Today's going to be a short post because of the holiday weekend. We put all the bestiary changes we discussed previously into the game and folks seemed pretty happy with them. The work changed almost every species so that means it's time for a free reinc!
The Details
The free reincarnation is open to all characters and will be available until May 10th, 2018. Each character may take exactly one freinc during this time. The room is located off the main office in the abjurer guild.
The room description includes the exact closing time and, if configured, will reflect your time zone. Check out help timezones and help set to learn how to configure the timezone feature.
The room description also includes a countdown clock. It updates every two seconds and is the most accurate representation of how long is left to take the free reincarnation offer.
Contrary to popular belief the freinc is not initiated by entering the free reincarnation room. You may enter and leave the room by the freinc exit as many times as you wish without penalty. The free reincarnation is a special command in the freinc room.
Gory Technical Details for the Curious
The way we've done free reincarnations in the past is by copying the old free reincarnation room, modifiying the text, and then adding an exit to the outside world. We then modify that outside room to have an exit to the freinc room. We also have to modify the flag it sets on the character so they only get one passage through the freinc room.
Configuring that much boilerplate code is a nuisance. It also leads to one-time-use flag proliferation which clutters up the save files. Kereth had already started working on a re-usable flag by the time I logged in this morning.
We chatted about the free reinc for a bit and I countered his proposal with a slightly larger scope of work. The new free reinc room does not grant explore and the freinc flag is re-usable. Setting up a freinc is now a matter of changing a few lines in a configuration file. The core mudlib will create the exits automagically and everything just works. The exit will disappear again after the configured duration ends.
It only took 90 minutes to do all those changes but it will save hours of headache for the staff down the road. Sometimes it's the little things.
Have a great holiday if you're celebrating this weekend!