Adding a changeable property
to your character

This topic has been covered a few times by other people but it's critical for everything that follows on my pages. Therefore I'm going to present it myself rather than relying on others.

First, lets assume you have a character on a muck already and you have some sort of description. The first thing we need to do is make sure you have your description set up 'properly' for all the MPI we're going to insert into it.

If you described your character using Triggur's "Editplayer" you're in good shape.

If you described your character with something like this:

@desc me=A pretty little kitty with big blue eyes.

We're going to want to make some changes. If you have editplayer available, use it. It will make your life smidge simpler. When you go to describe your character it will ask about simple descriptions and have a YES/no choice. You want the default YES answer.

Now you are presented with lsedit. Make friends with this editor, you will see it often if you stick with me. Use .h on a line by itself to get help while in lsedit.

If editplayer is not available you need to set up your character description by hand. We're going to do what editplayer does when you describe your character with it since this gives us a uniform naming scheme and insures you'll be able to follow what I'm doing easier.

First you need to set your @desc again. This time you want to set it exactly like this (you can just paste this line into your muck client):

@desc me={eval:{list:redesc}}

There, you just used some MPI. Of course if you try looking at yourself now you'll get error messages. The {list:redesc} part tells the MUCK that your description is saved in a list called 'redesc' on your character. The {eval: } part around it tells the MUCK to evaluate (execute) any MPI it finds in the list.

Now we go into lsedit and write your description. Type the following into your muck client:

lsedit me=redesc

And now you're in lsedit, making the list 'redesc' on your character.

Type your description. Every time you hit <enter> you'll be making a new line. You can't see your description as you write it though. To see what you wrote type .p on a line by itself. You'll see your description with line numbers. If you need help type .h in lsedit.

When you are done with your description type .end

Have a look at yourself. :)

Okay. NOW we can do the interesting stuff. Instead of using this description:

A pretty little kitty with big blue eyes.

Use something like this:

A pretty little kitty with big {prop:eyecolor} eyes.

If you look at yourself now you'll see:

A pretty little kitty with big  eyes.

Not too exciting. Try this:

@set me=eyecolor:emerald

and look again. You should see:

A pretty little kitty with big emerald eyes.

By changing the color stored in the property 'eyecolor' you change your description. You can put any number of properties in your description and each property can be any length up to the buffer size of the MUCK or your client, whichever is smaller (generally this is several hundred characters).

You could have a description like this:

A {prop:person} with {prop:hair} and {prop:eyes}.

and have it display like this if you set the properties right:

A tall, elegant, feline with long, honey-gold tresses than fall to her hips in thick waves and eyes the color of new pennies.

In this example the properties would be:

@set me=person:tall, elegant, feline
@set me=hair:long, honey-gold tresses than fall to her hips in thick waves
@set me=eyes:eyes the color of new pennies

Congratulations, you have just written your first MPI description.


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©1997-2001 Lynn A. Davis