Aabahran Building Guide

[Lloth]

This will take me some time to finish, but I will go ahead and share what I have completed already. I will be breaking it down into sections, and cover just the basics. If I dive too deep, it'll be 40 posts long. You won't be able to reply to this thread, as I want to keep the information pure and uninterrupted. Feel free to ask about it in my AMA post.

 

Part One: Rooms

 

When building an area, the first thing to do is to conceptualize. What feel are you going for? What's the theme? Is it a bustling city, filled with life and vibrant sounds? Is it a dark and damp tomb, covered in cobwebs and dust, the eerie sensation of being watched steadily creeping into your mind? Is it a thick glade, with sweltering heat and air so humid that your clothing sticks to your skin? An area's theme plays a substantial part in how it should play out in design. For this guide, I will be walking you through the process of creating a small area. You will learn how to maximize your building space, add flavor to your area, and make it feel like a real place with real danger and excitement. For now, let us start with the basics, starting with the area's layout. We are going to use the VNUMs 15000-15049 for the duration of this guide. This defines all ranges - Rooms, objects, mobs, and programs. We will get to programs later on, but for now, let's start with the rest.

VNUM stands for Virtual Number. It is used to reference a file in use by the MUD in a unique way. VNUMs cannot be duplicate within their type. That is to say, you cannot have two rooms with the same VNUM. However, you can have a room and an object with the same VNUM, as rooms and objects are stored in separate locations. A simple analogy is to compare it to your computer. You cannot have two files with the same name in the same directory. But, you can have two files with the same name in different directories. This is because they are stored in different places in memory, based on their directory path. For a MUD, every area has a root folder. Beneath that root folder, you have separate folders named Rooms, Objects, Mobs, Mprogs, Oprogs, etc. Area->Rooms->15000 is different from Area->Objects->15000 because they are located in different locations. That is at the heart of how you can create complex areas, even with just a small VNUM range.

 

Rooms, objects, and mobs all follow the same process of creation. First, it is best if you start with rooms. So let's begin

edit room create 15000

edit tells the MUD that you wish to edit the files it uses to create the game world. The text files that make up Aabahran.
Room tells the MUD that you wish to edit a file in the rooms folder.
Create tells the mud that this room does not currently exist, and that it needs to create a new file for it.
15000 tells the MUD two things. First, it tells it to reference the area containing that VNUM range. Then, it tells the MUD that the room file it needs to create is 15000. If you reference a VNUM that is already in use, it will fail.

 

Now that the room is created, you have entered a different mode. Edit mode. In this mode, keyboard shortcuts are different. For instance, "L" is normally short for look. In edit mode, it is short for level. Pressing enter with a blank prompt will bring up the VNUMs editable properties. For a room, these properties are as follows:

Day Description:  The day description is how the room looks in the day.
Night Description: The night description is how it looks at night. If you leave it blank, the day description persists.
Name:  The name is the title of the room. 
Area:   The area denotes which area owns this VNUM
Vnum:       [15000]  This is the actual VNUM of the room.
Sector:     [inside]   This determines the terrain. Everything from move penalties to hide/camo ability.
Watched By: [ ] Unused.
Room flags: [none] Some flags that are used to add room behavior. If you can gate in/out, if its dark, if you can't where. 
Room2 flags: [none] A continuation of other flags.
Health recovery:[100] Player recovery rate for health, in a percentage of their normal gain.
Mana recovery  :[100] Player recovery rate for mana, in a percentage of their normal gain.
Temperature:[72] Unused
Characters: [lloth] Any characters currently in the room. Unused for building.
Objects:    [none]  Any objects on the ground in the room. Unused for building.
-East  to [28001] Key: [    0]  Exit flags: [door closed]   Exits. Each exit also lists the VNUM of the room it connects to.
Kwds: [gates]   Keywords. Mostly unused in basic building.

 

To learn what values can be assigned to each of these, simply use the following command:

? <option>

For instance, to look up room flags:
? room
? room2

Some of the options in mobs and objects require you to specify "1" at the end of the default option - but room does not. If it doesnt work by itself, add 1 at the end.

 

To edit an option, simply type the option, then the value. 
Name Training Room
 

Some options do not function this way. Descriptions of any type enter an editor. You should be familiar with the editor, it works the exact same way as the description and history editor. To edit these, simply type in the name of the field.
desc
This opens up the default "Day Description" editor for this room. After you are finished creating the description, use .f to format, and the @ sign to exit the editor. For further help, just open up the editor and type in .h

 

Use this method to create rooms within your VNUM range. It is helpful to have a map already created, as it will give you a logical guide to linking rooms together as you go along. To link two rooms, so that you can walk between them, use the following command:
<direction> dig <VNUM>
The direction is the direction you want players to walk in order to leave. 
Dig tells the MUD to create this link.
VNUM specifies the VNUM of the room you want that exit to lead to.
If the room is not yet created, it will be created by using this command.

 

And that is it for rooms. I will cover Mobs in the next chapter as I have more time to type.

[Lloth]

Objects:

Objects are the items in the game. They can range from equipment to signs, to fountains and extra flavor stuff. By themselves, they are pretty easy. You start by assigning an object vnum in your area to an object. It is important to remember the objects, mobs, rooms, and programs of all types should use the same range of vnums that are assigned to the area. You may see some examples where this is not the case, but do not try to replicate this. 

 

To start building an object, you have to (as I mentioned above) assign a vnum to it. This is done by using the "edit object create <vnum>". 

Let's say we make an item with a vnum of 8600. 
edit object create 8600

You then enter object editor mode. This alters the commands you have available to you, as well as the shortcuts for keystrokes. It is best to familiarize yourself with these changes. 

The first thing you should do is set a name. This name affects how the item is handled by player commands, and identification. This field should NOT contain common short words like "a" "the" or "and". Keywords only. After that, you should decide on the short and long descriptions. 
name malachite bracer green

Short is how the item looks when wielded, or in the inventory.
short A malachite bracer

Long is how the item looks when on the ground.
long A bracer made of a brittle green material has been left here, waiting to be picked up.

Once you know what your item will be named and how it will look to players, you should determine what type it is. The basic types are: armor, socket, container, npccorpse, weapon, and light. Let's make this item a piece of armor.
type armor

After this, we need to determine how our piece of armor will function. What type of armor will it be? Will players be able to pick it up? Will it be rare/unique? Let's make ours a rare bracer that players can pick up. To do this, we will modify the "wear" values of the object:
wear take wrist rare

Once we decide on that, we give it flags. These flags give extra stuff to the object. Does it glow? Is it blessed? Is it burnproof? Can it be removed/dropped/uncursed? To modify this, we use the "extra" value. To see all possible values you can add, use "? extra". Let's make ours glow, blessed, and magic.
extra glow blessed magic

Next, we need to decide how many of these items we will allow. This is done through the "cost" value. This one is very simple. Whatever an item's cost is, that's how many of that item can exist at any one time. Let's make our item limited to 7.
cost 7

Now, we need to determine how heavy it is. Weight is calculated in tenths. So an item with a weight value of 10 on its build menu has an actual weight of 1. So if we want our bracer to weigh 5 pounds, we do the following.
weight 50

Next, we add any affects we want the item to have. This is where the fun comes in. This is where most of the balance consideration takes place. It's generally wise to make your first few items similar to another item that is in the same ballpark of difficulty to get, level, and rarity. We use "addaffect" to accomplish this. Each affect requires its own line.
addaffect hitroll 1
addaffect hp 10
addaffect damroll 2
 

A special note here on containers. Do not make containers that are as good as the backpack or the quiver. Aim for the current standards of cabal bags. Weight is used as a method of balance, to keep any one person from having too many of something. Backpacks and quivers make that hard enough.

[Lloth]

Mobs:

Mobs follow the general guidelines of rooms and objects, but with a lot more fields. Thankfully, these fields are pretty self-explanatory. I will give a brief overview of all of the important ones at once.

name/short/long - same as above
level - mob's level. Don't make it higher than 60. Most mobs shouldn't be higher than 50-55.
align - mob align. 1000 = max good. 0 = neutral. -1000 = max evil. Stay at +/- 750 range, and always use 0 for neutral.
race - mob race. Many of these have hard-coded immunity/resists/vulns.
language - mob default language. Use common on quest mobs. I have a few of these I need to fix after mob languages were changed.
hitroll - mob's hitroll.
hit dice - mob's hp. Uses the format x d y + z (x = number of dice. y = number of sides on the dice. z = static amount added to whatever amount is rolled).
dam dice - mob damage. follows the same format as hit dice.
mana dice - pointless. mobs dont use mana.
gold - this is not literal. assigning 100 gold does not mean the mob carries 100 gold. I do not know the exact formula. Compare to old mobs of similar level/difficulty.
immunity - what the mob is immune to. to see all possibilities, use "? immunity". Quest mobs, gauntlet mobs, and boss mobs should always be immune to summon/charm.
resists - what the mob is resistant to. Same options as immunity.
vuln - what the mob is vulnerable to. Same options as immunity.
affected_by - what flags the mob has, (sanctuary, haste, detect_invis, etc.). Split into affected_by and also_affected_by. View options with "? affect1" and "? affect2".
off - Offensive capabilities (extra_attack, bash, berserk, area_attack, etc.). See options with "? off"

Now the big one...

act - Act values define mob behavior and interaction. These are the most important flags. Split into "act" and "act2". Query possibilities with "? act" and "? act2". The most common ones are listed below.

Sentinel - Mob will not leave whatever room it is in, even after being attacked.
no_wander - Mob will not leave whatever room it is in unless it is attacked.
stay_area - Mob will not chase an attacker out of the area.
warrior - mob will act like a warrior.
thief - mob will act like a thief.
cleric - mob will act like a communer (i.e. steel wall, curse, poison, plague, etc.)
mage - mob will act like a caster. Gives it access to all normal caster spells (i.e. blind, fireball, lightning bolt, etc.)
aggressive - mob will automatically attack players below its level.
too_big - mob cannot be blackjacked, strangled, or animated by the old necro spell.
noncombat - mob will not assist and cannot be attacked by players or mobs.
shopkeep - mob buys/sells things.
stablemaster - mob rents mounts.

[Lloth]

Resets:

Mobs and objects are physically placed in the game by using resets. To create a reset, just go to the room you want them to be in, and use the "reset" command. Typing "reset" by itself gives a short table that explains every possible form of reset. A note - If you are placing an item in the inventory of a mob, the items must have a higher reset than the target mob, with no other mobs/containers in between.