SNARK'S RULES FOR BUILDING ON A BUSINESS OR RESIDENTIAL LOT
There are three kinds of restrictions on building a house or business: size limits, quality rules, and reality constraints. Many of these restrictions also apply to building on HoloMuck in general.SIZE limits exist because, unfortunately, database size is limited. (Also, the bigger the database, the slower HoloMuck runs.) Places should be "worth the database space they use up"-- they should be creative, interesting, and be built no larger than necessary to convey their concepts. Also, they should be built in a publically-accessible location when appropriate (e.g. we'll look much more kindly on a building construction on Michigan Ave. than one built in some private location locked-off to others). Obviously, everyone enjoys building SOME places which are private and inaccessible; we ask only that, whenever possible, your building add something to Holo as a whole.
No-no's include:
- too many undifferentiated rooms (e.g. a front yard, back yard, and two side yards, none of them very interesting)
- boring, undistinguished building (e.g. nothing to do except wander through a generic kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, where there are no interesting actions (e.g. 'bounce on bed', 'open fridge', 'shake soda'), and the rooms look just like everybody else's kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.)
- uncreative concepts (we don't really NEED yet another bar, cafe, bed & breakfast place, or gridded city, unless you somehow make yours DIFFERENT!)
- more rooms than are necessary to convey the concept (e.g. using 8 rooms when 3 or 4 would have sufficed. Remember, you can always expand later)
- not using the program "copydesc" (@501) whenever possible. For example, when selling an object with a long description, the prototype object (the one that is copied by the storekeeper program) should NOT include all the _dsc properties itself. Instead, @create a desc- holder object and then '@desc <prototype> = @501 <desc-holder>'. An added advantage of this method is that, whenever you update the desc on the desc-holder, all copies are automatically updated too
No-no's include:
- poor spelling
- descs missing
- descs long and boring
- descs poorly formatted
- exits not shown clearly (or not shown at all)
- messages (@succ, @osucc, @odrop) missing from exits. However, note that some exits, such as those whose first lias is a compass direction, supply messages by default; in these cases, it is not required to set your own)
- rooms not properly parented (see 'doc/parent-rooms' for details)
No-no's include:
- exit names not aliased to compass directions (and "out;o;exit" where appropriate)-- for example, don't make an exit "kitchen;k", instead name it something like "kitchen;n;north" or perhaps even "north <kitchen>;north;n;kitchen". Similarly, the return exit should not be just "living room", it should be named like "exit;out;o;s;south;living room"
- exits with destinations very far away (i.e., teleportation)
- rooms that can be entered but a player can't go back the way he/she came (of course, in proper context, such as "falling down a laundry chute", this might be OK)
- unrealistic spatial layout, e.g.:
- aircraft hangar in a room that's too small for it (but if you DO build something too large for its present location, feel free to ask for help relocating it to someplace more appropriate);
- exits linked so that walking east twice returns to original room;
- spatial design that ignores what is built on neighboring lots (e.g. extending your property across a river when you don't own the land on the other side of the river)
SPECIAL BORDERS
Property lots bordering the edge of Tanstaafl County: One exception to 'reality constraints' in Tanstaafl County applies to property lots which border the outside of the County. If you build north of Arbor Street, west of Ohio Ave., or south of Boulder Rd., then you may extend your property "outside of reality" and build, for example, a room in which magic works.Property lots bordering water: For any lot which borders a body of water (river, canal, lake, ocean), you have a special responsibility. It is expected that the owner will build a dock or bank or other connection to the water. When you are ready, page or mail Snark with the dbref of the room that is to be connected with the water, and he'll make the appropriate links for you.
