So my PC carries another character throughout the game and cannot put that character down. Over the course of the game, the PC needs to give this carried character several things. This causes some weirdness with implicit giving. If the player tries to give the carried NPC to someone else, the game assumes I want to give something to the carried NPC. Since it’s a noun-verb parser game for TALP, I can’t tell the player to be more specific about who to give the carried NPC to. Here’s the result if I try to give the carried NPC to a second NPC:
Second NPC is here. The flower is here.
>give carried NPC
(the flower)
You're not holding the flower.
So is there a way to fix this in a noun-verb parser game? It’s not the end of the world if it stays like this, but it might be annoying to a player who is trying to give the carried NPC to the second NPC.
Thanks!
ETA: And I don’t want to turn implicit giving off, because that makes life easier in a game for beginners.
so you could impose a different check giving carried npc rule that would fire before it…
check giving carried npc to:
instead say "carried npc must remain carried, I mean, it[']s in the name, come on now..."
edit: no, scratch that, it’s not. Could you provide a minimal example reproducing this?
well, more specifically, my solution might still be adequate, but I’m not sure 'cause you’ve got something else going on, maybe a Does the player mean? rule, that’s resulting in the implicit selection of the flower.
Yes, there is a “Does the player mean” rule about the flower. I need those everywhere to keep the parser noun-verb, because asking “Who do you want to give the flower to?” is not a kind thing for newbies.
And the check giving rule doesn’t work with it, because of the DTPM rule? But even in scenes where there are no objects but there is an NPC, and no DTPM rules about anything, it assumes I want to give something to the carried NPC. It’s vexing.
If you want to keep a game verb-noun you should probably override the existing give action and all the other two-noun actions. That’d probably save you a lot of bother with existing work you’re doing with Does the player mean? rules.
barring that, does Does the player mean giving the carried npc to someone: it is very likely. (in conjunction with my previous check rule) help? It sounds backwards, but it’d be a good thing to direct the parser toward the giving carried npc interpretation so it’ll trigger the action that will trigger the check rule.
Ok, that’s looking like it’s working fine so far. Ay yi yi, making a friendly noun-verb parser is much harder than I thought. Be warned, all you folks who are leaving TALP games until the last minute!
Thanks as always, Zed!