last minute questions, help please!

[disaster]

finally, i'm getting right down to the final few steps of writing my area. i just have a few last details to work through before i can start the whole submitting process, so i'd really appreciate some help.

1) what is the spell number for empath when placing it on a pill? it doesn't appear to be listed in the buider's guide

2) what is the spell number for complete healing on a wand? the guide says 478, but i was getting strange things happening with Alicia's builder, like it randomly changing it from saying "complete healing" to "control flames"

3)when putting a bunch of different flags into a value, is it best to add them up, or do the #|#|# thing? the builder appears to have done a bunch of adding for me, so if i'm hand editing things, do i have to keep adding them in, or is putting my additions in with a | good enough?

4)what is the object type number for a vehicle?

5) what are all the different vehicle flags (to make it have a horn, to make it fly, etc..)

6)is it possible to add more than one spec to a mob? the guide says no, but i wanted to double check. if the answer is no, is there a hate_all spec available? if not, please pretty please can one be made? *begs* i could substitute love_demon flags in for them, but i'd really like to be able to be mean to demons too

7)how does one go about making a mob load inside a container (like the ones in the toy shop boxes, for example)

what, exactly, has to be done for "hidden" containers. not just the ones with no long, but the ones where the room part of the file is changed to avoid the blank line look

9)what, exactly, do i have to do to use the room_damage speco properly, and how do i go about doing it?


if any of you can give me definate answers to one or more of these questions, i'd be very appreciative -Dis

[Faustus]

Okay, I'm not at my apartment right now, so I can;t check all of my paperwork and notes, but I remember enough to tackle a few of your questions...

2) what is the spell number for complete healing on a wand? the guide says 478, but i was getting strange things happening with Alicia's builder, like it randomly changing it from saying "complete healing" to "control flames"

That was a typo on my part that may have been fixed at some point after it made made its way into Alicia's program. 478 is indeed the correct number for control flames.

3)when putting a bunch of different flags into a value, is it best to add them up, or do the #|#|# thing? the builder appears to have done a bunch of adding for me, so if i'm hand editing things, do i have to keep adding them in, or is putting my additions in with a | good enough?

Leaving the separate numbers in the #|#|# is perfectly fine, and can actually make altering/editing the file a little easier if you're doing it by hand at some future point.

6)is it possible to add more than one spec to a mob? the guide says no, but i wanted to double check. if the answer is no, is there a hate_all spec available? if not, please pretty please can one be made? *begs* i could substitute love_demon flags in for them, but i'd really like to be able to be mean to demons too

Sorry, limit one spec per mob. If you try to give it more than one spec, it'll only end up with the last one listed in the area file. The closest you can come to a hate_all is agressive, but then it won't attack higher level characters.

7)how does one go about making a mob load inside a container (like the ones in the toy shop boxes, for example)

Go through a lot of trial and error, a lot of mis-information, and a lot of trial and error. At least that's how I remember it. I won't be able to give you anything better until I get back to my place and can look at the area file itself.

what, exactly, has to be done for "hidden" containers. not just the ones with no long, but the ones where the room part of the file is changed to avoid the blank line look

You'll probably need to make this change with a text editor rather than the builder program. At the end of the long description, make sure the tilde (~) comes immediately after the last period, rather than on the subsequent line. Then, make sure the first object to load into the room has no long description, otherwise things will look wonky.


I'll see if I can help you with some of the other questions later...

[disaster]

*does a little dance* thanks Faustus!

[Everybody]

1) It looks like it should be 621, but I can't seem to get any pill effects to work when modding existing pills. Up in the air whether or not it would actually work.
4) This one I can't even play around with to try and solve... I'm pretty sure it's being held secret based on some hard-coding issues or some such.
5) You can talk to me online to get a partial list (as far as I've discovered based on what I can mod on overloaded containers). This is also probably part of the reason why the vehicle type number isn't public knowledge.
9)Looks like the room_damage speco is pretty simple as of right now. Just set the speco on the appropriate (!take) object, and include a ed of "damage_message" (without quotes) that you want echoed to the room every time the damage ticks in.

[disaster]

cool, thanks EB, i'll look for you online soon.

slart? kiri? anyone out there know the parts that EB and faustus haven't been able to answer so far?

[Brodgar]

1) what is the spell number for empath when placing it on a pill? it doesn't appear to be listed in the buider's guide

It's not in the guide, because it doesn't work in that context. You'll need to pick a different spell.

2) what is the spell number for complete healing on a wand? the guide says 478, but i was getting strange things happening with Alicia's builder, like it randomly changing it from saying "complete healing" to "control flames"

Complete healing is 125. But, this really, really should not be in mort area as it has huge balance ramifications, especially on an item with multiple charges. Items like this were modded out due
to abuse and we shouldn't be putting them back in.

3)when putting a bunch of different flags into a value, is it best to add them up, or do the #|#|# thing? the builder appears to have done a bunch of adding for me, so if i'm hand editing things, do i have to keep adding them in, or is putting my additions in with a | good enough?

Faustus is correct, it makes debugging way easier to separate them out, but the mud will just smash them together if you add them semi-separately.

4)what is the object type number for a vehicle?/ 5.) what are all the different vehicle flags (to make it have a horn, to make it fly, etc..)

I had a very long winded response to this answering the question you asked and not the question you are trying to ask, so let's start over. Although as a player you can't easily see the difference, what you are thinking of as vehicles are really containers. Tyvek sells vehicles, but the builders guide is correct when it points you towards containers instead. The large comfy couch that moves, carries people and honks... is a container, not a vehicle.

Hover is actually the wear bit for the fly effect for vehicles if I remember correctly. I'm not at the computer where I worked out the container flags (I had to do this for the Tgames quest prizes), but I can tell you that a large comfy couch has a horn and it's flag total is 553361. You know how bits double, so you can work backward to isolate them. If you log in some time, I can help with this.

6)is it possible to add more than one spec to a mob? the guide says no, but i wanted to double check. if the answer is no, is there a hate_all spec available? if not, please pretty please can one be made? *begs* i could substitute love_demon flags in for them, but i'd really like to be able to be mean to demons too

You are correct to be wary of the guide as it's a touch out of date, but in this case, you are correct there is no hate_all spec. As a builder there are things like this that really irritate me (although I've come to understand the very good reasons why a lot what seems like it should be obviously in game is not, for example specs in general are buggy and crash prone), but I've also learned that sometimes they can be really great for our creativity. There are lot of interesting things that builders have come up with precisely because we had to be more creative due to limitations of our code base. To some extent, layers only exist because I was tinkering with mob chutes which I was tinkering with because I wanted a way to create rare load objects. So, get creative. Invent a trap or trick we haven't thought of yet. This is one way the builder robs you a bit, because you are less likely to tinker with the actual code. Faustus came up with a lot of interesting tricks, because he codes everything by hand and did a lot of "I wonder what would happen if..."

7)how does one go about making a mob load inside a container (like the ones in the toy shop boxes, for example)

This is all in the resets and I'd have to break out my old laptop to see what order it's done in. Again, if you are around, I can probably be convinced to do this.

8)what, exactly, has to be done for "hidden" containers. not just the ones with no long, but the ones where the room part of the file is changed to avoid the blank line look

Faustus mentioned this, you remove the tilde. Although there are other ways of doing this too. This has to be hand edited and it should be the absolute last thing you do. As in the area has been
approved, spell checked, balanced, loaded on the test port etc. because once you make that modification, you have to do all future modifications by hand without the builder.

9.) what, exactly, do i have to do to use the room_damage speco properly, and how do i go about doing it?

EB already covered this, but for the sake of putting all the answers in one place. Set the speco on the appropriate (!take) object, and include a ed of "damage_message" (without quotes) that you want echoed to the room every time the damage ticks in.