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Authoring

Authoring in Eldiron Creator adds narrative and descriptive metadata to the world. It is used by the terminal client already, and the same data can also drive room descriptions, sector enter text, and other presentation in normal 2D and 3D games.

Authoring Dock​

The tool strip contains an Authoring toggle.

When it is enabled, contexts that would normally show the Tiles dock show the Authoring dock instead.

This makes Authoring a persistent mode:

  • geometry and selection tools still work normally
  • tile-backed contexts switch from Tiles to Authoring
  • other docks like Data, Code, Visual Code, or Console are unaffected

What You Can Edit​

The Authoring dock currently edits TOML metadata for selected:

  • sectors
  • linedefs
  • entity instances
  • item instances

This metadata is stored with the selected object and is intended for player-facing text.

Minimal Format​

The current starter template is:

title = ""
description = """
"""

This is shown automatically for empty selections so the expected format is always visible.

Use:

  • title for the player-facing name of the place, connection, entity, or item
  • description for the longer descriptive text

Examples:

title = "Your ship"
description = """
The familiar deck of your faithful ship creaks softly beneath your feet. It has carried you through many adventures, and still feels more like home than any harbor.
"""
title = "Crossroads"
description = """
A small crossroads of worn earth and scattered stones, marking the meeting point between harbor, home, and garden.
"""

How It Is Used​

Right now the authoring metadata is already used by:

  • text-style terminal room titles and descriptions
  • text-style exit and room presentation
  • authored sector description messages in regular gameplay

For sectors, you can also add:

show_in_2d = false
show_in_3d = false

to suppress automatic sector description messages per view mode.

Global Authoring Settings​

Global authoring and text-presentation behavior lives under Game / Authoring.

That configuration controls things like:

  • startup welcome text
  • startup room/description behavior
  • exit presentation style
  • terminal colors
  • auto-attack behavior for text-style clients
  • sector description message policy

See Authoring Configuration for the full reference.