9. Building: creating things of your own

As a resident, you have the ability to play god and create things for your own personal use. Generally, you are permitted to create only a limited number of things, due to memory and disk space constraints.

You create things with the 'create' command. To get a list of the things you are permitted to build, use 'create commands' ('commands create' also works):

-> create commands
---  [base - 3 commands]  ------------------------------------------
    exit, room, commands
--------------------------------------------  3 commands listed  ---

Lets start with some of the basic definitions and discovery commands:

Room

A room is some place that you can 'be' on the program. For instance, a room might be a courtyard, a log cabin, a hilltop, or a dojo.

More than one person can be in a room at any time, and when you use the commands 'say', 'emote' and 'think', they are all directed to everyone who is in the room with you.

The 'look' command shows you a description of the room you are in, as well as who (and what) is in it with you.

Exit

An exit is one mechanism for moving from one room to another. The exits from a room normally show up when you 'look'. You can also see the exits in a room with the 'exits' command.

You use an exit by going through it, as in 'go track', or 'go south'. Most of the time (unless there is a command with the same name), you can also use an exit just by typing it's name, such as 'track', or 'south'.

An exit is in one place, and leads to another. To create an exit, you have to have access to at least 2 different rooms - one to put the exit in, and one for the exit to go to.

Exits are one way. That is, if you build a log cabin and a campfire area, and wish to have a door that goes from the log cabin to the campfire, you actually need two exits:

• one that is in the cabin and goes to the campfire, and
• one that is in the campfire room and goes into the cabin.

Homes

Every player may have one of his or her rooms designated as a 'home' room. When you type 'home', you are automatically transported to your home room. When you type 'visit slide', you will be automatically transported to slide's home room. The 'ghome' command sets your profile so that when you log in you are automatically taken to your home, as opposed to any other place.

That's just about all it means for a room to be your home.

Showing a list of your rooms

You can use the 'rooms' command to display a list of the rooms you have currently. As you don't have any rooms at the moment, the output will look like this:

-> rooms
There aren't any rooms in sLiDe.  Use 'create room <id>' if you want
   to create one.

Creating a room

To create a new room you use the 'create room' command, like this:

-> create room treehouse The Tree House
Built the room 'treehouse' (in sLiDe)
This room has also been set to your home, since you don't have 
   any others.

The exact format of this command is 'create room <room id> <room name>'. The room id is how you need to refer to the room from then on. For instance, to go to our new room, we can:

-> trans treehouse
                        The Tree House

There is nobody here but you.

You have transported yourself to /players/sLiDe/treehouse.

You can use the trans command to go to any of your rooms.

Setting up the room

Well, we have a room now, but it looks kind of bare. One of the more useful commands when setting up a room is the inspect command. This command shows some information about how the room is set up at the moment. Our new treehouse might look like this:

-> inspect
-----------------------------------------------------------------
/players/sLiDe/treehouse is a room owned by sLiDe.
There is nobody here but you.
There aren't any objects in this room.

The portrait reads:  Someone is [in] [somewhere]
-----------------------------------------------------------------

This screen shows the rooms id (/players/sLiDe/treehouse), who it is owned by (sLiDe), as well as the rooms portrait.

Portraits

As you can see from the inspect screen above, a rooms portrait consists of two parts, the 'relation', and the actual portrait. The relation is the 'in' part, and the portrait is the 'somewhere' part.

The portrait itself shows what appears when someone does a where command on someone in this room. For instance, 'where slide' returns 'sLiDe is in somewhere'.

For our treehouse, we're simply going to change the 'somewhere' to be 'the treehouse':

-> room portrait the treehouse
The portrait now reads: [sLiDe is in] the treehouse

To change the relation property (which you might want to do when creating a hill: no-one is ever 'in' a hill), you use the room relation command:

-> room relation at
The portrait now reads: [sLiDe is at] the hill

(We might use this trick later to create a room that is on top of the treehouse)

Descriptions

The rooms description and name may be viewed with the look command. The name, if it is set, appears centred above the description.

To add a description, we use the room describe command and the editor. The editor has some more advanced features, allowing you to fix mistakes and delete lines, but for now, there are only 3 things you need to know about it.

When you're in the editor, you have a + prompt, and whatever you type will appear in your description, unless it starts with a period '.'. There are many period commands, but the best ones are:

• '.end' (to finish editting and save your changed),
• '.wipe' (to wipe everything and start over), and
• '.quit' (to exit without saving any changes).

So, we start the editor and type in a simple description:

-> room describe
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Entering the forest editor :
  If you're not sure how to use the editor, enter '.quit' 
  immediately (without the quotes), and read 'help editor'

Limitations:  22 lines, 1760 characters.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
+ The treehouse is of the normal wooden variety, albeit rather rickety.  Several comics are lying scattered around.
The treehouse is of the normal wooden variety, albeit rather 
rickety.  Several comics are lying scattered around.
+ .end
Saving editor buffer...
You change the description of 'treehouse'

When you type in descriptions, type whole paragraphs on one line if you can. This will make the program automatically word-wrap them to the width of whoever is looking at them.

Renaming rooms

While you can't change a rooms id, you can change the the name that appears at the top.

In fact, it isn't necessary to specify it when you first create the room, either. We could just have written 'room create treehouse' and the room would have begun life without a title.

Nevertheless, to change it, or set it in the first place, use the 'room name' command. Here's an example using colour codes. (Colour codes have a chapter all for themselves, but here's a sneak preview):

-> room name ^MThe slippery treehouse^-
This room is now called The slippery treehouse.

Finished

Using the look command now shows us our complete room! The next section shows you how to create exits between rooms (for the go command) and mentions a little more about room management.

In summary, here are the steps to create a room:

1. Create the room: create room treehouse The Tree House
2. Go to the room: trans treehouse
3. Set the portrait: room portrait the treehouse
4. Set the relation: room relation in
5. Describe the room: room describe. Use '.end' when you're finished.
6. Rename the room, if desired: room name ^MThe slippery treehouse^-

Creating an exit

As mentioned previously, you need at least two rooms to create an exit: one room for the exit to go from, and one room for it to go to.

You need two rooms...

The first thing to do is quickly bash out another room. Lets build a backyard for our treehouse to be in.

-> create room backyard Joe's backyard
Built the room 'backyard' (in sLiDe)

We can describe it later. For now, lets use the rooms command to check which rooms we wish to use, and their id's:

-> rooms
  name             portrait                                pl# ob#
|----------------|----------------------------------------|---|---|
 backyard         Someone is in somewhere                  0   0   
 treehouse        Someone is in the treehouse              1   0   
|----------------------------------------------------- 2 rooms ---|

Building the first exit

Let us now build a ladder exit that goes from the backyard to the treehouse.

First, go to the backyard:

-> trans backyard
                               Joe's backyard

There is nobody here but you.

You have transported yourself to /players/sLiDe/backyard.

And create the exit, carefully specifying where you want it to go:

-> create exit ladder treehouse
Built the exit ladder in backyard, which leads to the treehouse (treehouse)

And try it out:

-> go ladder
You walk through the exit
                           The slippery treehouse
The treehouse is of the normal wooden variety, albeit rather 
rickety.  Several comics are lying scattered around.

There is nobody here but you.

Well, that worked. If you remember my explanation of the exit at the start of this chapter, you'll know that to get back, we need to create another exit. Lets do that now:

-> create exit ladder backyard
Built the exit ladder in treehouse, which leads to somewhere (backyard)

Notice how this time it only leads to 'somewhere'? That's because we haven't set the portrait in the other room yet, a task you can do later on.

Anyway, take a look at the 'inspect' screen for the exit we just created.

-> inspect ladder
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/players/sLiDe/treehouse/ladder is an exit owned by sLiDe.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
No active verbs
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Autolook: on
The arriveRoom message is: sLiDe walks in
The departRoom message is: sLiDe walks out

This exit leads to somewhere, designated by /players/sLiDe/backyard.

----------------------------  description  ----------------------------
A rent in the fabric of reality

(the message a player sees when going through this exit is shown below)
------------------------------  through  ------------------------------
You walk through the exit
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

The inspect screen lists everything that may be customised about the exit.

Autolook

This property, when it is on, will force a "look" command after you go through the exit.

It is nearly always left on, but the ability to turn it off means that, for instance, a room can have a different description when you enter through a door than when you're just standing in it looking around. You do this with the 'through' property, below.

Use the "exit <exit> through" command change to this:

-> exit ladder through
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Entering the forest editor :
  If you're not sure how to use the editor, enter '.quit' immediately 
  (without the quotes), and read 'help editor'

Limitations:  200 lines, 10000 characters.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
You walk through the exit
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+ .wipe
Editing Buffer Cleared.
+ You carefully climb down the ladder into the backyard.
You carefully climb down the ladder into the backyard.
+ .end
Saving editor buffer...

arriveRoom

This property describes the message sent to the room that the moving player is arriving into. The player will not see this message, only everyone else in that room.

-> exit ladder arriveroom %o climbs down the ladder into the backyard
The value now reads: %o climbs down the ladder into the backyard

Obviously, the '%o' is replaced by the name of the player going through the exit. (You must include the %o; otherwise it would be possible to make a way of entering someone elses room without anyone knowing who came in.)

There are a couple of other codes that you can use here (and more can be added if you want one, use the 'idea' command). They are:

• %h - Replaced with 'he' or 'she' based on the players gender.
• %i - Replaced with 'his' or 'her' based on the players gender.

departRoom

This property describes the message sent to the room that the moving player departs, or leaves. The player will not see this message, only everyone else in that room.

-> exit ladder departroom %o steps over to the ladder and disappears down it.
The value now reads: %o steps over to the ladder and disappears down it

description

This paragraph shows the message sent when someone types "look <exit name>". You can edit it with the describe command:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Entering the forest editor :
  If you're not sure how to use the editor, enter '.quit' immediately 
  (without the quotes), and read 'help editor'

Limitations:  40 lines, 3160 characters.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
A rent in the fabric of reality
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+ .wipe
Editing Buffer Cleared.
+ A ladder that leads down into the backyard
A ladder that leads down into the backyard
+ .end
Saving editor buffer...
You change the description of 'ladder'

through

You will remember, no doubt, the 'You walk through the exit' message that was sent when you went through the last exit. This is a configurable message, known as 'through' message, sent only to the player as they go through the exit.

You may use this message for anything you please, although here are some suggestions:

• Blank it out. The exit will behave the way old EW exits did: just take you to the room and then autolook.
• Set it, and leave autolook on. You can write a little bit of custom information in the exit, like "You walk down the windy road until you reach the bottom of the mountains.", which provides a good lead-in to the "foothills" room, for instance.
• Set it and turn autolook off. Here you can customise the rooms description a little more. As a player walks into the room, they have a different perspective (perhaps with less detail, or from another angle) than if they are standing in the room and 'look' around. Perhaps if they look a second time they'll see something that they missed initially, or perhaps you only see something on your way in, and not in the room itself.

It's predictable, but you set this paragraph with the exit <exit> through command:

-> exit ladder through
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Entering the forest editor :
  If you're not sure how to use the editor, enter '.quit' immediately 
  (without the quotes), and read 'help editor'

Limitations:  200 lines, 10000 characters.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
You walk through the exit
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
+ .wipe
Editing Buffer Cleared.
+ You step onto the ladder and climb down into the backyard.
You step onto the ladder and climb down into the backyard.
+ .end
Saving editor buffer...

FAQ's

How to I make an exit that leads to a room that isn't mine?

When you create the exit, put the players name, a slash (/), and then the room name. To have an exit to snapper's den, use 'create exit path snapper/den'.

You can create exits to clan rooms; use the clanname and a slash, as in 'create exit path osiris/hall'.

You can create exits to realm rooms, as well. Each of the public rooms is located in a scene. For instance, the town square is in the 'city' scene, so you can 'create exit path city/square'.

How do I change my home room?

With the 'sethome' command. Go to your new home and type 'room sethome'.

You can only set your home to a room you have the 'setHome' permission for. This is trivially true for all of your rooms, but your clan founder may have set up certain clan rooms that you can set as your home, or your net.wife might build a room for the two of you.

You'll want to read chapter 11 on context permissions to know how to give the setHome permission to someone.