Manual:Zone Manual Introduction

Introduction

Giving credit where credit is due!

The, basic zone writing manual, you are reading now, didn't just come flying out of this authors head. In fact it is a conglomeration of several old texts which are no longer used. I had first thought about quoting and giving credit to each person who had ever modified or created portions of the first documentation but because of the nature of the way they were built it was impossible to know who did what. I therefore have decided to create a list here of everyone who has ever worked on or had a hand in the development of the basic zone writing documentation and references. I will also give a short summary for each.

I would also like to thank those listed below for their contribution to the development of one of the best mud servers on the internet today.

Original DIKU coding Team

Hans Henrik Staerfeldt
Sebastian Hammer
Michael Seifert
Katja Nyboe
Tom Madsen
Lars Balker Rasmussen

You should all know these people they are not only the original DIKU mud developers but a few of them designed and developed the new VME server. One or more of the previous mentioned people were the authors of the following texts that have been swallowed up by this book.

abilities.txt
guild.txt
monster.txt
objects.txt
rooms.txt
vmc.txt

Andrew Cowan: One of the original administrators of Valhalla mud and now the administrator of the mud connector. Andrew created the first zone tutorial, which was later included into the vmc.txt to clear up some things missing in the old vmc.txt. Again my thanks go out to Andrew for his contributions not only to this document but to the growth of the DIL programming language.
Ryan Holliday: Made major updates to the tutorial.txt created by Andrew Cowan, which became version two of the tutorial.
Peter Ryskin: Wrote the original explanation of how to define exits.
John Clare: Made major updates to the tutorial.txt created by Andrew Cowan and updated by Ryan Holliday, which became version three of the tutorial.
Marc Bellemare: An editor and an author Marc combined and revised the tutorial and the vmc.txt into one document making it less Valhalla specific and more for any mud running the VME server.
Jennifer Garuba: Created the first document on how to create shop keepers. She also was one of the first builders to have the insite and to make it clear that a manual like this was needed.
Brian Spanton: Converted the original vmc.txt into HTMl, while at the same time fixing many inconsistencies and typos in it.
Kathy Perry: Wrote the original compiler howto to make it easier for new builders to compile their zone. She was also the first builder to open my eyes to the fact we needed a true manual on how to build.
Mark Pringle: Main editor, which spell checked and looked over my major grammer mistakes. I am sure he didn't catch them all but at least the ugly ones were caught.
Morgan Shafer: Wrote the guild definition primer which explained teachers.

Who should read this book?

This book was designed to be read by anyone who is thinking of writing areas for a VME server. If you have wrote for other mud servers you will still need to at least skim every chapter because the VME is like no other mud engine and has some very interesting differences.

What does this book cover?

The topics covered in this book are everything to do with writing an area for the VME server. While we do cover using DIL functions to make your monsters, Rooms, and objects better and smarter we do not cover how to write the DIL functions covered in the DIL manual. The following are topics covered by this book.