Dizzy Mud Area Builder's Guide

Area Coding

This page of the Dizzy MUD Area Builder's Guide is an introduction and overview to the coding process. Some information is given about the technical process of creating an area file. The area skeleton below contains links to all the pages dealing with individual area sections.

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Technology
To code an area, you have to create a text file as described below and submit it to an implementor on your MUD. If you are unsure of how to create a plain ASCII text file on your system, check out How to edit a plain text file.

Rules of the Game
An area file is an ASCII text file containing lines of text which describe your area to the MUD program in painstaking and rigid detail. The syntax description which follows is not a style guide; consider it THE LAW! Any deviations from the requirements will cause the MUD program to fail to boot if it tries to load your area.

Name That File
Your area will need a name. Several, in fact. For game purposes, you may call it something like 'The Caverns of Chaos'. The MUD program is not impressed by long, scary names and wants a short name, all lowercase letters, and preferrably not more than 8 characters long before the extension. Area files have an extension of '.are'. So a good file name for your 'Caverns of Chaos' would be 'cavchaos.are' .
The Bare Bones
The following is an example of an area file with all area headers and enders in it but absolutely no information. I call this a 'skeleton'. Your job in coding an area is to fill in the information between the section headers and enders. Take a peek at the file structure, then move on to the explanations below that.

#AREA #MOBILES #0 #OBJECTS #0 #ROOMS #0 #RESETS S #SHOPS 0 #SPECIALS S #$

Here is a quick overview of what all these thingies mean. You can click on the section header names to get to the in-depth information you will need to code each section.

#AREA

You will add some general descriptive data about your area after this header.

#MOBILES

Each of your mobiles will be described in this section.

#0

(hash-zero, not hash-oh!) ends the #MOBILES section.

#OBJECTS

Each of your objects will be described in this section.

#0

(hash-zero, not hash-oh!) ends the #OBJECTS section.

#ROOMS

Each of your rooms will be described in this section.

#0

(hash-zero, not hash-oh!) ends the #ROOMS section.

#RESETS

This section gets information about which objects and which mobiles to put into which rooms, which equipment to give them, and which doors to close or lock.

S

A plain capital 'S' ends the #RESETS section.

#SHOPS

This section is used to tell the game which mobiles are shopkeepers. You only need it (and the following 0) if you have shops in your area.

0

(zero, not oh!) ends the #SHOPS section if there is one. If you have no shops, leave out the #SHOPS section header and this 0 as well!

#SPECIALS

The #SPECIALS section is used to tell the game that one or more mobs in your area have special abilities such as 'spec_cast_cleric' or 'spec_janitor'. If your area has no such specially endowed mobs, you do not need this section header and the following 'S'.

S

A plain capital 'S' ends the #SPECIALS section. Again, if you have no mobs with special ability procedures, you do not need the #SPECIALS section and you also don't need the 'S'.

#$

This sequence (hash-dollar) is very important because it tells the MUD that this is the end of your area file. You need to put at least one blank line after this marker, too. Disastrous things happen if you forget to put this sequence here, or the following blank line(s).

What this overview doesn't show

There are at least 4 area sections which I have purposely left undocumented. Here, briefly, is what they are and why I have left them out.

#HELPS: Sections of this name contain the text that players can look at using HELP. Other documentation describes how to code this into your area files, but Dizzy does not fully support #HELPS in individual area files, and our policy discourages area builders from writing them. An area should document itself in its room, mob and object descriptions. Any HELP topics of gamewide importance are coded into HELP.ARE, ROM.ARE and GROUP.ARE by the maintainers of DizzyMUD. The format is obvious to those who work with it, so I see no need to document it here. If you feel the urgent need to add to the gamewide HELP information, please submit your HELP text to the Immortals by e-mail.
#MOBPROGS: A #MOBPROGS section is used by area builders who choose to write their MobProgs or collections thereof into separate files and require a MobProg section and lines to connect these external MobProgs to multiple different mobiles in their area. This method is documented in detail in the section called MobProgs Explained, but I also point you to a simpler, more common and preferrable method which does not require a #MOBPROGS section or separate MobProg files.
#SOCIALS: At Dizzy, all SOCIALS are maintained in a single separate file called SOCIALS.ARE. The MUD program will not read SOCIALS from other area files, and indeed crash on the attempt. If you would like to submit a new social to Dizzy, please read HELP MORESOCIALS to learn about the required format for SOCIALS submission, and e-mail your submission to the Immortals.
#TOURSTARTS
#TOURROUTES: Dizzy MUD proudly operates a system of coach tours through Thera for the curious, the footsore and the romantic. The coach routes and appertaining other data are coded into a single file called TOURS.ARE and maintained there by the Immortals of Dizzy. For those few who ever deal with it, the structure of these sections is documented inside the file itself.