I think I tried and failed to use OOPS enough times that it was forced out of my vocabulary…
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If you play IFComp 2025’s Not So Happy Easter 2025 for the ZX Spectrum, and my review recommends that you do, it had the biggest challenge to my IF habits I’ve encountered for a while. That is, L is LOAD (fastload a game from RAM) and not LOOK. To look, you type LOOK or R. I zapped my game a few times with that. It didn’t hurt much because, not knowing how kind the game would be, I was saving states frequently anyway.
-Wade
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I’m very curious how you end up with R for LOOK. Is the default phrasing in the game REGARD or something like that?
I speculated REFRESH in my review but on second thoughts I doubt that’s correct. In truth I don’t know. The game is translated from Czech, and I’m not sure if it’s the author’s own engine or a commercial one like PAW or something. I feel like anyone in that 8-bit UK/Eurogame circle could probably make that assessment quickly.
-Wade
I made a game once that was deliberately difficult to quit, but the game was essentially a shitpost about Vim so I maintain that it was justified in that case.
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I always (and still do) think g should be get (if anything) and not again. To repeat the last command, should be up arrow.
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Am I the only one who’s first guess for o was mnemonic for open to load a save file?
I do agree g for get makes more sense than g for again, but then again, I’m used to up/down arrowing to go through command history at the Linux command line.
I wonder if there are any parser games that use b and f for back/backward and front/forward.
Is H for help not common in parser games or did no one think to list it?
Kind of feel like J for Jump, K for Kick, and P for Punch would make sense if one wanted to implement some moves common in more action-oriented games.
Drawing a blank on things m, r, v, or y could be shorthand for if one went beyond the standards.
Are there any parser games that use two letter commands other than the compass diagonals?
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R is REDESCRIBE. It dates back to at least The Quill. I’m staggered that no one on here knows that. Don’t any of you play real adventures? Anyway, there’s no reason why the author can’t add L as a synonym for R, just as you would expect them to add X as a synonym for EXAMINE.
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It’s pretty fascinating to read what authors of different languages use for one-letter abbreviations which make perfect sense to them but not to English speakers. The reverse must be true as well…
I remember being wowed you could shorten INVENTORY and EXAMINE.
I often reassign OUT to O in Inform, because Inform has odd behavior with OUT anyway (tries to exit first). Maybe doing so is partially showing off to myself that I know how to “kill” standard oops behavior. But since up-arrowing is so much more commonplace, O isn’t really a useful shortcut. You can just control-arrow.
And yes O only saves 2 keystrokes but I like when it’s kept very simple. Also, I like having it so O/OUT is mapped to the only exit (if it’s not OUT itself, of course. That’s an infinite loop.)
I also use T for talk, which is especially useful if there is usually only one target NPC to talk to.
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What’s the standard practice for navigating on a ship? In my game you can use p, a, b for port, aft, bow. But I was a little confused about what to do for starboard since s is already taken.
Usually both the cardinal and ship directions work, so the player could, for example, use F or E to move forward. S is intentionally used to abbreviate both south and starboard, therefore most IF ships are travelling east.
S: starboard (south)
P: port (north)
F: fore/forward (east)
A: aft (west)
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Shogun used SB for STARBOARD.
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I’m surprised at how many people don’t know OOPS/O. It’s still standard in Inform.
I think I maybe used oops ten times during my lifetime. With modern computers/intetpreters I don’t see the value of it, I just scroll through the history and change the spelling. I don’t play on mobiles where it may be useful.
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Both G and O became largely obsolete when interpreters started supporting up-arrow. But G still gets some use – you sometimes want to type PUSH BUTTON. G. G. G or some such thing.
(If you want to repeat that whole one-liner with up-arrow! Is what I mean.)
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The need to reduce typing is even greater on mobile, where I don’t think you have up-arrow.
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Inform games in French (or, at the very least, most of them, not sure when it was added to the library) use PR for Prendre (take). I’m not sure why because I don’t think P is used for anything, and I wasn’t there when the libs were translated. Donjon fi kept the same abbreviations as Inform in order to be easier to use for players who are used to Inform games.
I have never been able to get the OOPS command to work – I got someone to give me some examples one time and thought I understood what it was supposed to do and tried it in a bunch of games and it just errored every time
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The trick with OOPS is it depends on recognizing which words are inappropriate in the context and which words aren’t in the game’s dictionary at all. Infocom games would usually make this clear (“sorry, I don’t know the word ___”), but Inform (and Dialog!) games don’t by default, which makes OOPS require an annoying amount of guesswork on the player’s part.
Which is part of why I think it’s an obsolete convenience that we don’t need to reserve a single-letter abbreviation for, or keep incorporating into new generations of parsers!
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Not sure if the original 1980 version of Eamon had the following but I know Eamon Deluxe understands meaningful abbreviations when the objects and characters are clearly defined.
E.g. typing A P the game interprets it as ATTACK PIRATE when the pirate is present. You could also type e.g. ATT PI or similar.