1.5.1 Describing Yourself

Until you describe yourself, people who look at you will see `You see nothing special'. You can (and should) set what people see when looking you by entering a description, or `desc' as it's usually called. The syntax is @desc me = <description>.

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    @desc me = A nymph with green hair. ====================================

A `straight desc' such as this is rather limited: the text remains the same at all times, you won't know when someone looks at you, you'll be limited to about twelve lines of text, and you can't divide the text into paragraphs.

Later, you can use MPI and the list editor (a program that lets you work with a `list', a series of props which together act like a document) to create highly flexible descs that change in response to the time of day, who's looking at you, what you're wearing or what mood you're in, and so forth.

Many MUCKs have a user-created command that allows you to `morph', or change descriptions with a succinct command. You may wish to type morph #help to see if such a program is available on your MUCK.

Most MUCKs also have an MPI macro that notifies you whenever someone looks at you, called `look-notify'. To use it, put {look-notify} — curly braces included — anywhere in your description. For example:

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    @desc me = A nymph with green hair.{look-notify} ====================================


Note: The most popular implementations of {look-notify} also require that you set a formatting string that tells {look-notify} how to display the notification, in the property _desc_notify_looked. An example:

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    @set me = _desc_notify_looked:+++++ %N just looked at you! ====================================


In the example above, the %N would be replaced by the name the player looking at you. Other formats are of course possible. Additional information on substitution strings like %N can be found on the page dealing with Pronoun and Name Substitution