chapter 27 "Towns"
Building Towns
The Nightmare IV LPC Library
written by Descartes of Borg 950429
The Nightmare IV LPC Library contains support for towns, which is in
fact very minimal from the mudlib level. If, however, you wish to
structure your MUD to be centered around the concept as Nightmare LPMud
is, then you need to understand how to build a town. This document
describes the building of towns using the Nightmare IV LPC Library.
I. What Is a Town?
A town is simply a collection of rooms which have the same value set
for Town. If done poorly, this is all it is. If done right, however,
a town becomes the center of the games' social structure. If you
decide to build a town in your area, the first thing you need to do is
isolate it. All towns should be surrounded by vast, vast areas of
wilderness of some sort. This may mean desert, forest, jungle, or
whatever. You may or may not want to have a road which links it to
the rest of civilization.
Rooms are considered "wilderness" by default. That is, if you never
set the town in them, they are considered wilderness. To make a room
part of a town, you need to call SetTown() from create() of the room:
SetTown("Praxis");
Capitalize your town name properly.
Next you need to decide how many estates may be built in the room.
Ideally, towns are expanding and changing things. Upper level players
have the ability to build estates in their home towns. Of course, ten
estates in one room is crowded. Generally you should limit the number
of estates to what would logically fit in a given room. For example,
if you are on a road at the edge of town with nothing about, then
allowing two estates makes sense. On the other hand, in the middle of
an intersection of two roads, there is hardly any room for an estate
to be built. To allow estates to be built in a room:
SetProperty("estates", 2);
This allows two estates to be built off of this room.
As stated above, towns are expanding. This is why they should be
situated far apart. Too close together it is hard for them to expand
without changing the overall map of the game. Therefore, when your
town has gotten as full as can be handled, then you simply move to
outlying rooms and make them part of the town by setting their town.
In addition, give them the capacity for estates. Do not forget to
change room descriptions and allow for needed roads!
II. What do I put in towns?
The first section described what is minimally needed for a town from a
code point of view. This section describes what sorts of things you
should put in your towns. Most are optional, however, you do need to
add something called an adventurer's hall. An adventurer's hall is
the default start room for the town for anyone who chooses the town as
their home town. In order to make it their home town, they go to the
adventurer's hall and pay a fee (generally determined by approval) to
move to this town. Until that person builds an estate in the town,
the adventurer's hall is their default starting point.
Beyond that, the only other thing required is a real estate office for
selling estates. This is an inheritable from /lib/sales.c
(LIB_SALES). Approval determines what your local land value is, and
you fill in the descriptions. For information on advanced coding of
sales offices, see the document /doc/build/Sales.
Nothing else is required. Of course, your land value (the amount
people pay to live and build in your town) is determined by the sorts
of services your town offers. No town should offer all services. And
certainly, the services your town offers should reflect the nature of
the region in which you are building. Are you an isolated, small
town? Then few services will be available. Are you a central, large
town? Then a majority of services should be available.
Services include:
shops of different types
bars and pubs
restaurants
libraries for learning languages
class halls
town council rooms
This list will probably expand over time, but it provides a good
starting point for common services.
Descartes of Borg
borg@imaginary.com
