Room Editor
The Room Editor is similar to the character editor. Just enter the name of the room you wish to create and press Enter or click the Create/Edit button below; if this room already exists and you don't own the room, you will receive an error message. If you wish to edit one of your existing rooms, select it from the dropdown menu and press Enter or click the button. Displayed here is the total number of rooms you've built along with the number of RP rooms you've built. If your total number of rooms reaches the limit, you won't be able to build more rooms until you delete a room. To delete a room, just enter the room name and check the delete boxes, then hit the create/edit button. As long as this is a room you own, the room will be deleted immediately and the appropriate room counters will be decremented. Renaming a room is similar to Deleting a room; select your room from the dropdown menu, type in the new name, check all three boxes for Rename and then click the button. You may also type in a room name to access a room that is not yours, but whose owner has placed you in their Builder Access List (described below).
Once you enter the room builder, you'll be given a list of options which this guide will present to you in the order from top to bottom that you will see them. Note that at this stage, the room builder is in WYSIWYG mode - What You See Is What You Get. Also, NEW ROOMS WILL NOT ACTUALLY BE CREATED UNTIL YOU SAVE IT AT LEAST ONCE!! This also means that as long as you haven’t saved the room, you can back out without taking up one of your room slots. Don’t worry if you make a typo in the room name--it can still be changed afterward if necessary, using the method described in the above paragraph.
You can choose a background image from the dropdown background list, or select “Custom” if you have a background stored elsewhere on the internet; enter its address in the URL: box. You may also opt to have no background; the dropdown has a selection of “None” for this. The bgcolor, text, link, alink and vlink fields correspond to the bgcolor, text, link, alink and vlink attributes of the <body> element. Quickly, bgcolor is the background color if you have selected none for your background image or when someone has backgrounds turned off in their user preferences. bgcolor will also be the background color of the form inputs (message box and suc) for people using HTML 4.0 mode. text is the main text color, link is the color for unvisited links, alink is the color for active links (links that are being clicked on) and vlink is the color for links that have already been visited. Your text and bgcolor must be a legible combination if you want everyone to be able to use your rooms. It's advisable to go through your rooms with backgrounds off at least once so you can make sure this is the case. The link address is an optional addy to a page you want linked from your room. The link text is the text that will make up the link.
Roleplay/Freeplay classification is a very important attribute to set as they make it easier for others to integrate. Freeplay, Roleplay and Para-RP Zone classifications allow people to quickly and accurately gauge what to expect in terms of responsible roleplay and OOC behavior--the three are ordered from most lenient and forgiving to least. If you mark your room as Freeplay, people will assume that rules there, if any, will be very lax and that pseudo-RP and wackiness are acceptable. Marking Roleplay Zone tells others that you expect people to be In-Character most of the time unless everyone is out of character or clearly marking OOC posts as such; generally, Roleplay rooms will have a basic set of guidelines for play, but individual rooms may be vastly different from one another in terms of genre, power level and rules. The Para-RP Zone (Paragraph Roleplay) flag lets others know beforehand that the room owner expects a certain level of responsibility and quality of roleplay, and most such rooms will have a more strict set of guidelines or rules, and will be more heavily monitored than normal Roleplay rooms. Para-RP Zones, as the name implies, require paragraph-length posts at minimum; one-liners will generally not be tolerated by the players in these rooms.
Being in the RP Zone has several benefits. First, anyone who's been barred from the RP Zone (damned to Limbo or Freeplay rooms only, for example) won't be allowed into your room. Also, all the automagically generated system posts are turned off in the RP Zone. This means you won't see any "user left for x" or "user arrived from x" messages, nor will you see entrance posts when people login or exit posts when they logoff. Also, system wide broadcasts won't be posted in the RP Zone.
Next, you can enter extra genre information that'll give users a quick idea of what your room's "feel" is supposed to be. This space is also useful to let others know if your room belongs to a specific hub (explained in the RP Introduction Guide). A box next to the space for Genre sets the system to record (log) each post in the room, when selected. Even posts that are removed by a user in the chat or erased using the .clear command will appear in the log. For more details on the room log see below.
HTML posting and image posting should be fairly self explanatory. Turning off or limiting HTML posting can be beneficial because it'll make it nearly impossible for someone to fake output from the dice codes. The "some" HTML setting only allows <p>, <br>, <center>, <i>, <b> and <u> tags to be used in the room. The "Most" settings allows everything the "Some" settings allows plus <font>, <Hn>, <sup>, <sub>, <pre>, <blockquote>, <s>, <a>, <blink> and <marquee> tags. Obviously, the "none" setting allows absolutely NO HTML to be used in the room. In all cases, people will still be allowed to use the pseudo-code tags to do limited text appearance modification.
Another important attribute to set is the room type. Here's the skinny on what the different types of rooms do:
Public rooms allow everyone not explicitly banned to enter the room. Additionally, public rooms are visible to everyone on Who's Here and people in public rooms can be located by everyone.
Private rooms deny access to everyone not explicitly allowed to enter. Also, private rooms are not visible on Who's Here except to super users (magistrate and emperor), people actually IN the room and the person who built the room. Finally, people in private rooms cannot be located with the .locate command except by the room owner and super users.
Invisible rooms allow access to anyone not explicitly denied, like public rooms. However, like private rooms they aren't visible on the Who's Here and people in invisible rooms cannot be .located. This is particularly useful for roleplaying where you want to create a secret hideaway but still want anyone who knows "where" the room is to be able to get in.
Invitation rooms deny access to anyone not explicitly allowed (like Private rooms). Like public rooms, they are visible on Who's Here and people can be .located while in the room. This room should be though of as an exclusive night club. Everyone knows where it is, but not everyone can get in.
Arena rooms are a special type of room. They work like public rooms so far as access and Who's Here visibility is concerned. Instead of controlling access, you control who can post publicly in these rooms. This type of room is ideal for tournaments and structured debates and the like where you want only a select group actually posting. Everyone can get in to watch, but they won't be able to interrupt the event with public postings. Anyone not on the user list of an Arena room will be limited to PMs only!
Room entry permission should be easy to figure out. Set this to Allow if you want people to be able to get in from any room, and to Deny if you only want them to be able to get in from rooms you put on the entry list. Ditto for Exit permission, but this applies to whether people can leave to a room or not.
The Room Entrance and Room Exit lists both work the same way. Both lists are comma separated lists of room names. Rooms just put on the list will be allowed Entry and Exit (depending on which list, of course). Putting a * in front of the room name (ie *The Battlements) will hide the exit or entrance. For instance, if you have your room exit permission set to deny and put *The Forest on the exit list, people will be able to exit to The Forest with the .room command but it will not appear on the drop down list (or on the list shown with the .info command). Prefixing a room with a '!' (ie !Limbo) will always deny entrance from or exit to that room, regardless of how you've set the room entry/exit permissions (Exception - users can always exit back to the Void).
The user list's effects are specific to the room type. The user list is a comma separated list of character names. If you put a character’s name in this list, it will only affect the specific character; conversely, if you put someone’s master account/login handle on the list, it will have a blanket effect on all of that person’s characters. Putting names on the user list of a public or invisible room will ban those people from the room. On the other hand, you MUST put names on the user list of private or invitation rooms to allow people in, otherwise they won't be let in. Putting names on the user list of the arena room will allow them to post publicly. Additionally, prefixing a name with a '!' (ie !Lamer) will always ban them from the room, regardless of what type of room it is. Prefixing the name with a '*' (ie *My Best Friend) will turn them into a room monitor. Room monitors can add people to and drop people from the room user list using the .adduser and .dropuser commands. They cannot add or drop room monitors (cannot create entries starting with a *). Prefixing a name with a '#' (ie #KickAss RPer) will give them permission to use the .narrate and .note command in your room. You can ONLY use one modifier on a given name; however, the modifiers are hierarchical, so for instance a * will give all the same permissions as a # and also allow the user to use the room monitor commands. Additionally, you cannot be banned from your own room(s). You always have permission to be in the room regardless of whether or not you are on the user list. You also always have permission to post publicly in any Arena rooms you've created. Additionally, all your subhandles will have permission to be in rooms you've created, or to post publicly in your Arena rooms. Entries with a modifier are globally effective. So for instance !Lamer would ban ALL of Lamer's handles from the room, not just "Lamer." If you need more fine grained control you can still ban/admit users the normal way (placing their name on the list to ban them from public/invis rooms or removing it from the list to ban them from private/invite rooms). One thing to note about banning users: if you use the ! prefix to ban someone’s character handle, it WILL ban all their other handles--however, if that person later deletes that character from their list, the ban will be rendered ineffective. In some cases a person has snuck back into a room they were banned from using this “loophole.” This is known as evading or circumventing a ban, and if you suspect someone has done this you should notify a Pathfinder immediately so that proper measures can be taken should the offender persist.
You can override the default owner displayed on the room information page by putting %name on the user list. Name (or whatever you put after the %) will be displayed as the owner instead of your master handle. Only the first such entry on the list will be shown. This has absolutely no effect on who is actually considered owner of the room by the system.
The Intro Blurb is the text that appears when someone first enters your room. It is limited to the length of a post. Room Description is longer description text that will appear when someone uses .scope in your room. This text is of virtually unlimited length so you can put things here that you couldn't put in the intro. Room Rules is a space to allow you to specify your own set of rules for the room. Again, this is of virtually unlimited length, and will appear when someone uses the .rules command in your room. You are requested to post rules in your room if you have any expectation for how the room is to be used. If you fail to post room rules, nothing bad will happen, but people will probably get irked if they're banned from your room.
Extended Options
These are some additional options for roleplay rooms. Included here are some time and season specific descriptions. These are short (limited to 512 characters) but allow for some dynamicism in the room description. Available so far are nine time of day descriptions (midnight, late night, dawn, morning, noon, afternoon, dusk, twilight and night) and four season descriptions (winter, spring, summer, autumn). You don't HAVE to fill these in, but they will add a lot to your room if you do. Note: As a nifty trick, you can put the same description in multiple slots to create an effect of timelessness or perhaps emulate a shorter day or night. Same with the seasons - so if you want your room to have two seasons, only use two descriptions and put them in two adjacent slots.
There is also a View Log tab at the top of the page next to Main Options and Extended Options. On this page you will find a link to download the log, which may take up to several minutes unless you are using a high speed connection. From the moment you first check the box on the Main Options page, each post made in your room will be recorded by the system and saved for you to view anytime. You may want to save your room log onto your computer occasionally and check the box to clear the log, to save space and bandwidth--in particular if your room gets a lot of traffic on a daily basis, this would be a good idea.
Again, when you are finished, click the Save button to save the changes you've made to your room. The room editor's appearance should change to reflect the changes you've made. Failure to save your room when you are finished will cause all changes to be lost! Finally, we do have the ability to lock users out of the room editor if they abuse room building privileges. This will not happen unless you build rooms purposefully designed to trap users or cause other denial of service type occurrences. If you have any questions, feel free to send Starfyre a PM. Finally, I'd like to advise you to put some thought into any RP rooms you are creating. It'd be a good idea to avoid building redundant RP rooms or RP rooms with no clear theme. I will not delete such rooms, but they stand a good chance of not seeing much use. More "atmospheric" or "thematic" RP rooms tend to be used more. Ideally, a room should contribute to roleplay, and perhaps should even be treated like another character. If you have any especially good backgrounds, send them to starfyre@shattered-realms.com for inclusion in the chat. Not all backgrounds will be included, but if they are good and/or thematic they stand a good chance of being added! Enjoy!
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