Intro

One of the most common changes you'll want to make to Tele-Arena is adding rooms and building new area's. Thankfully, it's relatively simple.

tsgarndd

Open up tsgarndd.msg, and find the line that reads: 

EXITTOT{4307}

The number will vary based on how many rooms you have in your game. Below that line, you'll find a number of entries (4307 of them in my case) that look something like:

EXIT1    {0 13 0 0 0 0 14 0 -98 0 1}
EXIT2    {18 0 0 19 0 0 0 0 0 0 3}
EXIT3    {21 0 39 0 33 32 0 0 0 0 5}
EXIT4    {0 0 0 0 0 0 0 47 0 0 7}
EXIT5    {0 6 0 0 51 0 0 0 0 0 9}
EXIT6    {0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 52 11}
EXIT7    {0 51 0 0 8 0 0 0 0 0 21}
EXIT8    {7 0 0 0 0 9 0 0 0 0 33}
EXIT9    {0 8 0 0 0 0 0 10 0 0 43}
EXIT10   {0 0 0 9 0 0 11 0 0 0 25}
EXIT11   {0 0 10 0 0 0 0 12 0 0 29}

Each line is a room, each number between the {}'s stands for a room to which this room is linked, the last number is the description. here's a break down of the numbers, they go like this:

{n ne e se s sw w nw u d  des}
              East    West      Description
Room ID  North | South |     Up   |
  |       |    |   |   |     |    |
EXIT1    {0 13 0 0 0 0 14 0 -98 0 1}
            |    |   |    |     |
        NorthEast|   | NorthWest|
            SouthEast|        Down
                 SouthWest

This room happens to be the entrance to the Dungeon in Town1 in the stock game. If you know anything about TA, you'll recognise it from it's layout. Room 13 is the entrance after the locked door northewest of the entrance, Room 14 is the beginning of the corrodor leading to the Minotaur, and Up is -98, the t1 arena.

Adding rooms is as simple as going to the END of the listing of room's and adding a new line. Adding something like:

EXIT4308 {1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2105}

Then add "4308" to the south field on exit1: 

EXIT1    {0 13 0 0 4308 0 14 0 -98 0 1}

Then go to the "EXITTOT" line and add one to it: 

EXITTOT{4308}

Exittot always needs to match the highest Exit number. Otherwise your new room wont get loaded when the game is loaded.

tsgarndt

Now, you'll notice that i set the "description" field to 2105. Thats because to do this right, you need to make a description for this room. You can re-use descriptions, if you have two rooms that would use the same description, go ahead and use the same description ID. To add a new one, just open up tsgarndt.msg, and find the section labeled: 

RoomTOT {1052}

And a bunch of lines under it similar to:

ROOM1    {You are inside the dungeon entrance.
}
ROOM2    {You are standing inside the entrance to the dungeon. This rounded
stone and earth room bears the marks of digging tools and a number of
assorted claw and hoof marks in the walls and floor. The only obvious
exits are back up the stone stairway you just decended, to the west,
down a plain earthen tunnel, and to the northeast through an enormous
rough-hewn stone door.
}

Here's one of the oddities in these files. "Room1" and "Room2" are actually one entry, theyre referred to by ID 1. This is the entrance to the dungeon. Room1 is the short description that is shown in the room header, and "room2" is the long description, shown when a player "look"s. So we'll add one to the end of this for our new room.

ROOM2105 {You're in a test room.
}
ROOM2106 {You are standing in a test room, you are surrounded by
lab experiments, and test rats.  Your only exit is to the north.
}

Now, the game will display the descriptions exactly as you enter them, line breaks and all. So dont count on word wrap, hit enter at the end of every line as you'd like it displayed, and put a return a the end before closing with a } or the game will just pick up ar the end of the description. Now, RoomTOT is a little odd. Instead of containing the last ID, it contains the total divided by two, because of the two entries to one id thing. So change roomtot to 1053.

Now, the moment of truth. Save your changes, and upload (or copy) them to your BBS's root directory (c:\wgserv in my case) and then reload the board. If you watch it reload, you'll see the board build new MVC's and .H's out of your MSG's, and then load the changes when your bbs starts up. You should be able to test things out now. Login, and go into TA. If you're a sysop (which i assume you are) you can teleport to your new room. 

teleport 4308 1

You should be in your new room. Type L and you should see your description. If you dont, you've probably missed something, and should go over the changes again. If you cant get it working, go back to your backup (you made a backup... right?) and start over.

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