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Default Database Tutorial
The default database includes enough functionality to create basic worlds and share them with other people.
You should follow the installation instructions and then logon using telnet or some other client.
You should be here:
Welcome back SysOp
The First Room
You are standing in the First Room. You are completely entranced by its magnificence,
which is probably only surpassed by the Second Room, to the east.
Exits:
east to The Second Room
You can see:
SysOp (you)
>
The '>' is the prompt that is waiting for you to type in a command.
You probably don't want to be called SysOp, unless you feel overly attached to the memory of running bulletin board systems back in the early 1990's.
Type the following to change your name (followed by ENTER). Don't type the '>' - it's there to show you the lines that you type in.
> @setname me to "Your Name"
SysOp is renamed to Your Name
I didn't mean actually call yourself "Your Name", so perhaps use your proper name.
Don't forget the preposition 'to'. @setname won't work otherwise.
At this point you can type in any commands and press ENTER to have the system process them.
Commands are English like, such as:
> pick up badger
> drop hose
> stroke wall
You will notice that we don't use words like 'the' or 'a/an'.
None of these commands will work right now because there are no badgers, hoses, or even walls in our world... yet.
In fact, if you try these commands you'll get the following default response:
> pick up badger
I couldn't understand that.
Almost all the time your character (currently called SysOp - short for System Operator) will be located somewhere. We are currently located in a place called the 'First Room'.
Reading the text on screen tells us the following:
"The First Room" is the name of this location
"You are standing in the First Room..." is the description of this location
"Exits" tell us which directions we can travel, which we will do in a second.
"You can see..." tells us what things are in this location.
Exits are not always listed - perhaps there is a secret passage (well, there isn't one yet, but you could add one).
For now, let's go somewhere...
Type in the following, and then press return:
> east
The Second Room
The wonderous surroundings of the Second Room manage to fulfil every dream you've ever had about a room. It is indeed even more resplendent than the First Room.
Exits:
west to The First Room
You can see:
SysOp (you)
Ah, it worked - we have 'moved' to another location called 'The Second Room'.
We can type in 'west' to get back to the first room.
All directions are recognised, so you can go north and south (if there were locations there), and also up and down.
There is a command for quickly creating a new room and linking it, called @dig.
Let's create another room to the north of either the first or second room, regardless of which one you are in.
> @dig north to "The Third Room"
You have created a room called The Third Room (#19)
Exits created...
Now type in 'look'
> look
The Second Room
The wonderous surroundings of the Second Room manage to fulfil every dream you've ever had about a room. It is indeed even more resplendent than the First Room.
Exits:
north to The Third Room
west to The First Room
You can see:
Your Name (you)
You can now go into your new room by typing in 'north':
> north
The Third Room
You can't see anything of interest.
Exits:
You can see:
Your Name (you)
Some things to note here.
- The new room has the default description.
- There are no exits
Let's fix these issues:
> @describe here "My New Room!"
Updated the description on The Third Room
> look
The Third Room
My New Room!
Exits:
You can see:
Your Name (you)
You can also use the @describe command on most objects (that you own) including yourself:
> @describe me "The all powerful owner of this world."
Updated the description on Your Name
> look at me
The all powerful owner of this world.
We also just introduced a new command - the 'look at' command
So we want to create an exit back into the room we just came from. We can use the @dig command to create an exit without creating a new room.
The command will be '@dig south to [room]' but how do we know what [room] should be?
Every object in the world has a unique number assigned to it. When you created this new room there was a number reported that you might have missed:
You have created a room called The Third Room (#19)
#19 means your new room is object number 19. And, if you're using the default database, #4 is the First Room, and #10 is the Second Room.
You can see a list of these numbers in the GUI server window on the left hand side.
We want to avoid using object numbers as much as possible but for this example we need to. Let's create that exit, to either room.
> @dig south to #4
Exits created...
> look
The Third Room
My New Room!
Exits:
south to The First Room
Great, we can now type 'south' and we'll end up in the First Room.
Obviously we don't want to go through all that each time so we can call @dig in a more advanced way. Navigate to the First Room and try this:
> @dig w,west|e,east to "Another Room"
You have created a room called Another Room (#20)
Exits created...
> look
The First Room
You are standing in the First Room. You are completely entranced by its magnificence, which is probably only surpassed by the Second Room, to the east.
Exits:
west to Another Room
east to The Second Room
> west
Another Room
You can't see anything of interest.
Exits:
east to The First Room
We just created a new room and added exits to it and back to our current location. We also added some aliases so you can type 'east' or 'e', 'west' or 'w'.
The command translates to:
- Create a new room called "Another Room"
- Create exits from here to the new room called 'w' and also 'west'
- Create exits from the new room to here called 'e' and also 'east'
When describing your rooms you might want to say there is something of note, say a rug on the floor, and let people look at it. One approach would be to create a new object called 'rug' and give it a description but if it's just decoration, creating a whole object might be more than we need.
Fortunately there is a detail system built into the default database so we can add details to our rooms.
First, let's describe our room and say there is a rug on the floor:
> @describe here "You are standing in a warm, cosy room. There is a decorative rug on the floor"
Updated the description on Another Room
We can add the rug detail like so:
> @detail here rug "The rug is quite beautiful and detailed."
Added detail for rug
> look at rug
The rug is quite beautiful and detailed.
> take rug
You can't take that.
Yes, if you try and take the rug, the system recognises it's just a detail and says, quite rightly, that you can't take that.
At this point you have learnt how to name, and describe rooms, dig new rooms and create exits between them. Finally, you learnt how to add details to add rich details to the things that you create.
Someone else can now log into your system and explore all the things that you have created.