Hello,
Adventuron has some system level synonyms for examine, and they are as follows:
X SUBJECT
EXAM SUBJECT (throwback to quill)
EXAMI SUBJECT (throwback to paw)
EXAMINE SUBJECT
LOOK (AT)? SUBJECT
Does anyone know is “EX” is a common synonym for examine. I see that Spanish IF/TA players tend to use this shortcut, but it is common in English games?
Chris
I don’t think I’ve ever seen EX explicitly proposed by any English game for me to use.
X came from the Infocom games. Now, there are/were English games that don’t support X, but some older games supported abbreviating any command to the shortest number of letters it would take to distinguish that command from all other commands in that particular game. Their parsers were programmed quite differently and RAM was a consideration. Such games would also accept any abbreviation inbetween that short version and the complete word. In such games, E was inevitably east, and then the shortest thing you could usually type to distinguish EXAMINE from E was EX. That’s really the only English context in which I’ve seen it come up, and it still wasn’t advanced by the game; it was something the player would hit on when they realised they wanted to type less or could type less. So a game like that would tend to also accept EX, EXA, EXAM, EXAMI, EXAMIN etc. automatically.
Short answer: I don’t think EX is common and was mostly a symptom of the way some older parsing systems were programmed when it was used.
-Wade
It wouldn’t hurt to support both, but I don’t think it’s very common.
For whatever it is worth, I think EX feels more natural than X. It comes to my mind quicker, even as a long time Infocom junkie.
Did it? I always thought that was an Inform addition. Lemme check…
Okay, Infocom used it, but very late in their history. X was only added as a synonym in 1986 (Moonmist) and not every game thereafter. Lurking Horror, Bureaucracy, Beyond Zork, Nord&Bert, Plundered Hearts, Sherlock, the invisiclues re-releases, and some of the V6 games.
Oh right. I googled fast because I wasn’t sure, and got it in a Zoro manual. But it must have been a later Zork manual. Thanks.
Wade
EX wasn’t particularly common in UK games; with X becoming pretty standard fairly quickly. I’ve never thought about trying to track down the main commercial influence on the use of X as a abbreviation for EXAMINE in the UK… it might be an interesting exercise… X seems an obvious abbreviation in many ways. EX, I guess, would’ve allowed for more consistent abbreviations across the board… but, saying that, Magnetic Scrolls DR for DROP and IN for INVENTORY (which has got to go down as one of the most daft abbreviations) never caught on. :
Some people still type EXAM due to the four-letter parser days… which isn’t always catered for! Certainly no harm in including EX; many of our Spanish friends play English-language games and it’s not going to clash with anything else.
I always default to using X myself when playing… and it can be annoying as the whole GET/TAKE issue if it’s not been included as a synonym.
The convention in early Spanish games was using X for listing exits from the current location, so the EXAMINE abbreviation had to be EX.
Those games had large location graphics and fonts, and exits did not always fit in room descriptions, hence the need for SALIDAS/X. There was some debate about this when Inform was translated into Spanish.
Ah that explanation of the history of EX in Spanish conversational adventures makes a lot of sense! I’ve never thought of using X for “exits”… I must remember that for the next time I try and play a Spanish text adventure game… No wonder I always struggle to navigate around the game map!
X for EXAMINE was certainly very common in British text adventures in the late 1980s… I wonder which UK games popularised it…
Some UK games used “L” instead, since “look” was synonymous with “examine”.
Out of curiosity I checked the instructions of two early Dinamic titles and they didn’t include this command. It was probably introduced in the Aventuras AD games (1989+), and kept by the indie development systems for PCs in the 90s.
Similarly, when “x” enters my inner monologue, my inclination is to type EX.
It looks like Gary Kelbrick was the first to come up with X for EXAMINE(?). He also applied T for TAKE. These abbreviations were present in the two games he wrote alone:
Cuddles (1984)
In Search of Angels (1985)
He also co-authored a couple of games but they did not have the abbreviations.
I found a few more authors besides Infocom to apply X for EXAMINE in 1986 and around 1990 it seemed to be the norm in most homegrown adventures, at least those published by Zenobi Software in the UK.
Yeah, we all tended to use X for EXAMINE in the late 80s and early 90s; just wasn’t quite sure what might’ve sparked off the trend. Cuddles seems a little early… too early, really… In fact, I’ve just checked the files and it only appears in the later re-released versions of Cuddles. The original version of Cuddles from 1984 (which has a standard Spectrum font) does not include X for Examine. I’m going to say, it’ll be the same for In Search of Angels… i.e. not real early uses.
Cuddles seems a little early… too early, really… In fact, I’ve just checked the files and it only appears in the later re-released versions of Cuddles. The original version of Cuddles from 1984 (which has a standard Spectrum font) does not include X for Examine. I’m going to say, it’ll be the same for In Search of Angels… i.e. not real early uses.
Good catch! I guess we are back to square one then 