How to build a great Wolf Experience

1. Start with one thing to do

Visitors choose by what they will do, not by a place's name. Before you build or tidy anything, finish this sentence: “When you arrive, you can…”

One clear activity beats a list of five. If your land has several, pick the best one for a newcomer. Each spot can be its own experience, up to three at a time.

2. Get the arrival right

Everyone who picks your experience lands on the exact spot you submit. Stand there yourself and look around before you submit.

• Let everyone in. The arrival parcel must be open to the public: no ban lines, no group-only access, no payment to enter.
• Rate it General if you can. New residents may not be allowed into Moderate or Adult regions yet, and they will simply be refused.
• Set a landing point. In About Land > Options, stand on your spot, press Set for the landing point and set Teleport routing to Landing point. Everyone then arrives exactly there and facing the right way.
• Arrive on solid ground with room to move, not inside a wall, on a roof edge or in the sea, and not on top of a sign or a door.
• Face the action. The first thing in view should be the thing to do: the plane, the town gate, the start line.

3. Make the first minute count

Many new residents decide within a few minutes whether to stay. Give them something to do straight away, within a few steps of where they land.

• One clear sign at the arrival saying what to do, in a short sentence and big letters. Your “when you arrive” tip says the same thing.
• Something to touch: a vehicle rezzer, a seat, a door, a game, a dance ball, a teleporter to the best part.
• Show the way to anything further away: a path, arrows or a guide.
• No homework. Nothing should need a HUD, an outfit or a group before the fun starts. If a HUD helps, give it free from a clearly labelled box.
• Sound and light make a place feel alive: ambient sound, music at a low volume, lights at night.

4. Keep it fast for everyone

Many new residents arrive in WolfStorm in a web browser, some on a phone. A place that is slow to appear loses them before it has loaded.

• Textures no bigger than they need to be: 512 pixels is plenty for most surfaces, and use 1024 only for big, close-up things.
• Keep the arrival area light on objects and avoid heavy, busy meshes right around the landing point.
• Turn off scripts that don’t need to run all the time, and avoid fast timers and many particle effects.
• Test it: teleport in with a fresh cache, or in WolfStorm, and see how long the arrival takes to look right.

5. Write the card

The card is what people see on this website, in the viewers and on the welcome doors at Wolf Territories Home.

6. Add it

1. Log in and stand on your arrival spot. You must own that land, or have full rights on the region as its holder or an estate manager.
2. Open Wolf World > Wolf Experiences and press Add your experience. It’s in WolfViewer and WolfStorm.
3. Fill in the card, pick or upload a picture, and press Submit for review.
4. A grid admin visits and approves it, or replies with a note saying what to change. Check the status under My experiences, where you can also withdraw it at any time.

You can have three experiences waiting or live at once, and send up to ten submissions a day.

7. What we check before it goes live

• The teleport lands somewhere sensible, and a newcomer can get in.
• The card matches what’s there, and the thing to do is in reach.
• It loads in reasonable time, including in WolfStorm.
• The picture is yours to use and shows the place.
• It follows the grid’s terms.

Once it’s live, keep it working. If you rebuild or move the landing point, withdraw it and send it again with the new spot.

8. Add characters and a story (Wolf Story)

A story gives visitors a reason to explore. Characters greet them, send them around your land and reward them at the end. With Wolf Story you write the whole thing as a notecard: no scripting. The first example is The Squall Gold Run on The Squall Wild West: the sheriff sends you to the saloon, the cabin and the waterfall to recover stolen payroll gold, and you finish as a deputy with a tin star.

Wolf Story is being tested on The Squall Wild West first. Once it’s tested we’ll offer the kit to region owners. These instructions are here so you can plan your story now.

What you need

• Your own land. The storyteller only runs on a parcel its owner owns, and it leaves out any character whose spot is on someone else’s land.
• Estate rights for characters. Characters are NPCs, and this grid lets only the estate owner or an estate manager create NPCs. If you rent land on someone else’s estate, ask them to make you an estate manager.
• The Wolf Story kit: the storyteller, which runs the story, plus story spots. A story spot is an object with the Wolf Story object script whose description says what it is.

How it fits together

Write the STORY notecard

One setting per line, as name: value. Lines starting with # are notes to yourself. Keep every line under 250 characters, because the region reads at most 255. For a long speech use several say: lines.

About the story

title: The Squall Gold Run
id: squall-gold-run
intro: Somebody robbed the payroll stage last night. Sheriff Hale needs a deputy.
repeat: yes

• title is shown on the storyteller and in chat.
• id uses letters, numbers and -. Progress is kept per id, so changing it starts everybody again.
• intro is shown when someone touches the storyteller before starting.
• repeat: yes lets people play again (rewards are still given only once). repeat: no, the default, means once.

Characters (up to 6)

character: Sheriff Hale | at: 988.5, 957.5 | facing: north | idle: Keep your eyes open, partner.
character: Ma Dalton | at: 949.5, 945.0 | facing: east | anim: stand | idle: Pull up a chair, sugar.

• The name is two words, because an NPC has a first and a last name.
• at: x, y is where they stand on your region. They stand on the ground or floor there.
• facing: is north, east, south, west, or degrees (0 = east, 90 = north).
• anim: is optional: an animation in the storyteller, or a built-in name such as stand.
• idle: is optional: what they say when they aren’t part of your current step.
• look: is optional: the outfit notecard. It defaults to Look - <name>, which Save look makes for you (below).

Steps

Steps happen in order. Each step: line starts a step, and the lines under it belong to it.

Lines inside a step:

• say: <speaker>: <text> is spoken when the step is done, one line every few seconds, privately to that person. The speaker is a character or narrator.
• hint: <text> tells them what to do next. It’s said after the previous step, and again whenever they touch the storyteller.
• label: <name> names a step, for option: and next:.
• next: <label> jumps to that step afterwards instead of the following one.
• ask: <speaker>: <question> and option: <button> => <label> belong in choose steps. You can have up to 6 options, and each button holds up to 24 characters.

An example with a choice

step: talk Old Jed
say: Old Jed: I did see a rider shove something behind my falls at first light.
hint: Follow the creek south to the waterfall. Someone is camped there.

step: choose
ask: narrator: Old Jed could be lying. What do you do?
option: Search the falls => falls
option: Fetch the sheriff => sheriff

step: touch Payroll Sack
label: falls
say: narrator: Behind the water, wedged in the rocks: a sack stamped SQUALL PAYROLL.
hint: Search behind the waterfall.

step: give Squall Deputy Badge; Squall Gold Nugget
say: narrator: The sheriff pins a tin star on your shirt.

step: finish
say: Sheriff Hale: Wear that badge with pride, Deputy!

step: talk Sheriff Hale
label: sheriff
say: Sheriff Hale: Old Jed? He couldn't rob a henhouse. Get back down there!
next: falls
hint: Ride back to town and tell Sheriff Hale about Old Jed.

The first step should be talk to your opening character, so clicking them starts the story. Visitors can also touch the storyteller and press Begin.

Set it up

1. Rez the storyteller somewhere visitors pass, such as next to your Wolf Experiences arrival spot. Put the STORY notecard and your rewards inside it.
2. Rez one talk spot per character. Its description must be exactly talk: <character name>. It moves onto its character by itself.
3. Rez your story objects where the story needs them, each with the Wolf Story object script and the description touch: <object name>.
4. Touch the storyteller and choose Reload story. The characters appear. If something in the notecard is wrong, it tells you which line.
5. Dress each character: wear the outfit you want for them, touch the storyteller, choose Save look and pick the character. The outfit is saved as Look - <name> and the character changes straight away. Until then they appear in the default avatar shape.

The owner menu

Touch the storyteller as its owner:

• Reload story: read STORY again and put the characters back.
• Save look: what you are wearing becomes a character’s outfit.
• Reset player: forget someone’s progress so they can test it again. Rewards already given stay given.
• Status: characters, steps and how many people are part-way through.
• Visitor view: see exactly what a visitor sees.

What visitors see

Characters speak only to the person playing, in local chat, so ten people can play at once without spamming each other. The storyteller keeps everyone’s progress inside itself, so it survives region restarts. If they wander off, touching the storyteller tells them what to do next. If a character is pushed away or lost after a restart, the storyteller puts them back.

Tips for a good story

• 5 to 10 steps that use your best places. Each step should take the visitor somewhere worth seeing.
• Short lines. Two or three say: lines per step. People read chat while walking.
• Always give a hint that says where, not just what: “Ride south down West Street to the weathered cabin.”
• One choice makes it feel like their story. Make both options lead somewhere, even if they meet again.
• A reward worth keeping: something they can wear or show off, named after your place, so it reminds them to come back.
• Test it as a visitor with Visitor view and Reset player, from the arrival spot to the end.

9. Optional: connect your story to the viewers’ game

WolfViewer and WolfStorm have a game screen built in: Wolf Roleplay. A player who switches Game Mode on gets a game bar with stats, a bag, money, notices and map markers. Region owners can run their own game on it with the wolfGame LSL functions. Connect your story to it and players in your game get:

• each hint as a notice on their screen, not only in chat;
• a marker on their map and minimap on the next character or place to go;
• game rewards next to your story’s items: your game’s money, or an item in their game bag;
• experience points, or any stat your game has, when they finish;
• a “story done” note in their game record, so your other game objects can treat them differently. For example, only deputies may enter the jail.

Visitors who aren’t playing your game see the story exactly as before.

The one rule: it must be your own game

The grid only lets a game’s own scripts change a player’s screen, bag, money or stats. Those are scripts owned by the game’s owner, or ones the owner has registered with wolfGameTrustScript. Holding the region isn’t enough. Otherwise any object could empty a player’s wallet.

So a region still running the grid’s default Wolf Territories game can’t connect a story to it. You need to make your own game first. When you do, your region runs it instead. Players are in it only while they have Game Mode on, and it’s always their own choice.

Step by step

1. Make your game on your region, as Make your own game explains. A small set-up script you run once is enough:

   // Run once, on your region, in an object you own. Then delete the script.
   default
   {
       state_entry()
       {
           if (!wolfGameCreate(["name", "The Squall Frontier", "kind", "managed",
                   "currency", "Dollars", "symbol", "$", "start", 10, "death", "spawn"]))
               llOwnerSay("Create refused: " + wolfGetLastError());
           // a stat for experience points that survives death
           wolfGameDefineStat("xp", ["label", "Experience", "min", 0, "max", 100000,
               "start", 0, "rate", 0, "keep", 1, "order", 3]);
           // a game item the story can hand out
           wolfGameDefineItem("deputy-badge", ["label", "Deputy Badge", "max", 1]);
           llOwnerSay("Game ready: " + wolfGameKey());
       }
   }

   Every wolfGame call returns TRUE when it worked. When it’s refused, wolfGetLastError() says why. The full list of game, stat and item settings is in the Roleplay guide.
2. Drop the game bridge into your storyteller. The kit has a script called Wolf Story game bridge (optional). Put it inside the storyteller, beside the Wolf Storyteller script. It must be owned by you, the game’s owner.
3. Set its table. Open the bridge script and edit the few lines at the top:

   // story item given  ->  what the GAME gives too
   list    REWARDS = [
       "Squall Gold Nugget", "$", 25,              // 25 of your game's money
       "Squall Deputy Badge", "deputy-badge", 1    // 1 of the item you defined
   ];
   string  FINISH_STAT = "xp";      // a stat of your game to raise on finishing ("" = none)
   integer FINISH_AMOUNT = 50;      // the first time they finish only
   integer SHOW_MARKERS = TRUE;     // map marker on where to go next
   integer SHOW_NOTICES = TRUE;     // hints as viewer notices
   string  MARKER_COLOUR = "#f59e0b";

   Every name in REWARDS on the left must match a give step’s item exactly. Every item on the right must be one you defined with wolfGameDefineItem, or "$" for money.
4. Test it. Switch Game Mode on in your viewer: World > Game Mode, or the paw icon. Then play the story. The hint appears as a notice, a marker shows the next character, and you get the game rewards. If the region refuses something, the bridge tells you why once, in your own chat.

Going further: your own scripts

The bridge is only an example. Any script you put inside the storyteller hears what happens in the story, as a link message with the number 57140201, the event text and the visitor’s key:

// Example: a story step that hurts. Falling into the creek costs 10 health, for players in your game.
link_message(integer sender, integer num, string msg, key av)
{
    if (num != 57140201) return;
    list f = llParseStringKeepNulls(msg, ["|"], []);
    if (llList2String(f, 0) == "step" && llList2String(f, 2) == "goto"
        && wolfGameIsPlaying((string)av))
    {
        wolfGameDamage((string)av, 10, "slipped into the creek");
        wolfGameEffect((string)av, "flash", 60, 0.5);
    }
}

Other ideas: a buff for finishing a chapter (wolfGameAddBuff), a dialog with game buttons (wolfGameDialog), a game tag under the name, such as Deputy (wolfGameSetTag), or a sound only that player hears (wolfGameSound). Every function is in the Roleplay guide, and the rest of the wolf functions are in the LSL reference. Always check wolfGameIsPlaying first: people who aren’t in your game must still be able to enjoy the story.

10. Go further

• Hold events. A DJ set, a race night or a guided tour puts your place on What’s on, with your poster, on this website, in WolfViewer and WolfStorm and on the welcome doors. Add one from the What’s on page.
• Tell a story. Characters, a quest and rewards: see Add characters and a story, and if you run a roleplay game, connect it to the viewers’ game.
• Use the Wolf tools. Weather, roleplay Game Mode, vehicles and the wolf LSL functions can make a place feel alive.