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Fixture

Note

These were previously called Objects, but were renamed in Alter Ego 2.0 to avoid confusion with JavaScript’s Object data type.

A Fixture is a data structure used by Alter Ego. It represents a fixed structure within a Room that cannot be taken or moved by a Player. Their primary purpose is to give structure and interactivity to a Room.

Attributes

Fixtures have relatively few attributes. Although their behavior is mostly static, they are capable of quite a few things. Note that if an attribute is internal, that means it only exists within the Fixture class. Internal attributes will be given in the “Class attribute” bullet point, preceded by their data type. If an attribute is external, it only exists on the spreadsheet. External attributes will be given in the “Spreadsheet label” bullet point.

Name

  • Spreadsheet label: Fixture Name
  • Class attribute: String this.name

This is the name of the Fixture. All letters should be capitalized, and spaces are allowed. Note that multiple Fixtures can have the same name, so long as they are in different Rooms.

Location Display Name

  • Spreadsheet label: Location
  • Class attribute: String this.locationDisplayName

This is the display name of the Room that the Fixture can be found in. This must match the Room’s display name on the spreadsheet exactly, or its ID.

Location

  • Class attribute: Room this.location

This internal attribute is a reference to the actual Room object the Fixture can be found in.

Accessible

  • Spreadsheet label: Accessible?
  • Class attribute: Boolean this.accessible

This is a simple Boolean value indicating whether the Fixture can currently be interacted with or not. If this is true, then players can inspect the Fixture, among other things. If it is false, Alter Ego will act as if the Fixture doesn’t exist when a Player tries to interact with it in any way.

Child Puzzle Name

  • Spreadsheet label: Child Puzzle
  • Class attribute: String this.childPuzzleName

This is the name of a Puzzle that is associated with the Fixture, if any. The child Puzzle must be in the same Room as the Fixture referencing it. If the name of a Puzzle is supplied, then any Room Items contained within the Fixture will technically be contained within the child Puzzle. This allows Room Items to be made inaccessible until the child Puzzle is solved, while also allowing players to take and drop Room Items from/into the Fixture if the child Puzzle is solved. Additionally, when a Fixture containing Room Items is assigned a child Puzzle, the item list must be in the child Puzzle’s already solved description. If no child Puzzle is needed, this cell can simply be left blank on the spreadsheet.

Assigning a child Puzzle to a Fixture is most useful when the Puzzle is intended to contain Room Items. For example, if there is a Fixture named LOCKER, and it has a child Puzzle named COMBINATION LOCK, all of the Room Items contained inside of the LOCKER will actually belong to the COMBINATION LOCK, and Players will be able to solve the COMBINATION LOCK by entering LOCKER instead of the name of the Puzzle itself. This makes it easier to assign unique names to Puzzles while still making it easy for Players to interact with them.

However, a child Puzzle isn’t always needed, even if there is a Puzzle that should ostensibly be linked. For example, suppose there is a Fixture named SHOWER which is intended to contain Room Items such as SOAP and SHAMPOO. It would be beneficial to have a Puzzle in the same location also named SHOWER so that it can use bot commands to clean a Player who solves it, but if it were a child Puzzle, the Room Items would be listed in its already solved description, which may not make sense. If, instead of assigning it as a child Puzzle, the Puzzle simply has the same name as the Fixture, Players will still be able to solve the Puzzle, and Room Items can be listed in the description of the Fixture itself.

Child Puzzle

This is an internal attribute which simply contains a reference to the actual Puzzle object whose name matches this.childPuzzleName and whose location is the same as the Fixture. If no child Puzzle name is given, this will be null instead.

Recipe Tag

  • Spreadsheet label: Recipe Tag
  • Class attribute: String this.recipeTag

This a keyword or phrase assigned to a Fixture that allows it to process Recipes that require that tag. A Fixture can only have a single Recipe tag, but it can be changed with the fixture command. There are no rules for how Recipe tags must be named.

Activatable

  • Spreadsheet label: Activatable?
  • Class attribute: Boolean this.activatable

This is another Boolean value indicating whether the Fixture can be activated or deactivated by a Player with the use command. If this is true, then a Player can activate and deactivate the Fixture at will. If this is false, then its activation state cannot be altered by a Player. Even if the Fixture is not activatable, it can still be activated and deactivated with the fixture command, and it will still process Recipes if it is activated.

Activated

  • Spreadsheet label: Activated?
  • Class attribute: Boolean this.activated

This is another Boolean value indicating whether the Fixture is currently checking for and processing Recipes. If this is true, then the Fixture will check every second if it contains the necessary ingredients for any Recipe with a matching tag. If it does, then the Recipe will be processed and the Recipe’s products will be instantiated in the Fixture when it is complete. A Fixture can only process one Recipe at a time. If it is found that the Fixture is able to process multiple Recipes with the ingredients it contains, then it will process whichever Recipe has the highest number of matched ingredients, and the remaining Room Items will be left untouched. If the Fixture is still able to process a Recipe with the remaining Room Items, then it will do so upon finishing the first one, as long as it is not automatically deactivated.

Important

If a Fixture has a child Puzzle, then the ingredients must be contained inside of the child Puzzle, rather than the Fixture itself. Likewise, the products will be instantiated in the child Puzzle.

Automatically Deactivated

  • Spreadsheet label: Deactivate Automatically?
  • Class attribute: Boolean this.autoDeactivate

This is another Boolean value indicating whether the Fixture will automatically deactivate after processing a Recipe. If this is true, then the Fixture will stop checking for and processing Recipes every time it finishes processing one, even if the Fixture’s activatable attribute is false. Note that if the Fixture is automatically deactivated and no processable Recipe is found, then it will deactivate after one minute of activation. If this is false, then the Fixture will continue checking for and processing Recipes after completing each one.

Hiding Spot Capacity

  • Spreadsheet label: Hiding Spot Capacity
  • Class attribute: Number this.hidingSpotCapacity

This is a whole number indicating how many Players can hide in this Fixture simultaneously. If this is greater than 0, then that many Players can hide in it, and this value can be bypassed with the use of the hide moderator command. If this is 0, the Fixture cannot be used as a hiding spot at all.

Hiding Spot

This internal attribute is a reference to the Hiding Spot object belonging to the Fixture. If the hiding spot capacity is 0, this is null.

Preposition

  • Spreadsheet label: Preposition
  • Class attribute: String this.preposition

This attribute is a string that performs two functions:

  1. It determines whether or not the Fixture can contain Items. If it is blank, players cannot take Room Items from or drop Room Items into the Fixture. If it is not blank, then they can.
  2. When a Player drops a non-discreet Room Item into the Fixture, Alter Ego will narrate them doing so using this preposition. For example, if the player Nero drops a Room Item named SWORD into a Fixture named CABINET whose preposition is “in”, Alter Ego will send “Nero puts a SWORD in the CABINET.” to CABINET’s Room channel.

Note that a preposition can be multiple words, but in most cases, it should only be one word. Most commands that take a Fixture’s preposition expect it to be one word, so its actual preposition would not be usable in commands if it is more than one word. If multiple words are necessary, care should be taken to ensure that the Narration Alter Ego sends will make grammatical sense. For example, if in the above example, Nero instead dropped the SWORD into a Fixture named DESK, a preposition of “on top” would result in the strange sentence “Nero puts a SWORD on top the DESK.” A preposition of “on top of” or just simply “on” would result in a better sentence.

Description

  • Spreadsheet label: Description
  • Class attribute: Description this.description

This is the description of the Fixture. When a Player inspects this Fixture, they will receive a parsed version of this string. See the article on writing descriptions for more information.

Unless it is manually specified, this Description will be sent using the PLAIN_TEXT message display type.

Row

  • Class attribute: Number this.row

This is an internal attribute, but it can also be found on the spreadsheet. This is the row number of the Fixture.

Process

  • Class attribute: object this.process

This is an internal attribute used to process Recipes. It has the following structure:

interface Process {
    /** The recipe being processed. **/
    recipe: Recipe;
    /** The ingredients used in the recipe. */
    ingredients: Array<CollatedItem<RoomItem>>;
    /** The products created during recipe processing. */
    products: Array<RoomItem>;
    /** How many times the given ingredients satisfy the recipe. Only set right before products are instantiated. */
    satisfactoryProcessCount: number;
    /** The duration of the recipe. */
    duration: Duration;
    /** The timer used to track the duration of the recipe. */
    timer: Timer | null;
}

For more information on the Duration data type, see the documentation for Luxon.

Recipe Interval

This is an internal attribute that allows Fixtures to check for and process Recipes every second. If the Fixture does not have a Recipe tag, then this will be null.

Methods

Fixtures have a number of functions that can be useful to moderators. This is not an exhaustive list of publicly accessible methods; only ones that are likely to be useful when writing Flag value scripts, or if and var tags in descriptions.

isItemContainer

this.isItemContainer();
  • Purpose: Returns true if the fixture is capable of containing items.
  • Returns: Boolean
  • Parameters: None

canCurrentlyContainItems

this.canCurrentlyContainItems(requireEmptySpace?, bypassLimitations?);
  • Purpose: Returns true if the fixture is currently capable of being taken from/dropped into.
  • Returns: Boolean
  • Parameters:
    • Boolean requireEmptySpace - Whether the container needs to be below max capacity. Defaults to true. Does nothing for fixtures.
    • Boolean bypassLimitations - Whether limitations should be bypassed. If true, the fixture can be processing items. Defaults to false.

getContainedItems

this.getContainedItems();
  • Purpose: Gets all of the items this entity contains.
  • Returns: Array<Room Item>
  • Parameters: None

getContainedItemsForItemList

this.getContainedItemsForItemList(itemListName?, player?);
  • Purpose: Gets all of the items that should appear in the fixture’s item list.
  • Returns: Array<Room Item>
  • Parameters:
    • String itemListName - The name of the item list. Unused.
    • Player player - The player the description is being sent to. Unused.

containsNoItems

this.containsNoItems();
  • Purpose: Returns true if this entity contains no items.
  • Returns: Boolean
  • Parameters: None

containsItem

this.containsItem(identifier);
  • Purpose: Returns true if this entity contains an item with the given identifier or prefab ID.
  • Returns: Boolean
  • Parameters:
    • String identifier - The identifier or prefab ID to search for.

getContainedItem

this.getContainedItem(identifier);
  • Purpose: Returns the item contained inside of this container with the given identifier or prefab ID. If no such item exists, returns undefined.
  • Returns: Room Item
  • Parameters:
    • String identifier - The identifier or prefab ID to search for.

getContainedItemsWeight

this.getContainedItemsWeight();
  • Purpose: Gets the combined weight of all the items this entity contains.
  • Returns: Number
  • Parameters: None

isProcessingItems

this.isProcessingItems();
  • Purpose: Returns true if the fixture is activated and deactivates automatically.
  • Returns: Boolean
  • Parameters: None

getContainingPhrase

this.getContainingPhrase();
  • Purpose: Gets the fixture’s name preceded by “the”.
  • Returns: String
  • Parameters: None

getPreposition

this.getPreposition();
  • Purpose: Gets the fixture’s preposition. If no preposition is set, returns “in”.
  • Returns: String
  • Parameters: None

getIngredientItem

this.getIngredientItem(prefabId);
  • Purpose: Gets the actual ingredient item instance that was used as an ingredient in the currently processed recipe. If no such item exists, returns the corresponding ingredient prefab of the currently processed recipe. If no recipe is currently being processed, returns undefined.
  • Returns: Prefab | Room Item
  • Parameters:
    • String prefabId - The prefab ID to search for.

getProductItem

this.getProductItem(prefabId);
  • Purpose: Gets the actual product item instance that was instantiated in the currently processed recipe. If no such item exists, returns the corresponding product prefab of the currently processed recipe. If no recipe is currently being processed, returns undefined.
  • Returns: Prefab | Room Item
  • Parameters:
    • String prefabId - The prefab ID to search for.