OLC TIPS OBJECTS
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- Do not capitalize keywords. Also, use as many keywords as possible, and above all, make sure that at least one of the keywords is found in the extra description. Another important point, try to describe the object in the keywords, so that a key has more keywords than simply 'key', for example 'key brass large'
- For short descriptions, always use 'the', 'a', 'an', etc unless the item has a proper name. Above all, never put punctuation at the end of a short description. Also, try not to capitalize the first letter of the short description unless it is a proper name.
- Long descriptions should end with proper punctuation, and make sure that the description is a complete sentence with proper grammar.
- For extra descriptions, try to flesh out your object with a description or three which tell the player what it looks like, etc... Ensure that all the keywords are covered by the description. Extra descriptions can add small interesting details to your area and are often remembered by players.
- Take note that a lot of small items make an area more interesting than a few incredibly powerful items, for the most part. Don't feel limited to items players consider 'useful', such as weapons and armour. A giant (untakeable) monolith, and other strange and odd items can add a lot of atmosphere to an area. They can also be used to distract players. Most of the useless items are often best as trash, but can be worn, and don't feel that items shouldn't get strange wear flags. After all, who says that boat you just created can't actually be a ring of water walking? All that would be needed for that is to have a boat with a finger wear position set.
- If you plan to have an object that is not to be taken, you can either remove the TAKE flag on it, or give it an enormous weight (30,000 or more). This way, players won't be able to take it very easily (if at all).
- Containers have many uses as well. You can disguise containers as trees, chests, or even a shower robe with huge pockets (like in the Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy game from Infocom). You can also create streams of water with drink containers that have no long description, but are in the room's description. That way people can actually drink from the stream they see.
- Drink containers and fountains can also be used as multi-dose potions. By setting an "apply" of "EAT SPELL" and set the modifier to the spellnum of the spell you wish it to cast. Each one drink unit becomes a potion dose. The number of a spell is most easily found with the "spells" command inside the mud (the left most number on the list).
- Figurines: Items can be made to turn into a pet that follows the commands of the owner. These are called figurines. Treat the level of the mob carefully, it wouldn't do to have a level 12 character to have an easily accessible figurine that summons a level 85 pet.
- Use logic when setting the weight of an item. A rose should not weigh 30 lbs, and a full plate armor should not weigh only 5 lbs.
- Treasures: Take care when setting stats on a treasure. One thing to keep in mind is that these are insetable into weapons, transferring all the stats to the weapon. The weapon must weigh more then the treasure, so it can be used as a limiting factor, however it doesn't make sense to have a 25 lbs rock that you're supposed to hold constantly, and the weight of the treasure as added to the weapon, so the weapon could be made unwieldable if it is too heavy after being inset.
- Treasures are also used by Psionicists to store PSP's. The total number of PSP's a treasure can hole is equal to the "value" (aka "cost") of that treasure. High value treasures will be scrutinized in a new area, for this reason in particular.
- Canned Magic: Any item that casts a spell, specifically a wand, staff, scroll or potions, are referred to as "canned magic". OLC has built in restriction on what kind of wand / potion / staff / scroll can be created. The guidelines on these items is pretty much "common sense", as are the prices.
- Item flags: You may use any of the "special flags", such as "humming", etc, but the ones that appear in the items short description (glowing, humming, invisible, etc) must be limited to 2 or less per item.
- Weapons
- THE ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM AVERAGE DAMAGE THAT A MORTAL-WIELDABLE WEAPON CAN DO IS 28. (This x*(y+1)/2 of "xdy"). There are safeguards in place that will prevent more powerful weapons from being created.
- If a weapon is under (5.5 average damage), you may add whatever "applies" that you wish. (Strength, Dex, etc).
- If a weapon falls in the range of 1d11 to about 3d5 (6-9 average damage), you may add apply's, but one of them should be a "nasty/bad" one. You may also use other methods to limit it's usage -- either by setting a minimum level, an "anti-class" flag or alignment restriction. (Or some combination of the three).
- If a weapon is capable of doing more than 9 average damage, you must restrict its usage and apply a minimum usage level of at least 10. Further, the "limited" flag must be set.
- The weapon's power should match the difficulty in getting it... i.e. "common weapons" (less than 5 damage) can go just about anywhere, while "great weapons" (The strange bow or thunderbolt, for example) should go on mobs that are worthy of them. Something that does more than 13 damage in one swat, should go on a mob that has spell casting ability, a large number of hit points, and basically should be very risky to get. (Ie you have to fight your way through several lesser mobs, find a secret door, then go up against a mob that can cast "chaos", etc before you finally loot it off its corpse... if you are lucky.)
- Please keep in mind that extremely powerful weapons are desired by everybody and can really screw up the balance of the game. For this reason they must exist in minimal quantities.
- The weight of a weapon determines the strength needed to wield the weapon, see the chart below.
- No weapon should ever exceed 30 pounds in weight or it will become unwieldable.
STR Max. Weapon Weight Carrying capacity
--- ------------------ -----------------
0 0 0
1 1 3
2 2 3
3 3 10
4 4 25
5 5 55
6 6 80
7 7 90
8 8 100
9 9 100
10 10 115
11 11 115
12 12 140
13 13 140
14 14 170
15 15 170
16 16 195
17 18 220
18 20 255
18/01..50 22 280
18/51..75 24 305
18/76..90 26 330
18/91..99 28 380
18/100 30 480
- Weaponspells are a different beast. They can make a smaller weapon more desirable, giving the trade off of a weapon that does small amounts of damage, but cases a great spell, or they can enhance an already great weapon. Use with caution. Such weapons will be carefully considered before the area will be allowed to be opened for players.
- Armor:
- OLC has built in limits that forbid "outlandish" armor. See ITEM_ARMOR for these restrictions.
- If the armor is "very good", you must put a limited flag and some kind of usage restriction on it. Further, it must exist in minimal quantities.
In general: material armor apply weight value/rent mob level Leather low light inexpensive low Studded Leather Splint Mail Chain Mail average average average mid Bronze Plate Iron Plate Black Metal/Steel high heavy expensive high
- Commonly desired stats:
- Please follow the following chart when making items. Bear in mind that the objects should be put on mobs that are about equal to the stats of the object. +3 hit and dam objects should not be put on level 6 mobs, for example!
DAM = damroll, hitroll and magpoints AC = ac-apply MHV = hit points, moves and mana STATS = strength, wisdom, intelligence etc...
WORN +/- DAM +/- AC +/- HMV +/- STATS +/-REGEN Light 6 0 50 3 35 Finger 4 1 "" " "" Neck 4 3 "" " "" Body 4 10 "" " "" Head 4 5 "" " "" Face 2 5 "" " "" Ears 2 1 "" " "" Legs 6 7 "" " "" Feet 4 6 "" " "" Hands 4 6 "" " "" Arms 6 7 "" " "" Shield 6 8 "" " "" About 6 6 "" " "" Waist 6 6 "" " "" Wrist 6 3 "" " "" Wield 8 0 "" " "" Hold 8 0 "" " "" Ankle 4 1 "" " "" Floating 6 0 "" " ""
- If you would like an object to have stats greater than what is on this chart, it must be cleared. If any item has 2 or 3 of the applies at max, it MUST have a LIMITED flag. Please limit your area to 2 or 3 LIMITED items unless it is an extremely high level area cleared BEFORE hand.
- Perm affects: Perm affect items are supposed to be rare things. Anything with a perm affect, MUST have a LIMITED flag. Anything with a perm affect (other then DET-INV, INV, DET-ALIGN) MUST have a 'bad affect' on it, which would be a negative apply or lots of align/class restrictions. No item may have more then one perm affect.
- Resistances and Weaknesses guidelines are as follows: No item may give more then ONE resistance unless there is a WEAKNESS for every resistance over the first resistance. If the item only has 1 weakness, it can not have any other 'good' applies without a 'bad' apply to go with it. Such items MUST have a LIMITED flag. The max RESISTANCE amount is +- 10. A "weakness" is a negative resistance.
- Many of the restrictions listed here are strictly enforced by the OLC, so they are hard to circumvent, or accidentally break; but not everything is checked for, so you cannot rely on the OLC to enforce all the rules for you. Two important commands that will help you are OCHECK and ZCHECK. They have evolved over the years to do some strong limit checking and error reporting, so please take advantage of them, they are the first things we check when going over a zone before it can be opened to players.
- No item should be considered "reboot only". In the past many items with low load rates had the best chance of loading only during a reboot. This lead to the idea that having things only load once unless there is a reboot as a good idea. These days the uptimes tend to number in the weeks, if not months, which makes it unfair to the players that they have to have excellent timing for an event that may only happen once in a couple months. There are other ways to make an item rare, please make use of them.
- Items in general: You can create literally any item, so be imaginative. :)