As should be relatively obvious, there are a number of differences in building for Keeper of the Trinity, however, they may not be as difficult as you might imagine. Provided here is a listing of helpful information concerning building as it pretains to our game.
Please read through all of these topics before beginning any project. We would not want you to feel you had wasted any time or effort!
Apps
To get an IC building, +request one. See +help +request if you don't know how. We'll need to know how many PCs are making the app and who they are, what the build is going to be used for and anything already owned by any of the PCs involved. The standard allowance is N+1 @dug rooms, where N is the number of PCs involved in the app. The number may be increased for businesses or sphere-relevant rooms.
IC resources will very rarely affect the number of @dug rooms. Places code and +views should be used to make IC rooms for your millionaire's 16-bedroom mansion.
What may seem like a perfectly good application may still be turned down. It is considered polite for the staffer turning down the application to give the player a reason why the application failed.
In multiplayer apps, all players concerned will be @mailed to inform them whether the request has been approved or disapproved and why.
Basics
By using default room attributes and default exit attributes, we have made it easy to keep within the 'look and feel' of the game. You have no need to worry about how to make your rooms look like the others, it is completely automatic and requires no special designs on your part. Exits, also, have been given default succ/osucc/odrop/fail/ofail messages to prevent an accidentally forgotten exit from causing problems on the IC grid. We encourage you to design your own such messages, however, to
personalize your building.
Rooms are still given an @desc just as you would any other, they automatically take on our format. Those with the CLASSIC flag set will automatically see the design in the old style. The only difference that you may see is a slight centering issue if you use the center() function. We encourage everyone to use 72 columns rather than 79, or to switch() between the two based on the CLASSIC flag (if you know how).
We have attempted to design a player-friendly format. We encourage our players to do the same. After reading through the rest of 'news building,' if you have any questions, please give it as a +request and we'll get right back to you.
The following are our basic standards:
- Descriptions should begin with %r%r[space(5)] and end with a %r. Please use [space(5)] and not %t in your descs. Public-use room descs should be 20 lines or less, including paragraph breaks.
- Please do not build useless rooms (bathrooms, kitchens) or rooms that can be converted to places or simply be posed as existing rather than actually 'building' them. We have no 'special number' of rooms that is given per resource point or other such nonsense. A ghetto apartment can come in 2 rooms or 5 rooms as long as the description is appropriate, as can a luxury home.
- Exit names should be in the format of "Exit Name;EN" followed by ‘;’ and more aliases if you wish. Every room should have at least one exit that is aliased with ';o;out;back;leave;exit' that takes the player back toward the 'exit' of the building. The first alias of every exit MUST be 2 letters only. More will be truncated and cause confusion. Single letters are not allowed since they interfere with the navigation system. No < >, [ ], or ( ) should be included in an exit name, ever - these are added automatically.
4) Room names should be in the format of "Room Name - Building Name - Neighborhood - City" such as "Living Room - Old Victorian House - Oak Lawn - Dallas". This is automatically formatted in the room's name format. For public-use rooms, preface with the number of the neighborhood your building is in. For example: "5: Joe's Restaurant - Oak Lawn - Dallas". See 'news directory' for likely locations to place your business, or ask staff for help.
5) Nightzones and areas with +views in them are automatically set as part of the room's format. Please do not include these in the @desc or name of a room.
Once you're done, let staff know with +request.
Rules
The following rules should be followed with all building projects if you expect them to be linked to the grid:
Rooms must possess the following attributes: a number at the start of the room name that corresponds to the neighborhood it is in. An @desc wherin all paragraphs are preceded by %r%r[space(5)]. Watch for that double carriage return.
Setting the LOCATION attribute on your room will adjust the exterior Location listing in the exit format to show up as set. (ie, '&LOCATION here=Barton Estate' will show up as 'Gates [BE] [Barton Estate]' outside.) Any room in your project that connects directly to the grid should have this attribute set.
6) Room names should follow the following format: Room Name - Location - Neighborhood - City. For example, Foyer - Vandergriff Estate - Uptown and Highland Park - Dallas. Public rooms should begin with the location number, for example D 3: Hippy Cafe - Lower Greenville - Dallas
If your house has a front yard, where you could be seen from the street, you may have that added as a Place to the grid square your home is in. That way you can hang in your front yard and get to know neighbors and so on.
Public-use rooms should have a desc no more than 15 lines long, including paragraph breaks, which should be in the format %r%r[space(5)] as set out above. See existing grid rooms for examples of layout and size. Private rooms, like houses and bedrooms, can be spammier but do consider notes instead of extra paragraphs. There should be a spare line ending the desc.