Could world info entries load each other recursively?

171 votes

A case could also be made for world info entries loading each other recursively.

Example: an entry for an alien named Kerr begins "She is a female Arran." A separate world info entry for the word Arran begins "The Arran are a race of aliens. An Arran looks like an ostrich with two necks and two heads."

Then, if the player decides to "examine Kerr" the AI first loads the entry for Kerr, then checks that text for other tags, finds one, and loads the entry for Arran as well; then it generates the text, which might say something like "Kerr is a female Arran. She looks like an ostrich with two necks and two heads."

Without this feature you end up having to include the info about what an Arran looks like in the world info for each Arran character. (That or you have to try and cram all Arran characters into one entry).

Suggested by: Shasarak (28 Aug, '20) • Upvoted: 03 Mar

Under consideration feature

Comments: 6

28 Aug, '20
Shasarak
I'm not sure where the word "also" came from in the first paragraph, there!
28 Aug, '20
Shasarak
A different but related option is to have world info loaded from /remember information. That might also be a good idea. (And has been suggested by someone else, I believe).
06 Sep, '20
Just me
This could also backfire, I think it's good that you can explicitly link them together (by using the same keyword on both).
If I have a world info "greece" which says Greece haves Turkey in it's east and "Turkey" which says it haves Greece in its West I don't want the ai to load everything from Greece if I'm actually in Turkey, this would lead to me being in a place that is at the same time Greece and Turkey, and my world travel would make less sense. I say this takes control away from you.
07 Sep, '20
Shasarak
> I don't want the ai to load
> everything from Greece
> if I'm actually in Turkey,
> this would lead to me
> being in a place that is
> at the same time Greece
> and Turkey

I don't think so. Under the current system, if you start in Turkey and cross the border into Greece, do you end up in a hybrid location until the Turkish bit drops out of scope? If there are two people in a room with you, does it always hybridise them? It's capable of holding multiple concepts in context.
07 Sep, '20
Shasarak
A superficially more plausible objection is that this would increase the volume of text loaded and processed. But in reality I think it might actually reduce it a lot of the time. If you imagine you're talking to two different Arran aliens in the same room, under the current system you have to give a full physical description of what an Arran alien looks like under both both WI entries; the change I'm proposing, that text would only appear once, in the WI entry for the species.
30 Nov, '20
Cris
What we can do reliably now (after some struggling) is having the AI correctly handle one world info at a time. Having it to load another WI and relate to that? It's neat, if it works, which is unlikely. If the AI can't even handle the second world info right, then loading it would be meaningless.