Dear far more experienced users of Quest,

As I would like to create Dutch text adventures, I have set myself the task to improve the Dutch language file. I guess my questions are very basic ones... a fact for which I apologise in advance.

At the moment I especially have issues with my translation of the command 'open'. All my translations for 'close' work, so I thought I should be able to manage 'open' as well. But when I try the easiest translation of all, which is 'open' for 'open', Quest says 'You can't open it.' (in Dutch) The other translations for open do work, but 'open' is the word I think a Dutch player would use most, so I would like to include that.

The same kind of problem I have with 'ask'. The translation of 'Tell object about ...' works fine, but 'Ask object about ...' doesn't.

I would very much appreciate it if someone could take a look at my language file and point out what I did wrong.

Your verbtemplate for "unlock" also says "open" - so maybe that is being picked up, and Quest thinks the command "open x" is an attempt to unlock?

You also have an extra "ask" verbtemplate in the file, which is probably stopping Quest from picking up the correct templates further down in the file.

Thank you so much! I can open objects again (although I have yet to come up with a proper translation of 'unlock', but my player will open much more things than unlock, so that's okay).

I have partly solved the 'ask about' problem. Now I have this in my code:

<template templatetype="command" name="ask"><![CDATA[^stel (?<object>.*) een vraag over (?<text>.*)$]]></template>
<template templatetype="command" name="ask"><![CDATA[^vraag (?<object>.*) naar (?<text>.*)$]]></template>
<template templatetype="command" name="tell"><![CDATA[^praat met (?<object>.*) over (?<text>.*)$]]></template>
<template templatetype="command" name="tell"><![CDATA[^vertel (?<object>.*) over (?<text>.*)$]]></template>

'Vraag naar' and 'Vertel over' are working now, which is great! But... Quest only seems to pick up the second commands, both of 'ask' and 'tell' (when I switch them, the other command works).
Is there a way to make all four work?

Although you can specify multiple verbtemplates, a command template has to be all on one line. Here's how you combine them:

<template templatetype="command" name="ask"><![CDATA[^stel (?<object>.*) een vraag over (?<text>.*)$|^vraag (?<object>.*) naar (?<text>.*)$]]></template>
<template templatetype="command" name="tell"><![CDATA[^praat met (?<object>.*) over (?<text>.*)$|^vertel (?<object>.*) over (?<text>.*)$]]></template>

Thanks again, Alex, I can go on now! (It won't be for long I'm afraid, but we shall see )