Request - parser accepting "two-word words" and smaller words

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Tue 02/11/2004 19:51:47

I'd like to be able to enter the following words as synonims - "take, get, grab, snatch, pick up".

The problem is "pick up". If AGS allowed me to enter "pick up" as a word - and that's my request - everything would be fine. As it is, I either set "up" as an ignore word (which I won't do, because I may need to diferentiate, say, "climb up" and "climb down"), or as a regular word, and say something like "pick [up] rock". Why don't I want this? Because in that case, "get up rock" would ALSO work, and I don't want this.

This is just one example... could this be added? Please? ANd I kinda need it ASAP - it's for a project I'm helping out in.

Developer · Tue 02/11/2004 20:00:55

I'm working on project, and could you PLEASE try and get it done ASAP it is a very usefull thing to fix so people can make text games just like the AGI games.Ã,Â 8)

Gilbert · Wed 03/11/2004 00:58:56

Hmmm I'm not quite sure, but cant you just use text scripting functions like Said() or the string comparing functions?
Like

if (Said("pick up")) ...

?

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Wed 03/11/2004 09:28:26

What would I do then? if (Said("pick up"))... treat as a synonym to get? How would I do that? One possible way would be to, say, find out if the user said "pick up gem", and then substitute "pick up" by "get" so that when the parser actually parsed it it would find "get gem"... but even if I knew how to do it, which I don't, that is a messy workaround that does, in effect, the job of the synonims. It's a bit like rewriting the whole pathfinding code - why should we, when it's something already available in a much easier fashion? That is the job of the synonyms, and they *should* accept these two words. It's not only verbs - imagine I want the following sentence: "examine lift" to ALSO be accepted as "examine transporter", "check out transporter tube", "look [at] elevator". If the elevator IS a tranport tube, as some are in Sci-Fi, then it should be able to be called one. But without synonyms handling this, there's cumbersome scripting ahead, to make for an eventuality that was already foreseen - just not completely taken care of.

EDIT - Another request - the ability to add 1- and 2-character words. Why? "x" for examine, "l" for look, etc; and, like in some games, notably the watch in SQ2, sometimes you just typed the initial of the button you wanted to press (C for comm, H for horoscope, and T for time).

Pumaman · Wed 03/11/2004 20:41:33

Yep, I can see this being useful. In fact, it's already on the tracker:
http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/tracker.php?action=detail&id=353

As for 1-letter words, that's a bug, and I'll get it fixed.

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Wed 03/11/2004 22:40:02

Is it? I didn't know. Er, CJ, considering you already put out the latest final, do you think you could implement this for the next version beta? Not this one, this one's done already... but the 1st beta of the next version? I kinda really need it at the mo...

stuh505 · Thu 04/11/2004 16:56:47

well its good to see that CJ will be making this little fix

but I don't really see the urgency, redrum

who cares if "get up rock" works? nobody is going to type that!

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires · Thu 04/11/2004 18:43:30

It's only a matter of getting things to work well. Besides, while this particular example might seem indeed absurd, there may be others, unforeseenable, that are NOT minor. Eliminate the problem as soon as it appears, and it will save you a LOT of grief later on.

And anyway, "nobody is going to type that" is unnaccpetable to me, as should be unnaceptable to anyone. A parser should be flexible and powerful, and that includes not making sense of absurd sentences.