
PRIMA CREATION DOCUMENTATION

Contents:
	[0] - Intro
	[1] - Creating a monster
	[2] - Creating an arena
	[3] - Creating an NPC
	[4] - Creating weapons & armor
	[9] - Naming Conventions
	[10] - Contact me	

[0] Intro
It is very easy to create monsters, arenas, and NPCs in Prima.  You can also
replace parts of Prima with your own programs.  For info on replacing parts
of Prima, or writing seperate .EXE add-ons, see PSTRC.H

A monster is a being you fight with in the game.

An arena is a set of monsters that the player fights randomly.

NPCs are semi-intelligent creatures that can be talked to, and/or
attacked.

[1] CREATING A MONSTER (My God, it's alive!)

So you want to unleash your own destructive force upon the world, eh?  Kill
hundreds of innocents, eh?  Great!

Start up EDITOR.EXE, and choose edit [M]onsters.  It asks you for a file 
name.  We want to start a new file for monsters, so just enter a name you 
like.  If you want to keep the file in the DATA directory, enter .\DATA\
before the name, otherwise EDITOR will put your file in the main directory.

Let's call our file BS.DAT.  The BS stands for Bonjour Sally.  The .DAT
indicates that this is a data file, containing monster records.  So we
type in: .\DATA\BS.DAT  
NOTE: You can name it whatever you want.  For more info on how you should
name your files, see section [9] Naming Conventions.

Now we have a brand new file in the DATA directory, called BS.DAT.  All that
is left is to think up at least 12 monsters, and enter their names and
stats.  The stats should be self explanatory.  In designing monsters, realize
that you must have at least 12 monsters in a file you want to use for an
arena, and they should be scaled for the 12 levels of play.  Also, think 
about the monsters when designing gold and XP rewards.  Undead don't carry
pocket change.

If you intend to use this file to create an NPC, just fill in the NPCs name
and stats just like you want them.

All right!  You have created a(some) monster(s)!  Now, read on to learn how
to add them to the game as an arena, or to use them with an NPC.

[2] CREATING AN ARENA (Oh, that has to hurt.)

An arena is how you let players access your monsters.  The players will fight
the monsters in a way that depends on their level...basically, the monster
they fight = total monsters / 12, then multiplied by the players level.
If the monster number is more than is in your file, Prima will reduce it
to a safe level.  Every monster file for an arena must have at least 12
monsters.

Ok, it is very simple to create an arena.  First choose where you want the
arena to be: Town Square (DH_A2.LST), Forest (DH_A1.LST).  Then just add
2 lines to whichever file you picked.  The first line should be the name
of your arena.  The second should be the location of your monster file.
Therefore, for the two lines of our monster file example, we would add:
The Bonjour Sally Arena
.\DATA\BS.DAT
to whichever file we had chosen.  That is it!  Players can now choose to
fight in your arena if they wish to.

As you can, this style is very easily used, so you can create an add-on pack
with a small setup program to install your arena to one of the arena files.
I am using this method of 3rdparty handling to keep everything simple and
easy to modify.  Even a fish could do it (if they had fingers.)

[3] CREATING AN NPC (You too can have a walking, talking Sock Monkey!)

Alright, let us make the Sock Monkey NPC.  Use the EDITOR to edit [T]alk
files.  When prompted for a filename, use .\DATA\ if you wish to put
your file in the data directory.  So for Sock Monkey, enter
.\DATA\SOCK.TLK

Now it will give you some crap to fill out.  The [N]ame means that when a 
player types this in, it will display Text[1] - Text[5].  You should fill
in Text[1]-[5] with stuff you want your NPC to say when the player types
[N]ame.  If you want a line to be blank, just press the line number [1]-[5]
and press enter.  You must set all lines to something, even if it is just
blank.

Next, choose the color you want for the foregound.  You need to type a string
in here.  I recommend bright green.  For the background, it is wise to choose
black.

Now, you can have as many talk sections as you want, but you will NEED the
following (to add a talk section, press [A]):
GREETING - What the NPC says when you first talk to it (not required)
LEAVE - What the NPC says when you leave (not required)
DEFAULT - What the NPC says when it doesn't understand (required)

If you want the NPC to fight a player when the player types ATTACK,
you will need two more areas:
ATTACK - What the NPC says when attacked
NPCSTATS - The stats: Line 1 should be the monster number, 2 the file

It is a good idea to capatalize key words in your NPCs talk file.  Thusly,
the player knows what to type.  See .\DATA\DH_WIZ.TLK for an example NPC.

Now, to make your NPC available to humanity:
Add the following two lines to an NPC list file in DATA dir (PMAIN.LST):
Sock Monkey   <-- this is the NPC name area
.\DATA\SOCK.TLK  <-- This is the NPC file area

There!  You are done!

[4] CREATING WEAPONS & ARMOR
YOu can use EDITOR.EXE to modify/create weapons armor files.
The default armor file is: .\DATA\DH_ARM.DAT
The default weapon file is: .\DATA\DH_WEAP.DAT
When creating your own IGM, please use the same structure (and you can
use EDITOR.EXE to make your database), as this will promote uniformity.
The weapon/armor editor should be fairly self explanatory.

[9] Naming Conventions (Who the hell are you?!?)

When naming files that you may wish to distribute, you may need something
to make them different from everybody elses files.  Now, if you intend for
your files to be stored in a directory of their own, you won't need this:
Use something special in your file names...
Take a look at the files that come with Prima, in the DATA directory.

You will notice that many of them have the DH_ prefix.  this is to keep them
seperate from files that other people make.  Figure something like that
out for yourself.

[10] Contact Me (always, they bitch at me.)

Email: frag16@yahoo.com
Web: http://counts-mike.tripod.com

