Message-ID: <3D21B542.2030907@csi.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Jul 2002 10:14:26 -0400
From: John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com>
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Subject: Re: [Inform] Dynamic Verbing (long)
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Lucian P. Smith wrote:
> John Colagioia <JColagioia@csi.com> wrote in <3d205333@excalibur.gbmtech.net>:
> : 1)  In a game involving travel to far-off lands, an author
> :     *might* want to have a small section of the game which must
> :     be played in a foreign language.
> : I realize the first example sounds like a lame excuse for an
> : unpleasant puzzle, but that's why it's just an example...
> Hey, now!  There are actually *two* games that do this to some extent, my
> own 'The Edifice', and Carl Muckenhoupt's 'The Gostak',

I didn't say (or, I hope, even imply) that the result would be bad.
Just that it sounded like a horrible thing to do to the player.

Plus, my "vision" for the atrocious puzzle would be something like
dropping the character into a section of the game that was entirely
(for example) in French.  FRAPPE LE MONSTRE AVEC L'EPEE would work
there, but KILL THE TROLL WITH THE SWORD would fail.

> though neither do
> exactly what you propose.  I dunno what Carl did for his game (probably
> hacked the library), but you can get the code for the language section of
> my own at:
> http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/programming/inform6/library/contributions/nalian.inf
> which might give you some ideas.

Good deal.  Thanks very much.

> Neil's reply to your article is a good
> way to get started;

Yes.  I'll attempt to conserve some bandwidth by saying thanks for
that here, as well.

> I have just one other code-optimization suggestion:
> : [ UnknownVerb word i ;
> :  objectloop (i ofclass VerbObj)
> Don't loop through all the items in the game:  put your verb objects in a
> 'MyVerbs' container and do "objectloop (i in MyVerbs)"

That's a pretty good point.  It also actually would make the language
choice easier, as well.  Have UnknownVerb loop through the contents
of EnglishVerbs, SwahiliVerbs, and so on.

