Mobiles
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]
Names
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.
Description
SHORT [STRING]
LONG [STRING]
DESCThe 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.
Race
ACE [RACE]
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 [SEX]
The sex your mobile will be. The flags are: male, female, neutral, random, or none
Form
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.
Parts
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
ACT [FLAG]
These flags dictate the mobiles general function or behavior.
Nature
NATURE [FLAG]
These flags dictate the mobiles general stats.
Alignment
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
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]
Damage Nouns
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,...).
Affected
AFFECT [FLAG]
Affect flags are used to assign spell or spell-like effects to mobiles.
Immunities, Resistances and Vulnerabilities
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.
Offensives
OFF [FLAGS]
Offensive flags control mobile behavior in combat. Be sparing with offensive abilities and generally set only one defensive ability.
Size
SIZE [SIZE]
Size is an extremely important factor in game effects and needs to be chosen carefully.
The choices are: tiny, small, medium, large, huge, or giant.
Special Functions
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.
Positions
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.
Money
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.
Shop Data
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.
