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Building Conventions for Reality Fault
For more details than are covered here, we recommend you take a
glance at the excellent
"mink" docs. While they are not specific to Reality Fault, there is
a great deal of clearly written and very useful information there. Also,
should the explanations here be confusing, perhaps there the different
style of writing will offer you clearer explanations.
- Getting Lost in a Realm
- It's easy for people to accidentally get lost in a
realm. Thus, to help your players, we ask you to please set up
all your rooms' with an 'out' included in their exits. That way,
if someone who is lost simply types 'out' repeatedly, they'll
eventually end up in the train station, which is an easily
recognizable place.
- Obvious Exits
- We have a bit of code in Reality Fault that will allow you to
show all your obvious exits in the rooms you build. If you want
an exit to be dark, you can set it so, but we ask that folks use
the code so that every other exit will show. All you have to do,
in every room you create, is type the following:
@success here=@$Obvious_Exits
Here is an example.
If you were in the OOC Club Room with no Obvious Exits code in
place, and you typed
look
you would see the following:
Club Room
This is a comfortably cozy room. Large overstuffed armchairs
and recliners are scattered around the room in such a fashion
as to allow small clusters of folks to chat together. A fire
crackles warmly in the fireplace. The decorations on the walls
bring back pleasant memories. The west door leads to the Meeting
Room, and the southern door leads out to the train platform.
Contents:
NickNack Board
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If you were putting the obvious exits code into the OOC Club
Room you'd type
@success here=@$Obvious_Exits
If you then typed
look
you would see the following
Club Room
This is a comfortably cozy room. Large overstuffed armchairs
and recliners are scattered around the room in such a fashion
as to allow small clusters of folks to chat together. A fire
crackles warmly in the fireplace. The decorations on the walls
bring back pleasant memories. The west door leads to the Meeting
Room, and the southern door leads out to the train platform.
Obvious Exits:
The Smoky Back Room <smoky> Train Station <out>
Meeting Room <mee>
Contents:
NickNack Board
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- Naming Exits
- We would like exit names to give a bit of information as to
where the exit goes. The name you want to have show up in the
room is the first one you list (i.e. Portal into Arcana Tower
<pat>), followed by a semi-colon, then the shortened
exit name (i.e. pat).
Any further shortened versions of the exit name that you
want to have work for the exit should follow, all separated
by semi-colons. If you put any spaces in, those will be
required to be typed to use the exit. Thus if you make
the exit's name be
pa t
the person using that exit must type that word exactly, space
and all.
An example: let's say you want to name your exit for the
building it is in, and you'd rather it not have only the
unexciting name of "out." You can do the following
@name [exit database
reference number]=Portal into Arcana Tower
<pat>;pat;port;portal;out
The name that will show up to someone in the room that exit
is in, is
Portal into Arcana Tower
<pat>
but the out command will also still work, as will
pat, port, portal, or even Portal into Arcana Tower
<pat>.
- Exit names
- We ask that all 'named' exits (i.e. not directional ones,
or standards like 'up' or 'look' or 'down') have a minimum of
3 letters in their names. Doing so means people can depend on
the basic directions to work across all realms. It also means
we'll run out of two or three letter acronyms much more slowly,
since instead of 676 possibilities (the number of two letter
acronym choices available), we'll have 17576 possibilities
(the number of three letter acronym choices available).
- Coding exits
- We ask that you fill out all the codeable information for
exits, namely @desc, @succ, @osucc, @fail, @ofail,
and @odrop.
If you're not sure whether or not you've gotten them all, you
can type @check in the room and it will tell you what
is missing. If it helps any, some folks here find it helpful to
create a doc file on their own computer which contains all the
various types of messages, then simply cut and paste the relevant
settings to Reality Fault, to prevent missing any of them.
@succ |
the message seen by the user in the room where the
exit is successfully used, or the action is successfully
triggered |
The user could see:
You step through the glowing portal back into Arcana
Tower. |
@osucc |
the message seen by other people in the room where the
exit is successfully used, or the action is successfully
triggered |
The other people in the exit-action's room could
see:
Kern steps through the glowing portal back
into Arcana Tower. |
@fail |
the message seen by the user in the room where
the exit is unsuccessfully used, or the action is
unsuccessfully triggered |
You could see:
You try to step through the glowing portal back
into Arcana Tower, but it collapses and closes before
you can do so. |
@ofail |
the message seen by other people in the room where
the exit is unsuccessfully used, or the action is
unsuccessfully triggered |
The other people in the exit-action's room could see:
Kern tries to step through the glowing portal back
into Arcana Tower, but it collapses and closes before
he can do so. |
@odrop |
the message seen by other people in the destination
room |
The other people in the destination room could see:
Kern has just arrived here in Arcana Tower,
stepping in through the glowing portal from another
place. |
- OOC / IC information
- We ask that you try to keep OOC information out of IC
descriptions. However, since we understand that it's sometimes
extremely helpful (i.e. a URL to a picture of a character, or
directions on how to code something), we suggest putting the
OOC information into a discreet 'look trap' instead. We strongly
suggest offsetting or emphasizing the look trap in some way so
that viewers can find it -- if the user cannot find the look trap,
in effect it does not exist!
We also understand that preferences vary as to how to offset
or emphasize the look trap. While we do encourage folks to try to
maintain the illusion of IC, and we understand people do not talk
with square brackets in their speech, we suggest using square
brackets as the offsets for a look trap (i.e. this room has a
[look trap] in it). That way there's no confusion between an
attempt to legitimately use quotation marks on a quote within
a description, and a look trap.
The use of look-traps is currently still being discussed on
Reality Fault, so we'll keep people updated should something better
arise. For the nonce, this is what we have to work with.
You can set as many look-traps in the room, or on yourself,
as you wish. You can also use MPI in the descriptions there,
too, including time of day coding if you wish. Here's how to
build a look-trap:
@set [object name]=_details/object
name;alias 1;alias 2:[description of object]
If, in a particular room that is supposed to have
desks in it, you type
@set here=_details/desk;desks;work desks:They're
wooden desks, with papers and plans all over the tops
of them.
followed by
look desk
you would read
They're wooden desks, with papers and plans all over
the tops of them. |
Here's how a look-trap might appear:
A character desc might read:
Rokhan stands tall, with a somewhat aristocratic
bearing, even though he leans a little on a cane. His fur
is a dark, even charcoal gray, with his counter shading
an almost shocking white. He is the very [picture]
of military precision. |
Typing look picture
you might read:
Check out http://www.yerf.com/ ruggscot/tenyrpls.jpg
for a picture. |
Entering a "room," you might read:
You see a huge, curving, organic shape before you,
in swirling shades of dusky ebony and soft dove gray,
gleaming with cobalt blue accents. Dark, dusty,
bottle-green [shrubbery] clusters below the low,
round windows and about the slender path twisting to
the doorway. |
Typing look shrubbery
you might read:
The twining branches reach up the sides of the
building, gaining tenuous purchase on the rough,
bark-like exterior. |
- Descriptions
- In regards to descriptions, we're hoping for a balanced and
happy medium -- yes, it's a dream to aspire to, but at least
we're making the attempt.
A single sentence may be too little to communicate what a
room is like, but a huge, inter-related series of paragraphs
describing each and every minute detail will end up numbing the
user and encouraging them to just skip reading the descs... and
we all prefer that folks admire our pretty descs, not ignore them,
yes? ;-)
So if you get more than, say, three to five sentences in your
description of your room, and the room will see a lot of
traffic, consider perhaps using a shortened desc and an attached
look trap instead. That way those that want to learn more can,
and those that have been there already won't be excessively
spammed every time they walk through your room.
If you have a room that will see a lot
of traffic, you might want to use this:
You're in a large square room, about 20 feet
by 20 feet, with a painted ceiling of about 10 feet
high. There are ornate tapestries and huge statues on
the walls.
Then as your players ask, you can give them more
information. Alternatively, you can put in multiple
look-traps. |
instead of something like this:
You're in a large square room, about 20 feet by
20 feet and the ceiling about 10 feet high. There are
tapestries on each wall. The one in front of you tells the
story of Romeo and Juliet, with the scene on the balcony
in the center. The one on the left has the death scene
from Hamlet predominant, where he's giving his dying
soliloquy, and his mother and uncle are already dead,
and Fortinbras is about to enter. Off to the right is the
scene from Midsummer's Night Dream, where the fairy court
is entering the clearing, led by Titania and Oberon.
In the center of the room is a tall, dark obelisk
of striated blue and white marble that's about 8 feet
high. It rises to a sharp, copper-metal-capped point. At
its base is a pattern painted into the floor of red,
yellow, orange, and green feathers, all alternating. The
painting is really excellent, looking almost as if it is
real, except that the feathers are each about 5' long,
so are much longer than would be possible in truth --
unless perhaps there is some magical creature that is
large enough for such beautiful, lustrous feathers?
The ceiling glows with illumination along its edges,
as if there were light sources behind the tapestries. It
gives the painting on the ceiling an eerie glow, as if
the glittering, beautiful constellations depicted there
might come to life -- the lion roaring, the scorpion
snapping its claws, the bull bellowing, and so on --
and closer viewing shows the stars are picked out in
precious gems that glisten gently in the dim light. Ruby,
emerald, and lots of diamond, all cunningly inset into
the sable ceiling.
On each of the cardinal points of the room, against the
walls, are huge statues made of some kind of mottled
stone. Each is upright, as if snarling and about to
attack, with wide-spreading wings. They all seem to exude
a cold, harsh malice. From the doorway around clockwise
the winged statues are a bull, an eagle, a humanoid,
and a lion. |
- Time-of-day code
- We would love for folks to use the time of day code in
their descs! We think it's pretty nifty, and adds color -- so we
gave time-of-day its own
explanatory page. Furthermore, if you like we can set your
realm so that the time of day setting matches your local time
(i.e. the GM for Indigo lives on the west coast of the US, so the
Indigo realm's time of day code is set to Pacific Standard Time)
-- although this is certainly not a requirement.
- Scent in Rooms
- You can set up a scent for rooms, as well as for
characters. To set a scent on a character, please refer to the
What Can I Do With This
New Character? page.
There are two different ways to set a scent on a room. You
can either set the room so that only one scent can be
smelled in the room -- the room's scent -- or you can set the
room so that it will list both the room's scent, and the scent
of all the individuals there.
To set the room scent so that it alone can be smelled, type
the following:
@set home=_scent:[scent desc for that
room].
When the individual who is "sniffing" types
smell here they will see
something like the following:
If you type
@set home=_scent:You smell cloves and
bubblegum. Don't ask why.
followed by
smell here
you'd see
You smell cloves and bubblegum. Don't ask
why. |
The other way to set scent in your room is so that it
and the scents of the other individuals in the room can be
"smelled." What a "sniffer" will see is the statement:
You smell a number of scents, mixed
together
with the scent of the room next, then followed by the scents of
the individuals present. For this type of scent-setting in your
room, type like so:
@set me=_room_scent:[scent desc for
that room]
Let us say our "sniffing" individual types
smell here
in a room that contains a room scent, Lou, and Collie. They
would see something like the following:
If you type:
smell here
you would see:
You smell a number of scents, mixed together.
You smell cloves and bubblegum. Don't ask why.
[Collie] A warm, almost smoky scent, when you're up
close... which causes Collie to give you an amused
"Yeeeeeees?"
[Lou] You smell a human. Hmmm. Head and Shoulders
shampoo. |
We do not yet have a way for you to be notified when someone
sniffs around in your room, as being so notified is a hot button
for several of the individuals on Reality Fault. However, if your
room is set in the latter fashion, so that all the scents are
listed, you will be notified of being "smelled" should someone
sniff the room.
- Realm mailing lists
- When you request a character for someone in your realm, we
suggest you immediately put their email address on your realm's
associated mailing list. This way you can quickly and easily
reach all your players, if some need to do so arises. If you
are unsure of where on the web is your realm's mailing list,
you can easily find it by going to your realm's web page. At
the bottom of that page you will see something like this:
Members only
Visit
the DNAnimals mailing list subscription page.
Click on the link that you will find on your realm web page,
and it will take you directly to your realm's emailing list.
You, as the GM of your realm, and the admin who helps with
mailing lists (currently Bob_Admin), will be the "owners" of
your realm's email list. Bob_Admin is there mostly so that if
you have any technical problems with your list he can fix them
for you quickly and easily.
- Have fun
- Aside from that, we encourage you to have fun with your realm,
your players, and your game. Remember... if it's not fun --
why are you doing it? ;-)
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