OLC TIPS ROOMS

Rooms should be the first thing you build in your area. They generally are what take the longest. Your rooms need to have good descriptions. Good descriptions are defined as ones that are decently long, but not too long: (3 or 4 lines, 5 or 6 at the absolute most, 1 line descriptions will not due), Descriptive (describe what the player SEES, not what the player feels. A good room description will give the player feelings and emotions on its own. Tell what the player sees, and describe where the exits are, but do not make explaining the exits your whole room description.

The ENTRANCE of your area (where it connects to the rest of the mud) should be the FIRST room in the world file.

Death Traps

These are to encourage "intelligent exploration", not to just "kill" players. You must follow these rules:

• If a room has an exit leading to a death trap, make sure to make an exit from the trap to the room.... this sounds strange, but if you don't, any people considering following won't hear the "death cry" upon the victim's demise.
• A general rule of thumb is OK to have 1 death trap per 100 rooms, if you want to put more then one, this is acceptable. This is all that is required to make "stupid wandering" dangerous.
• The exit leading to every death trap MUST have an exit description that describes something about the room they are about to enter.

Sectors

Room sector types denote many things, but a room type of "inside" does not automatically make the room INDOORS. Therefore it will get weather messages and the like. It's important to remember to flag these rooms as INDOORS as well (caves, inside a house, etc).

Title (or Name)

Room titles should contain proper "structure". For example:

"The West Hallway" is more acceptable then "West Hallway".

Also each word should be capitalized like a book title. Also avoid punctuation.

Descriptions

Room descriptions should be formatted properly so they are easy to read. This means carriage returns after 75 characters, but before 80 characters, so they will word-wrap properly. Also include proper spacing, i.e. two spaces after the end of a sentence.

Indenting paragraphs is optional.

Avoid putting in the room description objects or mobs that are not going to be in that room 100% of the time. If you do not wish to load an object in the room that is mentioned in the room description you should add an Extra-Description to the room to describe the item.

Exits / Doors

If you specify a door in the room description you should make sure that the door has the keywords used to describe the door. For example, if the room description says there's a "wooden door to the north" make sure the exit contains both keywords "door" and "wooden". Also be consistent in that if you put in the room description that there's "a doubledoor" to the west, make sure the door has the keyword "doubledoor", NOT just "doubledoors" or "double door".

Unless you specifically intend for an exit to be "one way", be sure to check that your exits are created two-way so that players can properly walk back into the room they just came from.

Renaming doors is sometimes a good idea to create 'secret' doors. For example, having a doorway behind a tapestry on a wall if you want to have a concealed passageway. This can often be used together with extra direction descriptions. Since the mud defaults to looking in a direction before looking at an extra description, you can set up an exit to 'nowhere' by using -1 as the destination room number, and then use the description section of the door to describe what can be seen when looking that way.

You are not limited to the four cardinal directions, and up and down when linking rooms. AddictMUD contains "diagonal" directions that you can use as well (northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest).

The ZCHECK command will display a lot of information regarding potential door errors.