10. Creating things

We have already created some things - dragons for example. There are many different things to create in Evennia though. In the last lesson we learned about typeclasses, the way to make objects persistent in the database.

Given the path to a Typeclass, there are three ways to create an instance of it:

  • Firstly, you can call the class directly, and then .save() it:

      obj = SomeTypeClass(db_key=...)
  obj.save()

    This has the drawback of being two operations; you must also import the class and have to pass the actual database field names, such as db_key instead of key as keyword arguments.

  • Secondly you can use the Evennia creation helpers:

      obj = evennia.create_object(SomeTypeClass, key=...)

    This is the recommended way if you are trying to create things in Python. The first argument can either be the class or the python-path to the typeclass, like "path.to.SomeTypeClass". It can also be None in which case the Evennia default will be used. While all the creation methods are available on evennia, they are actually implemented in evennia/utils/create.py.

  • Finally, you can create objects using an in-game command, such as

      create/drop obj:path.to.SomeTypeClass

    As a developer you are usually best off using the two other methods, but a command is usually the only way to let regular players or builders without Python-access help build the game world.

10.1. Creating Objects

This is one of the most common creation-types. These are entities that inherits from DefaultObject at any distance. They have an existence in the game world and includes rooms, characters, exits, weapons, flower pots and castles.

> py
> import evennia 
> rose = evennia.create_object(key="rose")

Since we didn’t specify the typeclass as the first argument, the default given by settings.BASE_OBJECT_TYPECLASS (typeclasses.objects.Object) will be used.

10.2. Creating Accounts

An Account is an out-of-character (OOC) entity, with no existence in the game world. You can find the parent class for Accounts in typeclasses/accounts.py.

TODO