The Wizard University

CHOOSING YOUR WIZARDS Or...
The Unofficial Wizards' Guide to Wizarding

The Wizard or 'operator' helps with the running of a palace. The wizard does not have full control of the palace and depending on the palace he or she is wizzing at, may or may not have scripting privelages.

Some palaces offer limited wizard privelages as a form of 'membership' but for most palaces, it is with trust and regard that one earns access to the wizard password.

Wizards don't need to be technical geniuses - although that can be a bonus. The Palace is a remarkably lay-person friendly program in which people with no IT background or training (i.e.: me) can run a reasonably interesting palace with basic iptscrae knowledge.

Being a wizard opens up a new dimension in palace. Welcome to the world of allscray, iptscrae and palace politics...

Entering the Circle of Trust...

When you agree to take on the role of a wizard, you must realise that this involves a certain amount of commitment. Even if you think that you are a 'mere social wizard' with no talent or knowledge whatsoever, you are still an important part of the team. (I will explain later that there is no such thing as a 'mere social wizard'.)

All wizards should allocate time to spend in the palace that they wiz at - as is limited by real life time constraints. Some palaces demand exclusivity. This means that while you are a wizard at their palace, you cannot wiz elsewhere. This is a reasonable request as it is difficult to wiz at a few palaces and do it all well. It is unfair to the ones that you are neglecting.

However, some owners do not mind at all and it is just courtesy for you to inform them of any other wiz positions you may currently hold (or may hold in the future). This is just to protect you as the palace gossip machine is an ugly thing indeed and it is always nicer to hear about such information from you yourself and not from a third party.

Having said that though... don't neglect your real life in favour of palace! Palace is an escape from the mundane humdrums of daily life... not a replacement for it.

Ladies and gentlemen... this is not a healthy lifestyle!

By the way... in case that's what you're thinking... it's NOT mine.

My day never started before noon.

Blazing Saddles

The wizard is given the unique ability to wear a 'star' before his or her name. The star or asterisk (*) can only be worn by people who have activated their wiz privelages. Owners have the option of wearing two asterisks.

The star or badge has its uses. Firstly, it is a symbol of office. Visitors see the star and know that they can page you for any help. Would-be troublemakers may see the star and be properly subdued.

Secondly, you need to don the star before you can use any allscray commands. Without the star, the commands will not work.

Whether you wear the star or not is a personal choice. Some people wear it proudly for the honour that it bestows. Some people don't like the attention that it attracts and prefer to creep around in annonymity while they go about their business.

The A-Team

A good wizard panel has a mix of talents. Different people excel at different things. Wizard duties should be enjoyable and less of a chore. Find one that suits you and your abilities.

I have listed a few common wizard types below. Even though I discuss them seperately, it is not uncommon for one to be working in two or more of these categories.

• social wizards
• avatar wizards
• security wizards
• creative wizards
• scripting wizards

  If you are a new wizard and you are unsure of what you want to do, or how to contribute to your palace, I hope these descriptions can guide you as to what is expected. If you are a new owner looking to assemble your first wizard panel, I hope these descriptions can guide you in what to look for.

  Ultimately, each owner has different expectations of their wizard panel. I advise you, as the owner, to make these expectations clear from the start so as to avoid much mincing about and temper tantrums later.

The Social Wizard

What draws a crowd to a palace? The answer is (and I'm not trying to be a clever Dick here...) a crowd... What content you have is secondary. The social wizard therefore plays an important role in welcoming visitors and encouraging them to come back.

Good social wizards:

• sit at the gate and wait for visitors
• have a bottomless reserve of small talk (not essential but is a big bonus)
• have a pleasant demeanor
• should know a few things about the palace they are wizzing at e.g.: history, special features, recommended rooms etc
• should be able to give interesting palace tours
• are great party animals (rowrrrrr!)

  Come back to my place?
  Let's focus on Palace Tours for a while. This is a essential part of a social wizard's duties. It is a good way to make visitors stay for a while when you run out of conversation topics. It also allows you to show off parts of the palace that the visitor might not have found on their own.

  There are many ways to take people on a tour. Your palace may already have an automated tour but that negates the need for a wizard led tour. You can lead people around by directing them to doors or you can transport them around with allscray.

  Allscray refers to the fancy commands you type in to make other people do your bidding. You can use allscray to make everyone say "I thinkis sexy beyond belief!" More mundane uses include the ability to transport everyone in the room, or a targeted person to the room of your choice.

  To transport, all you need to do is wiz up and wear the '*' in front of your name. Then type:

  ;as gotoroom
  to transport the entire room

  OR

  ;ao gotoroom (whispered)
  to transport a targeted person

  In order for allscray to work, you need two things. You need to know the room ID to the room that you are transporting to and a 'allscray script' in the room that you are transporting from. This is a sample of an allscray script:

  ON INCHAT {
  {
  {
  "$1" GREPSUB STRTOATOM EXEC
  } CHATSTR "^;*as (.*)" GREPSTR IF
  {
  "$1" GREPSUB STRTOATOM EXEC
  } CHATSTR "^;*ao (.*)" GREPSTR
  WHOCHAT WHOME == NOT AND IF
  } WHOCHAT WHONAME "^[*]" GREPSTR IF
  }

  For a list of room IDs, pester the owner of your palace.

  Lastly, devise a tour plan of your own. That way, you can make sure that all the rooms that you choose have the allscray script and you don't have to fumble for ID numbers.

  Note: If for some reason the allscray doesn't work and you want to bypass the gotoroom list, get everyone to type in "/ gotoroom.

  Be sure to include your links room, information room and avatar gate if you have any of them.

For a more extensive list of allscray commands, make sure you visit Lord Stelanthin's Allscray Guide.

P-A-R-T- why? COS WE GOTTA!
Depending on the size of your wiz team, you might want to make some people in charge of planning parties and special events. Party planners keep track of birthdays, special celebrations and other events. They think up party themes and activities for the day. The essential ingredients for a successful party is good advertising, interesting theme and interesting activities. And don't forget the ever present partypooper - Timezone differences. Find out where the majority of your target crowd lives and hold the party in a sensible time for that timezone. Sometimes a compromise between timezones can be worked out. It is no use to hold a party at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning in Australia, if most of your regulars come from Australia. Not all the wizards can be present at every single bash so if it is the crowd you are aiming to attract, then go with the majority.

Crass Commercialism
It is a good idea to designate someone as the official advertising wizard. This can be the job of one of the social wizards. The advertising wizard is in charge of the mailing list and icq contacts. This decreases the chance of multiple icqs or emails advertising the same event - which really cheeses people off. The advertising wizard could also be in charge of advertising in newsgroups.

• Important Newsgroups to join:
  • Palace-server
  • Palace Planet

  
  

  There is a comprehensive list of other newsgroups you can join at the Links here on the site.

The Security Wizard

I mention this job seperately but really, it is the responsibility of everyone in the staff. Security entails keeping the peace in palace and managing any would-be troublemakers quickly and discreetly.

Problems with flooders and persistently abusive visitors are less of a problem in the low population palaces. Favourite targets of attack tend to be adult palaces with explicit content.

Flooders are people who try to crash your palace by sending a lot of commands and overloading your server. They can easily overwhelm an inexperienced wizard, who will probably be thinking it is the client that is acting up before realising that a pack of flooders have come to pay a visit. The only way to deal with a flooder is death... Fortunately, this sort of thing is less prevalent now. Palace is largely a peaceful and friendly environment (internal squabbles not counted...).

Some other potential troublemakers I have had the misfortune to meet:

• abusive, harrassing visitors
  Abusive visitors unfortunately do crop up from time to time. Most of them respond to discreet warnings whispered by a wizard. Sometimes, just putting on the wizard star (*) is enough. Abusive people tend to do this in the hope of getting a response. If they continue to be abusive, the next course of action is to ignore. When you right click on a person, there is a list of options including mute. Do this and you will no longer see what that person is saying. If everyone else follows suit, the abusive person may tire of his or her game and leave.
• inappropriate avatars
  Most palaces including explicit adult palaces place restrictions on avatars worn at the gate. This is due to the public nature of the gate. 'Stray' children and underaged teens do wander into adult palaces either out of curiosity or accidentally. If someone is wearing an inappropriate avatar, the first thing to do is to whisper a friendly warning to them. Most people will be unaware of the dress code or restrictions and will usually apologise and change. If they refuse, then you may then do one of two things - propgag or threaten with death. The penalty depends on the nature of your palace. If you run a children's palace, someone wearing an obscene avatar is obviously out to make trouble and you are well justified in getting rid of them pronto.
• overuse of user scripts
  Some cyborg scripts that involve painting or tiling of props lag out people with slow connections. Overuse can also be irritating. If someone is guilty of this, try warning them first. Then, if that doesn't work and if authoring is on, click on Room Info and disable room scripts by checking the box. The perpetrator will invariably get bored and leave. Remember to restore the checked box once the person has left. If authoring is off, you can try typing the following two commands:

  `paint on|off which turns painting on or off serverwide
  `bots on|off which turn cyborgs on or off serverwide

Note that I always mention a discreet warning first. Always give the perpetrator a chance to redeem themselves. I hardly ever propgag, gag or pin (except in jest, when initiating a new wizard) because those commands are demeaning and have potential for abuse.

License to Kill

One of the special 'powers' bestowed upon wizards is the ability to 'kill' or disconnect another user. People tend to use the words interchangably but there is a slight difference between the two. Killing banishes a person until they reconnect again with a different ip address or until their death penalty is over. Users are executed by name and/or ip address. The maximum period of killing is 120 minutes. Bans on the other hand are a more permanent solution to excluded potential palace nasties. Once a ban has been issued, a person cannot come back into the palace until the ban has been lifted. Banning a person will not disconnect them from Palace, however it will stop them returning. As such you can ban people who are not connected at the time. These are the ultimate penalties for misbehaviour on palace. Use them sparingly. And if you do use them, do not regard them lightly.

Having said that, how does one turn into a lean mean killing machine?

There are 4 easy steps:

Step one: Lock onto target
On palace, we do this with the `glist command. Once again this is a command that can be used only by wizards. It reveals to you the ip number of each user, user status and location. This information should be treated as confidential and should not be shared with anyone outside the wizard panel. Unnecessary sharing of this information within the wizard panel can also be construed as an invasion of privacy.

The information you see will look like this

*** ;
for e.g: *** ; m Joe 123.1.1.1 Garden of Morpheus
( User status refers to whether the person is a member(m), guest(n), wizard(w) or owner(g).)

Do a `glist the minute you suspect something amiss. Note down the ipaddress.

There are 2 additional commands you can add to the back of the `glist: -k and -o.

'glist -k gives you all the information above plus the unique registration code for the target.

*** ; m Joe 123.1.1.1 Garden of Morpheus {AJDNPNBG}

'glist -o gives you all the same information plus the unique software orignation code and machine type

*** ; m Joe 123.1.1.1 Garden of Morpheus (321750 32Bit Windows)

While ipnumbers can change when a person reconnects, the registration code does not change unless the person reinstalls The Palace and enters a new registration code. The computer information (software code) does not change unless the person changes his or her computer (or so I'm told...).

Only the owner can ban on these two criteria. So take down this information for the owner of your palace.

Step Two: Anihilate the target
As a wizard, you are able to kill using `kill . Enter it and watch your troubles disappear. (At least, temporarily....)

The default time for a killing is 120 minutes (at least it is on my palace server...).

Most people will wander off in a huff and never return. But there may be a few who will return to wreak revenge on you for such violent treatment. This may be a good time to brush up on using wildcards in the ipaddress. A wildcard is basically an asterisk which can stand for anything. The more asterisks you use, the more people you can potentially exclude. Usually people connecting from the same area and ISP will retain the same first few numbers in their ipnumber even though the ending changes.

For instance, if you wanted to kill Joe who has an ipaddress of 123.1.1.1, you can try something like this:

'kill 120 123.1.1.*

To increase your chances to keep him at bay for 120 minutes, you might want to try:

'kill 120 123.1.*.*

And so on...

Step Three: Lock em out and throw away the key...

At this stage, you should have decided if you wanted this person killed temporarily or banned permanently. Wizards have the privellage to ban by ipnumber:

'banip

If you do not enter a duration, the person will be banished for the default penalty time specified in the palace. Entering the value -1, banishes the person for the maximum number of minutes possible (35791394 minutes or in other words, the equivalent of around 69 years...)

But these are bans that were writ in water...

As mentioned before, only owners can ban on more permanent criteria like registration codes. They can do it even if the miscreant is not connected at the time. So make sure you take down the information for them ASAP.

Step Four: Pass Judgement
Don't forget to comment on why you have chosen to ban or kill somebody. This is easily achieved with the 'comment command. It places a comment in the banlist that tells other wizards with your reason on it. This is to facilitate communication between wizards who may log on at different times and also to protect against potential abuse of the ban/kill command. To view the banlist, just type 'banlist.

*** ; Banned 35791394 min (35791393) (key = joe [0.0.0.0]) site banned by ~¤tRiStAN¤~
*** ; comment by ~¤tRiStAN¤~: is fictional character created solely for the purpose of banning

Is that a Bug in your pocket or are you just glad to see me...?

Tracking an individual is another special 'power' that wizards and owners are given. When an individual is tracked, a record is entered into the banlist. The effects are seen when the person signs on into the palace. If the person used another name in your palace and is logging on with a different name, the following signon may be seen: (varies depending on signon message in your palace)

** ;Joe (a.k.a. Sexy Chicken Lover) 123.1.1.1 has arrived!!!

Tracking is a great way to exert one's 'omnipotence' over other palace users. Remember that it is a tool to help you keep the peace. Do not abuse it if you don't need it.

The Avatar Wizard

The avatar wizard is one of the few specialized posts on palace. Most wizards in charge of avatars find time for little else (in terms of palace duties). There is a lot of work involved in maintaining a decent sized avatar collection. Avatar wizards need to:

• find suitable (or highly inappropriate - whatever the case may be) pictures to make into avatars
• convert these pictures into the palace pallette (not as easy as you might think)
• edit the picture in palace ( a time consuming and obsessive activity)
• regular prop room maintenence (cycling through props, prop purging and uploading of avatars)

  Yet some people think it's fun... which just goes to show....

Adobe Photoshop is probably the most widely used graphics program on Palace as there is an official pallette for it. Therefore, it gives the best colour conversion. JASC Paintshop Pro is also widely used. Any other graphic program can be used with palace but the colour conversions may not be as good.

For a brilliant tutorial on how to make good avatars, visit Dr. X's House o Props n Bots

If you make your own avatars, be prepared to have some them 'stolen' by some other less scrupulous palaces. To minimize this, you may choose to restrict access to your avatars by imposing a password to the Avatar Gate. Or you can grab a squeezeball and console yourself with the thought that your edits were good enough to steal...

Creative wizards are responsible for the graphics, ideas and text in the palace. If you are lucky, you may find a few artistic souls to help out in your palace. Palaces featuring original art are few and highly prized.

Examples of palaces featuring original art:

• Digital Exposure
• Marshouse

Creativity is not limited to artwork alone. It can extend to room concepts and script ideas.

Creative wizards can be specially nominated or it can be a responsibility shared among all your wizards. Creative wizards and scripting wizards work closely together. Sometimes, creation and scripting are done by one person.

Scripting Wizards (usually owners or wizards with owner privelages)

Scripting is a big responsibility. A wrong word, a forgotten bracket can lead to problems with the server - a crash being the worst case scenario.

The palace is buggy enough to cause lost doors and corrupted scripts to appear when all you tried to do was resize a door.

Reading the Official Iptscrae manual is as effective as reading a dictionary to learn how to speak English. At least for non-programmers like me. However, I found a great site called Ori's Palace Instructions. It takes you through some basic scripts and explains them step by step. The scripts he has listed are enough to help you set up a basic palace.

Once you have read through this website, the next step is to try Tandika Starr's Iptscrae Lessons. The lessons mainly talk about cyborgs but it is applicable to roomscripts as well. The lessons are well structured and interesting to read. Things start making more sense once you go through each lesson. Then you might want to try the official Iptscrae manual again...

Copying scripts and dumping them in verbatim is not recommended. You may not need to understand the entire script but you should have some idea as to which part needs to be modified for use in your palace. Remember to pay attention to the Spot or Door IDs. Some scripts don't work if you use the wrong ID number.

You can find the Palace manuals here:
Palace Manuals

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