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Sorcerer Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 706 Location: USA

Has anybody ever been able to figure a way out to make a trigger that will color the room descriptions in armageddon? I am having difficulty finding a way to recognize the end of a room description. I just wish the developers would put a blank link after the line desc and before any person or object in the room.
Here is a few examples of room descriptions:

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

I am actually in the process of writing a bunch of code that grabs item descriptions in Armageddon, for the purpose of automatically populating a database with value, weight, description, and analysis information. Unfortunately, the only way I could do it was to figure out every common phrase or phrase fragment that migh appear on the line immediately after the description proper. I am still finding a few phrases to put in the "conclude description" list.

Fo room descriptions, I don't think there is any possible solution. There is simply no way to identify, for instance, "A half-giant soldier of Tektolnes walks along here." as not being part of the description. There is an unlimited number of possible phrases that might appear as part of the "person or object is here" lines, especially since people can create their own arbitrary poses. Armageddon automatically linewraps room descriptions. You might be able to tell that line like "the fierce sun." is short, and so possibly the end of a paragraph, but a line like "east, sharp shards of glass set into the top to prevent it being scaled." is just as long as other lines, and ends in a period. Code can't tell that the next line is not part of the description. And there isn't even any consistency about paragraphs being indented. I've seen descriptions in Armageddon with 0 spaces, 1 space, 3 spaces, and 6 spaces at the beginning of a paragraph.

In short, I believe there is no way to identify the end of room descriptions in Armageddon. I have resigned myself to simply editing the room description in the mapper if I happen to notice non-description stuff in it. Person descriptions are easy, and item descriptions are possible, but not room descriptions.

Wizard Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 2320

Inspiration! I just thought of something you _could_ do. You could compare the text grabbed from the mud output with the room description stored in the mapper database, figure out what parts match, set the room description to the part that matches, and color the matching part in the mud output.

The matching algorithm might be a bit tricky. The code would also have to first gag the mud output while it slurped it all in, and then display the colored part followed by everything else. Could be an interesting exercise, though!