ID:1869605
 
I've been re-reading the reference and my notes and a thought occurred to me.
What can't we not use areas for?

Things that change their own coordinates.

What else?
There's only ever one instance of a specific area type in existence. So, you can't modify an area at one turf without modifying all of that area throughout the entire world.
Whoops, sorry meant can't.
In response to Sir Quizalot
Um, that still doesn't make sense.

What can't we not use areas for?

That's reallyyyyyyyyy bad English lol.


accorded to me.

Occurred to you.
In response to Kaiochao
Kaiochao wrote:
There's only ever one instance of a specific area type in existence. So, you can't modify an area at one turf without modifying all of that area throughout the entire world.

Not exactly. Usually when areas are done in the mapper, you're only ever using one area instance per type. It is not a given. You can in fact have multiple areas of the same type.
Interesting. Is that achieved via code runtime only?
In response to Sir Quizalot
Let's define some test area for this test.
area/test
layer = 5
color = "#ff0000"
icon = 'BlankWhite.dmi'

I chose to have a higher layered area with a fully white 32x32 square so that I can color it for visuals.

Now, let's try and make a new area where your mob is standing.
    var/area/test/a = new
a.color = rgb(rand(0, 255), rand(0, 255), rand(0, 255))
a.contents += loc

What you get is different colored instances of same area type.

I first noticed this little thing with SwapMaps where an area would still be raining after it's loaded even when the original area wasn't.

SwapMaps/loading maps is a good example of where this comes in handy since you can have custom made maps modified during runtime. Let's say you want to generate unlimited amount of dungeons and you make use of areas for spawns or activation of AI, this can definitely help by giving you an area of a type that isn't related to any other area and also doesn't require to have a sub type per dungeon.