Building in Forgotten Kingdoms
In order to become an area builder on Forgotten Kingdoms one should peruse the Builder forums to see if there is an existing project you could get involved in or an abandoned area to give a new home. If you wish to create a new area from scratch, we recommend that you start a discussion about it in the Builder Discussion forums, or if you believe the area information to be sensitive, through an application.
All areas on Forgotten Kingdoms should have a strong Forgotten Realms theme, and we recommend that new builders should aim to start off small: giving a face-lift to an existing area, working in a team to complete an area, taking on a small abandoned area or just starting a small area from scratch. New builders can choose whether to use OLC (online creation - where a builder character in the test port is able to interactively create an area) or 'offline', which requires the builder to be familiar with our esoteric file format. Usually, a combination of both methods works best and it is up to the individual builder to decide what works best for her.
Offline builders can use our Version Control System (VCS) to submit updates to the game server. As you make changes to your area, you can upload them directly to the game's test server where it will be validated and checked for errors. If it passes the validation process, the game will make it immediately available for testing. This allows for a rapid offline development process.
Sometimes, you might choose to build a new area from scratch, entirely offline. If you choose to do this, it will be necessary for you to email a copy of this area to us so it can be added to the VCS system. Before emailing, we recommend using our 'Area Check' web page to ensure that the area is error-free, allowing it to be added directly to the test port for you to start testing. This 'Area Check' service uses the same validation service as the VCS system.
Our builder documentation is provided in the form of lessons on this website. Unfortunately, you may find that some of these lessons may be out of date, inaccurate or just plain unhelpful. If you find this to be the case, please start a discussion about it in the builder forums to allow us to update, correct or expand the documentation as required.
Forgotten Kingdoms is interested in all offers of assistance in all areas of its workings - if you are interested in running roleplay sessions as a DM, helping out new players, building areas, contributing C++ code, helping to update the website or anything else, please get in touch via the forums.
Thank you for your interest in helping to further enhance Forgotten Kingdoms!