Area Editor bugs and suggestions

When I load my existing newdark.are I get the following message:


[line 141] "~" - #21005 the Broker: Unknown IF test "carryingvnum" at line 1 of program


Well, if carryingvnum ain't unknown to smaug 1.4a and executes properly in-game. The problem is that if I want to edit that mobprog, AE freezes me with an error message I can't escape from unless I delete the ifcheck or ctrl-alt-del to shut down AE -- very frustrating. Is there any way to disable or defeat this feature so AE just saves what I have in mobprogs, even if it doesn't approve of them? I would really love to solve this because AE lets you duplicate mobs mobprogs included, which is a brilliantly intuitive feature which smaug inexplicably lacks. Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide :)

When I check the summary screen on a mob that I've set up to have 460 hitpoints, I get:

Average: hit = 230

I set the exact hit points by using 1d1+459 and that's always the way I've done it. Not sure where I picked that up but I think you can also do 0d0+460, although I have a habit of doing it the other way at this point. Weird, I know.

At any rate, my point is that it's somehow halving the hitpoints under that scenario when calculating the average. Obviously if the hps are always 460 then they will never average to 230, so somewhere along the line something is getting munged it seems.

There appears to be a bug in the check areas routine. I have two mobs setup to use the 'knee' skill but for some reason, it reads this as an attempt to use the 'kneel' social. Obviously they're similar so I would guess that has a lot to do with the mismatching in the search routine.

Using 'knee' during combat works. Typing 'knee' appears to work too, asking for a target??

Typing 'kneel' invoked the social.

When viewing a room exit, if the exit has a key, and you click "go to key" it goes to the wrong thing. eg. if the exit is to 21001 and the key is 21011, then clicking "go to key" takes you to object 21001 not 21011.

Now please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that when you save the commands file it puts them all in alphabetical order, when the original file was not. It was ordered by command priority. You see, what happens when you type the command 'L', because it doesn't exist it will down the list and assume the first command it finds that starts with L. Originally this was "Look" but because of the new alphabetical order, it is now "Languages".

If I am right about this, Nick, you might want to rethink your commands.dat file saving for Area Editor (Just a suggestion), because I for one was quite annoyed when I discovered this because now I've had to and manually reorder them all back the way they were.

When editing a mob's stats (strength etc.) if you press ESC the window goes blank, making it impossible to make further changes.

If you have entered an invalid figure (eg. str = 1000) then you get an error message and cannot close the program or area.

I was wondering why carryingvnum is coming up as an unknown IF test. See newgate.are as in the SMAUG stock distribution.


eg. In newgate.are ...


if carryingvnum($n) == 113
or wearingvnum ($n) == 113
else
mpat 119 give armour $n
endif

In the rom mode, the mana keeps being reset to zero when you leave the window. If you make a copy of a mobs stats, the size resets to tiny and the class gets set to mage as well as the mana resets to zero.

It would be good to have the default be medium instead of tiny and class set to warrior instead of mage.

If you create a new area (or modify an existing area) and add a shop or repair without choosing a mob (ie. leaving it at the default of zero) then the area cannot be reloaded once saved. This is because the editor writes out lines like this:

#SHOPS
0 0 0 0 0 0 120 90 0 23
0

#REPAIRS
0 0 0 0 100 1 0 23
0

The zero indicates "end of shops" which is not correct.

Just a quick suggestion here, maybe it'll be of some use for future revisions. I have gotten much good use from the mob duplication, especially the duplication of mobprogs, but what I think would be useful is to expand this feature so that it works across area files.

What I mean is having it setup so that if you have multiple area files open you could duplicate a mob (or item, perhaps other things) from one file into another. I often find that setting up one mob is useful as a template for creating similar ones without having to go through the whole 9 yards again. If I wanted a similar mob in another area I was working on, it would be nice to be able to open them both and just copy the mob from area A to area B, rather than being limited to simply duplicating it within its own area.

However, scrolling up through the help list to find a help entry that i want to copy for example, to paste into a new entry way way down at the bottom of the help entries, is very time consuming.

Is there anyway you could make a feature so you could return to the previous entry you had highlighted by using forward and backward buttons please?

Second, is there any way you could make the add new item button work without having to first scroll up to the top of the area, down one to help, before you can activate the add new help from the menu bar ? Sure would be nice to make a new help entry from the bottom of that list ;)

If you make a change, but don't move the focus to a new object/room/whatever, and then save, the save doesn't work because the save command is greyed out.

Allow you to save at all times.

I was wondering why I keep getting MUDProg errors for IF checks that do
exist in the SMAUG codebase.

Is there a place to configure these?

Is it possible to add new ones?

I'd like to suggest you a few improvements for the area editor that are not difficult to code but could make our lives easier.

1. transfer the mobprog commands and ifchecks to config file instead of keeping them in the exe - makes it much easier for the muds with custom commands like many muds have 9or an option to turn off command parsing)
2. add the spellcheck button to edit dialog so the user can spellcheck occasionally if he wants
3. when doing duplicate reset on a mob, copy all of its E and G resets as well
4. color parser for walkthrugh mode just like orb has
5. saving of scroll, potion etc. spells in numbers format instead of strings format

Support for reading and writing out AEX areas. The AEX code can be downlowded from ftp://moodyg.erols.com. That way AreaEditor will support Wurm, Mythran, Envy, Circle, Ack, and of course Smaug/Rom if they have the AEX code installed.

Is there ANY way you can instill an import/export mode in SMAUG Editor? example; In creating zone "a" but zone "b" has some mobs that would be PERFECT in here. so i open zone "b" select the mob(s) and choose (export) then I go back to zone "a" and choose "import" and drop them in changing their vnums to the current area in the process. (maybe you could leave some steps out by simply doing import, select area to import from, then select the mob, object or AREA to import, have it request new vnumber and presto!

Can you somehow include a multi-room generator? Example: I define FROM what number TO what number of VNUMS to use. I give it four or five room descriptions to randomly give these rooms. and I select 10 pre-created mobs that i want thrown in here as well (maybe objects as well). I press create and voila! an INSTANT desert of 500 plus rooms connected and genericly named and detailed with mobs! a HUGE time saver and another GREAT reason to purchase SMAUG Editor. (a stretch to this would be to have a mob generator as wel) PERFECT for those very large areas where detail isnt as important as vast traveling space. And if it IS important, they can go in and redit exits and room descriptions as needed.

I have been wanting to put shockshield, acidshield fireshield on special objects, like a cloak, a crystal, and a weapon. Hmm.. I chose affected by, and there is a slot to write
in a number. But, no where can i seem to find a good list of numbers that will show the affect as shockshield for example.

I can't seem to program an if council($n) program, and I can't seem to find
any way to altered the "allowed" mpcommands.

A map editor would be handy - simple point and click on a grid would create the rooms.

A suggested feature for Area Editor - Find and Replace.

If you change the field "layers" for an object it returns to zero next time the area is loaded.

1. Added userdic.tlx to list of default dictionaries

2. Fixed problem where spell checking did not cause the "save" button to ungrey out.

3. Did custom spell check dialog box to make buttons bigger.

4. Added "spell check" button to the Edit dialog box.

5. Added keyboard equivalent Alt+. (ALT+PERIOD) for the "Edit" button in various windows.

-- SMAUG specific --

- Socials -

6. You can now delete socials.

7. You can now add socials.

8. Socials are sorted into ascending sequence when they are loaded.

9. You can now save socials.

- Commands -

10. You can now delete commands.

11. You can now add commands.

12. Commands are sorted into ascending sequence when they are loaded.

13. You can now save commands.

- Skills -

14. You can now delete skills.

15. You can now add skills.

16. Skills are sorted into ascending sequence when they are loaded.

17. You can now save skills.

18. You can now add, amend and delete affects inside skills.

-- General --

19. Mobiles, rooms and objects are sorted into vnum order on opening an area, in case someone keys in vnums out of sequence in a text editor.

20. Fixed problems in the default SMAUGCONFIG.DAT file regarding the #AFFECTS section.

21. Fixed bug where a change to damage type (ROM only) would not be retained.

22. The Area Check results (and also "Problems in Area" when initially loading an area) are now a modeless dialog box. What this means is that you can keep this box open (and move it to one side) if you want to, and refer to it while you are fixing the problems.

23. Area Editor now remembers where you last left it on the screen, and restores itself to that position.

24. Added an example area file (manor.are), so you can play with an area after downloading the program (eg. for shareware reviewers).

1. Fixed a problem where the comments at the end of "reset" lines (in the area file itself) were being spaced out with more and more spaces every time the file was saved.

2. Added a spell checker. You can now spell-check interactively (as you type in descriptions) or in batch mode (during an Area Check).

1. The "find" command now has an option for "all areas". If this is checked then the find is conducted through all open areas.

2. Fixed a bug where saving a ROM area would cause an "invalid page fault" error.

3. The mobile "references" page now shows all references to a mob from *all* open areas.

4. The object "references" page now shows all references to an object from *all* open areas.

5. The room "summary" page now shows all references to a room from *all* open areas.

6. Help file has been rewritten and now explains most of the screens in the editor.

7. The "find" command now will search for "affect" flags in mobs. Eg. you could search for "haste".

1. You can now add a batch of areas, by using the "Load Area List" function from the File menu. This will read a normal "area list" file (with one area name per line) and load all areas it finds in it. Thus you can now quickly load all (or some, if you set up a special area list file) areas for your MUD. This is surprisingly quick. For example, on my PC which is not exactly state-of-the-art, I loaded all 25 stock SMAUG areas in around 12 seconds.

2. Added a "close all windows" function to let you quickly close areas you have open.

3. The new "flags" pages did not show flag numbers, even if this was set in preferences. This has been fixed.

4. Added "refresh" function to the View menu (keyboard F5). This is to redraw the labels in the tree view. This is particularly useful if you are loading a number of areas. If, for example, you load area A and then area B, references in area A to rooms in area B will show "not in area" (because B isn't loaded yet). Thus, after loading area B you can switch back to area A and select View -> Refresh. This will update any exits in A leading to B to show their correct names.

5. The "cross-area" picker has also now been implemented for choosing objects and mobs.

6. The "go to" buttons now allow you to go to a room/mob/object/reset in a different area.

7. The "area walkthrough" now seamlessly crosses area boundaries (for open areas), thus allowing you to walk through your entire MUD without difficulty.

8. You can now do a "check all areas" which checks all open areas. This means that rooms which lead to rooms in other areas are no longer reported as "not in area", and cross-referencing of used items is now MUD-wide.

9. You can now use "go to vnum" to go directly to the vnum of a room/mobile/object, even if it is in a different area. For example, if you have 30 areas open, and want to find mob 12345, just choose "Go to vnum" (Ctrl+G) and type 12345, select "M" for Mob, and press <enter>. If that mob is in any open area that area will be selected and the mob highlighted.

10. Because Ctrl+G seemed a natural keyboard equivalent for "Go To Vnum" the keyboard equivalent for "generate mob name" has been changed to Ctrl+E.

1. Fixed a bug where you couldn't change the SMAUG area version.
2. Fixed a bug where the "tip of the day" would show up twice
3. Added support for extended bitvectors (in SMAUG), so you can now have up to 64 flags.
4. Changed the way flags are displayed (from check boxes to a list)
5. You can now enter negative numbers in the reset fields.
6. When clicking on the "edit" button (labelled "..." in some cases) to edit mob/room/object names and short descriptions, the program used to add an unwanted "newline" character. This has been eliminated.
7. You can now give a mob a level of zero.
8. Added automatic name generator (for generating mob names)
9. Improved "area check" so that when an exit cannot be found, you are told which room it is in.
10. When choosing a room from the "choose room" dialog, you can now select a room from any open area.
11. In various places where it previously would have said "room #xxxx not in area" it now correctly lists the room name, provided that (other) area is open. The area name is shown in square brackets.

Go into the 'Area' tab on the left of the editor, on the right it says Version 1 for Smaug 1.4, but when I fill in the box 1) It doesn't think it was modified and doesn't allow you to quick-save or file->save, you have to save-as, and 2) It doesn't save the version change thing.

Support is wanted for extended bitvectors used in the latest version of SMAUG.

It is a structure that contains an array of 4 unsigned ints (32 bit), giving a total of 32*4 or 128 available bits. The numbers are written to the area file as integers separated by "&" if required.

It would be great if you included a spell-checker. Regular editors get stuck on all the code, but your editor could recognise the sections that are text. Just a thought. :)

The help file supplied with the editor is not helpful.

I note that Area Editor has the skills, socials and commands, ADD function still not implemented.

Some sort of awareness if you have multiple area files open so you could "link" between
them?

An automatic Random Name Generator would be useful.

1. On a "Put" reset you can now choose the destination (arg3) from a dialog box, and the "goto" button is active, so you can check what the object is.
2. Object "references" page now shows the destination of a "put" reset. (ie. if you put something into a bag, the bag will show as a container).
3. When you add a reset by clicking on the word "resets" and choosing "add reset" it now appears at the *top* of the resets list. To add a reset to the bottom of the resets list, highlight the last reset and choose "add reset".
4. You can now duplicate resets.

1. Fixed a problem where, when adding a new mob, object or room, it might be given a duplicate vnum to an existing item.
2. Fixed a problem where if you pressed <enter> when allocating vnums in the area view, the screen would go blank.
3. For ROM mobs, in the "stats" page, the field "Number of attacks" is now disabled.

Fixed a problem in ROM areas where you could not enter negative values for AC bash, AC slash, and AC exotic.

1. You can now use the fixed-font editing window on mob name, short and long descriptions, object name, short and long descriptions, and room name. This may make editing descriptions easier.
2. Argument 4 for a reset now defaults to 1. This helps with "load mob" resets in ROM areas.
3. Mobile "attack type" can now be changed for ROM mobs.
4. ROM mobiles now allow for the 4 different AC values (pierce, bash, slash, exotic)
5. For ROM resets you can now enter values for "arg4" (max mobs to load per room).
6. Resets now only show the "wear location" combo-box for "equip"-type resets.
7. For a mob, room or object, when changing its vnum, if it is out of range (as set in the area header) you are now offerred the option to adjust the area header range automatically, and thus accept the new vnum.

1. Now checks that you don't put a "~" into a clan name on the room page.
2. File "save" is now greyed out if you haven't modified the area.
3. The window title now shows the full pathname to the area file, eg. C:\ROM\area\myarea.are
4. Object summary page now shows weapon flags for ROM weapons.
5. Fixed a problem where you could not change the long description of a mobile or object after creating a new one.

1. Fixed a problem where if a (ROM) room was a clan room, it would be saved incorrectly (the "~" was missing), and thus it would not reload.
2. For ROM rooms you can now enter: clan name, mana rate, healing rate.
3. For ROM rooms, hide the "Max in room" field, which does not apply.
4. When switching from a room to the "area" header, the wrong tab would be selected. It should have been the tab you were last looking at. This has been fixed.
5. Fixed a similar problem to (4) for room exits.

1. The MUSH export has been enhanced to add @succ, @osucc, and @odrop messages to exits, to eliminate the warning messages that you get if such messages are not there. Also, when creating objects, if they don't have an extra description, the object is given the "long description", to avoid another warning message.

2. The default "race table" is now a SMAUG race table - it used to be a ROM race table. This is overridden if you supply a #RACE section in your configuration file.

3. The file SMAUGCONFIG.DAT now lists the extra exit flags that apply to SMAUG room exits.

4. Affects for ROM areas are now handled better. The fields "where" (ie. Affects, Object, Immune, Resist, Vuln) now appear in a combo box, and the field "bitvector" now appears as 32 flags, that automatically reconfigure themselves, as relevant to the "where" field.

5. The "affects" list in ROMCONFIG.DAT has been amended to be more accurate.

6. A new section, AFFECTWHERE, has been added to ROMCONFIG.DAT.

As soon as you click on a "load mob" reset its room number (arg3) changes to -1, thus making it load into a non-existant room.

1. When viewing flags in a ROM area, the flag number is now shown as a ROM flag letter (eg. A, B, C, not 1, 2, 3)
2. The Object Stats page now shows ROM weight as 1/10ths of a pound, and SMAUG weight as pounds.
3. On the Object Stats page, the 6 "values" for ROM are now shown correctly (they differ somewhat from SMAUG values).
4. On the Object Stats page you can now choose more things by clicking on the "choose" button and selecting from a list of things (eg. weapon type, liquid type, various flags)
5. When saving an area warnings may be generated if "out-of-range" values had to be adjusted to make the area loadable next time. This might happen if a SMAUG area was converted to ROM, for example, as SMAUG has more exit directions than ROM.
6. You can now choose to review load or save warnings at any time by selecting View > Recent Warnings. This is handy for correcting load or save errors one-by-one.

a. When viewing object stats for a ROM area, spell names are incorrect.
b. When choosing spell names for a ROM area the SMAUG spell names (if any) are shown.

It doesn't seem to like negative values. Like I can not set a -1 for the light value to
make it an infinite time of light. And it doesn't like it when I add a -2 addaffect to strength or what ever else attribute I wish to affect.

1. Now recognise area file directives from SMAUG 1.4, namely:

#VERSION
#CLIMATE
#NEIGHBOR

2. Changed loading of areas to allow for version 1 area files (ie. those produced by SMAUG 1.4), in particular the slightly different format of the #OBJECT area.

3. Added tabs/fields to the "area" header so you can enter version number, climate and neighbor information.

4. Enhanced printing by adding "equip" and "give" resets to mobs when listed in a room. Also prints the names of any programs attached to a room/mob/object, and optionally lists the program contents.

5. Object values are now summarised on the object summary page (eg. listing spell names for a staff type) and shown when objects are printed.

6. Enhanced the "choose mob", "choose object" and "choose room" dialog boxes, to give more information about the item you are choosing.

7. When doing a "detailed search" exit names (eg. north) are now searched for. In other words, you can find all "North" exits by doing a search for "north".

8. An "add exit" button has been added to the room summary page, to make adding exits to rooms easier. You are prompted for the exit direction, asked to choose a destination room from a list, then taken to the exit editing page to fill in the exit keywords and description. You can also (optionally) add at the same time a "reverse exit", in other words if you are adding an exit that goes East from A to B, then it also adds a West exit from B to A.

9. Added buttons to the "button bar" for adding area items, duplicating items, and removing items. This does not add program functionality, but makes it easier to use.

10. Added a preferences entry for selecting the fixed-pitch font used for editing descriptions of rooms, mobs etc. This lets you choose your favourite font, eg. Courier.

11. Enhanced menu items for "add/duplicate/remove" so that they dynamically change to show *what* you are adding/duplicating/removing.

1. Fixed a problem in editing room and other descriptions where the program allowed 80 characters (per line) in a description when it should only have allowed 79.
2. The "flag handling" has been completely rewritten in this version. This not only makes a more consistent user-interface for "flags" (eg. mob affects), but also means you can specify flag names in the CONFIG.DAT file. All flags, such as area flags, room flags, mob flags, object flags are now represented in the CONFIG.DAT file (amended copy supplied in this archive). You can add or remove flags by changing the appropriate section in this file. For example:

#AFFECT
Flag01 Blind
Flag02 Invisible
... [snip] ...
Flag31 Berserk
Flag32 Aqua_breath
End

As flags are held as 32-bit integers the maximum numbers of flags in a particular section is 32. If you omit a particular flag number, it will not appear in the appropriate flags dialog box.

3. Fixed a bug where viewing a mob would make the program think you had changed it.

1. Fixed a bug where after getting an error message on a field, the "focus" was not returned properly to the field that had the problem.
2. Shop view no longer shows objects of zero cost (shopkeepers cannot sell things which don't cost anything).
3. In the shop view you can now add or remove items for the shopkeeper by selecting them from a list of items that can be sold (ie. this will add or delete the appropriate resets). Note that you cannot sell items of zero cost, so only items with a non-zero cost will appear in the "select objects" list.
4. In the room view you can now add mobs and objects by selecting them from a list. You can delete mobs, objects and programs by clicking on them and pressing "Remove". You can equip or give to mobs by clicking on the mob and selecting the item to give or equip from a list. This greatly simplifies setting up resets for the area.
5. In an exit view, you can now choose a key for an exit from a list of objects.
6. You can now print an area, either to a printer, or to a disk file (as text). The printed form endeavours to summarise as much information as possible in an easy-to-read format, for skimming through all of your descriptions, exits, and important resets.
7. Improved the way that "affects" are displayed if they refer to resistant/immune/susceptible.

1. An "area walkthrough" has been added which allows you to simulate walking through your area, room by room. You can see each room, its exits and contents, similarly to what you would see when playing the game.

You can enter commands, such as "north", "south", "goto <vnum>", and "look <object>".

The area walkthrough starts with the first room in the area, or if you have selected a room in the left-hand view, the selected room. You can optionally view item vnums (which looks less realistic but is more helpful for debugging), and mob equip and give resets.

Once you have finished your walkthrough, the room you last visited is selected - in case you have found a problem in its description, or resets, so you can easily edit it.

1. A problem with how resets displayed the "wear location" for an equip has been corrected. Previous versions showed wear locations (eg. head, feet) as check boxes, and thus you could check more than one of them, thus leading to the ridiculous situation where you could wear the *same* item on your head and your feet. This version now shows "wear locations" as radio boxes, which are mutually exclusive. Also, previous versions would have shown the wrong wear location (eg. "neck" for "hands", and so on).
2. Summaries for an "equip" reset now show where the item is equipped, eg. "black boots (feet)".
3. When selecting an object from the "choose object" dialog box, you can now narrow down the objects in the list to a particular type (eg. weapon, food).

1. The following dialog boxes now have "find" and "find next" buttons to expedite finding an item in a long list (eg. find "gloves"). The dialog boxes are: Choose Exit, Choose Mobile, Choose Object, Choose Room, Choose Spell.
2. Fixed a problem where if the size of the right-hand view was small enough to need scrollbars, using the scrollbars did not scroll correctly (the right-hand and bottom sides were clipped).

Added a MUSH export function to the File menu. For more details see the file MUSHEXPORT.TXT.

1. Added support for ROM areas, including the ability to convert from SMAUG to ROM, and ROM to SMAUG.
2. Moved most of the hard-coded list items (eg. races, classes, spell names) into the configuration file, for ease of editing. The supplied configuration file CONFIG.DAT has now been replaced by two files: SMAUGCONFIG.DAT (for SMAUG areas) and ROMCONFIG.DAT (for ROM areas). See the documentation in CONFIGURATION.TXT for details about these files.
3. Fixed a bug where deleting a MUD program which had a syntax error in it would cause a program crash.

1. Defaults "open" command to asking for the area type, in case ROM users are opening a ROM area, and are puzzled by the error message, because the program used to assume a SMAUG area.
2. Fixed a problem where writing out door flags didn't work correctly for ROM servers.
3. Made the door flags for exits a configuration option (section "exit") so you can add or remove your own exit flags.
4. Improved the "room exit" screen so that you can see the name of a key, if there is one, and go to the key item, if you want to view its details.
5. Improved the "equip location" handling, so that it is no longer a fixed set of radio buttons (which were rather SMAUG-centric) to a drop-down combo-box, which is loaded from the "wearlist" part of the configuration file.
6. Added an "average hit/damage/mana" calculation to the mobile summary page, to see at a glance the strength of this mobile.

If an area file has #HELPS in it, the editor crashes.

Printing of area files does not work.

I am having problems with the editor... v0.58.. I'm guessing that it's not been updated for smaug v1.4??? When will there be a version that is compatible with the new version of smaug??? The biggest problem is in the Commands.dat and Skills.dat file not loading..

A blank line somewhere inside a MUD program usually causes syntax errors.

When adding a reset, equip mob, the placement check boxes don't work, you have to type in the actual number in the wear location.

I was wondering if it is possible to edit the wear flags for objects?

On the object stats tab the 'Choose' buttons are never active .. would be a nice to have feature.

I have a problem now that I have added a new ifcheck. Everything is fine until I go to edit the program, when I try to leave the edit field where the program is it wont let me stating :

Unknown IF test at line 1 of program

I cant save, I cant close the application .. nothing .. I am stuck. This is not a good thing. I should at least be allowed to override the syntax check if I want to.

I have found a bug in 0.57 connected with field focusing which can be replicated as follows :

1. Create a new area
2. double right click on Area and add a new item
3. left click on Room low field to give focus and change to 0
4. press tab to move into the Room high field and enter 200000
5. left click on any section listed on the left hand side i.e Help, Rooms, Mobiles etc...
6. You will now get a warning dialog saying 'Please enter an integer between 1 and 200000'
7. click ok

At this point the '0' is highlighted but the focus goes into the Area name field. If you start typing the input goes into that field too. However, even if you left click or double left click in the Room low field it doesnt get focus. The only way to give it focus is to tab through the entire dialog and even then when you get to the Room low field you are not given a flashing cursor. Once you have tabbed into it and changed it then all works well
again.

You cannot add or delete things from the area.