I’m playing One King and it’s super clear to me exactly what I need to do… and I cannot get the parser to understand me in the slightest. It’s really weird! I’m at a riverbank, and I have two things I need to hand over. Here’s what I’m getting:
give goat to ferryman
You present the goat to Alcaz. His gaze shifts from your face to the goat. “I don’t think the goat holds any magical secrets,” he says.
present goat to ferryman
You present the goat to Alcaz. His gaze shifts from your face to the goat. “I don’t think the goat holds any magical secrets,” he says.
sacrifice goat
You present the goat to Alcaz. His gaze shifts from your face to the goat. “I don’t think the goat holds any magical secrets,” he says.
sacrifice goat to ferryman
You present the goat to Alcaz. His gaze shifts from your face to the goat. “I don’t think the goat holds any magical secrets,” he says.
present ring to ferryman
You present the gold ring to Alcaz. His gaze shifts from your face to the gold ring. “I don’t think the gold ring holds any magical secrets,” he says.
Yes the ferryman is only in scope if you actually enter the boat he is standing in, so indeed you need to go south first. It would not do to let players toss the payment to the ferryman and let the ferryman “get away with it” . Maybe I should add something to that effect, thx for your feedback!
@SomeOne2 if the player does an inventory (or an x me or just a look) they will see the ring marked as payment (to the ferryman). the goat is marked as something else…
@lpsmith the game is verb noun (and is supposed to ignore everything after the noun) and this applies to all actions, including the presenting action. It will ignore the to <some NPC> part. If nobody else is in the room with the player, presenting something will target your companion. If someone (or something) else is in the room which can be a target for presenting something, then that person or thing will be automatically targeted instead. I made a note to improve on giving better feedback on using this command.
I would definitely recommend having the parser fail if the user puts in extra words instead of having the parser ignore those words silently. If I had been able to tell immediately that the ferryman was out of scope, I could have figured things out a lot faster.
You got a very good point there. I added the ignoring part because I saw a lot of people trying to add things which caused the parser to fail to recognize the noun, causing them to think the game did not recognize the noun or some other confusion.
The present verb was supposed to just present something, but I can imagine people might want to try to present that something to a specific entity, as you mentioned. It does make sense to check if people are trying to present things to an NPC and act accordingly. Thank you for your feedback!
For me, I found the new error messages cute and thematic, but more confusing in general than the standard error messages. It was usually unclear to me why I got the error at all. I think all you need to do is go back to the original error message, figure out exactly what information in conveys, then rework that information into your thematic messages. (Alternatively, just revert to the original messages–while it was cute to get an error message from the protagonist, it was also a moment of disconnect for me, because I am the protagonist, and suddenly I’m being addressed as a player of the game, instead of the PC.)
OK, I have another hint request, for what to do with the altar. Spoilers, I suppose…
The last time I was at this altar, I could LOOT ALTAR and free the goat within. This time, Lydia’s in it, and this is what I get:
>smite corpse
You bring your sword down upon the nearest corpse, the blade sinking into its decaying flesh. The force of your blow cleaves through its brittle bones.
The corpse’s body collapses under the force of your blow. In an instant, its form bursts into a cloud of noxious particles, carried away by an ethereal wind, which seems to erase the remnants of its cursed existence.
The earth stirs, and another corpse emerges from the ground.
From within the altar, Lydia’s muffled voice reaches your ears as she calls out to you. “My lord, this is not the time for heroic exploits! Get me out of here before whatever is out there decides to dine on a priestess instead!”
>loot altar
Let’s deal with the corpses before we get to the spoils.
Small correction: at the altar the player will find wandering corpses so the command would be ‘smite corpses’ … think zombies. They do have a bit more meat on the bones than your typical skeleton army. …
. Maybe I should add something to that effect, thx for your feedback!
…