'Now where did I put that hat?' or 'OOC: ops wrong target'

[Peabody]

I have noticed, with a few chars, that in some cases when your working for a house there are several (if not tonnes) Of items in a container all with very similar keywords.  And have often sat in a room spending odd amounts of time feeling like an idiot for pulling out the 45th 'red' thing and the 23'rd ceramic thing trying to get that 'red ceramic lantern'.  Or even more fun, pulling out that knot of spice in the Trader when I ment to get my red hat.

I have see the command 'match' implemented in other games where the player would type 'match <keyword>' and recieve a list:

> match red
1 - a red stick - in a sparce back alley
2 - a red stick - in a sparce back alley
3 - a red stick - in a sparce back alley
4 - a blue lantern with red glass panes - inventory
5 - a sexy lowcut red dress - worn
6 - a red skined dwarf

> hold 4.red

This also would be great for distinguishing people targets as well, I mean how many time have you heard OOC: ops wrong target

Wow... I really do like that.  Interesting...

But I think it should be targetable, like count, count blah room, count blah crate...

the way ive seen it, it is targetable.
like match black pack:
In a pack:
1. a black hat
2. a black sword
3. a black whatever

so you could do get 2.black pack and know what your getting.

would work the same for other things...
but match black would default to check room, then it would be targetable by adding an argument, like match mug bar.

[spawnloser]

Actually, I think match shouldn't have a room default...it should be room, inventory and equipment.  Some commands only target some of those areas...this would pose a problem.  Match pack...well, there's one that you're wearing, one in your inventory and two on the ground.  You can look in any of them...but you can only get two of them.  How should match work in these instances?

[Dakkon Black]

I dunno, but however it works DO IT. Thats brilliant!

[Peabody]

I'd think it would list the default in the order they would be targeted.. as for getting the 3rd pack when really its the first pack because two are on your person, people would figure it out pretty quick.

I do see one issue with it tho...

>match wooden
1 - super secret hidden wooden box - a small chamber
2 - a thin agafari wooden ring - a small chamber
3 - a wooden crate - a small chamber

Not sure if there is a workaround, if you had it not list say things with a ldesc or items in the room description then it would become useless to find out what locker is the one your looking for... And get wooden would return 'you cant take that' in the above instance (i think)

[gfair]

I've seen it done in at least one other mud in a way that assigns a unique five or six digit number to all items in the game, for example"

redspice109423  A knot of shiny red spice.
dagger54660      An obsidian dagger.
etc.

And you can refer either to the single keyword, or the item's number ID, so "get redspice pack"  and "get 109423 pack"  would get the same items.  This covers the situation where you have duplicate items so you can refer quickly to them.

Arm might even have this in the code already, just not the interface or not utilized.

[creeper386]

I beleive all MUDs well have object, mob and room numbers, but that'd be the same for each individual object of the same thing.

Both those steel katanas of death have the same number, but the glowing katana of death has a different one. It'd probably be possible to do something like this... Like...

Bone dagger's number is 1
Bone sword's number is 2

You have several of each.

Match bone could return.
A bone dagger 1-1(Then each other dagger would be 1-2, 1-3, etc.)
A bone sword 3-1(Then each other sword would be 2-2, 2-3, etc.)

BUT, I don't know. It'd be kind of crazy, over all I think. And using numbers would be really bleh I think... And wouldn't help without them I don't think when there are multiples... I seem not to have a problem with this once I figure out the ranking of things... Although sometimes it's a hassle... but normally I find a way to get done what I want.

Creeper

[JollyGreenGiant]

Something that might be useful here is something the last mud I played on had - you could specify that you were trying to manipulate an object that was present in the room by appending the word 'here' to various commands.  So if you typed 'look sword', it might show you the sword in your inventory, or the sword in the room, but if you typed 'look sword here', it would only target sword objects in the room.

[creeper386]

Oh oh oh... Idea. Think it'd be best for all targeting things, rather a look command, get or what not could use more then one word. Something using 's would be good. Like...

get 'small yellow pouch' 'large yellow pouch'

put 'small yellow pouch' 'medium yellow pouch'

Course you could use just small, large and medium in that example it'd make it so it'd be abit easier. Maybe make it a check against the item/characters sdesc/keywords. Like...

l 'tall figure red'

You see the tall figure in a red hooded cloak.

l 'short figure red'

You see the short figure in a red hooded cloak.

l 'figure blue'

You see the figure in a blue hooded cloak.


Thats all I got... Wouldn't help completely. And some sort of tag on the end would be nice...

l in bag inven

l in bag room

l in chest room

So on and so forth.


Creeper

[Peabody]

Holy, I was just thinking a simple easy to code command to help find what # some certain object was (mostly in a containers as that where I've run into the most problems)

[JollyGreenGiant]

Actually, Creeper, you don't even need the '' marks if your command parser uses words like 'in', 'on', 'from', etc.

Instead of 'get sword pack' you'd type 'get sword from pack'.  It doesn't matter in the second case how many additional keywords you used - anything after the command (get) and before the keyword (from) refers to one object, and anything after the keyword refers to the second object.

You wouldn't need a list of reference numbers, in this case.  You could say 'get red lantern', and actually get the red lantern.  You could 'put red lantern on table'.  And so on and so forth.

I don't know if the DIKU parser can handle that syntax, though.