I find that the parser sometimes defaults to the “You can’t see any such thing” error when I think it ought to be able to manage the “I only understood you as far as wanting to” error. I wonder why and I wonder if I can do anything to improve matters. The “you can’t see any such thing” error can be confusing, by leading players to believe an object is not available when it is. Here’s an example of the parser doing well (from a playtest session with my rather imaginative nephew):
>fight the militia by jumping onto its back
[Parsing for the verb ‘fight’ (2 lines)]
[line 0 * Routine(270612) noun → MistakeAction]
[line 1 * noun → Attack]
I only understood you as far as wanting to fight the militia.
This correctly encourages the player to believe that fighting the militia is in principle possible. But in the next example the parser didn’t do so well (“run back” works because I have made “back” understood as the west direction):
>run back towards the militia
[Parsing for the verb ‘run’ (14 lines)]
[line 0 * → Go]
[line 1 * noun=Routine(455461) → Go]
[line 2 * noun → Enter]
[line 3 * Routine(546190) noun=Routine(455609) → Enter]
[line 4 * Routine(546311) noun=Routine(455498) → Go]
[line 5 * Routine(546406) noun=Routine(455535) → Go]
[line 6 * Routine(546501) noun=Routine(455572) → Go]
[line 7 * ‘into’ / ‘in’ / ‘inside’ / ‘through’ noun → Enter]
[line 8 * ‘across’ / ‘along’ / ‘over’ noun → A78_traversing]
[line 9 * ‘across’ / ‘along’ / ‘over’ noun → A78_traversing]
[line 10 * Routine(270467) Routine(270488) ‘away’ Routine(546596) Routine(546639) Routine(546682) → MistakeAction]
[line 11 * Routine(270447) ‘into’ ‘the’ ‘arms’ ‘of’ ‘the’ ‘militia’ → MistakeAction]
[line 12 * Routine(270407) ‘down’ / ‘up’ topic → MistakeAction]
[line 13 * Routine(270427) ‘to’ topic → MistakeAction]
You can’t see any such thing.
I hoped instead for “I only understood you as far as wanting to go west” because I would like the parser to always respond to a command in the form “[a known verb] [a thing that works with the verb] [some other non-understood text]” with “I only understood you as far as wanting to [verb] [the thing].”
As you can see from the trace, I have set up quite a lot of other grammar relating to various actions and mistakes that might trigger from “run [text]”. But still for me the bottom line is that “run back” would have parsed successfully as a command, so I think “can’t see any such thing” is not the best error. Any ideas much appreciated.