Having to type nouns out in full

[Anonymous]

I'm not very sure how to subject this, and I hope the subject I gave work.

I'm a very new player, and the hardest thing for me, coming from a smaug mud is that I have to type out nouns in full. In what I am used to, you only need to look at part of a name.

For example, a player called Zeios. To look at him in this mud I need to "l Zeios". I am not used to this as I am used to using only the first two letters or so of a name, which the mud I usually play completes for me. "l z" instead of "l zeios" is much easier to type.

Is there anychance of this being brought in or is it too hard to code in?

Just a suggestion to make it easier for people from smaug muds to play.

[Kalden]

I don't see why they don't move to this, either.

Also coding more things to get all.thing. I wish I could put all.coins cloak

[Bestatte]

First of all, you can create up to 10 aliases within the game itself.

alias zeios z

That's all there is to it, and voila - l z will return look zeios!

You can also create as many aliases as your telnet client will allow.

Although z isn't a common letter for someone's name in the game, let's try something more common so you can see why it would be difficult:

We've got a girl named Polly, a man named Palom, you are wearing a backpack, and there's a red pack on the floor.

l p

How many things do you supposed you're gonna look at before you end up looking at the thing you intended to look at?

Or how about the red-haired boy, a woman named Beulah, the juggler's ball someone dropped on the ground, and the battered wooden table.

l b

Which is the system gonna make you look at first?

Honestly though, it's a text game. Text games require you to type. I really don't think it's that big an issue that the coders should need to spend who knows how much time trying to "fix," since it really isn't broken in the first place.

[Lazloth]

alias zeios z

That's all there is to it, and voila - l z will return look zeios!

I'm fairly sure this is not the case, though I don't use my ingame aliases as real aliases.  alias lz look zeios would be the desired string most likely.

We've got a girl named Polly, a man named Palom, you are wearing a backpack, and there's a red pack on the floor.

How many things do you supposed you're gonna look at before you end up looking at the thing you intended to look at?

If there are three elves, and you're using elf as an identifier, or four hooded figures, or two templars, what do you do?  Iterate through; it's the same with string completion.  What I miss about early ROMs is the no argument iterator : look 1. == look at the first thing in the room that's not you.

To the original Guest, there are mud clients that offer tcsh-like tab-completion: tintin++ and its descendants (I know nothing of zMud etc) come to mind.  This, of course, means that you do the legwork in compiling a tab.txt file and add to it as you meet [presumably] people.

I won't address the smaug comment except to say the mod has been around muds much longer than smaug has been in existence.

[Cenghiz]

I must confess I missed my exMUD in the beginning. I used to type just "l s,get s, c ide s, dro s, sac s.... But I believe it's a hard work to code that. I'd be happier if some more creatures, items and such is coded at that time. You'll get used to it. But, especially for 'rynth rats, look 1. or look 3. would be very fine. I was bored of seeing myself or trying to steal from myself all the time at the beginning.... Would it be that hard?

[gfair]

Yeah, you need some auto-complete code to figure out what was being referred to.  For example - 'l b' could means look black, bone, Besatte, bracer, blue sash, and all manner of things.  Which one are you looking at?  We already can shorten 'look' to 'l', I think that's a good step.  Also, there are many truncated commands:

stat
sco
n,e,s,w
Quotes '
Emotes ~ em
Referring to yourself in emotes me @

and more.

Though this would be nice, it would require a lot of work, potential bugs, and always potential disasters for typing the wrong thing in a hurry.

I think its in part to avoid confusion...

Lets say Johnson, Johanany, and Johansen are all in a room.

tell joh Hey.
Ooc ack, meant Johansen

tell joha Hey
ooc ACK meant Johansen!

you get the point.
that is extreme... but it also would stop accidental hand-tos, and stuff.
give 10000000 coins john
ooc ACk, hand that back please?

because in a world where we dont know everyone's names, a shortened version might be someone elses.

[God]

I don't know a thing about coding, but is it possible to code it so that every item responds to a shortened version of itself? Like, type kill mek instead of kill mekillot or something. Just an idea.

[Master Z]

I don't know a thing about coding, but is it possible to code it so that every item responds to a shortened version of itself? Like, type kill mek instead of kill mekillot or something. Just an idea.

This answer may not be not be -quite- what you're asking, for forgive me if I'm not helping.

An object will have a list of keywords, which are the words you can type to refer to it. A lot of the time, an object will indeed have a common shortening as one of its keywords, like "look sword" for a broadsword, or whatever. If you think of a nifty keyword idea, like mek for mekillot (since everyone calls them that), I think there'd be no harm in using the idea command to suggest it.

[Plazgoth]

With many clients you have the option to tabcomplete as well. I like the mushcleint one which actually searches your buffer and completes the word it finds to match.

So in a situation like this:

The tired mudder tells you in sirihish:
 "My name is Jabberwookeee"

You can just type 'l jab <tab>' and it will complete the full name for you.


Just an alternative for shortening the keystrokes.