Room Guidelines

Room Building Rules and Guidelines

'''See help BUILD-ABroom on test port for additional details

To create a new room, type redit create <new#>

To edit a pre-existing room, type redit <roomkey>

Editing

Name

The name is simply a short, abbreviated description of what the room is.

  • The room name should never contain colors or special characters, and can be up to 80 characters in length.

Description

The room description is what makes the room into a place in a player's mind, rather than just something to move through to get to more mobs to kill. Read carefully the section on aesthetics.

  • The room's main description must be in text format, and should be at least four formatted lines in length. The base of a room's description should be dark white text only.

Sector

The room sector affects movement rate through the room, what type of movement may be made through the room, and other special room attributes.

Heal/Mana Rates

Most rooms should be left at the default of 100%, though you can vary this to add depth to your area.

  • Heal/Mana rates should NEVER be greater than 120 or less than -120.
  • Less than 20% of an area's rooms should have rates greater than 110 or less than 80

Owner

This should never be used, and is reserved for Manor rooms.

Flags

The various room flags give an area depth, though some should not be used in a normal game area. The flags are toggles, so setting a flag a second time will clear it.

  • combatmaze: Should never be used for area building
  • nomob:
The nomob flag prevents mobs from wandering into the room. This *only* prevents mobs from wandering in. Mobs can still be reset in this room, but if they leave the room for any reason (being pushed, normal wandering, mprog, etc) they cannot re-enter the room without being summoned or through an mprog. This is a common method of mob movement control.
  • indoors:
The indoors flag works in conjunction with two other flags. The first is the outdoors flag that can be put on mobs, and the second is the inside sector that can be put on rooms.
When a room is flagged indoors, a mob with an outdoors flag on it cannot enter the room. This provides a fairly easy method of mob movement control when the mob is naturally an outdoors creature (i.e. rabbit, horse, chicken, etc).
When a room is flagged indoors and the sector is inside, weather messages are suppressed. Use of the 'weather' command fails for characters level 201 or below.
The indoors flag helps with the thief skill 'unlawful entry'.
  • safe: The safe flag on a room renders combat impossible within that room.This includes all types of combat - plaver vs. mob, player vs. player, and combatmaze. It also makes it impossible to scry into the room.
  • norecall: Players are not able to recall from this room.
  • prison: The prison flag prevents players from using a portal to get in or out of the room. It also prevents reunion. It does not prevent recall, word of recall, or the home command, and will not prevent the thief skill unlawful entry. Chaos portals cannot target prison flagged rooms.
  • nowhere: 'where' command will not return the location of mobs/players in this room.
  • pk: The pk room flag allows players who are able to pkill.
- This flag should not be overused, as it can discourage many players from entering an area.
- This flag should be used sparingly in conjunction with norecall and prison room flags.
- This flag should not be used in conjunction with a safe flag.
  • clanroom: Should never be used for area building
  • nohunger:
The nohunger flag will halt the hunger and thirst process on a player, granting them relief from the hunger and thirst messages. The player will retain their current hunger/thirst meters when they enter the room, however. This means that if they are hungry when they enter the room, they will not see the messages, but they will heal as slowly as they would if they were not in the room.
This flag should be used *very* sparingly, if at all, in any game area.
  • nosummon: The nosummon flag will prevent any transportation spells from targetting the room.
You cannot doorway, gate, nexus, etc. into a nosummon room, and chaos portals will not target a room with the nosummon flag on it. Nosummon will not prevent the thief skill unlawful entry (see the indoors room flag for more information).
  • noexplore:
This flag prevents the room from being counted towards 'explored %' of the area or MUD. In some cases, rooms are created in areas that players are not meant to go, or have no means of getting to. These should be flagged noexplore. Rooms that are only accessible during goal completion and unavailable afterwards should also have this flag. See help explored
This flag should NOT be used on rooms that only certain classes or races can get to.
  • silentspell
The Silentspell Room flag prevents the output messages of all 'beneficial' spells to any player in the room. Typically used in rooms in epic areas where players regenerate or other such rooms.
This flag should never be used in a normal game area.
  • clanmaze:
The clanmaze flag sets the room as a 'clanmaze' room, subject to the limits and restrictions of clan mazes and raiding.
This flag should never be used in a normal game area.
  • noquaff:
The noquaff flag prevents all spells from being cast from an object in a room. This restriction includes spells obtained by eating pills, quaffing potions, reciting scrolls, brandishing staves and using wands.
Use of pills/potions is completely blocked, with messages similar to "You cannot quaff magical items in this room.".
This flag should never be used in a normal game area.
  • nomagic:
The nomagic flag prevents all spells from being cast in that room. This restriction includes spells obtained by eating, pills, quaffing potions, reciting scrolls, brandishing staves and using wands.
If an item is consumed (pill/potion/etc), it will be used, but the spells will fail with the message "a powerful force quenches your magic".
This flag should never be used in a normal game area.
  • nomap: Minimap is not displayed. Attempts to display the map return nothing.
  • noweather: Weather messages are suppressed, including moons information. Use of the 'weather' command is also blocked for characters level 201 or lower.
  • outdoors: If a room is defined as having an indoor type sector, this makes the room act like an outdoor room - allowing weather messages, etc.
  • notrap:
  • nomist: Use of mist form to pass through this room is blocked.
  • noport:
  • quiet:
  • beacon: If the area flag 'nobeacon' is set, this allows a beacon to be used in this room.
  • nobeacon: If the area flag 'beacon' is set, this blocks use of a beacon in this room.
  • nodrop: Items cannot be dropped in this room.
  • forge: Should never be used for area building
  • openhall: Should never be used for area building
  • norndportals:
  • quitrecall: If a player quits in this room, they are automatically sent to recall.
  • public: Should never be used for area building

Min/Max Levels:

These should be used sparingly, and completely block access. The default of 0 for both

Brightness

To see in a room without magical assistance, a room needs a total light value of zero or higher. Most rooms will have a light value of 0 (or -1 if the room had a 'dark' room flag in V2). Each light source in the room (objects with type light, campfire, player's lights) increases the light value by 1. Rooms flagged outdoors have light value decreased by one at night. Special objects/spells may change the light value as well.

  • Brightness defaults to '1' on new rooms.
  • Brightness levels of -1 should be used sparingly in areas for low-level/tier characters.
  • See Brightness for more information on how this affects players.

Color/GMCP Color

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Maxchars

The maximum number of characters (mob or player) that are allowed to enter the room at one time.

To be checked: Can mobprogs override this limit?

Resets

This defines what repops in a room. See Resets for information and restrictions on editing room resets.

Exits

This defines exits (standard and custom) from this room to other rooms. See Exits for information and restrictions on editing exits.

Mapexits

A method of manipulating the mini-map. When a mapexit is defined for a given direction, the minimap will display as if the exit is pointing to a different room than it really is. For example: A real exit may be defined east to test-22, but a mapexit can be defined to show the map as leading east to Aylor-0.

Descs

Extra descriptions are those that appear when a player looks at the keyword. The keyword is usually a word that appears in the room description or is an object in the room.

Extra descriptions are handy for when you want to add details to a room that wouldn't necessarily go into the room description or obj long desc. If you have a fishbowl in the room description, you might add an extra description of fishbowl and describe the contents therein.

RoomProgs

This is where room triggers to execute mob programs are defined.