View Single Post
Old 10-31-2002, 05:47 PM   #20
Iluvatar
Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Mississippi USA
Posts: 142
Iluvatar is on a distinguished road
I define the theme in my head, do the map on graph to determine how large a zone is needed to accomplish the goal of my theme then create and connect the rooms. After that, I start filling in the redits adding or subtracting from the map to make the area flow consistently. I choose 10 rooms at a time to completely finish before I progress to the next ten and strongly recommend that to any builder. I found out the hard way that doing 100 and having to go back and do exit descrips or extra descrips is really a pain in the arse and bores most to tears.

For the scripts and coding to support the area, I rely on experts to design around my stated desired effects. I'm way too old a dog to learn new tricks like coding or scripts though I do know how they work and can read both fairly easily. This stuff should be a team effort anyways so it all works out good and to the betterment of the Mu*.

So far, my zones average short snips of 25 or so rooms to sets of close to 1k and can take anywhere from a week to 2 years to get to playable. I do get team mates to help me with the big ones though, probably cause I'm an HImp but they do wonderful jobs and welcome to share in it.

In my experience, a zone is NEVER truly done and just gets to a point of playability by mortals. Once it's proofed and playable, it should get implemented and then fine-tuned to the current state-of-the-art existing in your code. An example: We've recently incorporated stay_terrain for mobs into the world and that tremendously affects how !mob should be used. Mobs with no pockets shouldn't carry gold. Mobs with no hands shouldn't wield weapons. Each time these concepts are adopted, we have over 6k mobs to adjust and modify not to mention the redits.

Overall, I guess build the way you are comfortable to a set minimum standard and try and improve on that standard as much as you can. Actually CARE about what you do and how it comes across to the mortals you're building it for. Once you've proven you meet the standard, nobody should have to look over your shoulder except as a team interaction or zone interaction thing. Your zone when finally "finished" is just "playable" and I expect you will modify and improve further as the capability increases or you have reread for the 50th time and decide it just doesn't flow right.
Iluvatar is offline   Reply With Quote