ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: A question about Style

Ant_222 — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:01:56 GMT

Do you find my question ridiculous?
I really need your help for no text adventures that I have seen use this style of narration, which makes learning from existing sources futile. I only can ask...

Re: A question about Style

Ant_222 — Tue, 13 May 2008 06:36:38 GMT

Hello, mr. Micawber

Looks like I have to provide some further explanations.
In a traditional text adventure the player enters text commands which are parsed/interpreted by the game's engine, and gets the result in the form a textual description. In the example above the commands were marked with ">" (a common symbol to denote command line prompt), and followed by possible responses from the game. The language parsers in early games were quite primitive, so the player interacted with the computer via simple constructions like command+object, and articles were usually ignored. Even modern games of this genre inherit the syntax of the elder games, although with some improvements.

If I haven't explained it well, all I can do is refer you to Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_adventure

And an example, of course: The End Means Escape (http://www.wurb.com/if/game/1016)
(plus you'll need the TADS inerpreter to open the game file: http://www.tads.org/t3dl/pksetup.exe â just in case you really want to try)

EDIT: Maybe I didn't formulate my question clear enough: Will the present tense in item descriptions (i.e. after EXAMINE) peacefully coexist with the Past Tense used to desribe the hero's actions (for commands GO, TAKE, USE, REST, ATTACK, TALK and so on...) in a diary-like form.

Re: A question about Style

Mister Micawber — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:55:14 GMT

.
Never having played one of the games, I suppose the 'Examine [mosquito]' is a hint to the player to do that? It sounds fine and makes perfect sense to me. To be more modern, you might want to say 'Check out [mosquito]' â if you are speaking of the word 'mosquito' â or 'Check out [the mosquito]' if you are speaking of a pictured insect.

In a lowland, I think.

A question about Style

Ant_222 — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:56:47 GMT

Hello everybody!

Probably, you already know of my infamous venture âthe translation of an adventure game called Star Heritage.

Below I'll repeat part of my answer to Huevos, whom I shall thank for accidently reminding me of the problem that I now ask you to help me with:

Â«I have tried to preserve the original (Russian) way of narraion, which is done:

1) From the first person perspective,
2) In the past tense,
So most of the time it looks pretty much like a diary.Â»

...Such is the most of the narration, but the descriptions of various items â those which you'd get in response to the "examine" command in traditional text adventures â are provided in the Present tense. Keeping the player envolved, this doesn't sound unnatureal in Russian, but...

Is it acceptable in English?

EXAMPLE (no, it's not from the game I just thought it out):

> GO NORTH
I easily went down the hill and found myself in(on?) a gloomy lowland. Only the strained buzz of moscitoes making their way through the thick, moist air disturbed the silence. They were the only creatures here, but that was more than compensated by their number.
> examine mosquito
Nothing unusual, except for the very long proboscis, probably useful for some animals covered with fur
> examine air
The air is extremly moist and smells of decaying plants.