BuildingIntro

Introduction to Area Building

Building a Mud consists of taking everything in your brain and transforming it into a text representation of a world that allows players to exploit, abuse, and generaly tear it down.

Nastyness aside, it is a great way to express ideas and creativity in a media that has a very low starting point. To create a 3-D gaming world you would need the software and time it takes to render models and code how they interact. With a text world, all your time can go towards creation of the world and things in it without the need to fully represent them. As an added bonus, simple descriptions of items allow the players to use their imagination to fill in what it should look like - as opposed to models which might not please everyone.

The Big Three Create, Copy, Destroy The majority of all building can be done with three commands. Create to bring things into existence, Copy to make a duplicate of something that exists, and Destroy to remove something from existance. Many things can be created with the Create command, including rooms, items, mobs, races, factions, and quests. This will be the command used most in game to build with. Though there are many premade Mobs and Items to create, the GenMobs and GenItem will be a mainstay in any world. Once created, they allow you a wide array of options to change to your liking.

Copy allows you to make an exact duplicate of something that exists in the world. The copied object will appear in the same room with you. A copied room requires a direction

Rooms Your area is composed of seperate rooms all connected together. The descriptions are vital, as they provide the enviroment with which the players interact in. A richly described area provides players with a vivid picture of where they are at. Room descriptions might also give clues as to what might be done in the room. A fully decked out room might have further description of details laid out in GenWallpaper's in the room. These allow players to look at the enviroment further without providing anthing to interact with.

A good area almost always starts on paper first. Layout each room and how it connects to the other rooms in the area. Sure you could just do this in the Grinder, but paper lets you jot down notes all over the place. If a room will later be special, or an idea for a description strikes you, you can mark it down and keep going uninterrupted on your layout. Some of the most important advice about area creation would be this: "Don't make an area too large to start with." Seriosuly, it is very easy to get overwhelmed with an excellent area idea. YOu must always remember that even if an area seems do-able, you must include the mobs, mod descriptions, items, and items descriptions as well - which could effectivly triple your build size. Once an area grows too large, the builder can quickly become discouraged with the amount of work left, which only slows construction further. A smaller but well filled area is generally more appreciated by players than a large yet empty one.

Each room should have a purpose. Now, don't take this as hard fact. That section of road that leads out of the village doesn't need a three paragraph description and every behavior in the book added to it. But in general, each room should provide your area with something; be it a service (healer, shopkeeper), an encounter (traps, Mobs), or more setting (richly described entrance, street). You can't expect players to read everything, and if you fill an area with rooms they have no reason to go to, a lot of your time will be wasted.

Another consideration for each room is the RoomType it will be. The RoomType can affect many elements from the perspective of a player in it. It can change the resources available in the room, it can allow access to the sky, it can make players more thirsty or take more movement to pass through. When in doubt, create it as a StoneRoom and change it later to be more fitting to the enviroment you are creating.

Mobs -Mob names. No long, if it describes them, put it in the description. If it's an action, add an emoter. -Create and follow guidelines for how much money a Mob should have per level. -Try to vary the Mob level within an area, this makes it easier for players to go up levels

Items -Premage guidelines for item level vs. strength. Keep consistant throught world. -Easy task to copy weapons/armor and rename them for different cultures or areas. -The hardest part is creating names and desc of items. Don't waste too much time on descriptions for common items you're sure players won't be reading. Short and to the point will allow you more time to build things that count.

Properties and Behaviors

Good ones to start with.

Emoter

RandomMonsters

RandomTraps

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