Objects
An object is any item in the game, be it unmovable rock, the fountain in market square, or that nice sword Everyman the Barbarian has. Everything the mud needs to know about objects can be found in the OBJECTS dialog, except for where they actually are.
DESCRIPTIONS
Same as Rooms and Mobs, except that objects don't get to have long descriptions. If an
object needs a long description, give it an extra description. Then when the player LOOKs
at the object, they will see the extra description.
OBJECT TYPES
Hopefully self-explanantory if you are making zones.
OBJECT FLAGS
The following chart gives values and explanations of all the object flags...
Glow item glows
Hum item hums
Evil item has a red aura to players with det evil/true see
Invis item is invisible
Magic item has a magic aura
Nodrop item cannot be dropped
Anti-Good not usable by good aligned.
Anti-Evil not usable by evil aligned.
Anti-Neutral not usable by neutral aligned.
NoRemove Can't stop using it, like that mithral axe the dwarf has
WEAR FLAGS
REMEMBER TO OR THE TAKE FLAG with the other flag!!! If you don't, you wind up with
something like the greaves in Mahn-Tor, which is armor that when you try to pull it off
the corpse it says 'You can't take that.' - Slash
Try to set only two flags for armor, the "Take" and the other bit. If you set
more, you get problems. For example, it used to be possible to hold a lot of the rings in
the game in your hand for an extra benefit, but that isn't the intention and the error
messages for items get strange if you are wearing noremove items and it goes for one of
the alternate bits.)
Lights don't need anything other than the "Take" bit, any other bits are ignored
by the server (except in the case of the player already using a noremove light... so don't
make a noremove light). (EnvyMud also prohibets 'invisible lights'. Don't try to make
those, either.)
OBJECT VALUES
The four numbers consisting of the 'item values' are different for each type of item.
Below the meanings of these numbers are broken down by each type. Zeroes refer to fields
not used, while letters are explained for each section...
LIGHT (1)
Value[2]: Number of hours the light can be used for. Zero hours means that the light has
gone out. A negative number will create an eternal light source.
SCROLL (2)
Value[0]: Level of the spell on the scroll.
Value[1]: Which spell (unused spells should be set to [none])
Value[2]: Which spell
Value[3]: Which spell
WAND (3)
Value[0]: Level of spell in wand.
Value[1]: Max Charges (1..X)
Value[2]: Charges Left
Value[3]: Which spell in wand
STAFF (4)
Value[0]: Level of spell in staff.
Value[1]: Max Charges (1..X)
Value[2]: Charges Left
Value[3]: Which spell in staff
WEAPON (5)
Value[1]: Not Used
Value[2]: Not Used
Value[3]: The weapon type: slash/pierce/pound etc.
(Anyone know what a "grep" weapon is?)
Remember that clerics can only use 'pound' weapons, and thieves need 'pierce' weapons for
backstab... If you make all the weapons in your zone longswords these classes will get
mad.)
TREASURE (8)
[all values are 0]
ARMOR (9)
[set by the server]
POTION (10)
Value[0]: Level of the spell in the potion.
Value[1]: Which spell
Value[2]: Which spell
Value[3]: Which spell
OTHER (12) (Sometimes called FURNITURE)
[all values should be set to 0]
TRASH (13)
[all values should be set to 0]
CONTAINER (15)
Value[0]: Maximum weight the container can contain.
Value[1]: Container flags:
CLOSEABLE 1
PICKPROOF 2
CLOSED 4
LOCKED 8
Value[2]: The key vnum of the container. No lock = -1.
Value[3]: Internal use for Corpses that must "rot". Don't use.
DRINK CONTAINER (17)
Value[0]: Maximum drink-units the drink-container can contain.
Value[1]: Number of drink-units that are left in the container.
Value[2]: The type of liquid in the drink-container, one of:
Type Drunkness Fullness Thirst
WATER 0 1 10
BEER 3 2 5
WINE 5 2 5
ALE 2 2 5
DARKALE 1 2 5
WHISKY 6 1 4
LEMONADE 0 1 8
FIREBREATH 10 0 0
LOCALSPC 3 3 3
SLIME 0 4 8
MILK 0 3 6
TEA 0 1 6
COFFEE 0 1 6
BLOOD 0 2 1
SALTWATER 0 1 2
COKE 0 1 5
The above values for drunkness/fullness/thirst are used per four "units" drunk.
The values are expressed in HOURS!
Example:
Dragon empties a bottle (say 7 units) of saltwater. His Drunkness is not changed ((7/4)*0)
His Fullness increases by ((7/4)*1) hours His Thirst increases by ((7/4)*-2) hours, thus
making him More thirsty. The hours above are numbers between 0 and 24. 24 hours is maximum
for drunkness/fullness/thirst.
Value[3]: if this value is non-zero, then the drink is poisoned.
KEY (18)
[all values should be set to 0]
FOOD (19)
Value[0]: The number of hours, that this food will fill the stomach
Value[3]: If this value is non-zero, the food is poisoned.
MONEY (20)
Value[0]: The number of gold coins "in the pile of coins".
ITEM_BOAT (22)
[all values should be set to 0]
ITEM_FOUNTAIN (25)
[all values should be set to 0]
ITEM_PILL (26)
value[0] level
value[1] sn 1
value[2] sn 2
value[3] sn 3
It is possible for things that don't look like spells at all to be spells, such as the
high explosive ammo that comes out of Mega City One lawgivers. (They are wands or staves)
A funny trick is to make a potion have both a beneficial effect and a negative affect...
Make the players think about what they are doing. Remember that attack spells cann't be
put in potions, you can't make a 'love potion' with CHARM, instead the player gets the
confusing message 'you can't do that.'
Slash is really tired of potions of different colors. The random potions are a little
better, but what about:
'a long thin bottle with no label' vs 'an orange potion'
'a jewel encrusted snifter' vs 'a purple potion'
'a clear potion that smells of bitter almonds' vs 'a yellow potion'
'a shrunken head floats in a green fluid' vs 'the bright green potion'
'(Throbbing) an old musty bottle' vs 'a jet black potion'
APPLIES
Applies dialog @@@
TIPS and OBSERVATIONS
A lot of small items make an area more interesting than a few incredibly powerful items,
for the most part. This is very subjective, however.
Remember to put take wear-flags on almost everything. It's easier to put a take wear-flag
on everything, and take off the ones you don't need (like fountains and such).
don't feel limited to items players consider 'useful', such as weapons and armor. A giant
(untakeable) monolith, and other strange and odd items can add a lot of atmosphere to an
area, as can food and trash.
The difference between treasure and trash is that treasure is linked to the level of the
mob, and trash isn't. If you don't give treasure any magical bonuses, you can make stuff
like 'an eyeball' that is level 22, and players will scramble to ID it only to find out
it's basically worthless.
Items that look like other items can be used: broken boats (trash), pills (food), costume
jewelry. Costume jewelry is hard to make, as the server is going to set a necklace on at
25th level shopkeeper to like AC6 or so, so what you do is give the necklace an AC6
penalty... (This may change soon-Slash).
Fountains can be disguised as other stuff like 'waterfall' or 'rusty faucet', but due to a
typo in the server other players will see 'Slash drinks from the fountain' instead of
'Slash drinks from the rusty faucet'
Pills are like potions, with the caveat that you can't eat them when you are full... This
has some interesting possibilities... For example a cake that lets you pass door into an
area, and then when you want to return you cannot until your stomach isn't full... Also
note that you can't cast 'identify' on pills and find out what the spells are in Merc,
though this is fixed in Envy.
There is no way to make armor specific to a certain race, so giants can wear halfling
vests, and winged aarakocrans can wear vests and still fly. You can use a few tricks here,
eg make an 'open-backed vest' for winged mobs. There used to be a mob called Aod that had
in his long description:
<worn on penis> A Trojan (TM) Condom and if you look at an elemental illusionist's
long description it will say: <wielded> the Sword of Illusion
Neither of these are actually wielded, they are joke items.
There is no way to have an object give a player a skill, like making a lockpick that
boosts lock picking 10% or a helmet of dwarf language speaking. There is also no way to
give specific damage bonuses against certain mobs, such as a sword of dragon slaying.
Invisible objects are pretty cool... Players can't pick them up without a see invisible,
they can walk right past them, esp. if they are put somewhere obscure. They also can't
pick up invisible weapons if they are disarmed, etc. Due to a bug in the server, potions
cannot be invisible.
If you are making armor and want it to have a certain AC value, you are out of luck, as
the server will set it to a few levels below the mob, thus a 28th level princess will have
a 26th level AC7 frilly petticoat. The way that you can get around this is to make the
petticoat a container (like the backpack) or treasure (like a necklace). Then, you set the
object to have an AC applies to the AC that you want... The level will still be high,
though. Also note that COMPare will not work right if you do this.
What level will your objects have? If your objects are going on a mob, they will have a
level a few levels below the mob if they are 'useful' (weapons, treasure, armor, wands)
and level 0 or 1 if they are 'useless' (food, furniture). If you want to make something
high level on the ground, put the object's reset after a really big mob. If you want to
make something low-level on the ground, put it after a small mob. Because of this, every
area has to have at least one mob, though the mob doesn't have to do anything. If you want
to make objects that will be sold at shops, their level is set by the server. This varies
from Merc to Merc and only applies to 'useful' objects.
Farside mud has a table of recommended +hit/+damage modifiers for weapons, it is pretty
fair so I reproduce it here:
Level Hit Roll Dam Roll Points
1-5 0 0 0
6-10 1 0 1
11-15 1 1 3
16-20 2 1 4
21-25 2 2 6
26-30 3 2 7
31-35 3 3 9
36-40 4 3 10
41-45 4 4 12
46-47 5 4 13
48-49 5 5 15
50 6 6 18
(Points is something that Farside charges for plusses on an object, and subtracts for
minus, curses, etc. They make objects meet certain "costs" to keep builders from
putting in objects that are too powerful. For a list of the rules they use (Lok's system),
ftp objects.doc from ftp.cs.odu.edu in /pub/caw.)
Farside recommends the level of the spell in the staff or wand should never excede that of
the level of the wand or staff. The amount of charges can be calculated using Lok's
system.
Placing items on the ground in zones: In MZF, this is done from the ROOMS dialog