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A few thoughts on the command parser, ideas about what it should be able to handle:
It may be best to have the parser look for certain keywords, such as 'in', 'and', 'with', things like that. This would allow for:
'Take the sword from the bag and attack Lukus with it.'
Or
'Attack Lukus with the sword in the bag'
These would tell the game to:
1, take a sword from the bag (if more than one bag, it will ask which one, giving choices, same with swords)
2, attack Lukus with it, which involves equipping it.
For example, Lukus has two bags, and three swords.
[code]
>attack Lukus with the sword in the bag
You have two bags. Which one do you mean?
1) Silky Sack of Sentience (contains a Sword of Plith and Vengeance)
2) A small magical bag (contains Greater Vengeance)
--if 2--
> 2 (or small magical bag)
You take Greater Vengeance from a small magical bag and equip it.
You attack Lukus!
--if 1--
There are two swords in the silky sack, which one do you want?
1) Sword of Plith
2) Vengeance
[/code]
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~~@Areo:~~
> A few thoughts on the command parser, ideas about what it should be able to handle:
>
> It may be best to have the parser look for certain keywords, such as 'in', 'and', 'with', things like that.
Yup, that would be an excellent start :) As well as doing this there are throwaway words like "a" and "the" which are necesarry in english for flow but don't actually serve any purpose.
I'll get a list of the important words started up in this post as soon as I write down a few more notes on English language syntax. Basicly it would be like the script parser, except with a ton of flexibility since requiring people to essentially learn a language, no matter how simple, is exactly the thing we're trying to aviod.
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I like this, but keep in mind that a lot of people are, well, lazy, and would want to have shortcuts. Could a system like this be shortcut?
Also, I think that having shortcuts and shortform would be critical to gameplay, since things would be quite slowed down if everyone had to type everything out in long form. Proper, yes, but it would annoy a lot of people. Say I was typing that to attack Lukus. He would have ample time to get away in the time I'm typing that, most likely, and I'm a pretty decent typist.
That's my only issue with it. Gamers as a general rule are lazy and want things to go at a reasonable pace to keep them entertained.
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~~@Ardghal:~~
> I like this, but keep in mind that a lot of people are, well, lazy, and would want to have shortcuts. Could a system like this be shortcut?
>
> Also, I think that having shortcuts and shortform would be critical to gameplay, since things would be quite slowed down if everyone had to type everything out in long form. Proper, yes, but it would annoy a lot of people. Say I was typing that to attack Lukus. He would have ample time to get away in the time I'm typing that, most likely, and I'm a pretty decent typist.
>
> That's my only issue with it. Gamers as a general rule are lazy and want things to go at a reasonable pace to keep them entertained.
Right, the thing we're describing is mainly for newer people who may have never played a MUD before. There will definitely be an "advanced" mode you can toggle on in addition to what is described above, probably even more than one, to configure gameplay for efficiency instead of intuition. So people who are used to things like "get 2.sword bag" would still be able to use that. It will also undoubtedly come with aliases, and command stringing.
