Clan Documentation v1.0 7/14/98
by Kyle Boyd
Introduction
This document is a guide to using the clan system included with official
EmberMUD releases. This system was desinged and coded by me, Kyle Boyd, for
my EmberMUD, MUDweiser, and was later modified slightly to install it in the
EmberMUD releases. This clan code used the existing OLC system standard to
EmberMUD and many other Merc-derived bases. Most of the clan code is in the
clan.c file, with the clan data being stored in the clans.are file in the area
directory. If the following document does not answer whatever questions you
have, you may e-mail me at boyd1@proaxis.com. After 9/23/98 or so I will be
attenting Oregon State university, so my e-mail address will likely change
then, but until I post a new address any mail sent to boyd1@proaxis.com will
likely be forwarded to my new address and will reach me that way.
I'm pretty sure I have some bugs left in this code. PLEASE PLEASE let
me know if you fix one, so I can fix it on official releases.
General information about this clan system
This clan system has a few fundamental concepts that are not immediately obvious
to the new EmberMUD implementor. One of the most important of these is the
availability of private and secret clans. Due to the fact that a player's clan
is stored as a number, the true numbers of clans should not be released to anyone
who is involved in them in any way, as this would defeat the purpose of "secret"
clans. Thus the code as it is written only allows implementors to know the true
numbers of clans. While this may be constricting to some, it is the only realistic
way to preserve the concealment of secret clans.
In addition, there is no way to remove a clan. This was done on purpose
to avoid problems involved with creating clans with the same number. For instance,
let's say a player logs on and joins clan #1. This player then plays for a
month then leaves for a while. When he comes back, he discovers that clan #1
was removed, and a new clan #1 was formed and now he is a member of a completely
different clan. To prevent these sort of problems, each clan has is assigned one
of 5 statuses. These are creating, active, inactive, disbanding, and dead. The
creating stage should not last long... it is for the period of time that OLC is
being used to define the clan. The active stage is where most clans will be...
active just stands for "actively recruiting". The inactive stage does not mean
the clan is inactive, it just means the clan is not looking for any more members.
The "disbanding" stage indicates that the clan will be gone soon and its members
should resign and look for a new clan to join. When the clan is dead, gone, and
forgotten, in the "dead" stage, any remaining members should be forced to resign.
Each clan has 5 ranks. This number can be changed by a coder (see the "For
coders only" section below) but 5 is the default number. There are also two
positions that should be filled before starting the clan, the leader and the
sponsor. It should be emphasized to clan leaders that promotions should be
given for doing something for the clan, just so all ranks get used. Implementors
can promote anyone to any rank, this will be explained in the "creating a clan"
section below. In order to promote anybody, the promoter must be at least rank
2 (the ranks are 1=highest 5=lowest 0=not in a clan). A rank 2 member can
promote people up to rank 3, and a rank 1 person can promote people up to rank 2.
Only the clan leader can promote someone to rank 1.
A note on the involvement of gods in the creation and playing of clans:
this clan code was written with the possibility thta one day a mud might wish to
have "clan wars" or some sort of feud between rival clans. It is intended that
all the IMPs are to remain neutral, due to their ability to do almost anything.
The god sponsor of each clan should be primarily responsible for building clan
rooms, mobs, and equipment for their clan, and acting as a sort of "go-between"
to carry messages form the IMPs to clan members in the event of "clan wars".
Gods not sponsoring clans should be discouraged from joining them to avoid
unbalancing the different clans, but this is not restricted by the code in any way.
Creating a clan
Eventually, a player will come to you and ask for permission to start a clan.
In order to insure that your mud doesn't end up with 49 clans averaging 3 members
each you should probably estblish some guidelines regarding who can be able to start
up a clan and what it costs to do so, etc. I'll leave that up to you. You should
probably transfer yourself and the player starting the clan to a private room to
assemble the clan interrupted. The first thing you should do is type "edit clan
create". This will create a clan with blank values. This command is not
reversable so extreme care should be taken when typing it. If you recieve the
error "Limit on clans has been reached" that means you have reached the limit on
clans allowed by the code and you need to raise MAX_CLAN in merc.h. When you press
enter or type "show" you should see a list of information listing the current values
of the clan, just like editing a mob in OLC. It should look something like this:
Name: [Unnamed]
Number: [ 1]
Leader: [ None]
Sponsor: [ None]
Whoname: []
Maximum members: 30
Minimum level: 15
Clan recall: 3001
Cost to join: 0
Rank 1:[ None]
Rank 2:[ None]
Rank 3:[ None]
Rank 4:[ None]
Rank 5:[ None]
Clan flags: [creating]
Join flags: []
Most of these areas are self evident. I'll clarify a few that I haven't gone over
yet. The "whoname" is what will appear before a character's name when the "who"
command is typed. If you want nothing to appear, leave this blank. It may be
necessary to put a space after the whoname to avoid having a character's name and
clan name run together. The max members field can be lowered, but to be raised
MAX_CLAN_MEMBERS needs to be raised in merc.h. Clan recall is the vnum of the
room that the "crecall" command will transport clan members to. Cost to join is
the amount of gold pieces is will take in order to join this clan. The clan flags
section shows the status of the clan, as well as whether or no the clan is set to
auto-accept new members, and whether it's private or secret(I'll explain the public
and secret stuff later). Join flags show the requirements to join this clan. Type
"? joinflags" to see a list... the list should be self-explanatory.
Next you'll need to add the leader of the clan and promote him/her. Type
"clan set # member name" where # is the clan number and name is the name of who
you are adding. This is the "override" adding command. It will add anyone regardless
of any restrictions, unless they are alreay in a clan. The final step to to get
the clan out of the creating stage. To do this, type "clan set # status active".
The clan is now complete. Type "done" to exit edit mode. The clan file saves
automatically when edited and when a member is added, so there is no command to save
the clans file.
Clan commands for mortals
At the time I wrote this, I have not included any help files for the various
clan commands. Until then this will do. The following is a list of the clan commands
for mortals and a short description of what they do:
offer: offers membership in your clan to someone
petition: petitions someone to join their clan
accept: accepts an offer or petition
decline: refuses an offer or petition
show: shows a list of the public clans
join: join a clan (if it autoaccepts members)
promote: raise someone's rank in your clan
demote: lower someone's rank in you clan
clantalk: like gossip, but only sends message to online members of clans
resign: type this twice to leave your clan
The IMP clan command
Aside from the OLC, there's only one clan command for IMPs. That command is
called (surprise) "clan". It does everything that IMPs should need to do to clans
outside of OLC. Here's a brief list of the different syntaxes for the "clan" command,
with the # being the number of the pertinent clan:
clan list: show a list of all clans, with their real numbers
clan view #: show a deteailed description of clan #
clan set # status <status>: set clan #'s status to <status>
clan set # member <player>: add <player> to clan #
clan snoop: Snoop the clantalk command. (toggle)
clan bank # deposit <amount>: deposit <amount> in clan #'s fund
clan bank # withdraw <amount>: withdraw <amount> from clan #'s fund
I don't believe I covered the clan fund yet. It's where all the money
goes if there's a required cost to join the clan. It can be given to the leader
of the clan or used for some other purpose, such as the for buying clan equipment
of a clan hall or some such... individual IMPs should decide what to do with it.
The clan logs
There is a directory set aside for clan logs outside of the normal log directory,
called "clan". In this directory there will be some files with names that look like
"1.01-31-99" (assuming you have some clans :). This example would be the log for
what happened regarding clan 1 on Janurary 31st, 1999. Later I or some other EmberMUD
coder may code something in where imps, clan leaders, and/or clan sponsors can read
these files while logged on. For now someone with shell access must read them like
normal logs. These log files are intended to provide records to avoid unneeded problems.
("Who let John into this clan and then promoted him to second in command without my
approval?" "Not me." "Not me!" "I didn't do it." etc. )
Clan-only rooms, objects, and mobs
Currently only objects have a restriction which limits them to only one clan.
To set an object to a certain clan, enter edit object mode for the desired object and
then type "oclan #" where # is the real number of that clan. Only IMPs have access
to this part of object editing... necessary to preserve the existance of sercet clans.
Rooms may be made somewhat clan-only. If you make the clan recall room enter into an
area with no exits to the rest of the mud world then entrance is effectively blocked
to non-clan members. As for mobs, a coder can write a spec program to guard the
clan-only rooms.
The three types of clans
I made this clan system have 3 types of clans available to it: public, private,
and secret. Pulbic is the default: unless a clan is set to something else it will be
public. Public clans are acknowledged to exist and anyone who types "who" will see
them. Private clans are acknowledged to exist but only members and IMPs can see their
clan whonames in the "who" listing. When an IMP sees a private clan, it has a (P)
before it to remind that IMP that the clan is private and most people cannot see it.
Secret clans are not acknowledged to exist at all. The "show" command will not reveal
their existance. Members of secret clans should use the "clantalk" command to find out
who else is in their clan, because only certain higher ranking people in the clan can
see other clan members on the "who" list. IMPs can see all members of secret clans,
but they are prefixed with a (S) as a reminder that the clan is a secret one. If you
have any problems with private or secret clans I reccomend that you just use normal
ones, but e-mail me with the problem.
For coders only
This section willl describe to coders (experienced ones!) some of the changes
they can make. If you're not a coder or not going to change the clan code you may
stop right here. Still here? Good.
There are some changes you'll need to make when the rest of the mud changes.
For instance, if you add a new class, you'll need to add new anti-flags for that
class to the joinflags. You'll need to edit the clan_join_flags[] table in bit.c
, as well as the can_ch_join function and the do_offer functions.
There are also some features partially programmed in, but not finished yet.
Take a look at the clan_data structure. You may notice that many of its members
are unused, such as kills, deaths, command, and skill. These are for feature I
meant to implement but never got around to. The kills and deaths are arrays that
were supposed to show the pk deaths and kills versus the other clans on the mud.
It can be set up to report any form of pking, or set up to only to record the
outcome of special duels between tow rival members. However you with to code it,
go ahead. I may release it as a snippet later, but don't hold your breath waiting.
The command and skill members of the structure were supposed to be so you could
designate clan-only skills and/or commands. You could make a special command or
skill and use those fields to designate it. You can probably remove these two
members of the structure and not have it affect gameplay at all.
If you add something new to the sturcture, you'll probably need to save it.
There's a handy way I've devised for saving the ranks and the names of members in
a clan. If you look in clan.c you'll see the load_clans() function, of which I've
pasted a small part here:
for( ; done == FALSE ; )
{
switch( fread_letter( fp ) )
{
default: bug("Bad letter in clans.are", 0);
break;
case 'M':
i = fread_number( fp );
GETSTR( clan->members[i-1] );
After this switch statement, it checks for a letter, then matches it up with what
it should load. So if you modify the save_clans function to save your new data
starting with a letter, then adding that letter as one of the cases under this
switch statement, your new addidtion should save just fine.
Conclusion
I've probably left some stuff out. If I have please e-mail me and tell me.
Any feedback on this code is also appreciated! Thank you for using EmberMUD.
Kyle Boyd