[Guide]Chapter 7. Objects in the Tree

[Thunda]

Welcome to chapter 7 of the BYOND ultimate Guide. If you have any questions regarding this tutorial or you just want to leave your feedback, feel free to do it here.

Chapter 7. Objects in the Tree

There are four basic object types. Each has its own special properties, as well as those that
they all share. The basic objects are mob, obj, turf, and area. There are other objects as well, but these four are the ones which are visible to players. We call them atomic objects.

The simplest difference between them is the order in which they appear on the map. Areas are drawn in the first layer. The icon of an area is often simply a solid background color. Turfs are drawn on top of areas; these usually represent some type of terrain like grass, roads, or walls. Objs are drawn next, and might stand for items such as swords or cookies. Mobs are drawn on top of everything else. They normally represent players or computer-controlled creatures.

7.1 Object Properties


Let us look at the properties that all of the objects have in common. We have already seen that they each have a name and an icon. These are variables. Here is a list of each variable and a description of its purpose.

name - This represents the name of the object. There can be blank spaces in the name.

gender - Grammatical gender of the object. The possible values are ”neuter”, ”male”, ”female”, and ”plural”. The default is ”neuter”

desc - The description of the object.

suffix - Text commonly displayed after the name of the object in the “stat” panels. For example, this could indicate the status of equipment items: ”(weapon in hand)”, ”(worn on body)”, and so on.

text - A single character used to represent the obj on a non-graphical map.

icon - Icon file used to represent obj.

icon_state - Icon files may contain several different states. This variable is the name of the current active one.

dir - This is the direction the object is facing. Some icons may look different depending on which directions they are pointed. This is mostly used for mobs that change directions while moving.

overlays - This is a list of icons or objects that appear on top of the main icon.

underlays - This is a list of icons or object that appear underneath of the main icon.

visibility - This is used to define whether the object is visible or not. Values used are 1 and 0.

luminosity - This is to define how far an object emits light, values vary between 0 and 6.

opacity - This is to define whether the object blocks light or not. Values used are 1 and 0.

density - This is to indicate whether the object fills up the space it occupies. Only mobs are dense by default. Normally, no two dense objects may occupy the same position.

contents - This is a list of all the objects directly inside of an object. Commonly called "inventory"

verbs - List of verbs aka commands associated with the object.

type - This is the type path of the object. For example, it might be /turf or /turf/trap.

7.1.1 Location

The following location variables apply to all object types except areas, which never exist inside
other objects.

loc - This indicates the container of an object. In other words, if object A contains object B, B’s loc will be equal to A, and B will exist in A’s contents list.

X,Y,Z - These indicate the position on the map. (I have explained what each of them represents in Chapter 3 : Chapter 3. Your First World)

7.1.2 Additional mob properties

key - Simply this is the login name of the player. By default when a new mob is created, the name is set to the key.

ckey - This is the player's key in canonical form. (stripped of punctuation and converted tolowercase)

client - This is the player’s client object (if any).

sight - This value controls special visual powers of a mob, permitting sight of invisible or obscured objects.

group - This is a list of one’s mob friends.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next chapter.

Guide is written with the help of Dantom's book.

[Albro1]

type - This is the type path of the object. For example, it might be /turf or /turf/trap.

This part should be "/obj or /obj/trap", since you are discussing objects.

You may also want to mention the parent of all /mob, /obj, and /turf types; /atom.

Dantom's book (I'm assuming you mean the Blue Book) is rather outdated. BYOND has changed much and honestly the book won't help a whole lot. While your tutorials are good, there are certainly better ones on BYOND that you could link to.

I may take it upon myself to write some tutorials myself while I am here.

[Thunda]

I know that the book is a bit outdated .. its back from who knows when (2000 if I'm not mistaken). About linking tutorials? Take a look at the rules .. and I'd say that I prefer writing them on my own with the help of the book of course checking for updated info too.

[Albro1]

About linking tutorials? Take a look at the rules ..

I see nothing about not being able to link to a tutorial. If there is a rule against it and I am missing it, you can always just copy and paste them and give credit to their makers.

and I'd say that I prefer writing them on my own with the help of the book of course checking for updated info too.

How experienced are you in DM? If you are not fully versed in the language and need the help of the book for most of your tutorials, chances are you aren't ready to be making tutorials.

[Thunda]

About the rules its not written, but the last thread that had links to another website with tuts got deleted .. Aaron doesnt seem to like those kinds of threads.

About my experience, I'm into BYOND development (includes coding and iconning) for a few months already, I'm not that experienced and I'm still studying it and trying to do my best to make the tuts. Lets not turn this into an open chat .. these posts here will probably get cleaned eventually :/

[Albro1]

Well, before they get cleaned, I would like to point out that these are forums and he asked for feedback, and that is what I am giving. If they get deleted for following the OP's request, why should I even post here?

Also, I would be willing to help you with your tutorials. I completely understand how you feel after a few months. Learning fast, learning a lot, feeling great, and wanting to spread the knowledge. However, although you are learning things at a great rate, you don't really understand organization and optimization of code until you have been programming for much longer. I personally have 3 years of BYOND development under my belt. In 98% of all cases, I know what I am talking about when it comes to DM.

I do not mean to bash you or anything, but I have felt as you do before. I've made tutorials way back when when I thought I was pretty good. Looking back, they aren't very good at all. I don't like sugarcoating things, so really I am not going to tell you in any way other than you aren't ready to be making tutorials on your own yet. I am willing to help, though.

[Thunda]

I get your point there.