2. Building Rooms

Room Commands

dig <direction>

Creates a new room and creates an exit leading from the current room to the new room in the specified direction. It also creates an exit heading from the new room to the current room in the oppoosite direction.

dig <direction> <room vnum>

Creates an exit leading from the current room in the given direction to the given room and a corresponding exit back from the given room to the current room.

redit

Bring up the redit screen for the room you're currently in.

redit <room vnum>

Bring up the redit screen for the room that you've specified by its vnum.

redit list

List all the rooms in the zone you are currently building.

redit list <zone num>

List all the rooms in the given zone.

redit list <start vnum> <end vnum>

List all the rooms between the start and end vnums given.

redit save

Saves all room changes in your zone to the mud database.

redit save <zone num>

Saves all room changes in the zone number specified.

Sample Redit Screen

-- Room number : [2600]         Room zone: [26]
1) Name           : Atop the Structure
2) Description    :
Standing on top of the tall structure you can see for countless kilometres in
every direction.  To both the south and the west, narrow wooden bridges lead
from the roof you are standing on back down into the tops of the trees.  You
cannot discern exactly where either bridge leads.    
3) Room flags     : NOBITS 
4) Sector type    : City
5) Exit north     :    -1   6) Exit south     : 2610
7) Exit east      :    -1   8) Exit west      : 2601
9) Exit up        :    -1   A) Exit down      : 2487
B) Exit northeast :    -1   C) Exit northwest : -1
D) Exit southeast :    -1   E) Exit southwest : -1
F) Extra descriptions menu
S) Script         : Not Set.
Q) Quit

Building Your First Room With redit

redit is the command that is used to edit rooms.

You should have been given a zone number to work on when you first were made a builder. This means that you can edit rooms, objects, mobs, triggers and shops XX00 through XX99 where XX is your zone number. These numbers are referred throughout this and other texts as the virtual numbers for rooms, mobs, etc.

Type redit XX00 and you'll be on your way to creating your first room.

First off, your room will need a name. Type 1 at the prompt and type in a name for the room. Then hit enter. You'll be brought back to the main redit screen, notice that the name of the room has been changed to display your new room name.

Next off your room will need a description. Descriptions are entered using Valarin's standard text editor. Type in 2 at the prompt and hit enter. The current text of the description will be displayed "You are in an unfinished room." You'll want to get rid of this before you start typing. Type in /d1 to delete the first line of the description. Now type in your description, hitting enter at the end of each line you type. Once the description is complete, type /f to format it and /l to see a listing of what you typed. If everything is to your liking type /s to save the description and you'll be returned to the redit main screen.

To get further help on using the text editor, type /h on a new line.

Next up, the room flags. Room flags allow you to add special functionality to your room. Type 3 and enter to get to the room flags menu. You can add flags by typing their number and hitting enter (flags can only be added one at a time), typing a flag's number a second time removes the flag. The flags you can set are:

1    DARK           Room is dark.
2    DEATH          Room is a death trap; char 'dies' (no xp lost).
3    !MOB           MOBs (monsters) cannot enter room.
4    INDOORS        Room is indoors.
5    PEACEFUL       Room is peaceful (violence not allowed).
6    SOUNDPROOF     Shouts, gossips, etc. will not be heard in room.
7    !TRACK         "track" will never find a path through this room.
8    !MAGIC         All magic attempted in this room will fail.
9    TUNNEL         Only one person allowed in room at a time.
10   PRIVATE        Cannot teleport in or GOTO if two people here.
11   GODROOM        LVL_GOD and above only allowed.
12   HOUSE          Reserved for internal use.  Do not set. 
13   HCRASH         Reserved for internal use.  Do not set. 
14   ATRIUM         Reserved for internal use.  Do not set.      
15   OLC            Reserved for internal use.  Do not set. 
16   BFS_MARK       Reserved for internal use.  Do not set.
17   DISEMBARK      Room is where people can disembark from boats.

Once you've finished adding and removing flags, type 0 and enter to leave the flags menu.

Now you have to set the sector of the room. The sector is a description of the kind of room that this is. You must pick one type of sector for your room from the following choices.

0    INSIDE         Indoors - typically small number of move points needed.
1    CITY           The streets of a city.
2    FIELD          An open field.
3    FOREST         A dense forest.
4    HILLS          Low foothills.
5    MOUNTAIN       Steep mountain regions.
6    WATER_SWIM     Water (swimmable).
7    WATER_NOSWIM   Unswimmable water - boat required for passage.
8    UNDERWATER     Underwater.  *** NOT IMPLEMENTED DON'T USE***
9    FLYING         Wheee!       *** NOT IMPLEMENTED DON'T USE***

For now we'll ignore the exits and script (exits are coming up right away, scripts will be dealt with in their own dedicated section)

So that leaves us with one more thing to look at, the extra descriptions menu. This menu allow you to add extra descriptions that are displayed when the player types in certain words. The menu is not essential for redit, however I will mention some stuff about it because it does allow you to add layers to your room, beyond the main room description. First off, the menu looks like this:

1) Keyword: <NONE>
2) Description:
<NONE>
3) Goto next description: <NOT SET>

Feel free to add an extra description or two to your room (perhaps a window that the player can see out of) but, again, its not all that vital for rooms to have extra descriptions (not the case, however, for objects, see below). If your room is to have an extra description it must be referred to in the room's description otherwise the player won't know that the extra description exists.

Creating Your Second Room With Dig

Now, the introduction to the builder's best friend, the dig command. The dig command allows you to automatically create rooms that are preconnected for your convenience. There are two ways to use the dig command and we will look at them both.

First you can use the dig command to build new rooms. Type dig s and hit enter. You should find yourself in a new room, XX01. Type redit XX01 and you should see, in the redit menu that there is an exit to the north from this room back to XX00. If you were to look at the redit screen for XX00, you would see that there is an exit, to the south, to room XX01. Feel free to edit this second room.

Now, on to the second use of dig. You can use dig to connect two rooms that already exist. From XX01, type dig e XX00 and hit enter. There should now be exits connecting east from XX01 into XX00 and west from XX00 to XX01.

Creating And Managing Exits

Now we'll look at the creation of exits without using the dig command. Options 5 through E of the redit screen allow you to edit exits in 10 different directions.

The exit menu looks like this:

1) Exit to     : 0
2) Description :-
<NONE>
3) Door name   : <NONE>
4) Key         : 0
5) Door flags  : No door
6) Purge exit.

Option 1 allows you to define the room number that this exit leads to, this room must already exist for this to work.

The second option is a short description of the room beyond the exit, for example, looking east from one room you may see a large room through the exit. This description should always be set. This is important if you use dig a lot, you'll have to go in and set exit descriptions for the exits you created using dig, because they aren't set automatically.

The third option allows you, if you choose to make this exit a door, to give the door a name that the player will use when trying to open, close, etc. the door.

The Key allows you to specify which object (see objects below) unlocks this door if it is a lockable door.

There are several types of doors, and you can choose which type you want, if you want this exit to be a door, through option 5. The different door flags are as follows:

0) No door                This exit has no door
1) Closeable door         This exit has a closable, lockable door
2) Pickproof              This door's lock cannot be picked
3) Secret                 This door will not be displayed to the user
4) Pickproof and Secret   This door is both pickproof and secret

The sixth option allows you to remove the exit if you no longer want it around.

To give exits a try, add an exit, north from XX00 to 1204 (the main room of the immortal complex). Give it a door, remember to set the door flags and to give the door a name. Leave redit and give the door a try, notice that if you go through the door you cannot go back (there is no door in 1204 leading back to XX00). Finally purge the exit to get rid of it. Note that in actual building you should put doors in both rooms the exit connects to ensure that the game feels right. In other words, if you want to create a door, you'll have to actually create two, one on each side of the exit.

Wrapping Up redit And Introducing olc

You've probably noticed that whenever you leave redit after you've made changes it asks you if you want to save, hopefully you've been typing in y to these questions. This saving, however, does not commit your work to the database for the MUD. If you type olc and hit enter, you will notice that it lists your rooms as not being saved to the database. To commit your work to the database you must type redit save XX and hit enter. If you do not do this, you run the risk of losing all the work you've done if the MUD crashes before your work could be automatically saved (which only happens when the MUD is shut down for some reason).

olc will always list unsaved changes for any part of the MUD, rooms, objects, mobs, etc. It is advisable to use olc before you leave the MUD to ensure that all of your changes have been saved.