Zugg Software :: View topic - Not sure how to do this. Need help with complicated patterns.

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

I've been looking at different Muds lately.

In one of them there are various attacks done that all give different afflictions. The problem is it is all on one line like the following.

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 7:34 am

Can't you just use a single trigger, with a list of attacks and a list of afflictions?

^(list|of|attacks). (list|of|afflictions).$

Adept Joined: 04 May 2007 Posts: 292 Location: Boston

Probably you know this, but it is faster to anchor at the end of a sentence (too). That is interesting I think, like, how many more sentences you would have to check beginning with the word with, then ending with the word ground? Anyway Fang Xianfu did that.

Maybe in this case, ground is more common, I don't know.

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:05 pm

The [tt] was me forgetting to close the tag :P It's fixed now. Still pondering solutions to this, it's a knotty problem.

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

With a focused look, Fred strikes at you with a curved executioner’s greataxe. Your left leg is elegantly struck and swept out from under you, knocking you to the ground.

could instead end up as...

With a focused look, Fred strikes at you with a curved executioner’s greataxe. Your right leg is struck with an awesome blow and pulverized into a bloody stump.

or as...

Swinging a heavy longsword in an underhand arc, Bob strikes at you. Bob slashes your right leg, striking a major artery that splurts blood in all directions.

or as...

Swinging a heavy longsword in an underhand arc, Bob strikes at you. You are slashed in the belly for a mere scratch.

Each attack does something different but there are only so many attacks but a lot of different afflictions. Otherwise I would have to make a trigger for every single type of attack and affliction and that would be a few hundred just for this skill set.

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

Perhaps it would help if we knew what you wanted to do with this information. Do you actually need to know that Bob swung a heavy longsword in an underhand arc? What do you want to do with the different afflictions? From what you have given so far, I don't see a need to know the type of attack, and I would focus on simply triggering on the afflictions, assuming I actually wanted to do or record something dependent on the type of affliction. What is it you actually want to do?

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

Well obviously I do. I also don't want to create 100 triggers that aren't anchored. Why else would I worry about it. I'm just wondering if there is a better way to do it than what I am currently doing, which is having all attacks in a list and making a trigger for that and then all afflictions in separate triggers. So every attack I have two triggers firing instead of one.

Besides setting variable values based upon the affliction given, I also color all attacks and sub the afflictions part of the line so I can easily see what is going on for clarity. The problem with doing "^(?:@attacks)\. (@afflictions)\.$" is I would have a huge switch statement trying to match over 50 lines of text so basically testing for a match twice, once when trigger fired then again to assign variable in script. I'm just asking what you all think would be faster because my current method also seems to be slow. I apologize if the answer to my question should be obvious.

Posted: Fri Mar 27, 2009 9:37 am

Okay, I think this is a pretty simple solution. Here's a test case demonstrating what I'm on about:

Wizard Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 1201

Thanks for the suggestions. That is pretty much the way I am going to do it once i discover ALL of the attack lines. I think I have them all but not sure yet. Smile