Syntax for referring to objects

[Salt Merchant]

Currently you can refer to, for example, a hat as 1.hat, 2.hat and so forth to distinguish between different hats in your inventory, equipment list and presence.

The trouble is that the inventory masks the equipment list and the room's contents. So if there's a hat on your head, a hat in your hands and a hat in the room, all with the same keywords, it's troublesome to refer to the worn hat or the hat in the room.

Here's a suggestion to ease dealing with that. Allow a prefix such as "here" or "worn" to be used.

So, for example, you could type 'look here:hat' to look at that hat on the ground even if you're wearing one or holding one.
Likewise, you could type 'open worn:belt' even if there's a belt in your inventory.
For sake of completeness, you could type 'look held:hat' to look at the hat in your inventory, though it's already the default.

The <number>.<item> syntax would still work. So typing 'look here:2.hat" would look at the second hat in the room's list of contents.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

>key hat

*grin*

Try it.

[Salt Merchant]

>key hat

*grin*

Try it.

That's useful in some instances but not globally. For example:

>key bracer
In Inventory:
  1.bracer - a sandy-yellow chitinous bracer

In Equipment:
  2.bracer - a spiked leather bracer

  3.bracer - a sandy-yellow chitinous bracer

>remove 3.bracer
You are not using it.

>

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Ah ... I see.

[Fathi]

Meh, it's easy enough to get around.

In that situation, I'd just 'remove sandy' or 'remove spiked.'

[Morgenes]

In Arm2 you are going to have more freedom for referring to items.  Not to say that your proposal here doesn't have merit, but just let me give you a taste of what's to come:

Code Select Expand

> inv
You are carrying a cool thing.

> give a cool thing to tiernan the timelord
You give your cool thing to Tiernan the Timelord.

>
Tiernan the Timelord drops his cool thing.

>get a cool thing
You get a cool thing.


yes, that's kinda wordy, but it shows that you can refer to things by more than one keyword.  For those of you conscious of typing too much (and too accustomed to the Arm 1 syntax to learn the new syntax), the above could also have been done as:

Code Select Expand

> inv
You are carrying a cool thing.

> give cool.thing tiernan.timelord
You give your cool thing to Tiernan the Timelord.

>
Tiernan the Timelord drops his cool thing.

>get cool.thing
You get a cool thing.


Note how the '.' syntax has been extended to allow you to include multiple keywords.  Just tie them together with '.'s.

The number syntax will also still be available (get 2.cool.thing).  We're still figuring out how we want to handle the number syntax in the more 'natural language' syntax.  Most likely we'll try and cover as many bases as we can ('get the second cool thing', 'get 2nd cool thing', and 'get 2 cool thing').

I think adding keywords like 'held', 'worn' and 'here' should be possible as the OP suggests, but I'd suggest they just get tacked in like the extra keywords:

Code Select Expand

> look at the red hat here
<description for the red hat that's in the room>

> look red.hat.worn
<description for the red hat that you're wearing>


[Nyr]

This is pretty badass.  We've done some discussions on other Arm 2 syntax things.  I'm sure the codeish people will post it on the blog soon.