Adding signs

From VbGORE Visual Basic Online RPG Engine

Sign text is stored completely client-side - there is absolutely no reference to it on the server. This is because even just letting the server know what sign is on what tile is a huge consumption of RAM. How much, exactly? On a 100x100 map, it would take 100x100x2 or 19 KBytes. It doesn't sound like much, but spread over 1000s of maps, it adds up fast for an insignificant benefit.

There is only two simple steps required in working with signs. The first step is creating the sign text, which is located in \Data\Signs.dat. Just open the file with Notepad or Wordpad. You will see the following:

[SIGNS]

//Displays in the format of:
//    The sign says, "<message>"
//Where <message> is the text on the sign (defined below).

NumSigns=5
...

It is important to keep in mind how the engine will translate the sign and display it. The ""'s are automatically added for you. The The sign says, text comes from the Messages file.

NumSigns holds the highest value in the list of signs. The signs do not have to be written in any particular order, as long as NumSigns holds the highest value used.

Once the sign is defined, it is ready to be applied through the map editor. Keep in mind you can have a sign applied on any tile anywhere you wish. You can even change the way signs are handled to make them display descriptions for certain tiles. You are limited to a total of 32,768 different sign texts, which shouldn't be limit to worry about.