Building Guide

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Better formatting, as well as editing and expansion, would be greatly appreciated.

If anything isn't clear, please leave a question next to it, and someone will clarify it.

Todo: divide into subpages?

Contents

[Example]
[Basic Concepts]
[Basic Walkthrough]
[Easy Editing Commands]
[Useful Shortcuts]
[Creation Actions]
[Action-Specific Commands]
[Describing Things]
[Success Messages]
[Setting Up Failure]
[Checking Commands]
[Spiffy Things]
[Fake Exits]
[Parent Rooms]
[Program Listing]
[Noise Program]
[Puppets]
[Whereare Setup]
[Teleport Properties]
[Advanced Things]
[MPI]
[MUF]
[Reference Links]

Your First Area, or An Example

Since this page is overwhelming to a lot of people, I've thrown together a quick walkthrough with just the commands for a quick-and-dirty example that you can do right off with the quota you start with.

Go to [Building Guide/Building Example]? and perform the commands there if you want a quick and basic jump-in.

Basic Concepts

When you build an area, you are creating rooms, creating exits to link those rooms together, and perhaps furnishing those rooms with objects or programs that have special abilities. Each of these, in building terms, is called an "object." Each player is generally assigned a set number of objects he or she can build; this is known as a "quota." For ease of reference, the MUCK will assign each object a reference number, sometimes refered to as a "DBref." In addition, it is possible to create other references, known as "registrations,' to save time. For ease of building, each object can have flags and properties that help dictate how different objects behave with respect to each other. One technique that many builders will use in order to collect objects with common flags, properties, and programs is to create a "parent room," in which all the other rooms will reside, thus saving time and space. More information continues below, including links to other, more detailed, guides.

To summarize:

Basic Area Creation Walkthrough

Refer below to information on specific commands. This is only a general guideline as to process.
  1. Plan out what your area will be like. It helps to brainstorm with people about it. Find out who owns the room you want your area linked from by doing ex here in that room, then talk with them about your area idea.
    1. You might want to write the whole area out first: think about continuing themes throughout, being as succinct as possible, edit your descriptions a little. Make each room mean something. Edit the whole, then do the technical implementation.
  2. Create your first area room, using either editroom or @dig. (see Creation Commands, also Easy Editing Commands)
  3. Set up that room's description using editroom or @desc and lsedit (Describing Stuff).
  4. Possibly register your room if you haven't already.
  5. Set up any look-traps, fake objects, dead-end commands, programs, or MPI, etc. you want (covered under Spiffy Things and Advanced Things).
  6. If you intend people to be able to teleport to it (and most areas will likely be accessible via that one way or other), do @set here=_tel/ok?:yes.
  7. Create another room and the actions linking to that room. Can be done with roomedit and such. +dig is a very nice, quick way of both creating a room and creating the linking actions at once. (Creation Commands)
  8. Set up the linking actions with at least a base minimum of success, osucess, and odrop messages. Preferrably also a desc, I personally get slightly annoyed when I do 'look (action)' and get 'You see nothing special.' (Describing Stuff, Success Messages, Setting up Failture)
  9. Describe and set up that linked room, register it if you need, create more rooms and actions, etc. until you have all the things you want to do finished. You don't necessarily have to do all those steps in the previous order listed, but it helps to do things as you go instead of putting them off.
  10. Bug a Function to give you more quota if you run out of quota during step 8, then resume step 8.
  11. Check over your stuff, looking at it for typoes and also using the @check command. (Checking Commands)
  12. Contact whoever owns the room you want a link from and tell them you've finished it and want it linked in. Probably that person will want to check over your area first.
  13. Once all the above've been done and your area linked to, congratulations! You've created a new part of the Mess. Of course, you probably will later find errors to fix, changes you want to make, etc.

Easy Editing Commands

It's entirely possible to do building without the above tools. Styles differ. The above two commands cover a lot of the individual commands explained below, if not all.

Useful Shortcuts

Creation Commands

Action-Specific Commands

Describing Things

Success messages

Most often used on exits.

Setting Up Failure

Checking Commands

Spiffy Things

The above are a lot of

Fake Objects

Fake Exits

Parent rooms.

Program Listing

Noises program

Puppets

Whereare Setup

Teleport Properties

Advanced Things

MPI

MUF

Reference Links

You know, I wanted to write an enormous, authoritative document for Building on FuzzBall. But what I may want to create is a busy little wiki full of people who can point their friends to it when looking for an autoritative source of tips, tricks, commandments, and ideas for building things. Who'd like to help? -- Echo

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Last edited June 3, 2005 1:28 am by Grace (diff)
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