Zugg Software :: View topic - Mapping Assistance needed with Lost Souls

Newbie Joined: 25 Jul 2004 Posts: 5

I am working on Lost Souls, they have pesky weather that is at the top when you walk into a room. Then instead of room names they just jump into a description.
Ex.

Hot rain falls from a steadily moving, lightly clouded sky. There is a
brisk wind.
Amidst the rolling plains, the low hills and scattered trees stand in stark
contrast to the sky. To the north and east a great river winds its way
through the plains.
Obvious exits lead in all compass directions.
>
Already working on a set of triggers for the different and various weather (annoying to me and the mapper) Is there a better way to block out all the weather, which changes. I want the mapper to realise there are all avaliable compass directions for exits, another annoying aspect. I have tried a trigger that changes obvious exits lead in all compas directions, to one that lists all the cardinal directions N S W E NE NW SW SE, is there a more efficent or direct way of doing this? Third, I want to take the first bit of the actually description, and force the mapper to add a room name, such as in the example above I want 'Rolling Plains' without the quotes.
I have tried making a trigger like
#TR {Amidst the rolling plains,} {%roomname (Rolling Plains)}
also {%roomname ([Rolling Plains)]}
but cannot seem to get it to take, and there is a dearth of documentation on these hard to find and somewhat obscure commands, atleast they are listed if you hunt through all possible commands.
Thanks

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

The first step is to create triggers with #NOMAP or #GAG for all the silly weather conditions.
Next create a #SUBSTITUTE for "all compass directions" so the mapper will detect properly when such exit lines occur.
Finally reconfigure the mapper.

Fixing so that there are room names will be much harder. Since there are no actual names provided you have to create them based on the description. The amount of parsing required to decide on a good name is definitely beyond my abilities to script. I can point you to the right place to do it though. You want to use the onroomcreate special alias to set the room name.

Newbie Joined: 25 Jul 2004 Posts: 5

Ok that is a good start, I will work on looking up the onroomcreate. Another question along a smiiliar line is the
%roomcol{[vnum],[color]}
does this only return what color the room is or can it be used to set the color of the room.
What I want to do is set the color of the room when I walk into it.
So far I am unable to get it functioning and the information in the help section for the command is somewhat vague and terse.

SubAdmin Joined: 18 Nov 2001 Posts: 5182

Yes it can set the color of a room. You are right the help for that function is a little terse, it has no examples. I will put it in the bug system so I remember to fix it.

The %roomcol function works like all the other mapper functions. If the vNum arguement is specified then that room is returned/set. Otherwise the current room according to the marker position is return/set.

If the color arguement is specified then the color of the appropiate room is set, otherwise it is returned.

Even when setting a color the value is returned. The set occurs first so the new color value is returned. This why a #NOOP is commonly used with mapper functions.

You can use a color named "default" to set a room's color to match the mapper's default room color.

If you happen to find anything else lacking in the help please use the bug reporting system to let us know. Sometimes experience gets in the way of seeing what people really need in a help.