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Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 2:54 am

On my mud there are a few people wanting to be pirates in my city. I would like to somehow have my typing translated into pirate speak. I have found some conversion sites which i guess use the same type of thing as zmud to do it. Wondered if I could get some advice of how/where to start this project. I have found pirates.lang file but no idea how to use it if it is useable. thanks

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 4:42 am

What you're looking for is probably %subregex. You can use an alias like this:

#alias say {~say @Piratenate(%-1)}

The @Piratenate function will execute a series of %subregexes on the parameters, doing whatever you want them to do. Changing "you" to "ye", for example. You can then reuse @Piratenate for any other times you want your text Pirateified.

I wouldn't advise finding a way to convert ALL your text into pirate-speak, because then you won't be able to send normal commands or do zMUD scripting without it being piratenated. Also, I believe pirates.lang is used to convert actual text in zMUD to pirate speak. That is, menu items, preferences, and so on. It's like translating it into a different language (just like the comedy Google language options), which is what I believe the .lang files are for.

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 1:51 pm

so how would i set up for example yes = aye in the @piratenate variable ? function or above?

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 6:45 pm

Look up %subregex and #function. You'll want something like this:

#FU Piratenate {%subregex(%subregex(%-1,yes,aye),you,ye)}

You can add as many as you like, then you just use @Piratenate as I described above.

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:12 am

hate to be dumb about this but i just tried this

%subregex( %subregex( %-1, yes, aye), you, ye),captain,Cap'n)

then I said

say yes you captain

I got

Yous say, "Aye ye captain,captain,Cap'n)"

just need to get a grip of how i add this and then im good to go as I can see it is exactly what I want

I can then put all this in a class for rp

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 1:47 am

You only have two %subregexes there. You need this:

%subregex(%-1,yes,aye)
%subregex(<previous string>,you,ye)
%subregex(<previous string>,captain,Cap'n)

to get %subregex(%subregex(%subregex(%-1,yes,aye),you,ye),captain,Cap'n)

Magician Joined: 17 Apr 2005 Posts: 496

No code (yet) but some thoughts, taken from http://pirate.monkeyness.com/suggest ...

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 3:54 am

ok here is what i got so far

I use a pirate translate site for posting things in city bulletin boards which works great

Speed...o' course we always all be havin' speed problems, but here th' problem would be less wi' th' parse speed on th' function (if yer says be delayed by a couple o' milliseconds most swabbies wouldna care) an' more by th' time 't would take t' add new translations t' th' function. Thar be probably a decent way t' run th' entire thin' off o' a strin' list directly, or possibly easier would be t' maintain a strin' list dictionary an' a second function which completely rewrites th' first function usin' th' dictionary (i.e. t' add a word, add 't t' th' strin' list an' then call th' update function)

then I have the above with some words in it for speaking while rp it is in a class which i switch off when fighting chatting none pirate or other such things that sort of looks like

say ok captain lets get the sailors together and go and find that enemy fred

with the above code on that reads

You say, "Ok Cap'n lets get the Jack tars together and go and find that shark bait fred".

i got a problem as you said with a word like hi

say hi higher his hit hills him
translates to
You say, "Ahoy ahoygher ahoys ahoyt ahoylls ahoym"

anything i can do to stop this - the other problems i can live with but its a shame if i cant use words like

me hi my and

stark

Magician Joined: 17 Apr 2005 Posts: 496

A quick fix is to change your pattern from, for example:

%regex( ... , "you", "ye")

to

%regex( ... , "(\W)you(\W)","%%1ye%%2")

Short explanation: \W (note capitalization) is a "character class", basically it means "match a non-word character" (\w, again note lack of capitalization, means "match any word character"...for future reference). Putting the parentheses around it allows you to reference it later, since otherwise the charcters immediately in front of and after would be removed...and the %%1 and %%2 are putting those characters back in correctly, double %s because it is/will be inside a function...if we had lookahead and lookbehind, this wouldn't be such a big issue, but as is we have to work around it.

Anyway, it still has problems. It won't match the first word in the block of text, for one thing, or the last word unless it is followed by punctuation/space/something like that--possibly a large problem with the first half, the second half not so much as long as you consistantly end your says with puncuation! It also won't correctly cope with plurals or possessive forms (unless you add them specifically): "your" will NOT beocome "yer", "you're" will NOT become "ye're". If you get the same word twice in a row it won't match (this is not really a problem, imho). It is longer to add and more prone to error due to being more complicated....back to the speed issue.

Quick edit: While I'm adding to your feature list, you might some day try and make it so that it only changes a percentage of the words... in an ideal world where just thinking about something causes it to happen, you could change it so that common words are changed randomly but less frequently, certain words are changed all of the time (based on your character), and average words are changed randomly but fairly regularly. This would help with readability, since just reading the one paragraph made my eyes bleed. :/

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 5:52 am

sorry to be stupid but %regex( ... , "(\W)you(\W)","%%1ye%%2")

how does that fit in to

%subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %subregex( %-1 , yes, aye), you, ye), captain, Cap'n), mad, addled), after, aft), hello, ahoy), rubbish, bilge), nonesense, bilge), treasure, booty), pirates, bretheren of the coast), friends, bucko's), song, shanty), eyes, deadlights), bye, fairwinds), drink, grog), food, grub), sailors, Jack tars), flag, Jolly Roger), coins, pieces of eight), enemy, shark bait), hi, ahoy)

Magician Joined: 17 Apr 2005 Posts: 496

Er, sorry, instead of %regex it should be %subregex, and then you would use it as you're already using... Um. Instead if where you have "you" put "(\W)you(\W)" and instead of where you have "ye" put "%%1ye%%2"... and so on for all of your patterns (or at least the small words that are likely to show up in something else). Like I said, it can very quickly become difficult to maintain!

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 3:58 pm

this didnt work

thanks for the idea though and ill keep messing with it

Magician Joined: 17 Apr 2005 Posts: 496

How did it fail?

One thing... You will probably -need- the quotes with the patterns that I've posted, since I notice you're not using quotes normally (also there is no harm in using them for all patterns, even simple ones).

Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 7:13 pm

dont want this to sound bad but

if i new that i could fix it
just doesnt accept code and doesnt work

Ive had stuff like this every time i try to get stuff working .... maybe i have my preferences wrong or just dont do stuff right.

dont worry as it works for all but small words etc so its good fpr some rp thanks

Magician Joined: 17 Apr 2005 Posts: 496

Hmm, what I meant was things like...

Does it give you an error message, either when you put it into the function or when you try and use the function?

If you use the function on some text, does the text come through garbled (translated incorrectly) or not translated at all?

What kind of test are you using to see if it works, and what result does the test give?