Building your first object

Now that you have learned how to make rooms and NPCs it's time to make the objects for your little world. In the last couple of sections you have looked through the fields. In this section we are going to make an easy object. There is really not that much new from what you have learned with rooms and NPCs so this should be a real quick section. As always we will start with something I like which as you remember is dragons. So the first object we will make is a dragon head. I didn't say I liked them alive now did I? Anyway, this will be a nice simple object that your player can pick up and carry around.

When making objects you create the zone source file first as shown in the chapter called Zone source file. If you only have objects you do not need the %reset, %mobiles, and %rooms fields. For the examples in this chapter we will use the zone we created in the chapter called The Room Section and add the %objects section where we will put all the object definitions. At the end of this chapter, in the Section called Dragon station with rooms, NPCs, and objects, we will bring it all together with the rooms and NPCs we have defined already.

The first part of all object definitions is the symbolic name it is good to always pick a name that will match the name of the object so it will be easy to load the object. The reason the symbolic and name should match is when you use the command wstat it will only show you a list of the objects by symbolic name for example if you type wstat zone dragon objects You will get the following:

List of objects in zone Dragon:
claw info_board dragon_head

List of objects in zone Dragon:
obj1 a_obj2 o3

Now let's get started with our dragon head. As with the rooms and NPCs all that is required to make an object is the symbolic and end fields. That of course will make a NPC with all defaults.

dragon_head
end

That's it for that dragon head right? Nope not quite, like before with NPCs, that makes an object with all defaults. That means this will probably be a very blank spot on the screen with no names and no way your players can interact with it. Now let's start putting the dragon heads other more interesting fields on.

Like with rooms and NPCs, the first three things we need are the dragon heads title, description and names. The description should be what you see when you do a 'look' in the room. The title should be what you see when the object is in your inventory or you are whacking someone over the head with it. Since we are not making a weapon though the title is what will be shown when you are picking up or dropping the object. Finally the names should cover everything in the title and description fields so if your player wants to pick the object up or wear it will be easy to figure out what the names are.

dragon_head

title "a gold dragon head"

descr "A large golden dragon head is laying here looking sad."

names {"large golden dragon head","large gold dragon head",
       "golden dragon head","large dragon head","gold dragon head",
       "dragon head","large head", "sad head","head"}
...
end

The names, title and description shouldn't be to hard so I don't think it's necessary to go into any more description on the subject. Now we have to take care of what a player sees when he or she looks at an object. To make the main description of an NPC you place an extra on the NPC with no names in the list. The blank extra is a special extra that will be shown every time you look at anything in the names list of the object. So a description of an object would look something like this.

extra {}
"The head is large and beautiful, at least as beautiful as a dead
dragon head can be.  There is an extreme look of sorrow on the dragons
face and it seems to be for much more than its own death."

Now that you have a main description for the object you need to make any smaller descriptions that you want the player to be able to look at. In this case it may be good to give some secret information if the player looks at the face of the head directly.

extra {"gold dragon head face","dragon head face","head face","face"}
"Looking into the dragons face your eyes are drawn to the eyes of the
dead dragon.  Could there be something there?"

extra {"eyes","eye"}
"A world of blue skies and no storms is visible through the eyes and it
seems to be moving as if you were watching the world from space."

Now that we have the object all described we only need to give the object the manipulate flags it needs, weight, height, and maybe some extras that will make some cool acts when a player picks it up or drops it.

First thing to do though is pick the manipulate flags you want on the object. This is not a weapon or armour so all the player really needs to be able to do with it is pick it up and maybe hold it if you want and I do. The flags would then be as follows:

manipulate {MANIPULATE_TAKE,MANIPULATE_HOLD}

If you were feeling a little weird you could even make the person be able to wear the dragon head on his head but that would just be strange. Of course it's always good to know you have options.

Now let's set the height and weight. Remember you set the height in centimeters and the weight in pounds. In the future the VME will standardize to one or the other but for now we have to play the conversion game.

//20 feet  (1 inch = 2.54 cm
height 33

//566 KG (1 lb. = .45359 kg)
 weight 50
 
 

The final touch to our little dragon head is some cute acts when the player picks it up or drops it. If you remember from the extra fields in the Section called Description of object fields, there are some special extras that are made just for this purpose.

extra {"$get_s"}
"You suddenly feel very sad for a world that you don't even know."

extra {"$get_o"}
"A strange look of sadness crosses $1ns face."

extra {"$drop_s"}
"You feel much happier but you remember a feeling of great sorrow."

extra {"drop_o"}
"$1n seems to cheer up a bit."

There are other things we could add to this item but I want to keep this first object simple. The finished head would then look like this:

dragon_head

title "a gold dragon head"

descr "A large golden dragon head is laying here looking sad."

names {"large golden dragon head","large gold dragon head",
       "golden dragon head","large dragon head","gold dragon head",
       "dragon head","large head", "sad head","head"}
   
   extra {}
"The head is large and beautiful, at least as beautiful as a dead
dragon head can be.  There is an extreme look of sorrow on the dragons
face and it seems to be for much more than its own death."


extra {"gold dragon head face","dragon head face","head face","face"}
"Looking into the dragons face your eyes are drawn to the eyes of the
dead dragon.  Could there be something there?"

extra {"eyes","eye"}
"A world of blue skies and no storms is visible through the eyes and it
seems to be moving as if you were watching the world from space."

manipulate {MANIPULATE_TAKE,MANIPULATE_HOLD}

height 33
 weight 50

extra {"$get_s"}
"You suddenly feel very sad for a world that you don't even know."

extra {"$get_o"}
"A strange look of sadness crosses $1ns face."

extra {"$drop_s"}
"You feel much happier but you remember a feeling of great sorrow."

extra {"drop_o"}
"$1n seems to cheer up a bit."

end

That's all there is to making regular items. The rest is just adding functionality to what you already know. We will get much deeper into what you can do with items in the Section called More complex objects but first we will go over a debugging example and then all the special DIL functions made for objects.