Multi-Word Names

Faraday
Sat, 30 Jun 2018 23:24:40 +0000

This was a design choice I made early on, and it will take a crap-ton of work to change. Basically, the problem isn’t with the name itself - it’s just a string, and the database doesn’t care.

The problem is that you have to make every single command smart enough to accept multi-word names whenever you allow them to specify the name of a character. This is particularly onerous for the multitude of Ares commands that accept lists of characters, requiring either comma-separated names or putting quotes around names like mail "Captain America"=Subject/Message.

Not only would that require a great deal of parsing gymnastics scattered all over the code, I believe that makes for a poor player experience.

I figured that all the other benefits of Ares would counter-balance the down-side of having to make somebody’s name Rogers instead of Captain America. (Incidentally, my softcode package has had the same limitation for over a decade and a good many games have made do - though admittedly not without some grumbling )

But if it’s a deal-breaker, I totally understand.