[MUD-Dev] Text Parsing

[Travis S. Casey]

On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Ross Nicoll wrote:

> > >That way they could at least ask for help...
> > That's a great idea, except then you confuse the hell out of people with
> > mudding experience. Why not just stick in a newbie channel and tell them,
> > at the end of character creation, how to use it to ask for help. 
>
> One alternative, looking at the results, would be to point the user at the
> "help" command if they entered "how", "what", "why", etc... as the verb?

How about all of the above?  It's definitely a good idea to give a brief
(4 or 5 line) summary of the most important commands to all new characters
before dumping them into the world.  You could point the commands Russ
mentioned to "help" as well.

I'm reminded of an idea in Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_.  One of
the characters has a computer that, when it encounters seemingly random
input that continues for a few minutes, goes into "kinder mode" -- that
is, it assumes the user is a child or doesn't know how to use the
computer, and starts up a nice, user-friendly interface with tutorial.

Following that idea, you could set things up so that after three or four
non-commands in a row, the system gives info on how to get help.

--
       |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
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