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Old 11-12-2004, 05:59 PM   #58
Molly
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Sweden
Home MUD: 4 Dimensions
Posts: 574
Molly will become famous soon enoughMolly will become famous soon enough
Kariyana:  Nov. 11 2004,22:11
Umm… yes, there is.

True enough building is a time-consuming and often tedious task. But there are several things that Muds can implement to make the life of the Builder a bit easier. Things like buildwalk, which creates a new room with two-way exits as you walk in one direction, or the ability to copy rooms, mobs and objects. Or the option to edit your zone directly in the file, which saves a lot of time.

But this thread isn’t mainly about saving time, in fact most of the ‘tricks and traps’ we use to make our zones more interesting, challenging and multi-faceted just add to the time it takes to create a zone. And many of those tricks are things that you only learn after you’ve been building for quite some time. The majority of all Builders, (the ones who never finish more than one zone), never even get to that stage. This is what this thread is about, to give some pointers and ideas to inexperienced Builders, to help them make better zones.

I have watched a lot of new Builders over the years, and in general their first zone is never up to their full potential. They may be very talented and creative, have lots of fresh ideas and write excellent descriptions, but usually they are not fully aware of all the tools that are available, and how to use them.

Things like listen/smell/taste descs, or descs for look behind/under/above things don’t even exist in most muds, they have to be implemented by the coder and then the Builders have to be instructed when and how to use them. Few new builder know how to create a truly invisible object (whether you do it using the ‘colour code trick’ or by using a !display flag). Stay_sector is another useful flag that keeps the mobs in their place, so that fish don’t walk on dry land for instance, but that usually has to be implemented too. If the Builders and the Coders don’t work closely together and listen to each other’s ideas, you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities in creating good zones.

Most Muds are very ‘two-dimensional’, and few Builders think about working in three dimensions, except for the occasional tower zone. But if you for instance create a toilet facility in a medieval castle, in the form of an oriel with a hole in the floor, I like the water in the mote directly under that hole to be exceptionally muddy and foul-smelling. And if the room desc tells you that there is a precipice to the north of you, with the opportunities do go either north or down, I like to see going north make you fall to the bottom of the ravine and die on the spot. Whereas going down might result in a message like ‘You start to descend the cliff face, but slip and fall halfway’ and the loss of a third of your hitpoints. And the third option, ‘descend cliff’, would land you safely on the bottom.

This of course has to be done with scripts. And almost all new Builders have problems with scripts. They usually don’t even realise how much can be done with a script; for instance that it can keep you from taking an object, even if it has a TAKE flag, or delay your entrance to a new room while some messages are run.

I have a nice example of a 3-dimensional design, using scripts and climb objects, but since this post is already long enough, I’ll save it for my next post.
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