demarcates the strings in the first

place. (no, \' doesn't work either). If you fuck up something with

an apostrophe, you have to re-enter the whole description.

Some notes: A lot of clients (especially zmud) use the . as a special

character -- make sure you change it so that it isn't.

Writing your descriptions offline: I recommend you write your descs offline,

where you can spell/grammar check them, and cut/paste them more easily.

Exits:

Exits are how rooms are connected with each other. We'll begin with a discussion

of how you connect rooms, then discuss the exit flags which are permissible

for these exits.

Dig:

The dig command lets you dig a new room, and create a two way exit to that room

at the same time. It's very convenient for creating rooms that connect to one

another.

Syntax: [direction] dig [vnum]

If the vnum does not already exist, the room will be created. If the room does

exist, it will link to the room with a two-way exit, provided the room

does not have an opposite direction leading elsewhere.

Link:

Link makes a two-way exit, just like dig, but will not automatically create a

new room for you.

Syntax: [direction] link [vnum]

Room:

You can use the ROOM command to create a one-way exit to another room. Unlike the

DIG command, room will not create a room for you to link with. You must use redit

or dig to independently create the target room, then ROOM to make a one way exit

there.

Syntax: [direction] room [vnum]

Important use for the ROOM command: If your room borders a room in another area,

and you wish to connect them, you *must* use the ROOM command to do so. Otherwise,

the exit will sometimes spontaneously disappear.

Delete:

To remove an exit from a room, do the following.

Syntax: [direction] delete

Exit Descriptions:

These are what people see when they "Look [direction]". While in the earlier,

more hurried portions of our history we've sometimes had to neglet them, exit

descriptions are in the long run essential, and help players navigate. They are

especially important when you have traps or noexit rooms. If a person hasn't

been warned in the description, there should definitely be a hint in the exit.

Syntax: [direction] desc

This will call up a desc editor, which operates in an identical fashion to the

room editor.

Exit Flags:

Exit flags are placed on exits, and they restrict/affect the travel that passes

through that exit. To toggle the exit flag on or off, the syntax

is: [exit direction] [flag] (i.e. "east closed").

The following are exit flags:

  door: This flags an exit as a door. If it is a door, it can be opened and 
   closed by players or mobs. 
  key [object vnum]: This sets an object as a key for a door.
  closed: If an exit is a door, this causes the default state of that exit to be
   closed. The door will automatically close whenever the exit resets. 
   WARNING: If you reset an exit as closed, but not door, when we next reboot, the
   mud will most likely hang, as it has problems dealing with a closed exit without 
   a door.
  locked: If an exit is a door, this causes the default state of that exit to 
   be locked. The door will automatically lock whenever the exit resets. 
   Note: If you do not have the exit flagged as closed, locked will do little as
   an initial setting. The same warning applies as to the closed flag above. 
  secret: An exit flagged secret is invisible to the "exits" command. A person
   must simply walk in the direction to go through the door.
  pickproof: A door exit flagged pickproof cannot be picked or knocked open. As
   above, do not add to an exit that is not a door. 
  nopass: A door marked with nopass cannot be entered with pass door while 
   closed. 
  easy: A locked door marked easy is easier to pick than normal.
  hard: A locked door marked hard is harder to pick than normal. 
  infuriating: A door marked infuriating is extremely hard to pick. 
  noclose: A door marked noclose cannot be closed. 
  nolock: A door marked nolock cannot be locked. 
  illusionary: This flag is used by the spell illusionary exit. It makes the exit
   lead back to your current room. 
  walled: This flag is used by the earth spell, 'wall of stone' to block off an
   exit. 
  walloffire: This flag is used by the wall of fire spell. 
  noram: This marks a door as unbreakable by a barbarian's ram. 
  fake: An exit flagged 'fake' appears as a normal exit, but mortals cannot pass
   through it. (This is very useful for entrances guarded by progged mobs, such as
   temples or guilds.)

Name:

To give a name to a door you've made, so people will see things like "You open

the oaken door", etc., use the NAME command in conjunction with a direction:

Syntax: [direction] name ['door name']

Extra Description (ED):

Often, you will want to have more detail in your room than is available in a

single description. There will often be things in the background that you want

to show more detail on, such as altars, writing on the wall, and so on. To

do this, you use the extra description feature. This adds a keyword to a room,

that everyone will be able to see if they type "look [keyword]". The syntax

for adding one of these is: ed add [keyword] which will bring up a description

editor window just like the one for the room's description. Use ed edit

[keyword] to edit it later on, and ed delete [keyword] to delete a keyword. To

add multiple keywords for the same exdesc, type ed add 'keyword1 keyword2' etc.

Danger:

Syntax: danger [number]

This assigns the EP points that the room will give in addition to the base value

assigned in aedit.

RESETS: Putting things in a room

Items and mobs appear in a room via the RESET command. We'll break it up into

two parts: Resets for mobs, and resets for objects. To get a list of all the

resets in a room, type reset by itself, with no arguments. You can see the syntax

for reset commands by typing reset 0.

MOB resets

This is the place a mob starts when the area resets. The syntax is:

reset [number of reset] mob [vnum] [Max number of mobs in the area] [Max in room]

The number of the reset determines its order in being loaded in the room. If you

just type zero, it will automatically put it in the next place in the list. The

Max number of mobs in the area determines how many of this mob can be reset in

total. If you have 17 separate resets in the area, and the max number is 16,

only 16 mobs will reset. The Max in room determines how many of the mob can be

reset in the room. If there is already a mob of a given type in a room, and your

max in room is 1, no more mobs will be reset.

Important: If you want more than one mob to reset at a given time in a room, you

need to have a seperate reset for each mob. So, if you wanted to reset two of mob

69000 in a room, you would do: ‘reset 0 mob 69000 2 2’ and then ‘reset 0 mob

69000 2 2’ again (Once for each mob).

OBJECT Resets

With object resets, you can put items on the ground, on a mob, or in a container.

We'll cover them as three seperate cases:

(A) Resets on the ground:

This loads the item on the ground when the area resets. Caveat: If there are

any players in an area, no objects will reset on the ground. The syntax for

this is: reset [reset number] obj [object vnum] room

(B) Resets on a mob:

This loads an item into a mob's worn slots, or into a mob's inventory, or as

an item in a shopkeeper's inventory. Important note on the way this sort of thing

works: In the list of resets, the objects must appear after the mob. This makes

intuitive sense: A mob has to reset before you can reset anything onto it.

Every item that you reset onto a slot will go on the mob it comes after, until

another mob is added. Done properly, this looks like:

0: Mob 1

1: Item 1 (goes on mob 1)

2: Item 2 (goes on mob 1)

3: Mob 2

4: Item 3 (goes on mob 2) etc.

The syntax for this is: reset [reset number] obj [object vnum] [wear-loc]

Take care that you set the number of reset right, as you will sometimes not want

to just use the default '0'. The wear-loc determines what slot the item is loaded

into. The following are acceptable wear locations: none light lfinger rfinger

neck1 neck2 body head legs feet hands arms shield about waist lwrist rwrist

wielded hold floating branded dual. Of these, 'none' and 'float' require

explanation. Use 'none' to reset an object into a mob's inventory. Items that

you want a shopkeeper to sell must be reset into the none wear location.

'Float' makes an item float beside the wearer, as per the air scholar spell.

Items that float should be used far more sparingly.

(C) Resets inside containers: If you have an object resetting inside a room

that is a container, you can have other objects reset inside it. Note that

as above, the items you wish to reset IN the container must occur after the

container itself in the reset list. The syntax is:

reset [reset number] obj [object vnum] inside [container vnum] [limit][count]

The 'limit' isn't the limit factor (see the section on object limits), it's

the total number of items this particular chest can produce before it stops.

Unless you want only 1 thing to come from your chest per reboot, you'll want

to put a large number, like 9999. The count is the number that can be in the

chest at a given time.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Never reset an object from one area into another. This is

generally very bad, and can crash us, depending on what order the areas are

loaded.

Resets to Randomize Exits:

There's something else you can do with resets: Randomize the exits. You can

randomize a certain number of exits in the room (unfortunately, not particular

exits... *hiss*)

Syntax: reset random [# of exits]

Deleting a Reset:

To delete a reset (any kind), the syntax is: reset [number] delete