DragonSpeak

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section may need a complete rewrite.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page.

This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article.
Please improve it or discuss changes on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.

DragonSpeak, also known as DS, is the simple programming language used in the massive multiplayer online game Furcadia. It is used for the customization of user-created areas known as "Dreams."

DragonSpeak can be edited in a text editor or in the Furcadia Dragonspeak Editor created by author "Reunion." DragonSpeak uses an English-like syntax, with pound signs where numbers may be specified. It was designed for easy use by children ages 12 and up. It is limited and designed to minimize the chance of "messing up." For example, it does not have looping or branching statements, so no knowledge of sophisticated computer logic is necessary to use it. If read aloud, a DragonSpeak script sounds like English.

[edit] Sample Script

(0:100) When 1 seconds have passed, offset by 0,

(5:204) emitloud message {BlahBlahBlah} to everyone on the map.

This is a fairly simple script; it will say "BlahBlahBlah" every second to everybody who is currently present on the map that the script applies to. Although not a very useful (or useful at all for that matter) script, it should make a good model of how the program reads the DS scripting language.

[edit] How Furcadia Reads DS

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message.
This article has been tagged since June 2006.

This section does not cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since February 2007.

You may be wondering how exactly Furcadia manages to make sense out of these simple words and turn them into complex functions, well it's rather simple really.

DS is nothing more than a modified version of the Notepad program that syncs up with Furcadia.

The Details Here are a list of the modifications that the Furcadia company made to the Notepad program:

{}'s are read as the beginning and end of a spoken value, or words that will appear on the Furcadia chat board.

()'s have multiple uses: (#,#) is read as an ordered pair, a coordinate if you will, which represents a specific point on the map to which the script applies.

(A:B) is what's actually read by the program, the regular text is simply for the convenience of the scripter. A is replaced by numbers 0, 1, 3, 4, 5; 0 means that the line is a basic Cause; 1 means that the line is an Additional Condition; 3 means that the line is an Area (the certain parts of the map that the script will apply to); 4 means that the line is a Filter; and 5 means that the line is an Effect (What will actually happen when all of the Causes, Conditions, Areas and Filters are fofilled). B is replaced by the ID number of the specific command line within the cataglory (A).

%'s are read as the beginning of a Variable, the name of which is accounted for as all text between the "%" and the next space.