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B. Early Apprenticeship (The Absolute Basics)
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Note: If you've already wizzed before and know how to read this, then
you can skip this entire section and go straight down to 'Late
Apprenticeship'.
Congratulations! So you finally managed to do enough inane tasks for Gaius
to convince him that you're worthy of promotion to the immortal ranks. You've
given all your coins to your AA friends and frozen all your alts. You've
kissed your mortalling days a temporary goodbye and await a new world.
Welcome to what is probably going to be the most confusing few days of your
AA life, probably more confusing than even your first days as a mortal. There
is going to be a barrage of new information hitting you hard and fast and
you'll probably feel overwhelmed. That's OK and very normal - don't be
discouraged just because of the amount you have to learn.
This is a list of things you should learn and get used to in the first day
or two of your apprenticeship.
(i) Things to read before you do anything else
Unfortunately, before you do anything, there are quite a lot of things
you should really read first.
First of all, understand the wizrules - these apply especially strictly to
apprentices and you should abide by them strictly.
Second, read that apprentice handbook that you have. Some of the pages in
it are quite outdated so take them with a grain of salt.
(ii) Some new apprentice commands
A few things will look different to you. One noticeable one is that when
you move around, you'll notice that before the room's description pops up,
something like '/d/Qc/room/office' pops up before it. A wizard gets to see
the filepath of all rooms she walks into and that's all that is.
Since every room has a filepath, you can just go to a room directly if you
know the path using the 'goto' command - 'goto /room/newvill/inn' will get me
into the starting inn, for example. This command can also teleport you to
specific players or npcs - 'goto bokwa' will teleport me straight there. Do
NOT do this as an apprentice, or preferably, ever. You can also 'goto' other
wizards - it is very much a matter of courtesy to ask first before you do
that.
A related command is 'go'. This works roughly like goto, except it works
on predefined locations. You should have a copy of Malire's address book -
'a simple address book'. Examine it and you'll see a list of locations that
you can easily get to by just using 'go'. So for example, 'go adv' will take
you straight to the adventurer's guild.
Once you're a full wizard, you can also clone any object in the game if
you know the filepath of it - 'clone /obj/torch' will get you a torch, for
example. As an apprentice however, you can only clone objects that you have
personally coded.
As a wizard, you also get access to a range of new wizard-only lines. The
two that apprentices start out with are the appr line and the wiz line. They
work pretty much like any other mortal line. The appr line is for help with
coding and other wizardly matters while the wiz line is more for socialising.
You have to turn the apprentice line on manually as it defaults to off for
a new apprentice.
(iii) The Ancient Anguish file system
AA stores its files in a hierarchical structure under a Unix-like system.
(Well, it might actually be Unix, I wouldn't have a clue). All that means
is that the data are all in files which are all in subfolders which are in
folders - nothing different from Windows. As an apprentice, you only have
access to 2 major folders: /w/yourname - your personal folder and /doc/ which
is a collection of many helpfiles, guidelines, tutorials and the like.
If you've played around with Unix before, moving around the folders will
be a breeze, so skip this next little bit.
When you're a wizard, you're actually 'in' two locations simultaneously.
The first is the room you're physically in - this works in the same way as
it does any mortal. The second is the folder you're 'in' - this is like
browsing windows explorer - you're always inside one folder or another.
To get around the physical rooms, you use 'n' 's' 'enter' 'goto' and similar.
To get around the folders, you just have to learn a few new commands:
'ls' lets you see what's inside the folder that you're currently in. If
you haven't done anything since wizzing, that'd probably just be your base
directory of /w/yourname, which looks pretty bare at the moment, something
like:
162:162>ls
log/ workroom.c
162:162>
Any names with a '/' after it, ie the 'log/' is a subfolder within the
folder you're currently in. Anything without is a file inside the folder
you're currently in.
To read a file, use the 'more' command. So to read workroom.c, just type
'more workroom.c'. You don't have to be in the same folder as the file to
read it though - for example, you can just 'more /doc/world/life_spans" from
anywhere.
'cd' gets you around the folders. Typing 'cd' with no arguments will get
you back into your own folder at /w/yourname. To go into a subfolder within
the folder you're currently in, just type 'cd foldername'. Or if you know
exactly where you're going, type out the exact folder path to go straight
there - 'cd /doc/world/' for example. To get out of a subfolder into the
main folder directly above it, type 'cd ..'. So if you were in the /doc/world
subfolder and did that, you would then end up in the /doc/ folder.
So now you know how to move around the folders you're allowed in and read
the files inside them.
(iv) Making a file
You won't get far in wizhood if you don't know how to write and edit files.
Ancient Anguish uses a text editor called 'ed' - it is quite antiquated and
rather hard to use for first timers. Most wizards avoid it and use it only to
make small changes to existing files. I recommend you do the same.
You do have to know its basic functionality, however. To start a new file
in the folder that you're currently in, just type 'ed filename' and you'll
see something like:
162:162> ed newfile.c
isn't readable.
/w/dafeon/newfile.c, 0 lines
:
That means you're in. Like all graphical editors, you edit the line that
you're currently on. Unlike graphical editors, you don't have the use of
a mouse or the direction keys (up, down, left, right) or the insert, delete
backspace and similar keys. This means that navigation through this text
editor has to be done in a fairly convoluted way.
Another thing to get used to is that you can only edit line by line instead
of character by character like in Notepad. That is, to change a typo on one
line, you basically have to retype in the entire line.
The editor has 2 main modes - input mode and perusal mode. It is by default
in perusal mode - in this mode, anything you type will not be entered into
the file - the editor will attempt instead to decipher what you've typed
as a command. The valid commands can be seen if you type '-h'. The main ones
to know are:
'i' - when in perusal mode, this will switch you into edit mode
'.' - when in edit mode, this will switch you into perusal mode
'n' - make line numbers show up when you look at your document - must have
when debugging your code
'x' - save and exit
'Q' - exit without saving
<number> - this will make editor go to that that line number and display
it - so '23' will make it go to line 23
'z' - show the 20 lines after your current line
'a' - append a line after the current line - your next input will become
that new line
'c' - replace the current line with the line you're about to input -
you'll use this one frequently while debugging
The latter 3 can be used in conjunction with the line number - that is,
typing '3z' will show you line 3 and the 20 lines after it. '5c' will replace
line 5 and ask for the new line you want to replace it with. There are of
course a bunch of other commands in ed that can be learnt, but the above are
the basics that can get you started.
If this is your first time using ed, you'll probably take quite a while to
get used to the perusal/editing system. It's not pretty but and that's why
most wizards use ed only for fixing small one line bugs.
(v) The 'man' command
The 'man' command is to a wizard what the 'help' command is to a mortal.
There are hundreds of wizardly subjects that are in the wizardly help files.
To get help on a particular topic, for example, coding a monster, type 'man
monster'. It'll come up with a heap of more specific help topics to do with
coding a monster - use the man command on one of those and you'll get the
specific helpfile - ie 'man add_keyword'.
If you want to search the entire database of helpfiles for a keyword, use
'man -k keyword'. This will bring up all the helpfiles with that keyword
in the file's name: ie 'man -k hit' will bring up a list of all the helpfiles
with the word 'hit' in the title - hit_player, query_hit_point, weapon_hit,
etc etc.
The 'man' command is your first port of call whenever you have a simple
coding question. If you don't know how to use a particular function, then
first see whether there's a man page for it.
Another functionality of the 'man' command is that it allows you to read
the files inside the open directory of other wizards. Most wizards do not
allow global read access to their files, but do allow all wizards to read a
few select files which they put in an open folder. To see what is in various
wizards' open folders, just do 'man ~wizname' so 'man ~scarecrazy' will show
you the very useful examples and tutorials she has put in her open directory.
To read one of the files, go 'man ~wizname/filename' so for example, 'man
~scarecrazy/tut1.txt' will bring up that file.
Note: If you use Zmud then you'll have to turn off its 'parsing' feature
by pressing the control key and the 'r' key.
(vi) Wizard only locations
As a wizard, quite a few new rooms become available to you. The first is
your workroom - located at /w/youorname/workroom.c. You can easily access it
any time with the 'home' command. This will probably be the first room that
you mess with if you want to start learning LPC.
There are many wizard only boards. Malire's address book allows you to
teleport to most of them with the 'go' command. The general 'wiz' board is
to wizards what the adventurer's board is to mortals. In fact, apart from
the immortal flame board, almost every wizard concern nowadays pop up there.
There are quite a few useful tools in the various wizard rooms:
/w/jerusulum/room/observe - a very useful room for apprentices to take a
look at locations of areas in the world without
breaking apprentice rules. Alternatively, just
go to Levek's map at:
sio.midco.net/aa/info/worldmap.html or the Infidian one at:
sio.midco.net/aa/info/infidianmap.html 'go qc' - submit your finished projects here
'go world' - submit your world.infos here
'go balance' - get the balance fish 'wandus' to do a balance report on your
item for you
/secure/banish - All wizards can pre-emptively banish names - this is so
that your npcs' names don't conflict with mortal names.
Whenever you code a new NPC, come here and banish its name
'go wiz' - where the main wizard board is
Those are the main ones you'll use as an apprentice and full wizard. You
can probably get by with just remembering those.
(vii) A recap
At this point, you should:
* Know the wizard rules
* Have read the apprentice handbook
* Know how to use 'goto' and 'clone'
* Know how to move around the folders of AA files and how to read them
* Have a basic understanding of the basic commands of the editor 'ed'
* Can read the wizard helpfiles and use the wizard helpline (appr)
* Know where the main wizard hangouts are
These are all the basics that you'll need to get started in the wizard's
world.