Advanced Building: Rooms

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To see a list of messages that you can change for your room, go into the room and type @messages here. For a list of messages on an exit, type @messages exit-name.

Arrival and Departure Messages

Entrances and exits are normally quiet. When a player goes through a door, the door simply plops the player out the other side. In some cases, you’ll want an entrance to say something, either to the player or to the other players in the room that the player is leaving or entering. Here are the messages for exits (which, on the other side, are entrances):

leave What the player sees when he leaves the room.

oleave What the other players see when the player leaves.

arrive What the player sees when he enters the room.

oarrive What the other players see when the player enters.

For example, I might want to set the leave and arrive messages on the fire (that leads to the chimney of Balder’s Hall) as:

@leave fire is "No fear of getting burned, eh, %n?

You set the "leave" message of fireplace (#83).

@arrive fire is "The flame burns your butt as you hang in %l.

You set the "arrive" message of fireplace (#83).

go fire

No fear of getting burned, eh, Balder?

Balder's Chimney

The stone chimney is smokey and warm, and a bit cramped for anyone of normal size. Dirty elfs skitter about as they see you coming.

The flame burns your butt as you hang in Balder's Chimney.

And, so that people in the room see what’s going on, I might:

@oleave fire is "takes leave of %p senses and crawls into the burning fire.

You set the "oleave" message of fireplace (#83).

@oarrive fire is "climbs up out of the fire, smoke rising from %p eyebrows.

You set the "oarrive" message of fireplace (#83).

Note that I did not use “%N”. The oleave and oarrive messages automatically put the player’s name in front of the message, whether you want it or not, so you’ll have to want it. When I go up the chimney, the people in Balder’s Hall see:

Balder takes leave of his senses and crawls into the burning fire.

If there’s already someone in the chimney, they see:

Balder climbs up out of the fire, smoke rising from his eyebrows.

Note the use of “%p” for possessive pronoun. This takes care of whether or not the player using the exit is a him, a her, or an it.

Who Location

When people are in your room, your room is listed whenever anyone does @who. How it appears depends on the rooms who_location message. Normally, it is simply “%T”, and that’s recommended. But you can change it:

@who

Player name Connected Idle time Location

Balder (#78) 11 minutes 0 seconds Balder's Hall

Total: 1 player, who has been active recently.

@who_location here is "By the fire in %t.

You set the "who_location" message of Balder's Hall (#81).

@who

Player name Connected Idle time Location

Balder (#78) 11 minutes 0 seconds By the fire in Balder's Hall.

Total: 1 player, who has been active recently.

Free Home and Residents

Normally, the rooms you create will allow anyone to make it their home.1 You can lock people out by setting the property free_home to 0. (In computer talk, ‘zero’ is often used for no or false. ‘One’ is used for yes or true.) If you have free_home set to 0, the @resident verb will allow specific players to use your room as their home.

@set here.free_home to 0

@resident Carol, Bob, Ted, Alice

Now, the players Carol, Bob, Ted, and Alice can set your current location as their home. You can only do set properties and residents for rooms that you own.

Locking Your Doors

You can restrict access to your room to certain people, or restrict specific people from your room. For example,

@lock here with me

will make it so that only you can get into your room.

@lock here with !capvideo && !thor

will lock both CapVideo and Thor out of your room.

@Lock here with me || (bible && cross)

will lock everyone out except you or someone carrying your bible and your cross. See page 22 for more information about making keys to lock your rooms up with. Use

@unlock here

to unlock a room so that anyone can get in. @Unlock erases your key requirements, so if you want to remember them, write them down.

  1. Objects
  2. Advanced Building
  3. Making Children