One tester's game polish tips for parser authors

I mitigated and qualified the wording in the cantGo paragraph of the original post. I think I’m realizing I didn’t quite mean how it ended up sounding. I mainly just advocated for You can’t go that way to be replaced when the player really doesn’t know why they can’t go that way other than the fact it’s not programmed as an exit.
Also added the bit about British/American…
@AmandaB @Warrigal

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ZIL have the NEXIT for customized can’t go messages. In Inform6 you can set cant_go to a routine for customized messages.

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I think using the exit lister is a pretty decent default alternative to “You can’t go…”

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----rolls up sleeves, cracks knuckles----

Looking forward to this area. Wax first and revolving doors, of course.

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Wax first? Hmmm I was not aware of that…

>x assistant
Your assistant, only known as "R", wears a "When in doubt, lick it out! - Sun Tzu"
tee shirt. He sports a Titanium Tongue(tm) for your advanced licking experience.
He carries a TT-belt with spare TTs to handle the wear and tear of extended
surface licks.
>x titanium tongue
This Titanium Tongue(tm) has a guaranteed lifetime of 10,000 licks.
Warrantly void if the surface to be licked has not been properly waxed.

I should have checked out the warranty statement…

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Would you like a disambiguation response with that?

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Ok in how many ways I can use ''wax"…
(1) waxing floors etc
(2) waxing skin
…?

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You seem to assume it’s a verb…

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The thing about nouns where the other way of spelling it is on screen, you can at least see the other spelling and so are likely to be reminded of it in the case of unexpected behaviour.

So if the game says, ‘There’s a tire lying against the post,’ and a player types GET TYRE, and receives ‘YOU CAN’T SEE THAT’ in return, there’s a 95% chance they’ll immediately realise what happened and can alter their spelling. It’s still better to cater for both spellings behind the scenes, but at least this isn’t a wall.

TORCH/FLASHLIGHT comes up, and those are whole different words, but it’s usually okay because the game declares the name of the item onscreen.

COLOR/COLOUR can be significant, because colour is a broader concept that comes up a lot in IF, but the word won’t necessarily be spelled on the screen in the author’s preferred manner at the moment you want to type it.

Verb differences can be more serious, because the verb you want will not be on screen.

I can name the single verb that has caused real problems for me in multiple games: PAT. Because Americans don’t PAT animals, they PET them. But in the UK or Australia, you’d PAT the animal. I have frequently tried to PAT animals in games and got a response indicating the verb wasn’t recognised. And it took a whole game of ignorance for me to discover I could have used PET. I still have to think about this every time it happens, because they’re different words that give whole different senses in my brain.

Anyway, they’re the main ones that have come up for me. Maybe others can chime in.

-Wade

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Just changed my PET verb to include ‘pat’…

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GRAY/GREY can be a big one… and I got some funny looks from my outside-the-border testers for using ‘plow’ instead of ‘plough’…

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Probably not. Here’s a few more that spring to mind:

English American
bill check
bonnet hood
boot trunk
cheque check
chips fries
dummy pacifier
gaol jail
garbage bin trash can
lolly candy
nappy diaper
petrol gas
serviette napkin
tyre tire
pocket money allowance

Isn’t language fun?

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Lorry/truck.
Biscuit/cookie
Crisps/potato chips

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Rucksack / backpack

I wonder if there’s a difference between British English with Australian or African? I think Canada/Asia are mostly patterned after British. I’m not trying to be racist, but I do wonder if there’s a specific lists that games have, that accounts for International dialects.

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  1. waxing Moon.
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Most countries that are British colonies or former British colonies generally use British spelling, although there are always a few local exceptions. For this reason, things like word processors with good language support and proofing tools will have multiple English dictionaries.

Although English (as in British) spelling is fairly consistent, there are zillions of local slang and colloquial terms and these vary from country to country and even region to region. We have lots of foreign immigants in Australia and they are killing our beautiful language, simply because we have to dumb down all our slang so that they can understand us. And that’s not being racist, it’s just a sorry fact of life. I’m sure it happens in other countries, too.

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I picked up fixin as a verb shortly after I moved to Texas. A teacher in my department pointed it out.

I’m fixin to get out of here. :wink:

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I wonder if similar sentiments were had between the Anglo-Saxons and the Normans.

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I don’t think we want this topic to go off on any kind of long-winded tangent, but I don’t think immigration has much to do with it.

I think change comes through from the young. The big factor with young people now is the internet. Kids take language from their family and environment and what they get from the media. Language in Youtube content and such has a strong influence because it’s in the context of what young people are interested in sharing with other young people.

Nine in ten videos my 10-year-old nephew watches are made by people in the USA. He uses the language and emphases and terms he gets from those videos, and I see all his friends know and say the same stuff. Sometimes I say to him, “Australians say it like this,” after I thought what he said sounded weird. Sometimes he says, “I prefer it the way I said it.” :slight_smile:

Most Australians under 30 now say what sounds like ‘Noo’ (rhymes with Moo) when they say the word ‘New,’ or they say ‘Nood’ instead of ‘Newd’ for ‘Nude’. This change has only happened in the last 15 years, I reckon, based on the pervasiveness of US media.

So I reckon the internet as the fastest driver of language change, and I think the majority of what’s disseminated by it in English circles is from the USA. Which is logical based on population.

-Wade

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As an English-speaking American and also a language enthusiast, I hate browsing another language’s lexicon, so to speak, and seeing all the ugly English loanwords. I unrealistically wish languages could keep their own unique charm without being dumbed and diluted by globalization. I was enchanted by Icelandic, which at least until recent years, made concerted efforts to coin new Icelandic words for foreign loans. And agreed that the Internet seems poised to slaughter beautiful language forever.
Also as a US speaker, I’m used to it, but I don’t consider it superior to other forms. I think it has about the least charming and romantic sound of any dialect I know…

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