terraMOO NEWBIE Guide
Using Common MOO Objects

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THINGs are everywhere and a thing is just an OBJECT in the MOO. All things have names (like "mars bar", "securitycam", "Rubbish Bin"). Basic thing manipulation involves simple NORMAL commands to take, drop, examine and place them elsewhere.

For the commands that follow, substitute the NAME of the thing for <thing> (eg. put securitycam rubbishbin)

get <thing> picks up an object up and place it in your inventory
drop <thing> places it in the room
put <thing> <container> places it in a container
give <thing> <player> hands it to some other player
look <thing> shows you what it looks like.

Additionally, you can click on the thing to examine it more closely. The HELP/HINTS icon lets you view all the commands your thing knows how to respond to also.

To "stick" an object to the current room, type the normal command:

@lock <thing> with here

The LOOK button returns you to room view after you have looked closely at a thing.

A room is also a thing but you clearly cannot pick up a room nor put it in the rubbishbin because it is too big!

Containers are useful objects - you can put things into them. Rubbish bins, voting boxes, refrigerators and pencil cases are all containers.

Apart from basic THING abilities, containers allow you to specify some particular properties, and have some useful normal commands.

put <thing> in <container> and
get <thing> from <container> are pretty obvious. You cannot put a container inside another container though.

open <container> and
close <container> are useful if you want your container to have a lid.

@opacity <container> is <number> allows you to control what you can see when you look in the container. The opacity can take on one of three values:
0: The container is transparent and you can always see into it.
1: The container is opaque, and you cannot see into it when closed
2: The container is a black hole, and you can never see into it whether closed or open.
The default @opacity is 1.

A voting box, for example, could be level2 opaque - that way, voters cannot see votes once placed into it. The OWNER of the container can change the opacity

Notes are useful objects in a MOO - not only can they contain textual information in their NOTE TEXT property, but you can embed multimedia in them also.

There is a note editor built into the chat window of the MOO but using the mouse and menus is much more direct.

Apart from general THING commands, notes also allow you to:

read <note> to display it's note text
erase <note> to erase it's note text
write "<message>" on <note> to add to it's note text.

Some notes are publically writeable (ie. you can wander up to them and add your own message) - publically writeable notes are great as Visitors books, Story trees and personal logs. If a note is SHARED with you, you have full edit rights over it also.

Note boards can allow people to post 'new' or existing notes on it. New notes are created automatically when someone wants to post something, whereas existing notes must be held in order to be successfully posted.

A note board has three configurations:
Private : In private mode only the owner of the note board may post to it.
Public posting in this mode is not allowed.
Restricted : In restricted mode only registered users, i.e. players, builders,
programmers and wizards may post to the board. (Default)
Public : In public mode anyone can post to the board.

Apart from general THING commands, Note Boards have some specific commands to allow you to control them. If you are not the owner (or are SHARING the board, some of these might not work).

look <noteboard> views the contents of the note board
read <note number> on <noteboard> views a particular posting
post note-name on <noteboard> posts an existing note to the board
post new on <noteboard> creates a new note and post it on the board, you will be prompted for subject and body text.
<note number> from <noteboard> removes a note from the board
configure <noteboard> set the board to either of the three modes noted above

Recorders also have an OPACITY that is set like a CONTAINER

To create your WEB SLIDES click on the Xpress Objects button and select Edit Web Slides from the drop down menu.

• Type in URLs for web pages you wish to share, one URL per line. Save your slides.
• To show slide 1 to everyone in room type 'display 1 on projector_name' or 'display next on projector_name'
• To view a slide by yourself 'view 1 on projector_name'
• To peek at your slides list at any time type 'peek projector_name'
• You can run a slide show of all web pages on the projector by typing 'start projector_name'
• You can stop the slide show at any time with the command 'stop projector_name.' To resume slide show, type 'start projector_name'.
• To reset the projector to slide 1, type 'reset projector_name'
• To change the delay between slides in the slide show, type '@setdelay projector_name to X', where X is the number of seconds you want the delay to be.

Once you have created one of these objects, type the normal command
help <objectname> to see the controls for the object.

Each MOO object inherits some characteristics and commands from others and may have commands of its own, When you click on your object, there is a command summary for it available by clicking on the HELP icon: