Up to Main Index Up to Journal for December, 2022 JOURNAL FOR FRIDAY 9TH DECEMBER, 2022 ______________________________________________________________________________ SUBJECT: Working on a WolfMUD in-game help system DATE: Fri 9 Dec 20:37:34 GMT 2022 Wednesday was an actual WolfMUD Wednesday. Something that has not happened in a long time. I didn’t have time to write about it — until now. Still, some people did notice I’d pushed out a temporary branch called helpSystem. The helpSystem branch is just that — the beginnings of an in-game player help system. It does not do much yet and has a number of quirks and bugs. The help topics are written in a data/help.wrj file. For example: %% Topic: PUT Synopsis: Place items into a container. Usage: PUT <item>... <container> Also: GET DROP TAKE Examples: PUT APPLE BASKET : PUT APPLE MY BASKET The PUT command is used to place items from your inventory into a container. @MY_CONTAINER Containers may be placed inside other containers. %% Topic: TAKE Synopsis: Remove items from a container. Usage: TAKE <item>... <container> Also: GET DROP PUT Examples: TAKE APPLE BASKET : TAKE APPLE MY BASKET The TAKE command is used to remove items from a container and place them into your inventory. @MY_CONTAINER %% Ref: MY_CONTAINER The container may be in your inventory or at your current location. If there are multiple containers, containers at your current location will be used before containers of the same name in your inventory. To specifically use a container in your inventory use the MY qualifier. %% Topics are not just for commands. Topics can explain anything, although the above is used to provide help on the PUT and GET commands. You could have topics on politics, lore or anything else. This is the help system in action: >/help The following help topics are available: /HELP DROP GET INVENTORY PUT TAKE >/? put Topic: PUT Place items into a container. Usage: PUT <item>... <container> The PUT command is used to place items from your inventory into a container. The container may be in your inventory or at your current location. If there are multiple containers, containers at your current location will be used before containers of the same name in your inventory. To specifically use a container in your inventory use the MY qualifier. Containers may be placed inside other containers. Examples: PUT APPLE BASKET PUT APPLE MY BASKET See also: DROP, GET and TAKE >/help take Topic: TAKE Remove items from a container. Usage: TAKE <item>... <container> The TAKE command is used to remove items from a container and place them into your inventory. The container may be in your inventory or at your current location. If there are multiple containers, containers at your current location will be used before containers of the same name in your inventory. To specifically use a container in your inventory use the MY qualifier. Examples: TAKE APPLE BASKET TAKE APPLE MY BASKET See also: DROP, GET and PUT > Anybody can pull the helpSystem branch and have a play. Be warned, this is probably not the final form of the help system. I would therefore advise against writing swathes of help text — at least until the branch is stable and merged into the dev branch. I may not get time to work on the help system, or any other personal coding, until next weekend — 17th onwards — due to a very busy work schedule. But, it is nice to pick up WolfMUD’s code again after having a short break working on my programming language Mere :) -- Diddymus Up to Main Index Up to Journal for December, 2022