begin Glyph Lefkowitz quotation:

Nick, I think you're right. I'm going to scrap the verb-oriented dispatch system for something MUCH more like Inform's style. I'm still working out the design, but when I've got something substantial, I'll post again.

Good heavens. Well I must admit that my earlier messages were driven largely by naivete rather than pure technical prowess. I've been playing with twisted-python more and more lately, and have been trying to build a smallish game. As such, I think I'm getting a feel for what you had in mind pre-0.8.x, so let me post what I was thinking about the nasty verb problem (goddamn action-oriented structures in an object-oriented world!). I had thought about your verb-based dispatch system, and decided that before I'd sit down and read your code, I'd think about how I would implement such a beast. I decided that all basic verbs would be implemented in the direct object. As such, that meant that the parser would identify the DO rather than the verb, initially, and then go looking for the object that represents the DO. The search pattern for a sentence with no DO ("Shoot at dalek") would be actor, actor's contents, and the contents of actor's location. So you could have a player with laser-eyes, a handgun, and a nearby trebuchet, all capable of "shoot"ing, but the laser-eyes would win out unless a DO was specified. Indirect objects would have a special kind of verb form for "catching" actions performed by direct objects. They'd accept the sentence's DO as the subject, as well as any prepositions (to know if you're putting the coin IN the piggy bank or merely ON it). Pre- and post- hooks are easily done by overloading and putting code before or after you call your parent's version of a verb. Anyway, this is largely cafe musing, but I had diagrammed out the traditional "throw rock at dalek" scenario and it seemed to make sense. I'm sure there are better ways to merge the handling of verbs with python's object system. It is kind of neat to just read through an object and pull out functions that match a simple pattern. Left unadressed was the synonym problem (making "examine" and "look at" synonymous in the general case), though I doubt it's that complicated. -- You are not entitled to your opinions. 01234567 <- The amazing indent-o-meter! ^ Matt McIrvin: the Nikola Tesla of tab damage.