Building Standards

PROJECTS FOR BUILDERS

For these projects, we'd like you to take on areas that we've loosely defined. Room names are largely placeholders to indicate our general thoughts on what should go into the room, so you can edit them - as long as you're making them more 'specific'. I.e., if a room's already got a quite specific name, try to work with it rather than change it, but generic names like "Trade Alley" are 100% up to grabs for changing.

You may have some rooms with pre-existing comments in the desc - these are meant as a general guide to help you envision what's there. Lean into them, but if the feel just seems wrong you have the freedom to go in a different direction.

While the room skeletons are already built out, you may find yourself thinking an area needs another room. It's okay to add on, just make sure you let us know what you added where.

Areas to Describe

District 1

- The Commerce Hub

- City Hall

- ACC Station

District 2

- Pawn Alley

- Refinery Row

- Catwalk System

District 3

- Street of Lights

- Mall

- Trade Alley

District 4

- University

- Hospital

- Pleasure Garden

Tailoring

- Needs additional recipes beyond shirt and pants to cover wearlocs (note items can only be assigned to one wearloc)

- Needs additional bolts of fabric. Lean heavily into sci-fi ideas like interesting synthetics, but you can certainly include fabrics woven from Artemis native plants as well.

BASIC STANDARDS

Desc Length:

3-5 sentences - you can go longer for a very complicated or unusual room, but if it's too long, consider putting some details on items instead so people can look at them separately.

Desc Style:

Person: Third person (so don't use 'you').

Spelling: Uniform American spelling throughout - use color, theater, center, etc. The one exception is "grey" because that just sounds way better than "gray".

Tense: Write all descriptions in present tense (i.e., "Slate tiles stretch across the plaza", not "Slate tiles stretched across the plaza.")

Contents: Focus on giving a general feeling of the area, the most obvious features, and adding some details to make it lively and interesting. You CAN include items in the descs in the same way you can in Untold Dawn right now.

Desc Examples:

D1 Pedestrian Airlock (#140)

A graceful glass dome rises about ten meters in height here, the light of Artemis's sun dimmed by smoky grey hexagonal panes overhead.  Foot traffic flows smoothly in two separate directions, black-tiled floors ringing with the constant footsteps of those exiting east toward Callysto Crater or west into the great domed City itself. The two streams of humanity are neatly divided by a great cylindrical column of clear glass, serving as the centerpiece of this space. Within it, an ancient fossil towers nearly all the way to the ceiling: blackened ribs protruding from a jagged nest of obsidian flakes, as if caught mid-eruption from volcanic earth.

M.E.R.L.I.N. Corporation - Craft Hall (#216)

   This vast hall is the heart of tailoring on Artemis. Rows of MERLIN workbenches line the floor, each paired with a cloth dispenser that whirs softly as fabric slides through mechanical arms. The air carries the faint scent of ozone and synthetic dye, the ambient chatter of tailors weaving through the mechanical drone. Above it all, the company's emblem - a sharp cyan sigil etched in chrome - casts a cold, white light across the room, glinting off mannequins half-dressed in prototypes of workwear and urban uniforms. Representatives of the MERLIN Corporation move between stations, clipboards in hand, observing and advising those who come here to rent their devices.

SETTING THE MOOD

We want things to have a cyberpunk-esque feel - technology embedded heavily in daily life, neon lights, colorful graffiti, profound contrasts between the rich and the poor.

But we also want to make them reflect the reality of life on Artemis. The city is multicultural, with a melting pot of different Earth influences. When you name NPCs or create restaurants, for example, consider looking all across the world for inspiration.

And Artemis itself has its own specific influences. For example, you can think about how people might use abundant local resources like obsidian or quoraja wood to decorate. You can create novel local resources too - but be sure to run them by the staff!

Living in a domed city is also very different from living in an open one. Space is at a premium, so people are very good at maximizing their use of vertical space as well (i.e., rooftop and window gardening, Murphy beds, etc.) Feel free to build UP rather than OUT, as long as it makes sense with the map.

Sample Building Materials

You're not limited to this list, but it'll hopefully be helpful guidance:

Limestone bricks - Most of D1 and D4's buildings are probably made with these. D1 because it was easy with all the dug-up limestone - D4 because it was classy.

Obsidian - There's tons of obsidian around, so it can be used as a decorative element in all kinds of ways. Smoky obsidian glass might be used for lower-quality windows, for example, whereas normal clear glass would be used for better ones. But decorative objects or inlays of obsidian would be distinctly higher-class.

Concrete - Likely a lot of cheaper buildings, especially in D2 and some parts of D3, use concrete instead of limestone.

Slate tiles - The default pedestrian outdoor flooring when nothing too fancy is called for.

MolecuFlex - A self-healing dark flexible material used for making highways.

Chromex - An alloy of primarily steel combined with multiple other metals, tempered to be lightweight, flexible, and strong. The Hab/Expeditor was largely made of this, it seems like, so panels from that might have been repurposed for makeshift structures (especially in D2). Prettier versions of this might be used alongside high-quality glass for cutting-edge, corporate buildings.

Area-Specific Details

D1:

The oldest part of the city. Built to be comfortable, pleasant, and somewhat utilitarian. The central plaza is floored in slate tiles, and most buildings are made from limestone bricks. However, some buildings (like City Hall) are on the much fancier side, while others may be a bit humbler. The vast majority of the city lives here in some nebulous middle-class state

D2:

Built explicitly for holding industrial facilities and the waste treatment plant, D2 is not pretty. People were not originally intended to live here, so the infrastructure for them is poorly supported. Think rusty catwalks, lean-tos and shanties, and even spaces carved out of the rock. Kinda go wild with grease, smog, and nooks and crannies. Note that the existing area carved out of the rock (beginning at #522 and going north/east/up) is a generally criminal area.

D3:

Built as the civic heart of the city, it has huge variability between its zones. The Street of Lights is full of tech and futuristic things - think Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan for inspiration. But the more explicitly Civic Alley (please rename this for me) is a lot more low-key with a focus on culture, and then the Trade Alley area (also please rename this) is more industrial.

D4:

D4 was built for the rich elites who were awoken at the end, so it should be absolutely gorgeous. Hearken back to classical Earth architecture and snobbery, but feel free to add some wild sci-fi inspiration too. The theme is luxury for the elite.

City Layout Notes

The city is made of four huge domes, interconnected by a network of tunnels, subways, and roads.

Each dome consists of one gigantic central plaza, which is four rooms in game - so D1 Northeast, D1 Northwest, etc. From these plazas, there are side streets and alleyways arching off in different directions.

D1, D3, and D4 are free-standing domes, while D2 is more like a half-dome, sloping down from the top of the cliff. This means D2 has some rooms built into the rock itself, and more verticality, especially at that back wall.

BUILDING COMMANDS

Getting Around

Welcome to mooWorld! You have some very basic commands you'll want to know.

First off, to avoid getting lost:

@teleport <me or ID> to #ID to get around. ID can be a person or a place. You can't do @teleport me to Rune, for example,

@find has a lot of uses - @find <person> will give you their ID and their location, for example. See help @find for more. Note that you can't find rooms by name, though, so you might need to refer to our map or use @addroom below.

@exits to see the full details of the room's exits.

@sethome sets the room you're in to be your 'home'; you will always log in there. @home takes you back there.

@addroom <name> saves the ID of the room you're in right now to a list you can see at any time by typing @rooms.

Basic Concepts

Everything in the beta is an object, defined by properties. Items can always be referred to by their number, such as #140 - the D1 Pedestrian Airlock Room. The # is required!

The qualities that define how objects work are typically inherited from their parents.

For example: Every room in the beta is a member of the class $rp_room, which means that among its parents it has object #104 (Generic Roleplay Room). You can refer it to it as being a $rp_room or having #104 as a parent interchangeably, in this case; parents that you use a lot can be defined as classes. Having #104 as a parent means a room comes pre-defined with certain qualities and coded logic, usually in the form of verbs (commands people can do within the room) or properties.

The command @parents #id shows you every parent object that is influencing a specific thing (person, place, or item). So if I type @parents #140 - which is the D1 Pedestrian Airlock Room - I'll see Generic Roleplay Room (#104) listed.

And @kids $rp_room shows you every room that's in the game. This IS spammy!

Viewing/Changing Properties

Properties are kind of the life-blood of setting things up. They're basically the variables where specific information gets stored, which allows builders to really flesh out the world once coders write logic.

@show #itemID to see the properties of any given item.

@set #itemID.property to "whatever" to change most properties.

A few properties do have special commands, for ease's sake:

@describe #itemID as "whatever" to set a description.

@rename #iotemID to "whatever" to change an item's name.

Room Creation, Step by Step:

STOP!

Before you build any rooms, type:

@build-option dig_exit $rp_exit

@build-option dig_room $rp_room

These will set you up so any new room you make defaults to an rp_room type and the exits to rp_exit types. It will save you so much annoyance. That said!

Making A New Room

You may not have to do too much of this, but it's ok to expand on the existing rooms if you've got good ideas in mind.

@dig creates a new room and, potentially, exits to it. review help @dig in-game for details, as you can make a room without exits, a room with one-way exists, etc.

But for a short version, @dig direction1,dir1alias|direction2,dir2alias to "New Room Name".

@dig west,w|east,e to "District One - Northwestern Plaza"

District One - Northwestern Plaza (#153) created.

Exit from District One - Northeastern Plaza (#147) to District One - Northwestern Plaza (#153) via {"west", "w"} created with id #154.

Exit from District One - Northwestern Plaza (#153) to District One - Northeastern Plaza (#147) via {"east", "e"} created with id #155.

IF for some reason your rooms are not rp_rooms or your exits not rp_exits, you can fix it with:

@chparent #roomid to $rp_room

@chparent #exitid to $rp_exit

@chparent #exit2id to $rp_exit

Set a Room Description:

@describe #roomid as "Description Here"

This is pretty easy, huh? If you forget the room ID, you can use:

where, if you're there;

@kids $rp_room, to see a list of every rproom and name in-game;

@addroom <name> #number, to remember a room in a list you can see with @rooms;

Setting Up Exits:

This is largely just done through setting certain properties. Note, if you forget an exit's ID, @exits in a room will show you.

Here is exit #142, which appears in the room as:

The truly massive dome of District One is accessible via the western airlock (west).

Looking at the properties of it with @show #142, we see the four I set, using @set #exitID.property to "words here":

long_description: "The truly massive dome of District One is accessible via %n."

begin_move_emote: "%N joins the queue waiting to depart through %t."

move_emote: "With a soft hiss of recycled air and a blast of UV decontamination, %N slips through %t."

arrive_emote: "%N steps through into the dome of District One."

How does this look in game?

Silver joins the queue waiting to depart through the western airlock.

With a soft hiss of recycled air and a blast of UV decontamination, Silver slips through the western airlock.

District One - Southeastern Plaza

You can go east (east) from here.

You can go north (north).

Silver steps through into the dome of District One.

Pronoun Substitution

If you're writing exit messages, you're going to want to sub things in. For example, a standard exit message is "%N begins to move toward the %t."

help $string_utils:pronoun_sub has a list of all of the pronouns, which is pretty intense. A shorter guide:

Names

%N for the person doing the action (Like @ on old UD);

%t for the target of the action;

%d for the direct object;

%i for the indirect object

%l for the location where the action was performed.

Pronouns

%s: subject; he/she/they

%o: object: him/her/them

%p: possessive, dependent: his/her/their

%q: possessive, independent: his/hers/theirs

%r: reflexive: himself/herself/themself

Making an Item

If you want to put in an item into a room, it's pretty simple too:

@create $rp_thing called "name here"

You may then want to @addalias <shorter name> to #itemID. For example, @create $rp_thing called "a fossilized leviathan" will need @addalias leviathan to #itemid for 'look leviathan' to work.

Drop the item in the room.

Describe it using @describe as you please. If you would like this item to have any special coded function, make a note of that to present to Rune.

You can do @set #itemID.integrated=1 to make it integrated.

Advanced References:

Pronoun Substitution

If you're writing messages, you're going to want to sub things in. For example, a standard exit message is "%N begins to move toward the %t."

help $string_utils:pronoun_sub has a list of all of the pronouns, which is pretty intense. A shorter guide:

Names

%N for the person doing the action (Like @ on old UD);

%t for the target of the action;

%d for the direct object;

%i for the indirect object

%l for the location where the action was performed.

Pronouns

%s: subject; he/she/they

%o: object: him/her/them

%p: possessive, dependent: his/her/their

%q: possessive, independent: his/hers/theirs

%r: reflexive: himself/herself/themself