Object Targeting

Have a new general feature to suggest, or think one should be tweaked? Share your ideas here.
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Maina
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Location: Colorado

Object Targeting

Post by Maina »

I'm not sure what the priority is for multiple objects with the same keyword in various places in a room.

I would first like to suggest an 'object manipulation' and/or 'object matching' help file/wiki page that explains the various commands for object manipulation but also what order targeting looks for matches.

Something like (and I doubt this is the order this game uses):

Code: Select all

The matching system prioritizes like so:
1) Items in your hands
2) Other characters
3) Items worn on your character
4) Items in the room
5) Items inside containers
Second, I would like to suggest some kind of strict matching order like the above? While I like that you can ignore putting things in your hands first here, it can be frustrating to 'put skull in trash' and it works, but then when you try to put a second skull in the trash you get "The small polished granite skull is already in the wooden trash barrel!" despite having more in the same container the first one came from.

But then when I put a pelt on a tanning frame and try to clean it, it attempts to target the pelt in my bag (which can't be cleaned in my bag) instead of the one in the frame.

It's inconsistent.

I would also maybe suggest that, if an object is already where you are trying to put it, matching keeps searching for an object that isn't where you want to put it and targets that one instead? So in the aforementioned skull example, even if you match to objects in the room before worn objects, it will see that the first skull is already in the target trash barrel and keeps looking to find the second skull.
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Teyarflow
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Re: Object Targeting

Post by Teyarflow »

The only problem I've had with this so far is cleaning pelts on the tanning frame. At first I worried it was eating my pelts.
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Rias
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Re: Object Targeting

Post by Rias »

This is one of those tricky things where the "sensible" default is going to vary from command to command, person to person, and situation to situation. For instance, the CLEAN command defaults to stuff in your own inventory because presumably you'd want to default to cleaning your own shirt you're holding in hand or have in your pack rather than the one sitting in a crate in the room that was left there a month back. But then when it comes to cleaning pelts, you'd want to clean the one on the tanning frame first. They both fire from the same CLEAN command though, and the game sadly has no way to discern a player's intent beyond what they specifically type in the command.

With stuff like that it can be a constantly-moving target based on what different characters spend their time doing, or just personal preference. So I'm happy to consider tweaking the defaults if enough people call for specific ones, but only if there's a pretty overwhelming majority that call for that specific case.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
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Maina
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Re: Object Targeting

Post by Maina »

I wasn't asking for any specific change; I'm sorry if it came across that way.

The idea was just to have it consistent and have that consistency documented so you know what to expect and when you'll have to add specificity to your commands rather than using trial-and-error. It can be confusing to have something work properly in one case then, in another case, use that same command and it doesn't.

I'm not advocating for every possible use of the commands to work perfectly every time. Just to have object targeting work the same across commands - and to have the method available in a help file - so there are no unpleasant/confusing surprises.

I'm not sure if that came across in my initial post.
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Maina
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Re: Object Targeting

Post by Maina »

Could we please revisit this?

I just had a held backpack and a worn one. Held backpack had 2 pendants in it.

get pendant from backpack/put pendant in backp 2

took the pendant from the held backpack and put it in the worn one

transfer pendant from backpack to backp 2

transferred the pendant from the worn backpack back to the held one

The inconsistency with item targeting is really, really frustrating and unintuitive.
Serity
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Re: Object Targeting

Post by Serity »

This came up again in today's round-table and I was helpfully informed that the thread already exists, so putting in my two cents, since Rias asked for input from as many people as possible and noted that an option/setting is on the table.

When I do "look itemname", and, really, most commands, this should generally be the priority, I think, which contextually makes the most sense in my opinion:

Code: Select all

1. the object in my hands
2. the object I'm wearing
3. the object in the room
4. the object in containers on me
5. the object in containers in the room.
When I do "get itemname", I think it should skip 1 and 2 (we don't want to get something we're already holding!), so perhaps the 'findObject' function could have parameters that skip these (e.g. findObject(chara,search_term,skipHands,skipWorn,skipRoom...))?

Clean is a tricky one, but there is already some plausible context-sensitivity: if there's a tanning rack object (or an equivalent that behaves as such) in the room, check the contents there, first, before everything else (if it checks the rack again, I'm not sure it will be that problematic, though it's certainly not optimized to do so...). It's a pretty special case, after all, since the object needs to be on the rack to clean it.

And as Maina noted, there's a distinct targeting difference between 'transfer' and every other command that, at the very least if nothing else is done, should be made uniform.
Gorth
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Re: Object Targeting

Post by Gorth »

I'd like to throw the full weight of my support, forty pounds or so considering, behind Serity here. Most MUDs I've played have a targetting helpful, at the very least, but the way this game works makes it difficult to do, as such. I don't see why TRANSFER should work different from GET should work differently from CLEAN. I've long wrestled with it in this game, from day one, and it's always given me a headache.
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