The hobbit: developing the parser

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Ralf
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by Ralf »

I figure this was the only way you could practically do a Plotto style interactive fiction game/RPG on the spectrum.
how does that help? just curious
Yes, could you elaborate more on it?

I've read the text in the link and it's actually an interesting subject of building some system of classification for book plots. I recall the similar things were done for example for fairytales which often have common, recurring motifs.

But how does it relate to Hobbit and Zx Spectrum? ;)
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by Nomad »

Ok that is a fair question.

The Hobbit encoded the data this way to be as compact as possible - this saved space but this made easy fan translations difficult (you are not looking for strings any more - you have to re-design the whole parser.)

Think of the advantages of creating a program this way - you tokenize whole parts of the sentence that you can re-assemble as you need. This enables you to pack a lot more data than you would have otherwise been able to with simple strings.

When you think about this technique, an obvious application is to use it for stuff like Plotto. To try and digitize plotto using standard string storage wouldn't work because it would take up way to much space even on a disk system. So what I am saying is probably the only way you could get a digitized version of plotto on the spectrum would be to use the same type of tokenizer/parser method that the hobbit used.

Now why would you want to do this - well as far as interactive fiction or RPG goes, Plotto can give you a very rich almost never ending set of story possibilities. Lots of TV shows and pulp stories were written with this method. Perry Mason is probably one of the best known examples. Others that have been suspected to use Plotto were many of the Perry Rhodan stories - how else do you write 30-50k words a fortnight for years without some sort of help like this? :lol:

I am not sure its been attempted on the spectrum, but what I am saying is by using the same technique that the hobbit used, you could at least come close.
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by Bizzley »

Nomad wrote: Wed May 09, 2018 8:10 pmOthers that have been suspected to use Plotto were many of the Perry Rhodan stories - how else do you write 30-50k words a fortnight for years without some sort of help like this? :lol:
The Perry Rhodan stories were written by a team of rotating authors so it's no wonder they could come up stuff so quickly, but it's chicken-feed compared to the old pulp authors. Walter B.Gibson aka Maxwell Grant was reportedly knocking out 10,000 words a day single-handedly when he was writing his 280+ Shadow novels and that was in addition to his other book, comic and magic writing commitments. When you were paid by-the-word it was quantity not quality that mattered, an accusation that was often aimed at the pulps, but if Plotto is reponsible for the Rhodan works then it's not a good advertisement. As those of us who've managed to read more than a few of them or sat through the awful 'Mission Stardust' film can attest to.
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Nomad
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by Nomad »

Yea you have a good point, the pulp writers knew how to not just write a lot but write stuff that they knew they could sell to the magazines. That is why I laugh when people complain they have writers block or talk about how they are warriors for writing 4k words over a weekend. I think to myself 'Dude, guys wrote 30k space operas in the same time period.. and they got paid.. then the next week write a western or war story..' :lol:

Still; I think Pixel is going out of his mind with this going off topic. :lol: So I will leave it.
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by R-Tape »

Nomad wrote: Thu May 10, 2018 8:17 am That is why I laugh when people complain they have writers block or talk about how they are warriors for writing 4k words over a weekend. I think to myself 'Dude, guys wrote 30k space operas in the same time period.. and they got paid..
I heard a summary of writers' block recently that I quite liked, it was along the lines of “it’s not that you can’t write, it’s that you aren’t willing to write badly”. I never liked the often made comparison to other professions though – “e.g you don’t get Plumbers' block”, maybe it applies a bit for the total hackwork, but generally don't think creative stuff can be compared.

For the Spectrum, we have Automatic Muse, but there are much better ones on the web, I like this one.

(Writer's or Writers' block? Opted for the latter as it's an affliction of writers as a whole...)

(Slightly OT, sorry MrPix)
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by R-Tape »

hikoki wrote: Mon May 28, 2018 1:23 pm Endless Story
Not very sophisticated but I quite like this, the idea could be developed a lot.

My English translation needs a bit of work though...

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djnzx48
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by djnzx48 »

Well that escalated quickly... :shock:
hikoki
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by hikoki »

The diagram this demo is based on can be found on this old book which MarcosC mentions on his blog: https://archive.org/details/superintelligent00berr
I wonder how DaveR would develop this idea. Perhaps some way for the user to feed the A.I. from outside with new words and branches?
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by hikoki »

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Beep!Beep!
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by R-Tape »

Nice one!

At first I misunderstood Marco's program, I didn't realise it was just acting out the flowchart.
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by hikoki »

Now imagine that you can answer any thing to the machine so you can alter its inner branches made up of chewing gum..the mad thing would try to "make sense" and reorder its "common" sense so that you cannot end the story. The Hobbit may well become a short endless thing unless you give Hal arguments to put an end to its misery. Hope makes sense. Tweet!Tweet!
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by hikoki »

The book talks also about Parry, a paranoid chatbot. There is a Sinclair Basic implementation of Eliza but I cannot find any Parry bot online.. though it was originally explained on this book: https://archive.org/details/artificialparano00colb
One idea could be adapting Parry to Smaug :geek:
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by programandala.net »

R-Tape wrote: Tue Jun 05, 2018 8:15 am
hikoki wrote: Mon May 28, 2018 1:23 pm Endless Story
Not very sophisticated but I quite like this, the idea could be developed a lot.

My English translation needs a bit of work though...

Image
I'm the author of that simple program, which I wrote so many years ago, when I was learning BASIC. As someone has pointed out, it is based on a flowchart I found in the Spanish version of Adrian Berry's The super-intelligent machine. I really enjoyed that book.

I'm glad to see someone found this old program worth mentioning and even translated it! I've updated the program web page with a link to this thread.
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Re: The hobbit: developing the parser

Post by R-Tape »

I'm glad to see someone found this old program worth mentioning and even translated it!
I just wish my translation was more representative of the original text! I do like the idea of these adventure gamebook style ideas, and there must still be a new angle somewhere that can be done on the Speccy.
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