![]() | Chapter 12: Advanced Actions | ![]() ![]() |
12.8. Irregular English verbs |
Our three example actions can be recognised in play using the following:
Understand "photograph [something]" as photographing.
Understand "blink" as blinking.
Understand "scrape [something] with [something]" as scraping it with.
The last of these examples shows why Inform does not risk generating this automatically: English is so full of irregular verbs. Inform could have guessed "blink" and "photograph", but might then have opted for "scrap" instead of "scrape".
Inform does risk automatically generating the past participle of an action (many past participles are never needed, so the stakes are lower if Inform gets this wrong). What almost always happens is that the "-ing" is replaced with "-ed", which happens to be correct in these three cases: photographed, blinked, scraped. It would be disastrously wrong for something like taking, though: we need taken, not taked. We can get around this like so:
Weaving is an action with past participle woven, applying to one thing.
| ![]() ![]() ![]() A shake command which agitates soda and makes items thump around in boxes. |
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