As of this moment, I haven't touched any of the circlemud player equipment saving code. The concept of MUD item rental is kind of foreign to me. All I want my MUD to do is allow players to log in with their equipment and inventory exactly the way it was when they logged out without having to have them "rent" or do anything.

I've looked at the functions in objsave.c and I'm trying to see what I can use for my purposes. Where should I begin?

Which version of circle do you have?

if you have the cedit command, you should be able to change it in there. If not, you may want to look over config.c for something like…
int free_rent = NO;

I've been using CircleMUD-3.1.

This is what's in my config.c.

* Should the MUD allow you to 'rent' for free?  (i.e. if you just quit,
 * your objects are saved at no cost, as in Merc-type MUDs.)
 */
int free_rent = YES;

Should it be yes or no?

With it as "YES," every time someone logs out with items, everything drops onto the ground.

check your do_quit function that should be in act.other.c. There should be something along the lines of..
if (free_rent)
Crash_rentsave(ch, 0);
You should be able to follow it from there through objsave.c to see whats going on.

I would personally recommend the latest tbaMUD release instead of circleMUD-3.1. tbaMUD is essentially the continuation of circleMUD, is more stable and is actively developed. You can get it from here.

I wish I'd known about it before I started work on my MUD, but I'm pretty sure I can still glean a few insights by looking at the code. Thanks.

Strange. Even if I call Crash_save() unconditionally on a character, it won't save anything. I'm having trouble understanding just how the rent system saves a PC's stuff then loads it back. Anyone have a hint to give before I have to read all of objsave.c? :(

Alright, uh, well … booting the MUD without the -q flag causes objects to be saved. Now I just need to have them re-equip when the players log in.