Manual:Zone Manual/The Room Section/A more complex set of rooms
Contents
A more complex set of rooms
In the last section you learned to make basic rooms. In this section we will build on what you already know to allow you to make much more fancy rooms. In this section we will give a much better view of the exits and what can be done with them including doors, hidden doors and rooms inside other rooms. We will also show some examples of the room DIL functions being used that were described in the previous section. Finally we will pull it all together in a completed zone for you to compile and play with.
Exits with doors
When we first defined exits we included the 'keyword' and 'open' fields on a door. In this section we will give an example of two rooms linked together with a door. There is no new information you have not already encountered so we will start with an example.
hallway
title "Module tunnel"
descr "The hallway is about 50 meters long and around 100 meters from
side to side and top to bottom...."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
west to chamber descr
"The hallway opens up into a chamber.";
east to office descr
"You see what looks to be an office."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","door"}
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED};
end
office
title "The station office"
descr
"Large paintings fill the walls of this part of the station...."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
west to hallway descr
"You see what looks to be a hallway."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","door"}
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED};
end
One important thing you should notice is, whatever you put as a keyword,
along with the direction, is what a person must use to open the door.
So make sure there is something in the description or extra that the player
can use to discern the correct search term.
To make sure the door closes at reset time you will have to add the doors reset to the '%reset' section. The door resets will be explained in (Link to ch-07). Notice also in this example we have a direction both in the room you are going to and the room you came from. This means you need a 'west' direction for every 'east' direction leading to it. If you do not put both you will end up with a one way direction.
Locked & Hidden Exits
An update to the old method of handling searching for hidden doors & picking doors has been made. What was once done individually between hidden & locked doors is now a 'difficulty' rating. This rating will apply to picking locks as well as searching rooms but they will actually call upon the PC's skills and abilities.
In our zone, we will denote it like so:
northeast to aroom
descr "A small room."
key key@zone
keyword {"door"}
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED, EX_LOCKED}
difficulty 10;
An example of how you apply the same concept to a container would be:
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED, EX_LOCKED} difficulty 10
See this for more information on how the skill and ability levels work:
Manual:Game Mechanics/Skills
Locked exits
Now that you have making a door down, you may find that it is not safe to leave your doors unlocked. Well the VME is ready for you. You have already seen the 'keyword' and 'open' sections and what you can set in them. Now lets use the 'EX_LOCKED' field with them and introduce a difficulty rating. Generally speaking a rating of 0 is very easy and a rating of 100 is very difficulty.
hallway
title "Module tunnel"
descr "The hallway is about 50 meters long and around 100 meters from
side to side and top to bottom...."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
west to chamber descr
"The hallway opens up into a chamber.";
east to office descr
"You see what looks to be an office."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","door"}
key nokey
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED,EX_LOCKED}
difficulty 10;
end
office
title "The station office"
descr
"Large paintings fill the walls of this part of the station...."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
west to hallway descr
"You see what looks to be a hallway."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","door"}
key nokey
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED,EX_LOCKED}
difficulty 10;
end
The only thing you may be wondering about in this example is the 'key' field. I have picked 'nokey' as my value of the key. There is no key in this zone so all this does is create a key hole. If you leave the 'key' field out totally the only way you can open the lock is by a magical spell. It is also important that you read about resets of door locks in (Link to ch-07).
Hidden exits
Locking the doors may not be enough. In fact sometimes you may not want to lock the door but you might want to hide it. You will denote the hidden doors in much the same way you do above.
#define SECRET_DOOR_DIFFICULTY(DIR, SKILL) \
extra{SECRET_DOOR} {DIR, SKILL}\
""
So if you wanted a door or just a passage to the north hidden you would add this before or after your exits.
SECRET_DOOR_DIFFICULTY(NORTH, 50)
Now lets put it all together and link two rooms together with a hidden door.
office
title "The station office"
descr
"Large paintings fill the walls of this part of the station..."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
west to hallway descr
"You see what looks to be a hallway."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","door"}
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED};
south to portal_room descr
"You see what looks to be a portal room."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","staff","door"}
key nokey
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED, EX_LOCKED, EX_HIDDEN}
difficulty 10;
end
portal_room
title "Green field room"
descr
"Like the other rooms on the station this one is large enough for
dragons to comfortably fit in. The strange thing about this room though
is it is totally empty except for a green field right in the center.
there is a door that leads to another room to the north."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
north to office descr
"You see what looks to be an office."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","door"}
key nokey
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED,EX_LOCKED}
difficulty 10;
end
Rooms inside of rooms
Now that you have normal exits down its time to take a look at something a bit different. Lets say you wanted to put a barrel in a room that is also a room that has exits to other rooms. Or maybe in my case I want to put a transporter pad in the room that is also a room so you can exit back into the room you came from. In the case of the teleporter I could use an object but as you will find it is much easier to deal with a room for this than an object.
To put a room in a room it is much different than using the normal exit fields. The only thing needed is the 'in' keyword and the room you are linking the current room into. There is no need for a semi-colon. The following is what the line would look like.
in <room that room is in>
Not too hard. The following are two rooms one in the other.
portal_room
title "Green field room"
descr
"Like the other rooms on the station this one is large enough for
dragons to comfortably fit in. The strange thing about this room though
is it is totally empty except for a green field right in the center.
there is a door that leads to another room to the north."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
extra {"green field","field"}
"The field looks to be a green fog shifting and churning as you watch.
if you are nuts you could probably enter it."
north to office descr
"You see what looks to be an office."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","door"}
key nokey
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED,EX_LOCKED};
//A link to the portal is also here
end
room_port
names{"green field", "field"}
title "Green field"
descr
"Green Mist swirls about you."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
in portal_room
end
After adding a room in a room you should note the room in the description or put an 'outside_descr' on the room inside it. In our example we have chosen to add the description into the room instead
of using the 'outside_descr'. Also doors and locks work the same way as before you can even hide this exit.
A room using force move.
Sometimes you will want to help players along their path. This could be for a river that flows strongly enough to force a players raft down stream or maybe for a room of quick sand that sucks the player into another room. In these situations we need to use the force move DIL, explained in the previous section. Here we have built two rooms linked only by a forced move.
portal_room
title "Green field room"
descr
"Like the other rooms on the station this one is large enough for
dragons to comfortably fit in. The strange thing about this room though
is it is totally empty except for a green field right in the center.
there is a door that leads to another room to the north."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
extra {"green field","field"}
"The field looks to be a green fog shifting and churning as you watch.
if you are nuts you could probably enter it."
north to office descr
"You see what looks to be an office."
keyword {"air lock door","air lock","door"}
key nokey
open {EX_OPEN_CLOSE, EX_CLOSED,EX_LOCKED};
//A link to the portal is also here
end
ship_port
names{"green field", "field"}
title "Green field"
descr
"Green Mist swirls about you."
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
in ship
dilcopy force_move@function(
//Time to activation
4,
//room and act
"portal_room@dragonst!You feel your body dissolving for lack of a better
description.&nYou appear on the deck of a ship.",
//True or False for randomizing or not
FALSE);
end
A death room
As a final touch to my little example zone I want to create a room that will kill a player instantly. I will use the DIL function Death room and the room would simply look as follows.
deathspace
title"Open space"
descr
"You see the ship and the station far off in the distance and you are in Space!"
movement SECT_INSIDE
ALWAYS_LIGHT
flags {UNIT_FL_NO_WEATHER, UNIT_FL_INDOORS}
dilcopy death_room@function (
//how often is damage done 4 would be 1 second
4,
//damage
400,
//act for the damage.
"You realize to late that was the trash disposal transporter and you feel your lungs explode.");
end
