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Reality Fault

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

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

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? ;-)




Last modified: 2006-Mar-04 22:01:52

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