Feature Request | Some more love for the text parser

[sneed]

I'd really love to see some more QOL features on the text parser, if anybody was mulling over whether it would be worth investing time into.
Many things I'd like to see were implemented in a plugin way back in 2008:
https://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=9435.msg462815#msg462815

Some Ideas being:
The parser popping up automatically when the player begins typing
An inventory list
Loading word/synonym lists from an outside text file instead of doing them one by one in the editor.
Maybe a better, less jumbled way of organizing/coding the parser other than a giant if/then statement or case switching? (I'm entirely unsure if this is actually possible, as I'm not really code-literate)
Perhaps also a template.

I understand that it's low priority since people rarely if ever still make text-based games, but I thought I'd mention it just in case someone feels like doing it.

[eri0o]

All of these things are better implemented either as a module or a template.

But anyway, if you are not familiar yet, 3.6.0.X alpha versions allow packaging arbitrary files, so you could just store text files this way to be consumed by whatever parser module/template is implemented. An AGS Dictionary is a good thing to unserialize your text file to.

[Danvzare]

It'd be nice to be able to organize your list of words the parser recognizes, in the AGS editor. If I recall correctly, once you put in a word, it's impossible to move it anywhere else on the list. It'd also be nice to mass-remove a selection of words as well.

[Crimson Wizard]

One related problem that I know is that currently parser dictionary is not exported to the translation, and not translated, so you cannot let players use their language when typing, they have to type in "default" language instead.

I once made a "hack" version of the engine for unofficial translators of old ags games, that had this covered, but this is still not implemented properly in the official AGS.

EDIT: probably one can work around this by enforcing translation using GetTranslation and comparing translated strings, but I'm not certain.

[eri0o]

If it was possible to store the parser entries outside of Game.agf in it's own file and also have it's own asset instead of being part of game28.dta, it would be trivial to develop a custom parser "Editor". (But I do feel this is something more aligned with ags4, possibly)