TAAL's GUIDE TO WORLD BUILDING ============================== PART 2B - DIGGING THE ZONE -------------------------- The first thing one needs to do when given a zone, is dig out the entire zone according to the map that was drawn. This is done through the use of the following commands: /room new /room dig /room exit /room enter See the appropriate helpfiles for more information on how to use the commands. You start out always in room 00 of the zone (the north-west corner). Then you work your way from there until the entire zone is connected the same way as your map is. PART 2C - ROOM NAMES AND SECTORS -------------------------------- The next step is adding room names and room sectors. The room sectors are very important. They decide stuff like movecost as well as where a mobile can go or not. Thus you should get it as close to the terrain of the room as possible. (Which should not be hard, since there is a wide variety to choose from). As for room names, there are a few simple design rules. A room name should be a short description of the terrain of the room. The first word in the room name should always be capitalized, and all the following words except: prepositions and articles (such as: in, at, a, the, above, below, within, of etc.) Here follows some examples: In a Small, Dank Room Below a Drawbridge At the Entrance of a Dark Cavern Festering Marshlands On the Brink of a Chasm If you wish, doors could also be set at this point. Remember however, that you must set the door on both sides of the connection. Also - door names should be logical, and not some strange made up word (like Rottenthinbranch). They should also be natural doors as much as possible (i.e if the door is a door, do not call it root or stone.) Further, door names must NOT be plural. A door is singular, always. Some doors can have LIBRARIES added to them. (See Part 3) PART 2D - ROOM DESCRIPTIONS --------------------------- After those parts are done you should be getting to see the general view of how the zone will turn out. This is when the tedious part begins (unless you like creative writing). It is however, necessary to do them. There are some guidelines, or rules if you will, for room descriptions. (This is also true for exit descriptions) 1) Rooms should ALWAYS describe the area of the room, NOT how the player in the room interacts with it. You should never say "you are in a small room" for example. Rather, you say "This is a small room". The simple rule is; Never Ever say 'you' in a room description! 2a)Rooms must NOT have forced emotions. You can describe a room in a scary way but you can not tell a player he is scared for being in the room. You can't say a player is terrified, happy, overjoyed or anything else that lets a player know how he feels when reading your room description. 2b)Nor must a room have other forced or assumed features about the character in the room. This means stuff that is NOT common knowledge should not be explained in a room desc. A room description should be just that - a description - and NOT a story! 3) A typical room description is four to five lines. It is acceptable with a few three-line descs here and there, just don't make too many of them. Likewise it's ok if lines drag on for too many lines too. An area where every room is nine to ten lines though gets very tedious to read. There are of course exceptions to this. A room can NEVER be less than three lines. (Two- or One-line room descs are not accepted. 4) The lines in a room desc is always a maximum of eighty characters long. Use /room format in the room or /f in the editor to format a description to eighty characters per line in length. 5) Correct English. Not 'internet' speech or other slang use of words. You don't say "c" for "see" or "w/" for "with". Note that we use British English, so americans should try to mind the u's. (Use a dictionary if in doubt) 6) These are the characters we use in room descriptions: a-z A-Z , . - You should never put a question or exclamation mark in a desc, and never use any other symbols. 7) Mobiles and objects that will load in the room should not be put in the room description. An object can be taken, a mobile can be killed, but the description will be there nonetheless. A few static objects can be accepted into the room description (such as certain furnitures, pictures etc), but an object that can be manipulated in any way should ALWAYS be an OBJECT and not a description. A mobile can NEVER be in the description. However, signs of a mobiles activity can be used (such as animal droppings, bloody remains of some hapless adventurer etc.) 8) Copying room descriptions is not acceptable. Each description is unique, although they can have parts that are similar, since they often describe the same type of area. I would even suggest using a few standard sentences for very similar terrain, where you just rewrite the sentences a bit, or put them together in a different order. This takes some effort off of doing tedious and similar rooms such as fields and grasslands. 9) Use words for numbers. Five not 5. And we use inches and feet, pounds and ounces. However, you should try not to use specific measurements in any place, since there might be characters that aren't that good at measuring that reads it, as well as rooms that might conflict with said measurements when say a group of ten is within the room. 10) Remember that room descriptions are STATIC. This means that they never Change (at least for now), and thus you can NOT use terms that refer to a certain TIME when doing descriptions. That is, you can not describe a room according to day or night, since you do not know if the player will ever read the desc at that point of the day. Also you should try as best you can to be season-independet. Although in some areas it is hard to describe the area without thinking about the seasons and weather around you. (such as swaying, green grass in a field). For now, I accept static seasonal descriptions as long as they are logical and natural for that type of surroundings (i.e mountains could have a winter-like static description, while fields should have a spring or summer-like description) We might in the future try to add some system to make descriptions more dynamic however. 11) Try to describe the room itself as much as possible, and not what lies in the neighbouring rooms. (This should instead be put into the EXIT DESCS of the room) Remember that EXIT DESCRIPTIONS is also a part of Room Descriptions, and even though they are found under a different command, they are just as important. We are working on implementing some generic exdescs, but for now you should try as best you can to exdesc every direction from a room (even if there is no exit in that direction). This is to explain to people what lies in a direction when they look that way, and to show them a reason for why they can't go in that direction for example. Also it is used to give clues to hidden exits. (And if the hidden exits are the only ones with an exdesc, the hidden exit isn't much hidden is it?) PART 2E - ROOM FLAGS AND FINISHING UP ------------------------------------- The room and exit flags are also important to set right. For an explanation of them, check the corresponding commands and help files. Room flags decide stuff like if weather echo and daytime echo should be shown. If the room is lit or dark, or lit at a certain time, etc. An important flag is the NO_MOB flag. Some mobiles walk around as they see fit, and these mobiles need to be stopped through a no_mob flag (either on the room or on the exit into the room). This flag denies mobiles "access" to the room. Remember that exit flags need to be set at BOTH sides of the exit. When the zone if fully desced, exdesced and other things set and you feel satisfied with your work, you should contact your supervisor. He or she should then proofread the zone (preferably together with you). In this part we weed out spelling mistakes, and other mistakes that might have snuck in. Be sure that you check over your zone at least one extra time before you call your supervisor (as he or she is bound to have tons of work elsewhere on the mud). When the zone has been proofed and approved, you will be raised to BUILDER level. NEXT: HELP GUIDE BUILDER or HELP GUIDE MOBILES