# Mundus - Basic Concepts

**Article Created: 21 May 2020** || **Last Edited: 21 July 2020**

[\<\<](./introduction.html) || [\< User Interface](./user-interface.html)

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Despite the fact that I tried my best to make the game as intuitive as possible, there are things you need to understand about how it works.

## Tiles

The ingame world (map) is composed of squares, called **tiles**, everything is a type of tile. The main purpose of tiles is to hold textures (amongst other important information). There are two main categories of tiles: items and mobs. Mobs (mobile object for short) are the creatures in the game. On the contrary, items are everything else, from the tools, to the trees.

There is only one type of **mob tile** and that is **MobTiles**. 

All mobs have a couple of properties:

- **health** (if it drops to or below 0, they die)

- **defence** (reduces or completely negates certain amounts of damage)

- **inventory** 

- **random movement qualifier** (used for random movement around the world)

- **item that is dropped upon death** (health <= 0)

- **the superlayer they are currenly in**

**Items**, however, are divided into:

- **Material tiles** are primarly used for crafting. Some tools are "consumable", meaning they can be consumed by the mob, which removes them from the inventory and changes the value of some property. In your inventory they are surrounded in oringe.

- **Gear tiles** are something you equip (in your accessories and gear inventories) that boost your stats. In your inventory they are surrounded in purple.

- **Ground tiles** are the tiles on the superlayer ground. For example, grass, water, sand are all ground tiles, because structures and mobs will be walking on top of them.

- **Structure tiles** are tiles that can be placed in the world. For example, a tree is a type of structure tile. Some of them can be picked up. For example, a ladder is something you can have in your inventory, but something you can also place. They have a health and a dropped item (they drop their dropped item each time they're hurt). In your inventory they are surrounded in red.

- **Tool tiles** are used for interracting (changing) the environment of the world. There are four types:

  - With a **shovel** you can dig up (remove) ground tiles from ground layer (see Layers and superlayers).

  - **Axes** are used to break (remove) wooden structures (trees, ladders, ...).

  - **Pickaxes** are used for breaking (removing) structures made from hard materials (rocks, boulders, ...).

  - **Swords** are used for damaging mobs.

  Tools aren't interchangeable, you can't use an axe to mine a bouder or an axe to kill a cow. In your inventory they are surrounded in blue.

## Layers and superlayers

The ingame world (map) is composed of **superlayers**. Superlayers represent each elevation level in the world. There are in total 5 superlayers (not all are implimented): **Space**, **Sky**, **Land**, **Underground**, **???**.

Each superlayer is composed of 3 layers: **Structure**, **Mob** and **Ground**. Each one of them contains a specific type of tiles, structure tiles are only stored in "structure" layer, ground tiles only in "ground" layer and mob tiles only in "mob" layer. Even though, they are different layers, there are some rules for the interraction between them:

- **Mobs can't be on top of structures** (except if the structure is marked as "walkable")

- **Structures cannot be placed on top of mobs** (except if the strucure is marked as "walkable")

- **Structures cannot be placed on top of holes** (empty spots in the ground layer), **except if they are "climable"**, in which case they will be placed on the structure layer on the superlayer below. Mobs also cannot be on top of holes (they fall to the superlayer below)

## Inventory

Each mob can store certain amount of item tiles. That is done in it's **inventory**. The inventory is comprised of 4 parts:

- **Hotbar** can have all item tiles (except groundtiles). It should be used for the most important items in the inventory. In the UI you don't need to have the inventory menu open to use items from the hotbar.

- **Items** is used as a bulk storage. It can hold any type of item tile and is the largest part of the inventory.

- **Accessories** and **Gear** are used only to store gear tiles.

## Crafting

Creating different item tiles is done through **crafting**. Each craftable item requires from one to five different materials in different quantities. The item tiles must be inside the "items" part of your inventory.

## Event logs

Certain actions you do in the game are stored in memory as messages (logs). They are also used to give you information that you couldn't get otherwise. For example, there is a log if you can't climb up a superlayer because a mob is blocking the way, or when you damage/kill a structure or mob.