Dizzy MUD
Area Builder's Guide
If you are planning to build or upgrade an area for Dizzy MUD,
this document will help you. It includes a design method based on the advice
of experienced area builders and complete and up-to-date information on
the mechanics of coding as applicable to Dizzy MUD.
To the Faint of Heart
Building a good area is a lot of hard work requiring a cool idea, vivid
imagination, much knowledge and many, many hours of painstaking attention
to every detail.
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If you're bored and need something to do, go ride a bike or toss a Frisbee.
Both activities are healthier.
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If you want to fill an otherwise idle evening, consider spending some quality
time with your loved ones if they're around or your TV set if not.
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If you plan to be finished in a day or two, don't even bother starting.
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If you want to create an area full of impregnable armor and devastating
weapons so everybody can level really easily, go back to Dizzy and play
until you understand about game balance.
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If the main reason you want to build an area is to become famous and get
your name in an area list, go ahead. But don't count on it being implemented
in Dizzy; post it on a widely read web site instead.
Only if your main motivation is to make Dizzy MUD even more fun and challenging
to its players by adding a high-quality area or by improving one that's
already there, and only if you are willing to do the best job possible
no matter how hard it is or how long it takes, please read on and more
power to you!
Disclaimer
Although this document contains all the knowledge an experienced player
requires to code an area and makes every attempt to make this knowledge
clear, there can be no guarantee that a fantastic area will result from
its use.
While the general principles of design hold for area coding in almost
any MUD, the specific coding information applies to Dizzy MUD. Apply it
to a different MUD at your own risk. If you use an outdated version of
this document to code for Dizzy, it is possible that not all information
will fit even there.
Opinions voiced in this Guide, especially negative remarks concerning
mediocre areas, are those of Elrac and Sharra, two Immortals active on
DizzyMUD. They are not necessarily representative of Immortals on DizzyMUD
in general or DizzyMUD's Creator, Implementor or Administration in particular.
The 'I' person in this document is Elrac.
Document Overview
How to Navigate in this Document
The HTML in this document is hand-coded for Netscape 2.0 and upward compatible
browsers. Rather than torture your browser with features it may not have
or fill your screen with frames that you don't want to see and which will
narrow your field of vision, I have included navigational zones at the
top and bottom of the main pages of this document. Following the 'Forward
... >>' link on each page will take you through most of the document
in a reasonably logical order. Tables and explanations found on separate
pages are linked together into an appendix after
the main pages.
How to use this Document Offline
| For your convenience, I have provided the complete HTML source of this
document as a ZIP file. You can download this file to your hard disk, unzip
it and then ask your browser to Open File... with a file name of
ab.htm in whatever directory you have the files in. You can then
click your way from link to link without an online connection and without
online lag.
download ab.zip
|
I've recently added a Quick Reference for the hotshots who need
the tables but have already absorbed the wisdom in the surrounding text.
This document contains the tables and very little else in 10 concise and
handy pages especially suited for printing out and binding into a booklet.
download abr.zip
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This page was last updated
May 15, 2001.
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