File Layout for NUTS 2.3.0 as modified by Casey Last update: Feb 17, 1998 I am going to assume that you are in the directory where all the talker files are kept for the rest of this document. Directories: helpfiles logs logs/Mon logs/Tue logs/Wed logs/Thu logs/Fri logs/Sat logs/Sun messboards profiles roominfo roominfo/atmos userdata usermail NOTE: Each of the directories userdata, usermail, and profiles have 26 sub-directories. These are the letters A-Z (in caps) and are used to keep the number of user files in any given directory down to a more reasonable amount. Files: banfile (only if some sites have been banned) blockfile (only if some sites have been blocked) helpfiles/general (strongly recommended - basic info to help new users) helpfiles/rules (strongly recommended - contains rules users should follow) init_data init_data.snapshot (created by program using .snapshot command) mapfile motd1 (optional but strongly suggested you have one) motd2 (optional but strongly suggested you have one) newsfile (optional) syslog (only after the code has been started running) These are all the files that you should have. Lets explain what they all are to you. init_data --------- See the InitData.txt file for details. mapfile ------- Once you have created your init_data, you will want people to be able to see the layout of your talker. The mapfile is just a file of text that can be used to show this. Many people like to fill it with ascii art. Remember that the lines should only be at most 80 characters long and the screen for most users is only about 23 lines deep, although the mapfile is paged (ie. press return for more). The map I drew above could be pasted into the mapfile and used quite happily. Be aware that the software turns single ^ characters into bold on/off control codes, so you might not want these in the mapfile or any other text file the software uses. roominfo/ --------- You can see where the rooms are and move around them, yet you would like to have some detail for each one, this is what you want to change next then! Two types of file live in this directory, the room descriptions and the atmospherics for the rooms. To enter a room description create a text file with the same name as the room you want it to be for (as specified in init_data) and just enter the description as text. If a file doesn't exist for a room then it has no description. To see a rooms description type .look or enter the room from another. roominfo/atmos -------------- The atmospheric files are slightly more complicated. Take the rooms in the order they are listed in init_data and number them from 0 upwards. Then for each room that you want to add atmospherics for create a file called atmos (eg. atmos1 for the 2nd room in the list and atmos0 for the first one). This file consists of pairs of lines: The percentage should be a number between 0 and 100 and indicated the likely hood of that particular atmospheric being triggered (I'll explain how they are triggered in a second) and the next line should be the atmospheric itself. Don't let your atmospheric be longer than one line or the software will get confused. How do atmospherics work? In the code there is a definition of a constant called ALARM_TIME. This is defaulted to 30 seconds. Every ALARM_TIME seconds the atmospheric function is triggered. This looks at the atmospheric file for each room that has people in it and goes through the pairs of atmospherics in that file. For each pair it creates a random number and of the time it will trigger that atmospheric, and then continue on the next room. So if you have 3 pairs of atmospherics in a file and each was set to 5% of the time, an atmospheric would be triggered (on average) about every 5 minutes. messboards/ ----------- This directory contains a file for every message board, which contains its contents as ascii text. The boards are named in the same was as the atmospheric files (eg board0 for the first room board1 for the second room etc.). If the directory is missing people won't be able to read or write to the message boards. motd1 & motd2 ------------- These are plain text files (like mapfile) that are just shown on the screen. Neither of them are paged. motd1 is shown when you first log into the talker and before you are asked to input your name, it is customary for it to contain the name of the talker. motd2 is shown as you log in, I've not actually seen anyone use it for anything useful as it tends to scroll by too quickly. Again, either file can be missing, it just means nothing will be displayed. newsfile -------- This is displayed when you type .news, it is paged and should be plain text. If it doesn't exist, the software will display "There is no news" when people type .news. banfile & blockfile ------------------- These two text files contain a mixture of site names and IP addresses and are used to place restrictions on who is allowed to log in to the talker. If a connection is made to the talker from a site whose name or IP address matches an entry in banfile, the user ID given at the login prompt must already exist (ie. no new users are allowed from the site). Connections will be refused for all sites listed in blockfile. syslog & syslog.bak ------------------- NOTE: This file is obsolete Whenever you start the talker syslog is created and if there already existed a syslog file, this is renamed to syslog.bak. It contains useful information such as when the talker was started and who had logged on and off. Every entry is time stamped. helpfiles/ ---------- This directory contains all the helpfiles. These are plain text and called after the command you wish them to refer to (eg. go move quit). Also in this directory are two special helpfiles: general and rules. These are follow the same format as normal helpfiles but to access them you type .help general or .rules. If you try to access a help file for a command that you may not use, the software refuses to let you read it. profiles/ & userdata/ & usermail/ --------------------------------- Theses three directories contain all the user files. Each directory is split into 26 subdirectories labeled A-Z, and each subdirectory contains only information for user files beginning with that letter. Profiles end in .P, user data files end in .D and mail files end in .M. For example if we had a user named janitor, then his user files would be: profiles/J/Janitor.P userdata/J/Janitor.D usermail/J/Janitor.M Remember that upper/lower case matters. The profiles are just plain text and are entered with .entpro, the mail files are just the users mail (again plain text - so don't be tempted to read them) and the data files follow a special format. For details on the format of the data files, see the UserData.txt file.