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As of Stone Soup 0.3 the previously hard-coded monster
speech has been outsourced into shout.txt and speak.txt by
Matthew Cline. This makes changing existing messages, or
adding new ones really easy. This file will hopefully help
you in this endeavour.
shout.txt handles message output for monsters noticing you.
speak.txt handles messages for monsters communicating.
If you take a look through the two files, you'll see that
all entries have basically the same structure. Let's have a
look at an xample:
###############
# Friendly imps
###############
%%%%
# Friendly imps are very common so they speak very rarely
friendly '5'
w:9
__NONE
w:1
@_friendly_imp_@
%%%%
Now let's have a look at these in more detail:
# Friendly imps
A '#' sign at the beginning of line means this line will
be ignored, so it's used as a comment.
%%%%
The four percentage signs mark beginning and end of a
database entry. If you forget to place these, buggy
monster speech will result.
friendly '5'
The first non-comment, non-clear line is interpreted as
the key of an entry. Most keys are hardcoded but there's
place for user defined ones as well. In this case, the key
is "friendly '5'".
'5' refers to the monster glyph, so the speech will not be
entirely restricted to imps, though they are by far the
most common ones.
On the whole there are three ways the game tries to look
for keys in the database. First the actual monster name is
used, then the monster glyph (with prefix "cap-" for
capital letters), then a a group description (such as
insect or humanoid) defined by the monster's body shape.
The latter is entirely hardcoded, though.
"friendly" is one of a couple of allowed prefixes,
distinguishing the speech from "hostile" (default).
These prefixes are optional and tested in the following
order:
default friendly/hostile fleeing silenced confused monster
First the database is searched for the whole prefix
string, then reading from left to right the combinations
are tested, beginning at three prefixes and ending at
none, at which time the prefix "default" is used instead.
For the last round (shape comparison, e.g. winged humanoid
etc.) a prefix on intelligence gets added. If in this last
round still nothing has been found, the monster stays
silent.
w:9
After a clear line the actual talk begins. You can skew
the probability of a given message with the weight ('w')
tag. A message will be chosen with a probability of its
weight (defaults to 10 if none set) out of the sum of
weights for this entry. In this case, nine times out of
ten a friendly imp will stay silent.
__NONE
Aside from "__NONE" there are a few other hardcoded
markers:
__NONE : no message
__NEXT : try the next combination of attributes
__MORE : enforce a "-- More --" prompt
__YOU_RESIST : "You resist."
__NOTHING_HAPPENS : "Nothing appears to happen."
In addition, some more are defined in speak.txt and
shout.txt, such as __RESIST_OR_NOTHING, __SHOUT, and
others.
@_friendly_imp_@
Other variables can be defined in the form of @variable@.
The "@_friendly_imp_@" above is key to another entry in
the database entitled "_friendly_imp_" (without those '@'
signs) that actually has imps talking. Their speech
includes messages such as the following.
VISUAL:@The_monster@ grins impishly at you.
VISUAL:@The_monster@ picks up some beetles from the @surface@ and offers them to you.
Again, there have to be clear lines between the different
messages. If messages are placed directly one after another
they will be printed as a block. This can be useful, e.g.
for outputting first a "spell" and then it's (fake) result.
Monster speech can be greatly customized by the use of
several variables. This example already includes a few.
VISUAL:
This optional parameter at the beginning of a string
decides which message channel a string will be passed
through. The list of allowed tags is as follows:
TALK : MSGCH_TALK (Default value.)
DANGER : MSGCH_DANGER
ENCHANT : MSGCH_ENCHANT
PLAIN : MSGCH_PLAIN
SOUND : MSGCH_SOUND
SPELL : MSGCH_MONSTER_SPELL
VISUAL : MSGCH_TALK_VISUAL
WARN : MSGCH_WARN
Note that MSGCH_SOUND and MSGCH_TALK get filtered out
when you are silenced. For similar reasons monster speech
of channel SPELL is muted under silence, along with
ENCHANT and WARN, both of which currently only occur in
combination with SPELL. To allow for silent spells along
with fake warnings and enchantments, you can combine these
with VISUAL and enforce output even when silenced.
VISUAL SPELL : MSGCH_SPELL
VISUAL WARN : MSGCH_WARN
VISUAL ENCHANT : MSGCH_ENCHANT
Note, though, that these hardly ever take effect as
usually the "silenced humanoid" types take precedence.
Only if no message for the silenced monster type is found
these special VISUAL cases will apply.
For shouts the default is also MSGCH_TALK which is
changed to MSGCH_TALK_VISUAL for monsters that don't
speak, and manually set to MSGCH_SOUND for all those
variants of "You hear a shout!"
@The_monster@, @surface@
Like with @_friendly_imp_@ above, variables have been
defined to allow for greater flexibility. When the speech
code encounters an '@' sign it will first search the
database for a variable of that name and execute the
necessary replacement. Note that recursive replacement of
one variable with another is possible, so try to avoid
loops. The remaining variables it was unable to find in
the database are hardcoded and will be replaced before
output. If you add a new variable make sure to also add a
database entry for it (without those '@' marks around!);
otherwise it won't get replaced and just look weird.
A variable that you will see all over the place is
@The_monster@ which is hardcoded and will be replaced with
the monster's name. This is particularly useful for groups
of monsters that share the same speech pattern. Another
variable you can see in this example is @surface@ which
will be replaced by whatever the monster is standing on.
The following variables are hardcoded:
@the_monster@ : replaced with definite article plus
monster name for non-unique monsters
@Monster@ : as above, but capitalized
@the_monster@ : replaced with monster name
@The_monster@ : replaced with capitalized monster name
@a_monster@ : replaced with indefinite article plus
monster name, if several can exist
@A_monster@ : as above, but capitalized
@Monster@ : replaced with plain monster name
@monster@ : es above, but capitalized
For friendly monsters an additional "your"/"Your" is
placed before the monster name, respecting capitalization
and grammar (only for the_xxx).
As an alternative there's also @the_something@,
@The_something@, @a_something@, @A_something@, @something@
and @Something@, all of which behave like the corresponding
monster definitions above but get replaced by "something"
and "Something", respectively, should the monster be
invisible and the player be unable to see invisible.
But wait, there's more!
@player_name@ : replaced by player name
@surface@ : replaced with whatever the monster stands on
@feature@ : replaced with the monster's square's feature
description
@pronoun@ : replaced be it, she, he as appropriate
@Pronoun@ : replaced be It, She, He, as appropriate
@possessive@ : replaced by its, her, his as appropriate
@Possessive@ : replaced by Its, Her, His, as appropriate
@imp_taunt@ : replaced by hardcoded imp type insults
@demon_taunt@ : replaced by hardcoded demon type insults
Also, @says@ will get replaced with a synonym of 'say' that
fits a monster's (hardcoded) speech pattern and noise level.
Pre-defined variables in the database include _high_priest_,
_mercenary_guard_, _wizard_, _hostile_adventurer_,
_friendly_imp_, _hostile_imp_, _tormentor_. There are also a
few synonyms defined at the beginning of speak.txt such as
for @ATTACK@, @pointless@, @shouts@, @wails@, @yells@ and
others.
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