Re: Lojban Adventure - volunteer wanted

[Daniel Biddle <deltab@ps.cus.umist.ac.uk>]

coi ro do
.i de'i 1999-03-03 la lojbab. cusku

> From: Bob LeChevalier-Logical Language Group <lojbab@lojban.org>
> 
> A long time ago Nick Nicholas translated the classic Adventure game
> (colossal cave) text into Lojban, but modifying the program to take Lojban
> commands was never completed.
> 
> I've been contacted by someone in the Interactive Fiction community who
> would like to see us complete the game as an example of language teaching
> using interactive fiction, totally independent of its obvious value in
> actually helping people learn Lojban.  He has suggested that rather than
> fiddling with archaic programs, that we use one of the modern tools for
> interactive fiction.  Anyone interested can see rec.games.int-fiction
> (there is an FAQ), and he suggested Inform in particular
:
> Anyone interested who has seriously checked out what it will take to
> complete the job and test it, given that all the text of the classic data
> file is translated, but the commands would have to be modified as well as
> perhaps some small amounts of text that were hard-coded in the original
> program, can contact me.

Indeed, translating the Inform libraries would provide a very good base
for Lojbanic interactive fiction (.i.e'u lo'u cpedu skami lisri bau la
lojban. le'u tanru mapti pei ra) - which, hopefully, there will be more of
in the future.

Adapting Inform to handle Lojban will be an interesting challenge: on the
one hand, Lojban does not have gender, number, or animation, so those can
be ignored. However it has many more anaphora than Inform currently
handles, and other features that will need more than superficial changes
to the parsing code. I think it's well worth supporting these features: it
annoys me when a game misunderstands what I mean by 'he' or 'it', and then
complains that I'm trying to do something nonsensical. Being able to
assign my own choice of pronoun could save me a lot of typing. 

So, to start considering these problems: what should be the general form
of a player command, given that some player input is clarification or
correction of a previous entry, or the answer to a question from the
computer? Should every command start with 'ko', and if so, should that be
the prompt (to save on typing)?

> This is not a small job - the text file is around 100K of Lojban, and may
> need some fiddling with to fit the current file models - which look like
> they are based on C code.

I'd be interested in seeing it.

.i.o'a le nu mi cusku bau la lojban. xlali
.i co'o mi'e la deltab.