http://www.zalanthas.org/blogs/brideofson/archives/001407.html
Seeing some discussion on the GDB about the Gone command, I decided to post some documentation on what we currently have implemented in the game engine for the gone command. Note that when we started designing the game engine, we have aimed to make it easily configurable and modifiable on the fly. That said, some of what is posted about in 'Code' posts about the Game Engine may never be used by Armageddon Reborn, but I include it here to show you the process we've gone through.
The gone command itself remains largely unchanged. It is an out of character command that lets you notify others in the room with you that you are no longer actively playing the game. The syntax, remains the same:
Syntax: gone <reason>
[Everybody oooh and ahh that there's a consistent 'syntax' command...you're welcome]
Here's an example of using the gone command:
You are gone putting out a fire.
The following is an excerpt from an internal doc (modified for the audience) on the features the game engine provides to support the gone command.
Gone Warning [engine default true]
If you're marked gone, a message is sent to anyone who refers to you in a command. For instance, if Amos (the brown-haired man) is gone, and you want to give him some coins, you would see:
You give 100 coins to the brown-haired man.
[The brown-haired man is gone afk.]
Notice the command still happened, you'll just get a warning letting you know that they're gone.
Gone shows in rooms [engine default true]
[GONE] is placed in front of gone character's long descriptions. A user settable option to show this or not is something that likely will be added.
Example:
Idle Gone Timeout [engine default 5 minutes]
A timeout can be set to automatically mark you gone if you're idle for longer than a specified # of seconds. The message is 'You are gone idling.' This likely will also get a user option to disable it.
Idle Timeout [engine default 1 hour]
If you're idle for more than the specified time your link is automatically dropped, leaving you link-dead.
Link-dead Timeout [engine default 30 minutes]
If you're link-dead for more than the specified time, you are automatically extracted from the game.
Note that if we chose to use the link-dead timeout, it will allow a ranger-quit for non-rangers with the cost of having to leave yourself exposed for the delay specified.
In closing, please remember that this is just what the engine currently supports, more features could be added, and some, if not all of these might not be used at all.
