As a parser player, what's your preferred way to enter a password into a computer?

I just had a look at what I did when I made a password-protected computer. It looks like I went the route of having “type password on computer” as the main action, with synonyms covering everything I could think of, including a few weird ones. I know you were a tester, Mathbrush, so you might have suggested one or two of these synonyms in the first place!

Typing it on is an action applying to one topic and one touchable thing.

Understand "type [text] on [something]" and "type in [text] on [something]" and "guess [text] on [something]" and "try [text] on [something]" and "input [text] on [something]" and "enter [text] on [something]" and "password [text] on [something]" and "give [text] to [something]" as typing it on.

(now that I look at this again, it’s missing the reasonable synonym “type password INTO computer”. Oh well.)

Plus a couple of extra actions for less specific attempts: one for just “type password” which tries to redirect the input to the nearest computer-type object, and one for just “type” which asks the player to say what they want to type in an out-of-world message (which may not be what you want if you’re trying to avoid immersion-breaking messages to the player).

Singular-typing is an action applying to one topic.
Understand "type [text]" and "type in [text]" and "guess [text]" and "try [text]" and "input [text]" and "enter [text]" and "password [text]"  and "give [text]" as singular-typing.

Carry out singular-typing:
	if a computer (called the target) is touchable:
		say "(typing '[the topic understood]' on [the target])";
		try typing the topic understood on the target;
	otherwise:
		say "You don't see anything to type that on."
		
Objectless-typing is an action applying to nothing.
Understand "type" as objectless-typing.

Check objectless-typing:
	say "[bypass every turn][italic type][bracket]Type what? You'll need something to type, and something to type on, e.g. TYPE TEXT ON COMPUTER, or just TYPE TEXT if you're near a computer.[close bracket][roman type][paragraph break]"

(That “bypass every turn” bit is borrowed from this climbingstars post.)

I think this scattergun approach worked in the end, but I’m not sure because I forgot to download the player transcripts while the game was in IFComp. I don’t remember the computers being a complaint though.

2 Likes