Scribblings - FAQ's

Is it easy to code rooms?

Well yes and no.

I actually don't find it to hard, I have written thousands of rooms. I have typed over 3 million words that's 14,000 pages and counting. That's more than most novelists. But the ability to write rooms is down to several things. You have to get a rythym, you have to accept there will be errors or periods where you don't squeeze out the best from your brain. You have to learn how to make your text appear functional even when your writing areas you have little empathy for.

One moment you are looking at writing vast areas of the land that people will hardly look at the next you are finishing off areas that people treat as incredibly important.

The most usual pit falls for would be room coders are as follows:

Too much too soon

They try to write to much to soon. Try as I might I can not get people to aim low when coding rooms, the urge to be creative needs to be matched with a determination to complete the work. Sadly your imagination will always try to push you on , you don't want to do just 40 rooms you want to construct a whole sunken city to the lizard king. I have lost count of the emails I get from would be coders who tell me they are going to write this great area, hundreds of rooms with linking quests and events. At first I tried to explain why I thought it was a little over ambitious, then I changed tact, I say to these people 'go ahead and get back in touch when you have them done'. I will usually get an email about how the maps been drawn out on paper then I never hear from then again.

You see room writing is not a 'doddle' it takes planning and bloody mindedness on the part of the writer. You also have to have a 'inner fire' room writing has large bits of it that are dull, deadly dull. You have to want to get past those parts before you can even think about writing the good bits.

They under estimate the task

You know how they say we all have a novel within us? Well room writing is a lot like that. If you have ever sat down to write your novel you will be aware of a few truths. Its not as easy as you thought  and the work involved is disproportional to the enjoyment you get. Room writing is a lot like that, you can talk yourself into believing that its easy, you convince yourself that you will be able to rattle off a few hundred rooms a day, you are convinced that your stuff will be better than any other rooms you have ever seen. The truth of the matter is that you will never know if you have the ability to write rooms until you have a go at it, just remember you are not doing a small task, treat this like painting a house with a toothbrush. It can be done, but its a hard slog.

To complicated, try to keep it simple

The urge when your about to write a set of rooms is to try and make it a master piece. You need to learn your trade, start with simple things and then work your way up. Don't try to construct the elven court as your first set of rooms. Pick something that people won't want to look over with to much of a critical eye. Roads are a good starting point, that or woodland (though personally I hate woodland but thats a personal thing) Far to often I hear from people who set the sights way too high and then have to climb down.

Perfectionists can not write rooms

If you are constantly re editing your email, if you hate spelling mistakes, if you are more critical of your own work than other peoples I strongly suggest you don't even try to code any rooms. You will only cause yourself distress. Far to often I find really great would be room coders just as I am about to get excited I find out they are perfectionists. Don't get me wrong they will be able to write rooms and they will be great, but that will be balanced against the slow speed of the room creation and constant re editing. Some of the best rooms in Terris are not written by me, but the people who did write them either take forever to produce them or only ever wrote one section and vowed never to write any more.

You have to keep going

If you start to get the bug to write rooms you take on one real commitment. You will be adding to a living breathing game world. You owe it to that world to see the job through. That might mean hours of coding, you may have to code lots of extra rooms. The task will spiral out of control. You can not just drop in your own style if it clashes with the rest of the game world. You need to read about the world you are adding to. We have not really done a good job of this in Terris but we are paying more attention to it these days.

Your not writing war and peace

To many would be writers think they are adding the greatest bit of literature known to man. If anything you have to be more like a pulp novel writer. Your work has to be above a certain level and true to a style. You do not have the space to write masses of text (and nor would you want to) you have to get some atmosphere across a bit of description while maintaining consistency with the rest of the game world. You don't have room to show boat. Better to be a productive hack than a nasal gazing would be literary giant with delusions of grandeur.