Introduction
No area is complete
without everybody's favorite mud persona, the Mob! Mobiles are an essential
ingredient to any area, otherwise what is the point of visiting the area
besides reading all those quality room descriptions? This section will
address everything you need to know about creating and editing mobiles
with the vaunted OLC. You can read my 2 cents on building in a different
section, as this will generally only cover the commands and values required.
Like creating/editing
room, you start off with:
EDIT MOB {CREATE}
[VNUM]
NAME [STRING]
Every mobile
needs keyword names. Otherwise players couldn't interact with them. These
will not be visible to a player but should be logically apparent based
upon their long and short descriptions. A mobile with a short description
of the prince of Valhalla should have keywords of at least prince
and valhalla. If the long description is The royal prince of
Valhalla stands here, admiring himself. then the additional name keyword
of royal might be appropriate.
SHORT [STRING]
LONG [STRING]
DESC
The short description is seen whenever a mob peforms an action or is the object of one (i.e. socials and fighting). The short description is also that seen when performing a scan. It should NOT be capitalized or have a period at the end.
The long description is seen when players enter a room or look in the room where the mobile is located. The first word should be capitalized and a period placed at the end.
The description
is what players see when they look at the mobile. This should be just a
physical description and not a lengthy epic poem about what the players
think of the mob. Describing apparent emotions of the mobile is okay as
long as it's not overdone.
What's the race
of your mobile going to be? Keep in mind that selecting a specific race
will, depening on the race, automatically include certain immunities, vulnerabilities,
resistances, forms and parts. These can be altered though with the appropriate
commands. If one doesn't suit you, select unique and go to town generating
your own one-eye, two headed purple people eater.
SEX [SEX]
The sex your
mobile will be. The flags are:
| male | female | neutral | random |
| none |
FORM [FLAGS]
What is the mobile's form? Is it a regular mammal or a fantastic construct? Certain form flags will be automatically assigned according to the race selected, but they too can be altered. Perhaps your dragon is rare breed such as the mist dragon. Imagination is the limit but going too far out on a limb is discouraged. There just aren't that many undead crustacean centaurs running around. Some of the form flags should logically be combined. The available form flags:
As you can see,
a form snake should be both reptile and cold_blood. More exotic combinations
such as blob and mist would be a cloud.
PART [FLAGS]
The body parts
of your mobile. A beholder wouldn't be a beholder without his eyestalks
and scales. Most creatures tend to have heads and brains. Again, some of
these logically require another part. Hands and feet are generally attached
to arms and legs respectively. The available part flags:
ACT [FLAG]
These flags
dictate the mobiles general function or behavior.
NATURE [FLAG]
These flags
dictate the mobiles general stats.
ALIGNMENT [NUMBER]
Most brainless
animals and monsters will be neutral (0)
unless they are somehow inherently evil (-1000)
or good (1000).
Sentient creatures can by anything that fits. How many good Orcs do you
know?
LEVEL [NUMBER]
Level is a measure of the mobile's overall strength. This also generally determines the Hit Dice, Damage Dice, and Armor (AC) values for a mobile. The Hitroll is a bonus or penalty for exceptionally powerful or clumsy, inept mobiles. Use it sparingly.
HITROLL [NUMBER]
ATTACK [TYPE]
Sets the mobiles damage noun for combat. Exercise caution when assigning this value. Every Attack type has a default damage type, which you can vary, if you wish.
DAMAGE [TYPE]
The damage type
sets what kind of damage the attack does and if there are ways to evade
it (parry,...).
AFFECT [FLAG]
Affect
flags are used to assign spell
or spell-like effects to mobiles.
IMM [FLAGS]
RES [FLAGS]
VULN [FLAGS]
Immunities, resistances,
and vulnerabilities exist to both define the nature of mobiles and make
fighting them something more than just the usual hack-and-slash with any
old weapon. Avoid producing mobiles that are vulnerable to only one type
of attack and immune to everything else. The 'Achilles Heel' mob is both
boring and pretty easy to defeat. Certain races and forms will automatically
select certain immunities, resistances and vulnerabilities. You can change
these however you want though.
OFF [FLAGS]
Offensive
flags control mobile behavior
in combat. Be sparing with offensive abilities and generally set only one
defensive ability.
SIZE [SIZE]
Size is an extremely important factor in game effects and needs to be chosen carefully.
| tiny | small | medium | large |
| huge | giant |
SPEC [SPECIAL FUNCTION]
Special
functions are basically complex
hard coded MOBprograms. The only way to generate new ones is to physically
write them into the code. The advantage is that they can accomplish tasks
beyond the scope of normal MOBprograms.
POSITION [START/DEFAULT] [POSITION]
The Start
position is the position the mobile loads in.
The Default
position is what the mobile assumes after a fight.
GOLD [NUMBER]
This is the average
amount of money mobiles will carry measured in local currency. Non-intelligent
mobiles shouldn't carry money unless they hoard cash based on their nature.
An undead might have lingering memories of wealth and seeks to collect
as much as possible to provide a connection to its former life.
Shops are defined to allow mobiles to sell and buy items. Note: a mobile does not need to have defined item types, he could only sell items and refuse to buy any. Any items to be sold must be placed in the shopkeeper's inventory with resets. Reset items automatically replenish but items sold to the shopkeeper do not.
SHOP HOURS
[#OPENING] [#CLOSING]
SHOP PROFIT
[#MARKUP% BUYER] [#MARKDOWN% SELLER]
SHOP TYPE
[#0-4] [ITEM TYPE]
SHOP CURRENCY
[CURRENCY NAME / DEFAULT]
SHOP DELETE
[#0-4]
Shop hours define
when the shopkeeper will do business, so a 7-11 open 24 hours would be
set from 0 to 23.
Profit Markup
should never be less than 100 and Markdown should never be above 100.