Difference between revisions of "Building"

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(Initial builder page, just quick copy of Kvetch's building tutorials. Thanks to Kvetch. :) Lots of work needed.)
(No difference)

Revision as of 02:33, 10 November 2015

Extremely wip, thanks to Kvetch for the guides


So, I created my own room building guide, hopefully to help new builders as they stumble their way through building on 4D. I'm always glad to help, but I'm not always around, so here you go!

Room editing

This is what you will see when you first redit a room:

-- Room number : [4400]     Room zone: [44]

1) Name         : An unfinished room

2) Description  :

You are in an unfinished room.

3) Room flags   : NOBITS 

4) Sector type  : Inside

5) Exit north   : -1     - Nowhere

6) Exit east    : -1     - Nowhere

7) Exit south   : -1     - Nowhere

8) Exit west    : -1     - Nowhere

9) Exit up      : -1     - Nowhere

A) Exit down    : -1     - Nowhere

B) Descriptions : Extra

C) Descriptions : night description

Not Set.

E) Descriptions : Look under

F) Descriptions : Look behind

G) Descriptions : Look above

H) Smell        :

You smell nothing interesting.

I) Listen       :

You hear nothing interesting.

J) Mine         : Num: -1 Level: -1 Tool: None

R) Descriptions : Quests flagged - NOT SET

S) Script       : Not Set.

Q) Quit

Now we will change these one by one and show you how to do it.

-- Room number : [4400] Room zone: [44]

The room number and room zone can not be changed. This is the room you are editing and the zone it is in – hopefully your zone.

1) Name  : An unfinished room

Let’s change the name of the room. This is what will be at the top of the screen when someone walks into that room. This should be something like the name of the street they are on, what’s most obvious in the hallway they’re in or the special thing about the room they are in. Room 4400 is one of the rooms that’s around the path of the Dragon

Master’s fort (zone 44). So, we’ll change this to:

1) Name  : Dragon Fort Northern Wall

This tells us exactly where it is in the Dragon Fort zone.

2) Description  :

You are in an unfinished room.

This is the actual description of the room. As you see, it starts out with “You are in an unfinished room.” Well, we want to make the room finished. This is where you show the players what they see in their immediate surroundings – whether it be a room or outside area. Remember that small details can be added later. So, you can describe that there is a pine tree here and later go into descriptions of a knot in the tree if you wish – the knot in the tree does not have to be supplied here. If you’re going to make a pine tree object though, you don’t need to describe it in the room description as it will load as an extra object. For our example room, there isn’t much too it as it’s just a path around the Dragon Fort so, we’ll put in this:

The dirt path created by adventurers like you tramping around the outer wall of the fort continues to the east and west. The wall itself is devoid of any hand or foot holds making it impossible to scale for humans, animals or even plant life. Not that there is any plant life around here to speak of as its all been worn away.

Always use /f when you’re finished with your description. This will format it to the screen without the indent (Molly doesn’t like the indent).

3) Room flags  : NOBITS

This is where you get to make your room special by adding flags to it. Is it dark so you need a light source or infravision to see in it? Is it a deathtrap so anyone entering automatically falls to their death? The choices of roomflags in 4D are many and make sure you choose the right one for your room. Here are the choices:

1) DARK                  2) DEATH                
 3) !MOB                  4) INDOORS              
 5) PEACEFUL              6) SOUNDPROOF           
 7) !TRACK                8) !MAGIC               
 9) TUNNEL               10) PRIVATE              
11) GODROOM              12) HOUSE                
13) HCRSH                14) ATRIUM               
15) OLC                  16) *                    
17) VEHICLE              18) !RECALL              
19) ARENA                20) GOOD                 
21) EVIL                 22) HP                   
23) MANA                 24) MOVE                 
25) ROLEPLAY             26) !TELEPORT IN         
27) !TELEPORT OUT        28) !SUMMON IN           
29) !SUMMON OUT          30) WILDERNESS           
31) !VIEW                32) DO_NOT_USE           
33) GOLD DEPOSIT         34) SILVER DEPOSIT       
35) COPPER DEPOSIT       36) IRON DEPOSIT         
37) ANTIMONY DEPOSIT     38) CHROMIUM DEPOSIT     
39) QUARRY               40) COAL MINE            
41) SPRING               42) PASTURE              
43) DRAGONPORT           44) TIN DEPOSIT          
45) PLASTONIUM DEPOSIT   46) BURNING  

The path around Dragon Fort has nothing special to it, so we made no changes.

4) Sector type  : Inside

There are plenty of types of sectors including air (need to be able to fly), space (need a space suit), or even the benign forest or inside. The default is inside. Here is the list of choices you will come across:

0) Inside                1) City                 
 2) Field                 3) Forest               
 4) Hills                 5) Mountains            
 6) Water (Swim)          7) Water (No Swim)      
 8) Underwater            9) Air                  
10) Desert               11) Space                
12) Road                 13) Entrance             
14) Atmosphere           15) Sun                  
16) Black Hole           17) Vehicle(coded)       
18) Swamp                19) Reef                 
20) Tundra               21) Snow                 
22) Ice                  23) Prairie              
24) Badlands             25) Rail    

Since the outside path of the fort is, well, outside, then the first two don’t work (Inside or City), it’s not in water, so any of those don’t work. The best I could come up with at this point of time was “Field” so we’ll enter that.

4) Sector type  : Field

5) Exit north  : -1 - Nowhere

6) Exit east  : -1 - Nowhere

7) Exit south  : -1 - Nowhere

8) Exit west  : -1 - Nowhere

9) Exit up  : -1 - Nowhere

A) Exit down  : -1 - Nowhere

Entries 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A are all exits so we’ll handle them together. I mentioned in the description that the path around the fort continues to the east and west so, I don’t have to worry about 5, 7, 9, A, but I do have to fill in 6 and 8. When you first open up the exit number, you get this table:

1) Exit to  : -1 - Nowhere

2) Description :-

<NONE>

3) Door name  : <NONE>

4) Key  : 0

5) Door flags  : No door

6) Purge exit.

Like the main room, this too has to be filled out as much as you need to. First is the exit to – this is the room vnum that the exit goes to. For example, the east exit of the room we’ve been working on goes to room number 4497, so we end up with this:

1) Exit to  : 4497 - DragonFort Northern Wall

But, that’s not the only part that *has* to be filled out. The second step is filling out a description of what someone sees if they look in that direction. It is useful at this time to look at the room description of the room this exit goes to – what would the players see that could be important. In room 4497 – which really is just a continuation of the path around the dragon fort, except that it’s a corner and there is a large rock out from that corner which is peculiar, so I’ll mention it here as the player should be able to see it. So, we end up with something like this.

2) Description :-

The path continues around the fort and you can see a rock in the distance. Usually, you’re told not to use the word “you” in descriptions, but that can easily be broken here as you *know* the player is looking in that direction so you can refer to them as you. This is what *you* see when *you* look there.

There is no door, keys or door flags for this room so we don’t need to use those. But, in case you need those, you do it this way:

3) Door name  : <NONE>

This is the name of your door – for example if you wanted a secret door with the name trap door, you’d put it here, but know that this name is only one word. So you will never be able to open the trap door, but you can open the trap or the door, but the first word is the word it will use when the player opens it. So if you put in trap door and the player opens door, the player will see that s/he opens the trap.

4) Key  : 0

This is the vnum of the object you have created to be the key for this door. It can seriously be anything and doesn’t even need to look like a key.

5) Door flags  : No door

When you open up this choice, you get these options:

0) No door

1) Closeable door

2) Pickproof

No door is the default that you use when there is no door, just open hallway, open space, etc – but, if you had that you wouldn’t be using this choice. Closeable door is what you would choose if you want the door to be able to open and close – whether it has a lock or not doesn’t matter. Pickproof is if you want it so thieves can not pick the lock on the door, otherwise, they won’t have to find that key you made. Use this sparingly though as picking lock can be one of the useful skills for thieves. A pickproof door should only be in front of very important things like people or objects that shouldn’t be ran into unless they have the key first.

6) Purge exit.

Purge exit is used if you realize the mistake that the western exit was supposed to be to the north. This gets rid of the everything you’ve done in the exit choice.

B) Descriptions : Extra

This is where you put in your extra descriptions (as many as you want) to fill out what the room looks like. This is where you’d put that knot in the tree we discussed earlier (provided you didn’t actually make the tree an object). If I hadn’t had a specific idea for the magical outer wall of the Dragon Fort, I may have used this for someone looking at the wall and let them know that there were hand or foot holds there. I still could, just in case someone looked at the wall to make sure. Or maybe it’s just on the surface that it looks like it doesn’t have hand and foot holds and if you actually look at the wall, you see cracks where you may be able to climb up the wall…

C) Descriptions : night description

Not Set.

Night descriptions are something new to 4D and have been used rarely. These are best used when the lighting would make the room look quite different than it would in the daytime. For example, you have a forest. In the daytime the forest is bright and cheery with squirrels and rabbits hoping around, but at night, once the sun sets, that same forest – even though it doesn’t actually change – could look quite dark and sinister. It’s all in the lighting.

E) Descriptions : Look under

F) Descriptions : Look behind

G) Descriptions : Look above

E, F, and G are all like B, except you are looking under, behind, or above the object. So, let’s say we had that pine tree, using E, I could have the player look under the tree and find something (there is a rabbit burrow in the ground) and that may tell them that they should look in the burrow and maybe they’ll find something. These are used for good places to hide things.

H) Smell  :

You smell nothing interesting.

This is the smell that is in the room. All rooms have some particular smell or other whether it creates it itself (like a kitchen baking items) or whether it’s a strong smell coming from another room (you smell the sweet smell of cookies coming from the west), either way, again you can use *you* because if they type this, you know they are actually smelling for something. This could also be used to go into detail about a smell you have touched on briefly in the room description. For example if you’d said there was a sweet smell in the air, if they typed smell then you could detail about the aroma of cookies coming from the west. This is one of the extra items that Molly wants filled out for a complete zone.

I) Listen  :

You hear nothing interesting.

Like smell, but the player is listening for some clues. Again, every room has a sound whether it’s created in the room, or by things close to the room. Be careful using this to let players know there is a mob nearby as that mob could have been killed. Again, you can use *you* in this as the player is actively listening for sounds. And you can use it to describe a sound in detail that you briefly touched on in the room description. For example, in the room description maybe they heard some birds squawking , in the listen description they could be squawking from the west – or maybe they’re squawking over a kill in the same room. Hrm… maybe that kill can be a clue – or harbor something inside its belly that the birds were squawking over. They do like shiny things.

J) Mine  : Num: -1 Level: -1 Tool: None

I’ve never used this myself and taking a look at it really doesn’t explain it.

R) Descriptions : Quests flagged - NOT SET

This is a new option so that people can now have rooms changed on whether a person has completed a certain quest or not. For example if you have a forest that is evil until the player kills the evil queen then you use this for the description of the good forest once the queen is killed. Please note that now two people in the same room may be looking at different descriptions – one that’s killed the queen with the good description and one that has not, with the bad description. Let’s look at our choices here:

1) Quest Type: 0

This is the type of quest – whether it affects a player or the whole zone. Let’s look at the options:

1) Zone wide quest flag

2) Player only quest flag

A zone wide quest flag would affect the whole zone once the quest is completed. Let’s say to complete a quest, someone has to blow up a dam. They do so and the affect is that the area is flooded. Everyone who then comes into the area sees the area as flooded – because the quest had been done. The Player only quest flag only affects the player – as stated above in the example of the evil forest/evil queen. The one player will see the room differently than the other, because they’ve completed the quest and the other hasn’t.

2) Quest Keywords:

<NONE>

This is the flag that the player has from completing the quest.

3) Room Description:

<NONE>

This is the description the player (or the room if zone quest) will have if they’ve completed the quest.

4) Goto next quest description: <NOT SET>

As you can see, there can be many different descriptions for a multi-layered quest. Say that they have one description for before the quest starts – say, building a death star – their quest is to get product to Build the death star, they succeed in getting metal for the outside (new description as the death star starts being put together). Next quest, get some weapons to make the death star have teeth, they finish that and get a new description as the weapons are being put on, etc, etc, until the final quest and the death star is finished.


S) Script  : Not Set.

This is for the scripts set on the room. Each script is its own vnum.

Q) Quit

Erm… obviously when you’re done editing your room.

Mob editing

I did this for Rooms so thought I should continue for objects. Careful, this is a very long post. Basically I'm breaking down every step it takes to make an object starting right after you type in oedit #

1) Namelist :

These are the words that can activate the object. For example: pile hay – for a pile of hay. That way the player can look at pile or hay to get the description for the pile of hay.

2) S-Desc  :

This is the description that is use when the object is being used. For example let’s use that pile of hay. If someone gives it to someone else, you want them to give “a pile of hay” not “pile hay” so the S-Desc would be “a pile of hay”. Do not capitalize the first word or else it will come out: player A gives A pile of hay to player B. You’d rather have Player A gives a pile of hay to player B.

3) L-Desc  :-

This is the description of the object as it’s lying in a room. Using our pile of hay for example: A pile of hay lies here. You don’t have to go so basic, but you should always use the main words that are in your namelist. We could say: A pile of hay lies upon the loft. But if I did that, I’d probably have the loft as an extra description or an object or part of the namelist of this object.

4) A-Desc  :-

This is the description that’s given as the object is used. And I never use this choice.

5) Type  :

This is the list of things this item can be. The list is quite extensive and is as follows:

0) UNDEFINED             1) light             2) scroll                3) wand                  4) staff                 5) weapon               
 6) <NOT USED>            7) <NOT USED>             treasure              9) armor                10) potion              
 11) worn                 12) other                13) trash                14) trap                 15) container            
16) note                 17) liquid container     18) key                  19) food                 20) money               
 21) pen                  22) boat                 23) fountain             24) throw                25) grenade              
26) bow                  27) sling                28) crossbow             29) bolt                 30) arrow                31) rock                 
32) vehicle              33) vehicle control      34) vehicle exit         35) vehicle window        36) room portal
37) gun                  38) ammo                 39) wings                40) spacesuit            41) aqualung             
42) climbable            43) level 1 poison       44) level 2 poison       45) level 3 poison       
46) level 4 poison       47) level 1 antidote     48) level 2 antidote     49) level 3 antidote     
50) descendable          51) bush portal          52) water portal         53) hole portal          
54) meat                 55) nugget               56) metal detector       57) tree                 
58) bark                 59) anvil                60) hammer               61) grindstone           
62) oil                  63) ore                  64) axe                  65) gem cluster          
66) element              67) shovel         68) wood                 69) machine              70) pickaxe             
71) nut                  72) skin                 73) furniture            74) portal hurdle        75) thermal protection   
76) radio                77) minor focus          78) major focus          79) lightsaber hilt      
80) zone flag            81) locker               82) garotte              83) vial                 84) bankbook             
85) spacebike            86) vehicle2  

6) Extra flags :

Again, an extensive list on what flags can be put on the object:

1) glowing               2) humming               3) unrentable            4) undonateable         
 5) anti-invisible        6) invisible             7) magic                  cursed               
 9) blessed              10) anti-good           11) anti-evil            12) anti-neutral         
13) anti-mage            14) anti-priest      15) anti-thief           16) anti-warrior         
17) unsellable           18) anti-faun         19) anti-centaur         20) anti-elf             
21) anti-dwarf           22) Live Grenade 23) anti-indian          24) anti-gringo          
25) anti-martian         26) anti-spacewolf 27) anti-hunter          28) anti-ranger          
29) anti-gypsy           30) anti-esper           31) melt-on-drop         32) (buried)             
33) player corpse        34) mob corpse     35) artifact             36) unique               
37) unlocateable         38) hidden              39) poison type 1        40) poison type 2        
41) poison type 3        42) poison type 4  43) edible               44) skinable             
45) anti-disarm          46) anti-male           47) anti-female          48) contraceptive        
49) <UNUSED>             50) <UNUSED>      51) tinkered             52) randomized           
53) enhanced             54) modified            55) lightsaber           56) two-handed           
57) <UNUSED>             58) <UNUSED>      59) life-stealing        60) mana-stealing        
61) move-stealing        62) undisplayed    63) extracting-(CODE)    64) shiftable            
65) key-rent             

7) Wear flags  :

Where you want the player to be able to wear an item (if it’s a wearable/wieldable item). This will automatically start out with TAKE flagged so if you want it to be an item in the room that isn’t takeable you have to take the flag off. Any item that has just TAKE on it, can be picked up by any player just as long as they don’t max out on weight. Please note that certain areas are only for Clan items.

  1) TAKE                  2) FINGER                3) NECK                  4) BODY                 
 5) HEAD                  6) LEGS                  7) FEET                   HANDS                
 9) ARMS                 10) SHIELD           11) ABOUT                12) WAIST                
13) WRIST                14) WIELD           15) HOLD                 16) FACE                 
17) EYES                 18) HIPS                 19) EAR                  20) ANKLE                
21) HORNS                22) ANTENNA    23) TAIL                 24) FOCUS                
25) SHOULDER             26) CREST       27) THIGH                28) KNEE                 
29) FLOATING


8)Weight  :

The weight of an item. There is nothing that weighs less than 1.

9) Cost  :

This would be the cost of the item if it was sold in a store.

A) Cost/Day  :

This would be the cost per day for the player to keep the item. Most items have 0 cost. B) Timer  : -1

This would be how long the item exists in mud time after it is picked up. Usually only used on major items or season items. Most items would have a timer of -1 which is indefinite.

C) Values  : 0 0 0 0 0 0

The C values change depending on the TYPE of item it is.

D) Menu --->  : Applies

This is any bonuses or negatives you want to apply to the item. When you first enter this screen you will see this:

1) None.
 2) None.
 3) None.
 4) None.
 5) None.
 6) None.

That is for the 6 stats you want to apply bonus/negs to. Right now there are none. When you hit 1 for the first state to apply, you enter this screen:

0) Nothing               1) Strength            2) Dexterity             3) Intelligence         
 4) Wisdom                5) Constitution   6) Charisma              7) Health-regen         
  Move-regen            9) Age              10) Weight               11) Height               
12) Maxmana              13) Maxhit       14) Maxmove              15) Mana-regen           
16) Experience           17) Armor         18) Hitroll              19) Damroll              
20) Paralyze Defence     21) Rod Defence         22) Petrify Defence      23) Breath Defence       
24) Spell Defence        25) Race                 26) Speed                27) Coolness             
28) Tunnel-Speed         29) Tunnel-Bonus  30) Tunnel-Stealth       31) Tunnel-Protection  

So you choose which of those stats you want to apply a bonus/neg to. Once you choose one, you get the basic prompt of: Modifier : which is where you would enter your number bonus (1) or negative (-1). Please follow Molly’s guidelines for appropriate bonus and negatives and the cost values of such at this link: http://4dimensions.org/node/4DEquipguide

E) Menu --->  : Extra Desc

This is where you can actually describe the item itself and anything about the item that someone would find interesting and want to look at farther. The first screen you see is this:

1) Keyword: <NONE>

Like the namelist of the object itself, your keyword is the word used to look at the object. For our pile of hay, you would again use pile hay as the keywords

2) Description:

This is the actually description of the keyword item. For our pile of hay example, I have this: This pile of hay has been sitting here for a long time. So long, it's hard to say it's really a pile, but it isn't flat onto the ground. 3) Goto next description: <Not set> This is in case I have something else I want to describe about this object. Like maybe I’d said there was a green leaf in the pile of hay. Well then I’d go to the next description and start all over with the keywords green leaf and enter that description

0) Quit

This is for once you’re done with all of your extra descriptions.

F) Innate  :

Innates are any skill/spell in the game that the object gives to the player that holds/wields it. They player will always have that ability until they no longer hold/wield the object. This is a very intense list and because of the strength of the abilities, you need to have an IMP set it:

0) UNDEFINED             1) armor                 2) teleport              3) bless                 4) blindness             
5) burning hands         6) call lightning        7) charm                  chill touch           9) clone                
10) colour spray         11) control weather      12) create food          13) create water         14) cure blind           
15) cure critic          16) cure light           17) curse 18) detect alignment     19) detect invisibility  
20) detect magic         21) detect poison        22) dispel evil          23) earthquake           
24) enchant weapon       25) energy drain         26) fireball             27) harm                 28) heal                 
29) invisibility         30) lightning bolt       31) locate object        32) magic missile        33) poison               
34) protection from evil 35) remove curse         36) sanctuary            37) shocking grasp       38) sleep                
39) strength             40) summon               41) suffocate            42) word of recall       43) antidote 1           
44) sense life           45) animate dead         46) dispel good          47) group armor          48) group heal           
49) group recall         50) infravision          51) waterwalk            52) gate                 53) minor identify       
54) remove alignment     55) locate person        56) poison 2             57) poison 3             58) poison 4             
59) antidote 2           60) antidote 3           61) evil eye             62) absolve              63) chain lightning      
64) recharge             65) meteor shower        66) stoneskin            67) steelskin            68) hold person          
69) paralyze             70) holy word            71) holy shout           72) haste                73) shield               
74) group shield         75) acid arrow           76) flame arrow          77) cone of cold         78) knock
 79) protection from fire 80) protection from cold 81) earth elemental      82) water elemental      
83) air elemental        84) fire elemental       85) fire shield          86) life transfer        87) mana transfer 
88) protection from good 89) mind fire            90) mind electricity     91) mind water           92) mind ice             
93) ice shield           94) thorn shield         95) mana shield          96) mirror shield        97) holy shield          
98) static shield        99) fortify mind         100) fortify body         101) sweet dreams         102) divine mind          
103) numb mind            104) slowness             105) flight               106) battle rage          107) embue armor          
108) magic bubble         109) psi panic            110) nightmare            111) vitalize             
112) dispel sanctuary     113) forsee               114) mana blast           115) confuse             
116) corrupt armor        117) weaken               118) soulsmash            119) demonshriek          120) lifesuck             
121) burning skull        122) heart squeeze        123) facemelt             124) electric blast       125) inferno              
126) water to wine        127) midas touch          128) polymorph            129) darkness             131) backstab             
132) bash                 133) hide                 134) kick                 135) pick lock            136) flank               
 137) rescue               138) sneak                139) steal                140) track                141) mount                
142) riding               143) tame                 144) snare                145) throw                146) bow                  
147) sling                148) crossbow             149) dual                 150) encircle             151) blackjack            
152) advanced melee       153) firearm              154) push                 155) scan                 156) brew                 
157) scribe               158) tinker               159) poison weapon        160) retreat              161) filet                
162) disarm               163) forage               164) trap aware           165) parry                166) mounted combat       
167) trample              168) joust                169) grapple              170) drunk                171) hand-to-hand         
172) melee                173) master melee         174) hamstring            175) short blade          176) dodge                
177) phase                178) charge               179) grip                 180) face                 181) focus                
182) martial arts         183) slip                 184) manipulate           185) holy strength        186) berserk              
187) meditate             188) woodsing             189) hyperactivity        190) true strike          191) strangle             
192) fortify              193) manifest             194) scalp                195) brace                196) behead               
197) bladedance           198) longarm              199) cleave               200) smash                201) identify             
202) fire breath          203) gas breath           204) frost breath         205) acid breath          
206) lightning breath     207) burn                 208) freeze               209) acid                 210) resist fire          
211) resist cold          212) resist electricity   213) wall of fire         214) wall of force        215) dispel bubble        
216) slit                 217) thrust               218) bleed                219) embowel              293) Silenced             
294) Imm Freeze           295) Malactation          299) OUTCAST   

G) Smell Desc  :

This is what the object smells like: ie: it smells like moldy hay.

H) Taste Desc  :

This is what the object tastes like, should someone try to taste it: ie: No way you're tasting that. Well, ok, it tastes like moldy hay.

I) Feel Desc  :

This is what the object feels like: ie: It feels as if it's been in the elements for quite a while. And by elements we do mean rain, sun, rain, etc.

  • Please note that you can put in more details in smell/taste/feel to hide clues to your quest or to your zone.*

J) Material  : base-material

This is the base material that the object is made out of. This is not used very often, but can be useful if you want your item to be made out of something specific. The list of materials we have are:

1) glass                 2) iron                  3) gold          4) silver                5) copper                6) zinc                 
 7) cromium                tungsten              9) carbon               10) coal                 11) basalt              
 12) silica               13) diamond              14) plastic              15) tin                  16) leather              17) hair                 
18) wool                 19) wood                 20) magic-wood

M) Min Level  : 0

This is the minimum level someone has to be to use that object. As far as I know this isn’t usually used and off the top of my head can’t think of an object that uses it.

S) Script  : Not Set.

This is so you can put scripts on your objects so they can do special things.

Q) Quit

For when you are done.