[MUD-Dev] Text Parsing

[Chris Gray]

[Katrina McClelan:]

> a huge hoard of orcs spot you and reach for their weapons with a snarl.
> -> take off running away from the orcs.
>
> -> put on cloak.
> you put on the white cloak.
> -> look around.
> an off white cloak lies on the ground here.
> -> take off white cloak.
>
> (If you have a parser that will not blarf all over any of these, I'm
> _much_ impressed)

Nope, and I don't think I would want one, since it is making ambiguity
decisions for the user. To handle these things, I would change the
"off white cloak" to be "off-white" cloak (or just add the alternate
adjective), and use verb "escape" instead of "take off running", since
I don't try to handle multi-word verbs anyway.

> worse, when you throw in the tendency for experienced players to perfer
> lazy typing to english, you get problems:
>
> the lizardmen have left an offering to their gods on the alter.
> -> take off alt
> (shorthand for take offering from alter that most mud processors allow,
> and that veteran players will expect to have work)

Understood. However, I wouldn't want to try to build a system that can
effectively handle such varying abbreviations in the presence of free
user construction of objects, using whatever words they desire. If
that means the "pros" won't play my MUD, then so be it. As previously
mentioned, if I was playing such a MUD, I would deliberately never use
abbreviations, or stick to the most obvious ones, simply to avoid the
possibility of the MUD doing something I didn't want.

--
Don't design inefficiency in - it'll happen in the implementation.

Chris Gray     cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA
               http://www.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA/cg/


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