Parser games need abbreviations

Authoring
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This thought came from my first couple of random IFComp choices, but I see no need to name names.

The need to reduce redundant typing has been recognized since the First Age. ADVENT recognized the cardinal direction letters, and even the earliest known release of Zork I had I, L, and Q. It included IT and other pronouns, short synonyms, like BOX for the starting MAILBOX, and even sensible object defaults, so you can just type OPEN to open the kitchen window. Most of the Infocom games are pretty good about this sort of thing. Nowadays the parser development systems tend to supply this functionality out of the box.

But authors need to watch out for these things.

If you give me a flashlight as a plot-crucial inventory item, and don’t set LIGHT or TORCH as synonyms, it will hurt my judgment of your game.

If your game understands HER as the woman from the last scene instead of the woman I’m with now, that’s an outright bug.

If Q is not recognized, your game is dead to me. :wink:

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What does Q do as an abbreviation?

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So much emphasis on Q, so little respect for the humble O…

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That’s QUIT, of course.

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It does make me wonder what single letters are easily available for authors to use.

Inventory, Look, eXamine, aGain, Zwait are all used pretty frequently.

N, E, S, W, U, D are standard in games with compass navigation.

Q and O are unlikely to be missed, even if they’re standard.

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6

Don’t make it hard for me to leave your game.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a number of infuriating quirks. One of the worst is that you have to hit Enter one extra time to quit. It’s maddening!

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See, I just close the window or Ctrl-C. The only time I actually use QUIT is when writing regression test scripts!

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Is there like a master list of expected abbreviations somewhere?

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I have written custom responses for quit, but I really do that for me. I doubt many players see them (I just close windows).

I include shortcuts for new mechanics, as that seems like a courteous thing to do.

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Some interpreters (I know Qtads is one) actually warn against closing the window without quitting.

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That honestly seems like a nice feature to have (so that I don’t lose all my progress by closing without saving), but I’m afraid none of my commonly-used interpreters do that.

Actually, no. Wait. Unix Frotz doesn’t let you Ctrl-C out, so if you get the program into an infinite loop (couldn’t be me…), you have to open another terminal to kill it. I do find that immensely frustrating.

But then again, I don’t play any IFComp entries in Unix Frotz; when it comes to the Z-machine, Gargoyle just looks so much nicer!

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One of the many things I love about Lectrote is that it saves your place automatically, so when you reopen the game you can continue exactly where you left off!

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Yeah, autosaves in recent web interpreters are so nice, I’d vastly prefer that over a warning when closing the program!

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That would make Q even more necessary!

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You could do a lot worse than the list Infocom ended up with:
D, E, G, I, L, N, NE, NW, O, Q, S, SE, SW, U, W, X, Z

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I don’t think anyone really uses O any more, though.

A and T are popular for conversation systems.

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Yeah, IN and OUT are short enough that it’s not really worth it.

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  • cardinal directions: N, E, W, S, NE, NW, SE, SW
  • T: talk/tell
  • I: inventory
  • A: ask
  • G: again/repeat previous command
  • L: look at room description
  • Z: wait
  • X: examine

rarer:

  • Q: quit
  • U: up
  • D: down
  • O: oops
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No no no. O is for OOPS.

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In Infocom games, O is actually OOPS (a way of replacing a misspelled word without retyping the whole command), which tells you how often that’s used nowadays!

I’m sure if UNDO had existed earlier it would have gotten an abbreviation.

1 Like