[MUD-Dev] re: Language Parsing for NPCs

[Bruce]

Robert Zubek wrote:

>    [my summary:] 
>    1. parsing and disambiguation.  
>    2, 3. extracting semantic structure from the parse tree
>    4. doing something with the extracted semantic structure 
 
> yes, i agree - and each of these steps by itself is a difficult
> problem. even considering the disambiguation problem you
> mentioned: "i ran a mud with a really smart npc" - there isn't a
> way to guide the parsing of this sentence without already knowing
> what muds are, what npcs are, that muds contain npcs, the word
> 'with' can be used to express such containment, etc.  syntactic
> processing is amazingly intertwined with semantic processing -
> sentence parsing builds on the semantic knowledge of the world
> (and, i might also add, the pragmatic understanding of what the
> other person is trying to communicate), but also vice versa,
> knowledge of the world builds on what gets extracted from the
> parsed sentence.
 
> fortunately for us, we're not dealing with full-blown human
> environment here. mud worlds limit the problem in interesting ways
> - unlike in the real world, in muds there is a finite and small
> number of discrete actions you can perform (take, hit, go, etc), a
> reasonably limited set of stereotypical things to do in the world
> (ie. go on a quest, practice skills, etc.), and if you impose a
> grammar on emotes the way skotos does, for example, there will
> also be a well-constrained set of ways to express emotions,
> gestures, and postures.

For those stereotypical discrete actions, there's little point at
all in actually having to parse a text stream to obtain that data.
In TEC we use a system that I described in:

  http://www.kanga.nu/archives/MUD-Dev-L/2001Q1/msg00415.php

That system allows for all sorts of monitoring based on classes of
actions as well as particular actions.

So, handling the processing and recognition of those actions needn't
involve language parsing at all.  But that doesn't necessarily grant
an NPC any insight into the reasoning behind the behavior of a
character.

Regarding the rest, have you read _Le Ton beau de Marot_ by
Hofstadter[1]?  Judging from what I've seen of player or character
discussions on muds, I'm not sure that I'd agree that the
environment is limited sufficiently to simplify the problem.

  - Bruce

[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0465086454

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