dranorter
commented
7 years ago I've run into something this issue actually prevents me from doing. I'm trying to have a generated narrative remember what the hero is trying to accomplish, but the hero's goal is a list of alternatives like "money, riches, treasure" or "medicine, a cure". Since the nested narratives have different goals, I need to rename "quest" to "quest2" to keep it from being forgotten. But if I use something like "#[quest2:#quest#]tellStory#", of course that just picks one element from the list. So really what I'm wanting at the moment is a way to wrap "quest", keeping it from being evaluated; or something like #quest.rulesList# which would evaluate to the list "money, riches, treasure" for example.
The thing is, I can't seem to find a viable workaround. Here are several attempts to get around the problem:
{
"origin": ["#[#setVars#]thepattern#","#[#setVars#]thePatternWrapper#","#[settings:#setVars#]smarterWrapper#",
"#[settings:#setVars#]evenSmarterWrapper#"],
"thepattern": ["#one#, #one#, #one#, #one# ..(thepattern).. #two#, #two#, #two#, #two#"],
"thepattern2": ["#one2#, #one2#, #one2#, #one2# ...(thepattern2)... #two2#, #two2#, #two2#, #two2#"],
"thepattern3": ["#one3#, #one3#, #one3#, #one3# ....(thepattern3).... #two3#, #two3#, #two3#, #two3#"],
"thepattern4": ["#one4#, #one4#, #one4#, #one4# .....(thepattern4)..... #two4#, #two4#, #two4#, #two4#"],
"thePatternWrapper": ["#[one2:#one#][two2:#two#]thepattern2#"],
"smarterWrapper": ["#[#settings#]smarterWrapperHelper#"],
"smarterWrapperHelper":["#[one3:#one#][two3:#two#]thepattern3#"],
"evenSmarterWrapper": ["#[#settings.replace(one, one4).replace(two, two4)#]thepattern4#"],
"setVars": ["#setOne##setTwo#","[one:plane, car, road, boat, vacation][two:kiss, wedding, date, longing gaze, heart, cuddle]"],
"setOne": ["[one:yes, no, maybe, try again, reply hazy]","[one:cat, dog, horse, bird, puppet, seahorse, fish, espionage]","[one:1, 2, 3, 4, 5]","[one:many, some, multitudes, a number]"],
"setTwo": ["[two:ufo, pyramid, greek fire, bigfoot, Barney]","[two:life, taxes, free will, morality, missing socks, calculus]","[two:into, under, out of, between, within, acquitted of]"]
}"thePattern" does what I'm trying to do, but isn't protecting the variables, so it would lose them if I recursively called "thePattern". The rest of them prematurely collapse "one" and "two" down to one possibility.
The results look like this:
no, no, no, no ...(thepattern2)... between, between, between, between some, some, many, many ..(thepattern).. out of, acquitted of, out of, between ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)) .....(thepattern4)..... ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)) vacation, vacation, vacation, vacation ...(thepattern2)... cuddle, cuddle, cuddle, cuddle ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)) .....(thepattern4)..... ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)) car, boat, plane, plane ..(thepattern).. date, cuddle, kiss, longing gaze ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)) .....(thepattern4)..... ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)) road, road, road, road ...(thepattern2)... kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss multitudes, multitudes, multitudes, multitudes ....(thepattern3).... calculus, calculus, calculus, calculus ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)) .....(thepattern4)..... ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)) a number, a number, a number, a number ...(thepattern2)... calculus, calculus, calculus, calculus road, road, road, road ...(thepattern2)... kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)) .....(thepattern4)..... ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)) plane, plane, plane, plane ....(thepattern3).... date, date, date, date ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)) .....(thepattern4)..... ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)) plane, road, plane, boat ..(thepattern).. longing gaze, kiss, date, wedding seahorse, dog, bird, puppet ..(thepattern).. under, out of, out of, within ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)) .....(thepattern4)..... ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)) ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)), ((one4)) .....(thepattern4)..... ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)), ((two4)) 2, 2, 2, 2 ....(thepattern3).... into, into, into, into 5, 5, 5, 5 ...(thepattern2)... life, life, life, life
I really can't figure out why the "evenSmarterWrapper" approach (pattern4) didn't work! Shouldn't the "replace()" change the names before the text is even evaluated? Come to think of it, though, that method wouldn't offer any protection if I was doing recursion.
A second feature that would help me out here would be double evaluation. I could have symbols like "treasure" and "cure" hold their possible paraphrasings, and keep a symbol "quest" which simply evaluates to the text "treasure" or the text "cure"; and then I could write ##quest## and get what I want.
galaxykate
When I pass a 'correlated' bundle of information (such as "bracetypes" below) to a symbol, and then make recursive calls to that symbol, then the information gets overwritten unless I protect it with a second symbol ("brace2" below) which renames the relevant symbol. The more basic actions (like symbol:#letter# below) don't care.
This gives output with matched braces and matched brace labels, such as the following:
Technically I don't need the symbol/action "open2" since I only use the open braces before recursive calls. But if I rename all occurrances of "close2" to "close", I get this sort of output:
<A «O O> «L <O ᙅH H> O{{close}} L{{close}} <P «K K> P{{close}} A{{close}}
It's as if nested calls "borrow" the value of their parent, and then the variable is no longer defined after the call! Yet, note that the capital letters match up perfectly; they have no such issue.
Of course, how I initially wrote the code was with no protective symbol "brace2", like this:
which gives output like this:
Again, the letters match up fine, yet the different braces and brackets don't.
Another interesting example is this piece of code:
The first and second rule for symbol "origin" clobbers the value of "x" so that after it's called, the variable no longer even exists. So, using the Tracery tutorial, I can get run histories like the following:
Or like the following:
Or:
So "x" actually disappeared from the grammar! Now, I wouldn't mind being able to use actions to change the value of "x" over time. But having it just disappear isn't very useful, and I don't understand why the first two rules are different from the other two (using bare lambda or using lambda with "test").