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                      JOURNAL FOR SATURDAY 30TH MAY, 2020
______________________________________________________________________________

SUBJECT: Welcome to Merkle’s Fine Emporium!
   DATE: Sat 30 May 18:14:29 BST 2020

As promised in my last entry I’ve now added some examples of clothing to the
provided zone files. These items will allow players to experiment with the new
Body system and also provide templates for zone authors to look at. If you
head west from Fountain square (south of the tavern) you will find yourself
outside Merkle’s Fine Emporium!


  Street outside Merkle's Fine Emporium
  You are on a street that runs east and west. To the north you can see a
  narrow alley. To the south is a clothier's shop with a sign proclaiming it
  to be "Merkle's Fine Emporium".

  You can see exits north, east, south and west.
  >s
  Merkle's Fine Emporium
  You are in Merkle's fine emporium. All around you hanging from pegs or lying
  on shelves and tables are various articles of clothing.

  You see Merkle here.
  You see some shoes here.
  You see some boots here.
  You see a plain belt here.
  You see some leather bracers here.
  You see a plain silk scarf here.
  You see a floral silk scarf here.
  You see a leather jerkin here.
  You see a cotton shirt here.
  You see a leather jacket here.
  You see some cotton trousers here.
  You see a cotton dress here.
  You see a knotwork belt here.
  You see a leather cap here.
  You see some leather breeches here.
  You see a formal gown here.

  The only exit you can see from here is north.
  >
  Merkle says: Please look around, there must be something here you like?
  >
  Merkle starts sweeping the floor.
  >


Shops are not currently implemented yet, so you can’t buy or sell items. For
now Merkle doesn’t mind if you try on and ‘borrow’ some of his wares :)

Most of the new items are also plain with no mention of colours. This is
deliberate as I plan on adding dyeing of items different colours later on ;)
You can of course alter the items yourself and add coloured variants. When
dyeing is added the existing items can be replaced with pre-dyed items or
replaced with plain ones. The old items that players already have would then
become rare and get phased out as players sell and dispose of them.

I’ve cleaned up the zone files where a few test items had been lurking — the
red and green balls. I felt a little sentimental about deleting the iron bound
chest and curious brass lattice. They have been early items created at the
start of the rewrite. For now the iron bound chest has moved to the trading
post along with the sack and bag. The curious brass lattice has moved to the
pawn shop.

The tavern door now has a ‘TAVERN’ alias qualifier so that you can now ‘OPEN
TAVERN DOOR’ or just ‘OPEN DOOR’. The frog and rabbit can now be held.

Six location aliases have been fixed. They were defined as “Aliases: alias1,
alias2” which creates two aliases: ‘alias1,’ (should not have a comma) and
‘alias2’.

The Body attribute API gained three new methods: Wielding, Wearing, Holding.
They return a unique list of items a Body is currently wielding, wearing or
holding. However, these methods may just be temporary as I need to implement
the Wielding, Wearing and Holding attributes to save and load state for item
usage. For now the methods are just used to update the EXAM/EXAMINE command.

The EXAM/EXAMINE has been updated to show what items a player is wearing,
wielding or holding:


  >exam diddymus
  You examine Diddymus.
  They are wearing a cotton shirt, a knotwork belt, some cotton trousers and
  some shoes. They are holding a dagger and wielding a sword.


The message about what is being held or wielded is dependant on how the items
are being used:


  - They are wielding a dagger and a sword.
  - They are holding a dagger and a sword.
  - They are holding a dagger and wielding a sword.
  - They are holding a sword and wielding a dagger.


The LOOK command for location descriptions needs updating to show what items
are being wielded and/or held by players and mobiles. For example:


  South bridge
  You are standing on the west side of an incomplete bridge. By the looks of
  it the city wants to expand onto the far banks of the river. Up river to the
  north you see another bridge in a similar state of construction.

  You see Diddymus wielding a sword and holding a dagger.
  You see a city guard wielding a short sword.
  You see a sweet flower girl holding a daisy.

  The only exit you can see from here is west.
  >


However that looks to being part of a larger change. Locations currently have
four linked lists: players, contents, narratives and disabled. Mobiles are
currently in the contents list with items. Now that the Body attribute can be
used as a signal to identify mobiles I’m thinking of also adding a separate
mobiles list. This would allow location descriptions to list players, mobiles
then items — in that order. At the moment mobiles are mixed in with the items
and sorting them to the top of the list would be quite expensive. Apart from
allowing a cosmetic change to the LOOK command, mobiles moving around and
doing things should also become more efficient due to a shorter linked list
being processed.

Merkle and his Fine Emporium are waiting for you on the public dev branch :)

--
Diddymus


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