Argila RPI Engine
What is Argila?
In December of 2004, Traithe released an early verion of the code used by Shadows of Isildur MUD. The RPI Engine was a working version of the code used by SOI, based on code from Harslands, and descended from DIKU code. Over the next 18 months, a trimmed down, generic codebase was dervived from the RPI Engine. At the begining of this project I wanted a name with a meaning, something that meant MUD, and somehow related to the Portegues language. Lua, developed in Brazil, by Portegues speaking authors, was going to be added to give scripting abilities to the new Engine. I researched Portegues and mud, and came up with Argila, a type of clay, or mud, that is used to make the red tiles seen so often on Portegues and Brazilian roofs, thus the Argila Project was born.
Requirements and Warnings
Coders trying to run Argila will need to be familiar with tools such as gdb, gcc, lint, as well as be familair with the commands to manage directories, file permissions, passwords and server variables. You will need to be familar with Mysql, and be able to edit text files and the database structures and information. You may also need to do all of this on remote machines, so you will need to use tools such as telnet, ftp, sftp, and ssh. If any of this is unclear to you now, it will get much worse when you try to work with Argila. This is not a plug-and-play game. It is code, and it is generic. You will need to add a lot to it, to make it your own game, since each and every installtion of Argila and the game it supports are different. With that said, it does give the game coder a big headstart over a codebase written from scratch.
Code Features
The engine comes with 4 rooms in Zone 0 and two rooms in Zone 13, two mobs, and eight objects. All you need is imagination and hours of dedication to create your own RPI MUD. You also get two Object Manuals, (one on creating objects and one for reference), a Room Building Manual, a Craft manual and a Mobile manual, as well as the infamous RPROG Manual.
- Clean, stable and most importantly, easy to set up and run.
- Improved compare command, as well as improvements to height, weight and frame.
- WearLocs aligned in head-to-toe order, with visibility code for some locations.
- Any object can be set as Currency.
- Numerous other small enhancments from the orginal SOI code.
Player Features
What you won't find in Argila is hack-n-slash commands, levels, classes, remorts, reincarnation and global channels. Argila is meant for Role Play Intensive games. An RPI differs from what most people think of as a MUD in many ways. When you play an RPI, your focus is on your character. How does he act, think and grow as he lives his daily life. As they live their lives, they increase their skills by using them. The code has limits built in to thwart power-gamers who might try to gain an unfair advantage by using their skills repeatedly. When the character dies, they are gone, and you must create a a new character.
To start it all off, Argila has a character generation and approval system, that allows players to customize their description, rank their attributes, and choose their skills. Role Play Points, RPP, can be assigned by the Staff, using whatever criteria they choose. In turn, the number of points a player has determine the availability of extra races, skills, professions or even roles available to the player when they create a new character. Professions, or a set of pre-chosen skills, can be created by the staff to aid players in creating their new character. Roles can be created by the staff that may include extra equipment, increased coins or other perks to the starting character. Once a player completes the character application, it must be reviewed. First characters can be reviewed by Guides or Staff, and all future characters are reviewed by the Staff alone. The review of the application depends upon the criteria set upon the staff, but generally, the applications will be considered for completeness, spelling errors, and how well the application conforms to the game-world.
Argila lacks global channels so any communication is in-character. An OOC command is available to help new players out and to deal with the very limited matters that need OOC, but you won't find channels that let you chat with the other players while you are online. Your game may have a website and forum associated with it, and these are good tools for building the community, but once you are in-game, the OOC stays out. There is a Petition command to allow players to query the Staff on game-related matters, and players can use the Think command to alert the Staff on the reason behind a change in behavior for your character.
Since you are immersed in the game, you won't have to depend on pre-configured socials either. The emote system in Argila covers normal poses, traveling, stationary, and objects. You can be as creative or as terse as you choose, but each emote is yours.
Advance Features
Lua is embedded within Argila as the foundation for mob-progs, object-progs, and room-progs. The actions taken will be written in C but the how and when they happen will be determined by Lua scripting. A few commands are included, and the scripts that make them work.