Scripting(Builder)

CoffeeMUD
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CoffeeMUD has enormous flexibility outside of pre-built behaviors and properties with the Scriptable and ScriptableEverymob behaviors.

Official Scripting Docs

• Official Scripting Guide

Articles on General Concepts

• Scripting Intro - An introduction to making your Mobs come alive
• Scripting Tags - Useful markup to make your output more grammatically correct.

Specific Scripting Solutions

• Step Stone - A script which loads in a GenPortal item to enable players to step on the stone to go through a portal.
• Level Pull - A simple lever script for opening doors.
• Button Push - A simple script for pushing a button.
• Starting Zone - A script to provide players with some information about the world, and change the player's beacon based on responses.
  • Changing a Player's Beacon - A solution for resetting a player's RECALL location.
• Skill Use on an Item - A solution for a mob to charge for using an ability on an item.
• Mana boosting - A script for adding mana to a MOB, such as recharging their mana pool.
• Non-resettable Instance - A script to prevent players from having the option to reset an autogen instance.
• Play a sound from file - A simple example of how to play a sound from an available file.
• Display Word Switch - A complex script for changing a word in the display text of a MOB and maintaining participles.

Scripting Do's and Dont's

• Do not overtax your scripts for performing actions. A maximum of 25 actions may be taken by a given script per tick. This limit is there to prevent bad scripts from destroying the mud. If more than 25 actions are attempted and error will be thrown similar to:
  • Scripting Error: ...script/UNK/SYS/Attempt to que more than 25 events.
  • To fix a script taking too many actions, review the number of events the script is attempting to handle for a given item/mob/room, and see if it is possible that it is generating many of those message in rapid succession.
• The death_prog works before the moment of death of a mob, enabling a builder to take a variety of actions, from emotes of the dying mob to protecting the mob from death. As such, this prog needs to be used with care.
  • Transferring a character away from a mob using a death_prog will result in the character being penalized for fleeing a fight.
• MPECHOAT and MPECHOAROUND are good ways to script things to prevent nuissance messages to other players (for example, a quest giver that talks to each person entering the room).
• VARIES is a useful command to provide alternative actions based on a criteria.
  • The way it works is you do something like <MASK22 -RACE +DWARF>Stuff for Dwarves</MASK22> The 22 part can be anything, so long as the tag starts with MASK and you use something unique. Important though, you need to use html rules for any < or > characters .. so use & l t ; and & g t ; (no spaces) inside the mask itself.'
• MPSETINTERNAL should be placed in a once_prog. Any mpsetinternal, or any commands, outside of a trigger block are just going to cause problems.
• It is not good to combine exit_prog and entry_prog on scripts that affect a GenSailingShip, since the ship generates both an EXIT and an ENTRY message on every room they leave/enter.
• if has($n red sword) - will fail if there is also a red sword in the room. To properly check if a player has a red sword, use if wornon($n inventory 'a red sword') to make it work.
• When working with hitpoints (or mana or movement), HITS=current hit points, BASEHITS=maximum unmodified hit points, MAXHITS=modified maximum hit points.
• For MPDAMAGE, each variable needs to have single quotes around them and everything works.
  • mpdamage $t '$<$i FINALDAMAGE>' '$<$i FINALDAMAGE>' KILL

Notes

• MPOLOAD will work fine if the item is not in the same area as the script.
  • Archon-only items may not be loaded with MPOLOAD, and must be manually created to avoid scripting abuse.