intfiction.org

Based on post-comp feedback, I've done a major revision pass on Smarter Parser. While Smarter Parser is designed to ease novice players into IF more gently, I realized I'd lost sight a little bit of the needs of experienced players and the authors themselves, so this update mostly focuses on them. Major changes:

FOR AUTHORS:

• Better documentation, with a summary of each parsing rule and instructions for changing the message and removing it. In general, the attitude is less "set it and forget it" and more "with interesting power comes interesting responsibility."
• Rules referring to specific types of nouns (body parts, clothing items, and general surroundings) have been spun off into a new plug-in extension, to reduce potential conflicts with your own implementations.
• In general, a trimming back of overly ambitious behaviors: for instance, now looks for only a specific set of adverbs, rather than anything ending with "-ly."
• Several new ways to customize output, including replaceable overrides for exactly how reparsed commands are displayed.

FOR PLAYERS:

• The NOVICE OFF and CORRECT OFF commands are now better advertised to the player the first time Smarter Parser kicks in, and preferences are stored in an external file when possible. Any future stories using Smarter Parser will automatically honor this file if it exists.
• Major speed improvements, including rewriting some low-level matching algorithms in I6, and several other tricks here and there to improve performance.
• No longer tries to recognize swear words, in line with the next I7 update which no longer responds to these either.

The new Smarter Parser is temporarily on my web space, along with the new extension for unimplemented stuff (which has a mechanism for authors to remove individual words from the match patterns, if your story has, say, noses but no other body parts). Posting here for feedback on the changes before submitting to the extensions site. Thanks to everyone who provided ideas and suggestions!

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Aaron Reed - Creating Interactive Fiction with Inform 7 - Smarter Parser

That sounds great, Aaron.

Stupendous!

I've never actually tried Smarter Parser, but the more I hear about it and its changes like this, the more I want to give it a shot for my next substantial project.

Hmm, I7 will be dropping swear support? It dang well better be adding good stuff! (And I'm sure it will.)

It sounds like somebody needs to write an extension to take up the slack, perhaps entitled "F***ing Expletives."


Robert Rothman

I think the extensions site is supposed to be family-friendly as well. Maybe "Colorful Language"? Or is that just asking to scar some impressionable young painter?

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Blog at Gamasutra :: Programmer's Guide to Inform 7 :: Seattle I-F

I am dreadfully tempted to do this just so that I can call it My Profit On't.

Being far less sophisticated in literary matters than Maga is, I immediately thought not of Shakespeare but of The Three Stooges. In Disorder in the Court, there is a scene in which which Curly is taking the oath before testifying in a courtroom. "Do you swear . . ." the bailiff starts to ask. Without allowing him to finish the question, Curly responds "No -- But I know all the woids!"


Robert Rothman

Quick bug I've found: the documentation, including the prewritten link to remove the rule from the rulebook, consistently refers to "The unnecessary possessives rule". Problem is, only "The stripping possessives rule" exists in the rulebook.

Aaron, sounds like an awesome update. Will you be updating the Player Experience Upgrade later on as a result? I'm using V1 and there are some minor things that happen behind the scenes that I can't quite figure out.

For example, I defined some Understand as a mistake rules as follows:

Understand "yes" as a mistake ("That was a rhetorical question...") when Monica is visible.

and instead of these rules firing I get "Saying yes here has not effect." I'm sure there's a quick solution to ensuring my rules fire, but I'm not sure what it is or whether this is a Smarter Parser issue or somewhere else.

I've seen a couple of other confusing messages about body parts, but now I've forgotten the details. (I'll try to pay attention next time I see anything odd though.)

--Zack