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The Area Engine

Overview

Essentially it is a single "controller" that creates the rooms for you based on an area file. As a builder you write the area file and the area generates itself - no more creating rooms. At this time the area file only controls the rooms and their exits, but it will soon provide the ability to place monsters, and then to define monsters. After that, I'm open to suggestions.

File Format

The file is broken into a series of sections, each section having a heading and some content. Headings have the form [heading-name], and a section is all the content from its heading until the heading for the next section. Section headings have to be on a single line of their own.

The following shows you the outline of the file. A complete area file will probably include the sections shown here as well as having lots of content inside each section

[general]

[map]

[exitnames]

[specialrooms]

[roomdescriptions]

Comments

# I am a comment
[general]
I am not a comment.

[map]
# I am another comment
# that goes over multiple lines
I am not a comment

The [general] section

Supported constants at this time are:

Each constant goes on a line of its own and is assigned a value using the = operator.

For example:

[general]
# Define 'domain' to be 123
domain=123

#define 'startroom' to be 'hallway'
startroom=hallway

The [map] section

This section does not define the contents of rooms, nor the room descriptions, just the exits/links between rooms.

Each room is defined on a single line. The line has the format:

After the ":" are the exits for the room, separated with commas. Each exit is a direction, an "=" sign, and the room_key for the destination.

So - the following map is used to describe a 2 story house with several rooms:

[general]
# Make people start in the lounge
startroom=lounge

[map]
# This comment is just describing the layout below, the area creator ignores it completely
# The ground floor map looks like:

# kitchen   -  dining  
#    |      \     |
# hallway    lounge - outside
#    |
# hallway - bedroom
#    |
# hallway - bedroom
#    <

# The second story looks like

# bedroom - onsuite
#   |
# landing
#   >

# The "outside" room is not in this area, it's the room for entering this area

# Below here are the actual rooms with their exits
kitchen: e=dining,s=hallway1,se=lounge
dining: w=kitchen,s=lounge
lounge: nw=kitchen,n=dining,e=outside
hallway1: n=kitchen,s=hallway2
hallway2: n=hallway1,s=hallway3,e=bedroom1
hallway3: n=hallway2,e=bedroom2,u=landing
bedroom1: w=hallway1
bedroom2: w=hallway2
landing: d=hallway3,n=masterbedroom
masterbedroom: s=landing,e=onsuite
onsuite:w=masterbedroom

Note that there is no room with a room_key = "outside". This is because the room is specially coded - it is either a hand-coded room which you want to connect with, or it is a room managed by a different area engine.

The [exitnames] section

The [specialrooms] section

The [roomdescriptions] section