Help System

Ares contains a robust help system that can be accessed from the game (via the help command) or through the Web Portal.

Help Files

Help files live in a help\<language code> folder under the plugin folder. This supports having help files in multiple languages, based on the game’s locale.

Help files use Markdown Text. This lets you use formatting and hyperlinks that will show up nicely on the Web Portal and also in-game.

You can link to other help files using See also [Jobs](/help/jobs).

Help Metadata

Inside the help file, the first few lines are embedded YAML, where you can set various fields.

• toc - Defines where the topic falls in the help table of contents. If omitted, the topic will appear under “Miscellaneous”.
• summary - The summary text that shows up next to the topic in the help table of contents.
• order - If specified, controls the order that help files appear in that section of the table of contents.
• aliases - Creates aliases for the topic name. See ‘Topic Names’ below for more details.

Topic Names

The name of the help file will be the topic name. For instance, if we name the file traits.md then you can type help traits.

The help system has a number of automatic features that try to help players find the help file they wanted even if they don’t type in the exact topic name. For example:

• Singular vs plural: e.g. ‘help traits’, will match ‘help trait’ and vice-versa.
• Switches: e.g. ‘help trait/set’ it will match ‘help traits’.
• Manage: e.g. ‘help combat manage’ will match ‘help manage combat’ and vice-versa.

You can also set up manual aliases in the help metadata. This is particularly important when you have old-school MUSH shortcuts. For example, the help entry for ‘profile’ defines an alias for ‘finger’ and ‘info’ since those are common old-school names for the same basic command.

---
toc: Community
summary: Using character profiles.
aliases:
- finger
- info
---