I7: Understanding "w" as new fails to work

[code]The Porch is a room. The Kitchen is west of the Porch.

Understand the command “w” as something new.

Test me with “w”.[/code]

This is pretty odd to me. Why does the command still work, and how do I deal with it when standard directions aren’t desired?

“W” and similar commands are not technically verbs; they are names of objects, viz. compass directions.

The parser treats them specially: it checks if the first word in a command refers to direction, and if so it converts the command into a go that direction action.

(Thanks! I see I got this wrong in the I7 translation.)

Ha! And I thought I’d surprise you by handling this on my own. Outsmarted my own good self there, I did. :slight_smile:

In addition, the “something new” statement only affects synonyms. It doesn’t remove grammar lines.

For example, “hit” is a synonym for “attack.” This is achieved in the Standard Rules using this statement:

Understand the commands "break", "smash", "hit", "fight", "torture", "wreck", "crack", "destroy", "murder", "kill", "punch" and "thump" as "attack".

Now, if you wanted to use the command “hit” to mean “push,” you’d have to break that synonym connection:

[code]Understand the command “hit” as something new.

Understand “hit [something]” as pushing.[/code]

On the other hand, this statement would do nothing at all:

Understand the command "attack" as something new

Because “attack” isn’t mapped to any other command word.

I’m not sure what you mean by that. There’s no difference if it’s a synonym of a verb or an independent grammar line. If you try

[code]The sparring area is a room. A training dummy is here.
Understand the command “attack” as something new.
Understand the command “hit” as something new.

Test me with “fight dummy/attack dummy/hit dummy”.[/code]
You’ll see that FIGHT still works, ATTACK and HIT are removed as expected.

On the other hand you are correct in that individual grammar lines aren’t affected, but “understand…as something new” removes every meaning of the word. For example

Understand the command "get" as something new.

will affect every action that has “get” as a verb, including taking, getting off, and entering (get in).

I should have checked before I said anything. That’s very interesting. I was curious how that would affect the index, and look at this!