![[Amberdrake's picture of Dina goes here.]](dina_amberdrake1.jpg)
You should @dig an auction hall and use two of the budgeted actions to make exits in and out of it. The Auction II code must be in a room owned by the same person that owns the action it's on; it's inflexible about that. Where on your muck you put this is your problem, of course; I suggest it be someplace that's easy for people to get to. Write descriptions for all of it, make sure the exits have @succ, @osucc, and @odrop messages, and the usual stuff that good builders do.
Now that you've got your auction hall in place you're ready for all of the magic that makes things happen. You'll come back here and save the Auction II archive to disk. (You can do this part first, obviously.) It's best if you choose the latest version, as the code gets more feature-rich and easier to use as it's tinkered with.
Log in to the muck, go to the auction hall, and write the archive onto the muck. I can't tell you exactly how to do this because I don't know what muck client you're using. In TinyFugue you can just /quote the file and have the whole thing spat out at high speed with no more trouble to you. In Trebuchet you'll chose File > Send File to do the same thing. Most programs will let you paste text in, so you can always open up a text editor or word processor, highlight and copy the whole thing (watch out for line wrapping!), and paste into the muck window. Generally, do whatever you'd normally do to put text onto the muck, okay?
![[Dina picture #4 by Millia, Aug '02]](dina0004-millia.jpg)
There should be a long period of messages as a lot of code gets written. Be patient. What it's doing is an @create to make the action and then many @set commands to put the MPI onto the Auction II action; any bystanders will hear you narrate what you're doing, but you probably won't spot that because of all the spam you're getting. When it stops, you'll see a message to that effect.
To tidy up, you should @link the action to $null, $do-nothing, or whatever it's called on your muck. This is just a destination that does nothing; don't distain it, though! An action that is unlinked must fail and the Auction II system won't work if it always fails. If you don't remember the dbref (and who does?) go ahead and ask someone; it's a legitimate question for the helpstaff.
![[Picture of Dina at the computer, by Dobbs @ FurryMuck]](Dinacomp.jpg)
Yes, you have to read the instructions. It'll be pretty easy, as the help files are included and will teach you how to use the system if you let them. You'll be the only registered auctioneer at first, so you'll have to know how to use the 'sell' command; it's easy to add more auctioneers, though, so you're not stuck doing all of the selling even at first.
There's an on-line help now and a FAQ coming; these will be useful to you.
Publicize your auction! This is the easiest way to fail, because I can't write a program that will bring you participants; that's something you have to do.
Hold your auction and have fun.
